How To Shift Your Frequency From Lack To Abundance & Attract Wealth

I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy.

And if you are looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy.

I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward.

We have some big guests and content coming up.

Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode on the school of greatness.

If you became the person who could become rich, when you say what should they do first, it's they got to focus on the abundance that's all around them because your frequency, your energy is what you frequently see.

Dan Martell.

Dan is the author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book.

Buyback Your Time has taken the world by storm.

Dan has founded, scaled, and successfully exited three technology companies.

I'm Dan Martelli.

I don't think we create success.

We attract success.

Why is it people that seem to work extremely hard don't make that much money?

Because they're not working on the right things.

They're working hard on the work.

They're not working hard on themselves.

When I think wealth, I think time and just the freedom.

And when we think about the value of the time, it's not how much you get paid for your hour.

It's what do you think you're worth.

So what I learned a long time ago is nobody's going to get paid a penny more than they think they're worth.

What's negative beliefs that keeps people broke?

The rich people are evil.

I think a lot of people that think, well, if I was rich, I would just hang out on the beach and do nothing, drink my ties.

The reason why you'll never be rich is because...

How does someone identify what their current money story is from their past?

And then how do you rewrite your money story to create more abundance versus scarcity?

So good.

That's a great question.

I've never told anybody this.

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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.

Very excited about our guest.

We have the inspiring Dan Martell in the house, my man.

Dude, good to see you, brother.

Man,

we have known each other for 15 years.

We're here in my home studio in Los Angeles in the basement.

I'm still trying to figure out what this is going to be called.

The basement of greatness or something.

The downstairs studio.

The downstairs studio, you know, just trying to upgrade our life in the downstairs studio.

No, let's see.

I think greatness something sounds better.

Greatness basement, greatness,

something.

Something.

We're not there yet.

We'll figure it out.

It'll come to us.

Yeah.

But I've seen you evolve over the last 15 years as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a father, as a husband, and transform in so many different ways.

And a lot of people know you for the SAS stuff that you do.

Yeah.

But your newest book, which is all about buying back your time, has really helped people rethink what it means to be a human being in life and how, not just towards entrepreneurship or as a freelancer or in business, but also anyone in a career, how they can reimagine their life to optimize their life with time.

Yeah.

And the first thing I want to dive into, because you coach and work with a lot of nine-figure entrepreneurs.

And my community, I think people that are coming to this are really going to want to understand about the three principles of building wealth first before we get into time.

So I'm curious with all the people you coach and work with, what are the three keys that they all have in order to build wealth sustainably

and exponentially.

What would you say those three things are?

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I'd say is most entrepreneurs, unfortunately, because they've never been taught different, end up building companies they grow to hate.

Think about that.

It's not the economy that takes a business down or an entrepreneur.

It's usually the fact that they wake up one day and they look around and they hit what I call the pain line, which is essentially they have opportunity to grow, but the more they grow, the more pain they're going to feel.

What is the thing they're, they have the most pain around?

Is it their teams, their customers, the clients?

Is it the industry they're in?

It's the calendar.

It's their schedule.

Yeah.

And it's maybe the way they hired where they don't have the right people or the thing they're selling is too complicated.

And the more they do, the more their calendar explodes.

So imagine you get an email where you could double your capacity, double your revenue, and you can't take that business on because that would mean more pain in your life.

And you're already trying to get more time for the weekends for your kids or whatever it is.

I mean, it's tough.

And you're exhausted.

You're burnt out.

And it's not the dream that you were sold.

You sold yourself a vision of a future where the bigger this gets, the more time you're going to have and the more freedom.

And unfortunately, if you're not taught to do it properly, that's what ends up happening.

And that's what happened to me.

The three things that I would say that people who have created wealth and when I think wealth, I think of like time and just like the freedom is first off, is they understand the value of their time.

So, and when we think about the value of the time, it's not how much you get paid for your hour.

It's It's what do you think you're worth.

Because what I learned a long time ago is nobody's going to get paid a penny more than they think they're worth.

So wait, what's the difference between how much you get paid per hour versus how much you're worth?

I think there's one that materializes in the minute.

How much did somebody just pay me for what I just offered?

And there's what do you think you're worth?

What's your value?

But some people might say, well, I'm worth $1,000 an hour.

Yeah.

but they're not getting paid that.

Nope.

And you could, is that delusional to think, oh, I'm worth this, but the market's not willing to pay it are you worth it dude it's such a good question here's why it's a great question is because there has to be a belief you're worth more than what you're currently getting paid so you make better trades see if you think you're worth a thousand but you're only getting paid a hundred then you're going to start thinking about your time differently where you'll say no to things that don't even look remotely close to a 200 maybe a 300 an hour opportunity or you might decide to spend some money see most people spend time to save money i encourage them to spend money money to save time.

Yes.

This is kind of how I grew up.

You know, this is what people do.

It's like, you know, we're cutting coupons, we're going to discount, we're going, waiting in line for an hour to like save money, whatever it might be.

It's like you wait or you spend time to try to save money.

But why is that the wrong way to look at it?

Because if we're talking about creating wealth, the only ways we can create wealth is by making that hour worth more.

And this is what's interesting is so the first part is worthiness, but the second part is increasing your value.

So if you think you're worth a thousand, but you're only charging 100 or people aren't willing to pay you more than that, then you can say, well, how can I become more valuable?

For me, the three areas I always look at is the character traits that I have, right?

Like you're not valuable if you're not somebody that can deliver on the commitments you've made.

Right.

And so then are you worthy if you're not valuable?

Exactly.

So I think that you have to start with the belief you're worthy, but then you got to back it up by action.

And by creating value.

Creating that value.

What?

Developing skills.

Yeah.

So it's character traits first off, right?

Like just being somebody that shows up that honors their word, right?

Be impeccable with your language.

Second would be skills.

Like what skill do you currently have that's creating value?

And is there a way to upgrade that skill, right?

Marketing, sales, et cetera.

And then the third part, I think, is belief systems.

Right.

So

what are the belief systems that keep people bankrupt or broke?

I always look at two things.

Whatever the, let's say the goal is becoming rich.

There's two parts of this.

There's the negative, there's this limiting beliefs you have about yourself, about being rich, and then there's the negative beliefs you have about the achievement.

So both of those are in the mind.

So the thing about like limiting beliefs is like, well, I can't do this.

I've never done this before.

And I know the person has those beliefs if I hear the language.

And you know what I'm talking about.

This language like could, should, it'd be nice.

One, two, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That language has the expectation of failure built into it.

So, so that's the

limitation beliefs.

And then on the other side of the coin of the outcome is is the negative beliefs.

So what's the negative beliefs that keeps people broke?

The rich people are evil.

There's no chance you're going to wake up to try to be rich if you believe rich people are evil or rich people don't pay taxes or rich people took advantage of somebody or rich people are unhappy.

Because if you believe rich people are evil, you don't want to become that belief of evil.

If I held a knife to your throat and said, step forward.

You'd be like, well, I don't want to step forward because I'll hurt myself.

It's like, yeah.

So you'll never push for the goal if you think the outcome is negative.

So until we work through those beliefs, I've seen that's what I call self-sabotage.

The biggest work I do with entrepreneurs is understanding what are the unconscious beliefs they have that are literally self-sabotaging their progress to winning.

What are the beliefs that most people have around money that are holding them back then?

Is it that money's bad or people with money are takers or what is it?

Yeah, I think it's it's anything negative.

So, I mean, I know I had money beliefs around, I used to, I had this this crazy belief that everybody had to go bankrupt.

That everyone had to in order to be successful.

Really?

It was this weird belief that I read Donald Trump's book and I read a bunch of other people's books.

And when you look at the history, they all talk about like, you know, if you're really trying, you're taking risks.

And at some point, you'll probably go bankrupt.

So get used to it.

So, like, well, if I have that belief, how hard am I going to push to try to be successful?

If I've got a young family and I'm trying not to create pain in their life, yes.

So that one kept me playing small for a long time.

Yeah.

The other belief is you know what will other people in my family say do i have money oh my gosh do you ever feel guilty about the money you have i i felt so guilty lewis you've known me for a long time i didn't tell anybody i had money i was quiet about it i didn't allow myself to buy anything nice until i was 30.

I made my first million at 27, multi-millionaire at 28.

And it wasn't until I was 36 I allowed myself to buy a McLaren.

Dude, it's so funny.

Isn't that crazy?

What's so funny to say this?

Cause I still don't really buy myself anything.

I mean, I bought a nice home.

Yeah, you bought a beautiful home.

I'm buying like,

you know, I'm not buying things to like show off that I have money though.

Like I don't showcase my home.

I'm not like taking photos of it and posting it online.

I'm like, look at me.

My friend got me a Rolex for my 40th birthday last year.

I think I'm worn it like seven times.

Because part of me is still kind of like, should I be wearing this?

Talk to me about that.

You know, it's well, part of it is not my style.

Yeah.

You know, I don't like, like,

you know, part of it's like I just wear the same black thing, just like you're wearing black

t-shirts.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So that's part of it.

The other part of it is, is,

you know, I don't want to reject money coming my way by not wearing it, but it's also like, how are people going to, are they going to judge me?

Are they going to want more from me?

Are they going to be thinking I should be doing more?

It's just like, do you also, do I want to attract some type of judgment that is unnecessary?

I don't know.

It's like, it's kind of a lot of that well and that is it so you said a few things that i just want to kind of pull up to the surface is one of them is i'm worried if they expect me to do more a lot of people don't want to call their shot or live a bigger life because then that becomes the new floor they got to live into so that's a fascinating one it's like well i don't want to create wealth because then i have to maintain that and if i lose and people will visually publicly see me rise and fall yeah that holds a lot of people back i'm not afraid of the rise and fall because i'm getting the bottom, but it's the

yes, 100%.

And, and, um, like for me, it was what would my family say?

Like, oh, you're too cool for us now.

Why did you get that kind of car?

I remember, dude, I got the car, especially Canadian.

Okay, you guys, it was the only McLaren in the province I lived in.

And they used to have to go to Montreal to get serviced.

Wow.

And I remember the first time I had it for almost two weeks.

I didn't want anybody to know.

It was in the garage.

I wasn't even sure how it was going to

be with it.

That was really weird.

And I remember the first time I wanted to go to the gym and drive it with my wife we went and worked out every day you know renew and she wouldn't come with me

she took her car why she didn't want to have to deal with what people were going to say interesting so it's fascinating that like when people just kind of try on these these ideas like what would it mean to say even a lot of my clients i say can you say i am ultra rich they can't say it nope why not

I mean, everybody's got a personal story, but what does that mean?

Why does saying the word ultra rich

scare you frustrate you like you're the judgment what is it what is it what does it mean to you it's just words what do most ultra rich rich people say around why they can't own that they're uber wealthy by speaking about it i think there's a part of it that is if i acknowledge it then i'm different than other people and they don't want anybody to think that they think they're better really yeah i mean i'm that way man i don't want anybody to think that because i drive a certain car or fly around in my jet that I think I'm better than you.

Cause that's, and you're the same way.

Like, we don't.

Yeah.

Right.

I don't, the reason I don't wear watches because I don't like it to get in the way.

I appreciate beautiful things in design.

Yes.

But yeah, I'm definitely when I first got the McLaren, I was worried that people would treat me different.

And guess what?

They did.

They did.

They look at you differently.

Dude, I remember the first, it was awesome.

I mean, I showed up.

I went and did a talk at a rehab center.

I'll tell you why.

So I pull up to go.

I do a lot of work with troubled youth and every kid immediately, the, the,

like they want to know what I have to say.

Whereas before I'd show up in whatever car and then they'd be like, who is this guy?

Isn't that fascinating?

So, you know, perception is reality.

But

yeah, people do treat you different.

And sometimes if you are comfortable with it, you can use that to fast track conversations.

And if you're not okay with it, then it can be a source of a lot of pain.

And I think that's, that's the mindset.

Who are the wealthiest people that you know that you respect based on how they live their life?

And what are the things that they do that you respect the most about them?

Yeah, I'm going to say Gary Vee for sure.

I just interviewed him yesterday.

Yeah.

I mean, Gary.

What are the characteristics about the wealthy like Gary that you respect?

That he uses his money to create and to help other people.

And I, and I would, and I would aspire to always be that.

And that's what it is.

And I think that if you truly, it's like when people say, well, I don't need to be rich.

And I'm like, cool, why don't you become rich?

And then if you want to do good with it, then you can.

Like, why wouldn't you accumulate the resources?

If you think somebody else, the government, this other entrepreneur, this CEO isn't going to do right by having that money, go get it.

And once you got it, decide what you want to do with it.

Right.

That's the way I think about it.

So when I watch Gary, you know, create his empire and then reinvest it into content and helping other people and running these big events and building companies to inspire entrepreneurship and help and really like help other people around him become wealthy.

I mean, we've seen gary over the years make concessions for his career for other people yeah i mean dude even the fact that he helped build his dad's wine shop like no like most people don't know this he built it to 60 million he owned none of it yeah and was paying himself maybe 100k a year dude i don't pay my ceos 100k a year if they're generating 60 million a year right right dude that's not how the math works sure

so um he inspires me just the way he shows up i think uh you know alex and layla hermozzi friends of ours like they they do the same thing they're they're very much like how do i use this to create more how do i buy back my time like because i really think it's about an experience and a leverage thing like wealth should be an opportunity to live a full a more fully developed life right like i think the word empire subtitle my book i believe an empire is a life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from

And I think everybody should want to aspire to do that.

Interesting.

Just be a creator.

That's why I talk a lot about artists and creators creators in the book.

The book's really meant for people that are starting off because I don't want them to get the wrong headspace for what it means to be successful.

And I try to teach them how to value their time, the math behind it, the value of it, the worthiness.

And then allow yourself to, if you have a desire to drive a supercar, don't tame it.

If you have a desire to own a jet, don't tame it.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Live in a beautiful home.

I think the number one thing you could ever do for somebody else is inspire them to live a bigger life.

And you don't inspire people by playing small.

And to add to that, though,

what is the difference between inspiring people and showing off?

It's the intent.

Think about it.

Money is an amplifier.

That's it.

It's not good or bad.

It's like a fork.

A fork can be used to hurt somebody.

It could be used to nourish somebody.

It's a tool.

That's it.

So some people buy the Rolex because they're trying to fill a hole that says, I'm not enough.

Maybe this will make me feel worthy of that affection.

Other people get it because they understand the history.

And from a engineering point of view and a story, maybe their grandfather had one, they want to wear it as a reminder of that.

Or, and it could be like, this is the cool part is that it's not necessarily the thing.

It's the story behind the thing.

Isn't that fun?

Like, that's why I help people kind of rewrite their money stories because then if we, if we say, okay, like like I had a client, he was worth like, you know, 50 million and he couldn't bring himself to, he had, he had a car he wanted to get.

I think it was, um, it wasn't, it was like the, the new Corvette, okay, the C8, brand new rear engine Corvette.

And he, and he couldn't bring himself, okay, guys worth 50 million, car's like 100 and some thousand.

And I said, why is that?

And his mindset was always about, well, if I do that, then I'm taking away from something else I could help somebody with.

And I said, cool, I totally honor that.

I appreciate it.

I said, but what if you got the car to help inspire other kids that were just like you

and i could see the light bulb and he goes oh i said so talk to me about what just you just i saw the math click

and he goes well if i got the car then i could use it for charity rallies and i could do it i could go to schools and i could like go to car shows and i go now we're talking see if you have a thing a house and you don't host people there.

Right.

You have a company, but you don't allow the resources to be leveraged by your team to to do good.

You have money, but you just try to hoard it and keep it in one spot and not use it to create experiences for yourself.

That's where I think people get prisoner of money.

And here's the thing.

And I got this from one of my friends.

I really like the way he framed it.

He said,

it doesn't matter how much money you have, 100,000 or 100 million.

He said, if money is the primary decision, you make a decision.

you're a prisoner.

Said money needs to be a consideration, but it can't be the primary reason.

Why you do something, why you create something, make something, start a business.

It has to be a consideration.

It has to be.

You can't just say, I want to do this, but I make no money.

You have to be thinking about the money as well.

How much do you think about the money versus the impact when you're making a decision?

Exactly.

How much should you think?

I think impact should be at least 50%.

I think the money should almost be, let's not be wasteful, but I think we should listen to our heart and say, that's what I feel called to do.

If you feel called to, you know, charter a boat and invite all your friends on it to create a magical experience, you know, I think that is a beautiful thing.

And economically, it might make no sense.

You know, calling my dad and sharing with him some of my travel stuff I'm doing, he for sure would go, wasteful, makes no sense.

Why would you do that?

But again, different mindset, right?

He had a belief that money didn't grow on trees and there was a limited supply.

I have a belief that to the level I'm creative and resourceful, it's unlimited.

Let's go.

But that's true because you've experienced it.

Yes.

Right.

To the degree that I can create opportunities for people or feel a certain way, then all of a sudden I attract it into my life.

Then I need to show up.

And always, that's why the desire to help other people should be at least 50% of every decision because it's actually a better way to live.

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You mentioned money story.

How does someone identify what their current money story is from their past?

And then how do you rewrite your money story to create more abundance versus scarcity?

So good.

That's a great question.

So what I do with people is I ask them to sit down and say,

as it pertains to money, being rich, and let's call it like being rich.

What are all the negative beliefs?

that you have around that language and really sit with that for 15 minutes.

Don't move on it.

Well, and I, and I've had people say the, the craziest things and crazy to me, but maybe obvious to a lot of people listening.

The first one, I remember one time they said that rich people don't pay taxes.

That's fascinating.

And I've paid a lot of taxes.

I'm like, I know how much I write.

And I want to pay taxes.

The more taxes I pay, it means that I've obviously created more wealth.

Like I have no problem paying tax.

I don't want to pay one penny more and I have to, but I have no, I have zero problem.

And it's funny how that belief.

Well, what is that?

Why does that matter to you?

Well, I don't want to make, I want to give a penny more to the government than I have to.

Interesting.

So you have an anger issue against your government that's stopping you from being wealthy because you don't want to pay more.

So you don't want to make more because you don't want to give more.

Dude, it's so fascinating, right?

When people literally say like, well, I don't want more because I might make, you know, if I'm wealthy or rich, my sister might be upset with me.

Talk to me about that.

Well, last time I got a raise and I told her all of a sudden she didn't talk to me for three weeks because she thought I was better than her.

That's interesting.

Let's talk about that.

So I always go to three questions when this stuff comes up is number one, is it true?

So first off, write off all the beliefs

on your money story.

Yep.

Then for each one of them, the first question, is it true?

What if they believe it's true?

Well, is it really true?

Is the follow-up.

Is it true, comma, is it really true?

Is there a scenario where that's not true?

And for most people, if I say, is it really true?

They're like, well, no, it's not really true.

It's like, cool.

Let's start there.

Second question is, what would need to be true for that not to be true?

Because that's another great question.

It's like, well, I don't want to pay taxes.

Like, perfect.

So what if you had a tax expert that specialized in making sure that you didn't pay a penny more to the government you had to?

Would that solve the problem?

Cool.

Because again, it's, it's not about overcoming that they don't believe it anymore.

It's resolving the belief.

So if I then found a firm that I knew would help me not pay the government one penny more, then I could push harder, right?

Because again, people don't want to grow if they have a negative belief of achievement.

So once we resolve that, then we move it forward.

Now, the third question is, how old is that belief?

How long have you been thinking about it?

Or how old are you when you came up?

When did that start?

You know what I'm talking about.

Seven, I was 10, I was nine.

I saw, you know, I saw my dad, you know, upset and he made a comment

and that stuck with me.

Or my dad, my dad used to say that it's fascinating.

He used to always say to me

that

it's not what you make, it's what you spend.

Okay, which is good advice.

On the surface, it's not what you make, it's what you spend.

So you could make a million dollars a year, but if you spend a million in one, then then you're no worse off than somebody that didn't make any money.

But what I took that and internalized it for my 20s and my 20s when I started in business was every dollar I was an expense was I was taking it away from me.

So think about the concept of buying back your time.

My belief, if I spent a dollar, then I was taking away profit.

So I tried to do as much as I could.

To save.

Save.

Dude, I was like, I was making like,

you know, hundreds of thousands a year.

And instead of investing in the business, I was constraining it.

I was choking it from its potential because

I wouldn't let a dollar go if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

And the challenge, if you understand business, is that it requires an investment.

And what happens if you make good investments, you get a return on that investment.

And if you get really good in business, then the more investments you make, like when I ask somebody like, how much do you pay for a customer?

Well, I pay $10 a customer.

Well, how much is that customer worth to you?

$100.

How quick do you get that $100 $100 within the first month?

How many $10 bills do you want to trade for a $100 bill?

So what's your marketing budget?

But originally they'll say, well, my budget's $10,000 a month.

I go, no, it's unlimited to the degree that you get that $100 bill for every 10 that you put in.

It took me six years of being in business and choking the potential of the business till I flipped the mindset of, oh, no, it's not what you make.

It's not what you keep.

It's literally what's the return on the growth.

Because the the real value in a lot of businesses, yes, it's the profit, but even more importantly, it's what's the business worth to somebody else.

Because to the degree that, and this is what I talk about in the book, to the degree that I can build a business that doesn't need me to grow and that it has predictable revenue, predictable profits, those two equations equals how much it's worth to somebody else.

And for, and this is what happened to me at 28 when my company got bought, my first company I sold, that was when the

spheric, even before that.

That one, that was the one that really set me up to then do a bunch of other stuff.

But that's when I learned that, yes, you can't be not profitable, but at the same time, don't constrain the business from its potential growth.

Because if you can build a business that doesn't require you to run and is predictable profit, then it's going to be incredibly valuable to somebody else.

Or for someone like you where the business requires some of you to grow, your personality, your likeness, your knowledge, your wisdom, your...

content creation, all of them might be.

How do you justify that when it's a personality driven total or expertise driven?

There's a lot of creators who are watching, a lot of solo entrepreneurs.

It's my favorite question.

That are, they're the experts, they're the face, and they feel like they need more of them in order to grow.

Here, here's the way I would think about it is we got to reframe the problem we're trying to solve.

Cause I think the problem, you know, I call them puzzles, not problems, but the puzzle is

what is true about the business?

So do you need to be the person that creates?

Yes, but what parts of it?

So I have this framework I teach in the book called the 108010 rule.

The 108010 rule, I saw Steve Jobs do this, Gary Vee do this.

And honestly, most massive creators at scale, Jimmy Donaldson, Mr.

Beast talks about this, is they'll be involved in the first 10%, the ideation, the creative, and then they'll hand it off to a team that executes.

And then at the very end, they'll come back for the integration.

So what I do and what a lot of people do is I resolve to be the talent.

And by design, in my company where I am the talent, that is my role.

I have a general manager that runs that company.

So I don't do one-on-ones.

I don't do strategic planning.

I don't manage finance.

I don't, you know what I mean?

With the whole team.

You're just talent.

I am literally talent.

When I wake up, the team says, I need this from you, this from you, this for you.

I negotiate.

And then I try to figure out, like, do you really need me to do that part?

Negotiate your time.

100%.

And then also like, hey, we've got revenue.

Can you spend some, invest some to go get 80% of this project done that I'm not going to do?

So, for example, a lot of the creative projects, we have like writers that help us with it, that come with the ideation, that go research all the videos I might have done, and they present the solutions.

So, it's really about just looking at your calendar and saying, okay, I want to be the person on camera.

That's the thing.

I can't until AI and maybe Neuralink or whatever gets good enough.

I'm doing that.

But anything that isn't that, I'm not doing it.

So, create a forcing function, a decision to say, I'm the talent team.

You guys want to grow the revenue.

Try to come up with ideas that don't require more of my time.

Right.

So that's the puzzle.

That's big.

That's the question.

But then you got to figure out how to hire the right people and people, you know, all that stuff.

That's the business stuff.

That's, that's challenging.

Yeah.

No, and that's why I talk about it in the book, test-first hiring method.

Like, what's that?

So the test-first hiring method is the idea that, you know, I got this from Seth Godin, you know, a long time ago, you know, Clay Bear.

He introduced me to Seth.

I'm in New York and we go to his favorite ice cream place.

That was when I was doing Clarity.fm,

and I was just so excited to meet the legend marketer, Seth Godin.

And we're talking about Clarity, which is a marketplace for entrepreneurs to get paid over the phone.

And that was cool.

It was like kind of LinkedIn had a call button.

But in our conversation with Seth, we were talking about people and talent because we had just raised a bunch of capital and we're hiring.

And he goes, Yeah, I have a rule.

I just can't work with you until I work with you.

And I said, What does that mean?

And he was just like, he was ready to move on.

I was like, I can't move on.

What does that mean?

And he essentially says, before I work with anybody, I do a project with them.

And I'm like, I don't do that.

And that was a big aha.

And I said, tell me more.

And he tells me about the whole process.

So over the years, I've developed kind of a three-part way of how I hire.

And the first part is people have to submit a video.

answering questions that are very clear and they have to figure out how they upload the the video to give me the video.

And why do I do that?

Well, first off, I want to make sure they can read the instructions

and they can shoot a video and talk to a camera, which is really important from a communication point of view.

And they can technically, they're advanced because I mean, we're doing distributed teams.

I don't have time to teach you how to use Google Docs, right?

So, can you record a video and upload it and get a link and then put it in the submission for the application?

So, that's step one.

Step two, we do a profile assessment.

So, a lot of people hire folks and they're like, man, this person just isn't like the lights aren't on.

You know, you're talking to them.

It's like, what's going on?

Did you hear what I said?

Turns out you can test for a lot of this.

Cognitive intelligence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we have a profile assessment that not only does it do their kind of the cognitive side, it also does just their, their, their default behaviors.

See, I think their personality style too.

Dude, it's all that.

Cause the best hire is somebody that selfishly has a desire to be better at the thing you hire them for.

My favorite question is to ask somebody in five years, we can't be working together.

You wake up and you're living your dream life.

What does that look like?

And they explain to you exactly what they want to do is what you need them to become in your company.

Game on.

So that's step two.

Step three is the test project.

Here's what's different about the way I do test projects.

A lot of people are like, oh, yeah, we do test projects.

No, we simulate.

So whatever the role they're going to do is what they do for the test project.

So I just hired a CEO to run one of my companies.

His test project amongst the four other candidates was to create a 90-day plan

because that's the first thing you know what i mean so whatever they're going to do when they start working for you yes is a hundred percent what the project should be and that's why it's called the test first hiring method so before somebody ever gets to the end the other rule i have is i always have to have three really good candidates which it sounds like a lot of work and it is

But the chances of you not hiring somebody that can hit the ground running and add a lot of value to your business is very, it's limited.

What happens when you hire fast and you don't have three potential candidates to make a decision from?

It happens sometimes, especially if it's like a key role, a specialized role.

I mean, we'll look for it and just manage the expectations.

The big thing that we do that's quite different is we document everything.

So if the person comes in and they don't pan out, at least we have a process.

So we're not left hanging.

Sure.

But it's never usually a good, and it also, think about what it communicates to the person that you're hiring, right?

If they go through this process, they're thinking to themselves, I'm joining a killer team.

Right.

So like a lot of times really senior director level above hires we're making, they're so impressed with our process that they almost want to come work for us as they're going through it.

Cause they're thinking, if I had to go through this, imagine the other people I get to work with.

Yeah.

You know, so I think that's the business part is always interesting because yes, you have to figure out how to be the talent, but then it's always about the people.

I think we build the people, the people build the business.

Exactly.

So our job, and I call it teach, not tell.

So this is a very, you're going to love this.

So when I have people that work for me, I don't tell them what to do.

If I see something they're doing wrong, I write it down.

I create a training.

I teach it.

And now I have a standard.

So essentially, when I'm coaching people and they say, you know, my team's not figuring it out or they're too slow or I don't feel like the risk takers, I hear it all.

I go, cool, make a list.

What's on your list?

And they're like, well, they don't, they don't, they don't collaborate in meetings or they don't take notes in meetings or they're slow on email replies or whatever it is.

Make a list, all of them, 13, 14 complaints about their team i said cool now show me where you've done a training on how those things should be done right

well i don't right right that's the problem right or maybe they said well i told them one time or twice but no no no no yeah yeah you have to not tell you have to show them teach you have to need to show me where there's a video that if i watch that video and i follow what you told me are the five ways that i need to collaborate in a meeting that when i show up in a meeting and i don't do it you pull out that video and say hey remember this video you watched let's talk about the way you showed up in that last meeting right And see, what's cool about that, it's just so simple is great leaders, and you know this, look at the people they've led.

To the degree those people have developed and grown, that says, you know, if you look at any organization that's performing, I will show you a world-class leader.

It's impossible for you to Boy Scouts, you know, organization, businesses, media companies, if you, if you point to this company is doing awesome, I will introduce you to a world-class leader.

And that leader is really good at developing people.

Wow.

That's a skill set.

How important is creating bulletproof processes for your teams in order to grow and scale?

If you have an issue on your team, you have two options.

It's either a people problem or a process problem.

So I default to assuming positive intent.

I call it API.

Assume positive intent.

If there's a mistake, I assume somebody wasn't properly trained.

So I always go to

the process.

So I always ask before I get upset, I go, can you show me the process that led you to create this outcome?

And sometimes they'll be like, well, I don't have one.

But it's missing.

So I don't get upset at the person.

And then if they have it, I look at it and there might be a step missing that causes the issue.

Cool.

Let's add it together.

We'll just be like, can you add that step?

See right there?

Enter.

Boom, boom, boom.

It's done.

Then now I have something I can hold them accountable to.

But I think as a default people, especially entrepreneurs, we're kind of crazy.

CEOs are crazy.

In case they didn't know that, like I'm very self-aware.

I always want to go to the process.

But once the process, that's why.

But once the process is in place and then there's a breakdown continually, then they're not following a process.

Yep.

And then it's their decision if they want to not step up to the standards.

Right.

I think people.

At the end of the day, if you don't have a process, a system, they'll fall to the level of your systems.

So you need to train them.

They have to exist.

And then that's how you build a company that doesn't require you to run.

And people, some people are like, well, I don't ever want to sell this company.

Cool.

I would still encourage you to build it in a way that you could sell it because a company that could be sold is a great company to own.

Right.

And that's how we have less breakdowns and you can hire more people and put them into the process.

And think about just what's fun in life.

Like my whole philosophy is I want to wake up every day and go back to back awesome stuff.

Yes.

Fixing a problem that keeps happening is not fun.

It's not fun.

Hence why a lot of people build companies that grow to hate.

It's the way they built it.

Yes.

So as soon as you get to a place where

you resolve a problem, and that's why I teach the framework, the camcorder method in the book, this is how we create processes in my life, is when a problem happens, I solve it.

I never want to have to revisit that.

And then every time it's new problems, like most entrepreneurs, I know you're this way, Lewis.

It's, I'm addicted to my expansion.

I don't want to revisit something I've already overcome.

Yes.

And having new team members, sometimes it feels like, oh, I got to teach them again.

And here's what's crazy is whenever you feel that way is why you might not want to grow the business.

Because

if I grew it, it would probably, that person wouldn't be able to grow with me.

Right.

So I'd have to let them go, which means I have to hire somebody new, which means I got to train them.

So that's a lot of people, because they don't have those systems in place, they actually will stunt their growth.

Wow.

Isn't that fascinating?

It's really cool, like when you sit down with an entrepreneur that's got a business and you're like, okay, where are the opportunities?

And they're like, well, I can't do that because of this.

It's like, let's talk about that thing, that person.

Yeah.

So when someone starts to develop their and get to be aware of their money story and they start to identify their story, is that true?

Is that really true?

And they go through these steps.

Would you say that when they're clear on their money story, they then have a money personality or identity?

I think it definitely is identity.

Identity.

Yeah.

And we've all heard, you know, one of my coaches, Ed Milette, talks about this a lot, right?

The whole idea that, you know, whatever our identity is around our wealth, our love, our relationships, it's like a thermostat, right?

If this room has got a thermostat set at 80 and it gets hot, the cooling is going to kick in.

It's going to cool us down.

If it gets cool, the heater is going to kick in.

It's going to heat it up.

And everybody has an identity around money and especially worth.

And, you know, some people, it's fascinating to watch.

They can just go look at their bank account.

Usually it oscillates between the floor and the high, right?

And some people, it's overdraft is cool and it is like no problem.

Other people, if they don't have 5,000 in their bank account and savings, they freak out.

So what's interesting from a working through the beliefs is trying to figure out how do I make the old high the new low.

How does someone break through then?

You got to do the belief work.

You have to understand what beliefs you have about breaking through.

If the low happened, if you looked in your bank account or you stepped on a scale, you step on a scale and you thought it was going to read a number and it read 20 pounds heavier, you're going to make a completely different set of decisions that day, right?

About what you have for breakfast.

Right.

Do you go to the gym?

Of course you're going to the gym.

You're like, what am I doing?

20 pounds heavier.

I didn't know that was going to be there.

So what happens is you need to trick yourself into making the old high, the new low, and act as if it was.

The best way to fix your identity is get around other people.

Yes.

We know this.

I mean, the environment, it doesn't matter how motivated or how much positive motivation you have about being warm.

If you're sitting inside a commercial freezer, you're going to be cold.

Eventually, you're going to get cold.

Yeah, you're going to be cold.

So, it's like, how about we move you out of the freezer into a warm room?

And all of a sudden, that warm room is your peer group, right?

And I always say, if you're the

big dog in your city, you might want to look around, right?

If you're the smartest person on your street, find another street.

Yes.

So, what would you say is the process then from shifting out of a belief system of scarcity or lack around money into

abundance and prosperity

would it be around the story first then shifting your environment around people you're with so that your identity starts to shift how do we shift our identity to become wealthier oh man minded and wealthier materially yeah it's beautiful question

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I love it because

oftentimes I'll talk about the chocolate and the broccoli.

You know, people,

sometimes you have to communicate the chocolate because that's what people really want, but what they need is the broccoli.

So the chocolate for a lot of people is success.

It's rich.

It's money.

It's accolades.

It's recognition.

It's all that.

And what is the, and

put a note on that, what is the thing that people usually want?

Is it they want want financial freedom?

Is they want

status?

They want options.

What is it people really want when they think around wanting more money?

I think the word that comes to most entrepreneurs when I ask them this question, and I do, I run big events and I say, okay, why do we start the business?

One word, write it down.

Go.

It's freedom.

Freedom.

It's freedom.

Freedom means the ability to do what you want with who you want anytime you want, which is interesting because it's a bit of a fallacy, right?

I can actually,

your work ethic is a byproduct of your gratitude.

Think about that.

I think a lot of people that think, well, if I was rich, I would just hang out on a beach and do nothing, drink my ties.

The reason why you'll never be rich is because that's all you would do with that resource.

If you became the person who could become rich, you would have a different character trait that would, you would not be like, I don't want to waste my day.

Yeah.

I've done this for 14 days in a row.

How many more days am I going to just hang out on a beach and do nothing?

So it's fascinating that some people that are broke have a belief about what they would do when they're rich.

And it's the reason they'll never be rich because that energy will never bring that to them.

Right.

So when you say, what should they do first?

It's they got to focus on the abundance that's all around them.

So you start paying attention to abundance around you.

It's, it's, you can wake up and you can decide that the world has scarcity and negativity and lack and you will find evidence of that.

Or you wake up and you decide that the world is abundant and there's positivity and there is so much opportunity around me.

And my job is to just keep my eyes open for the rest of the day and not let.

Yeah, because your frequency, your energy is what you frequently see.

I want people to hear that.

Your frequency, my energy.

is what I frequently see.

You know, and that was, I was excited.

My boys came in here.

I wanted them to meet you because you're one of those people where I'm like, Lewis is such a good and positive.

Like, you need to feel that energy.

So it's, I'm never surprised when I meet somebody that's successful that's positive, because of course they are, because look at the way they, yeah, they look at life.

So I think the first thing any person, no matter where they're at, doesn't matter how much money they have or have nothing, they can decide, hey, in the last hour, did I focus on opportunity?

Did I focus on gratitude?

Did I focus on abundance?

Or was I complaining?

Was I seeing the downside of my situation?

Like one question I ask myself a dozen times a day, Lewis.

I've never told anybody this.

Anytime I feel any lack, and it happens all the time, or frustration, you know, I meant to be somewhere on time, I'm running late, or, you know, my driver, something happened.

I always go to this question.

How can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment?

That's cool.

Anytime, it's like a cleanser.

I could be sitting here and I'd be like, oh man, I wish I would have had something to drink before I started or whatever.

And I would just be like, how can I, in my mind, I just ask myself, how can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment?

And immediately,

see how it just changes the scanning of the, the world?

All of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I'm warm.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Or, hey, I'm here with my buddy.

That's cool.

I'm healthy.

I'm healthy.

Oh, my gosh, I'm breathing clean air.

That's cool.

I have, I have resources.

I have friends.

I have rich relationships.

I just got back from vacation.

Like, there's.

As soon as you, and that's why I think questions are probably one of the most powerful tools we have.

Because if you ask a more powerful question, you'll live a more powerful life.

And that is my

question.

It's my primary question that I use to try to reset it.

So it's not about like, go get another skill or character trait or change your belief.

It's really about like, can you decide right now to see opportunity all around you?

It's there.

Yes.

It's right there.

You mentioned frequency.

How important is it for us to shift the frequency of our thoughts and our emotions

in order to draw in more financial opportunities.

And

is money attracted to a certain type of frequency?

If so, what is that frequency?

It is.

I think the number is like 433 hertz or something.

Like I think I saw it one time.

I was like, the money frequency is 433 hertz.

I don't know.

I do know this.

In my kids' playroom in our house, there's a chart.

And it's essentially a spiral energy chart.

And there's a downward spiral and an upward spiral.

So the feelings on the downward spiral are all the things you would assume, you know, anger, frustration,

sadness, or whatever.

The upward spiral is things like gratitude and joy and laughter.

So when we think of our frequency attracting, because I don't think we create success, we attract success.

And Jim Rohn says this often, right?

We attract success by becoming an attractive character.

So an attractive identity.

Yes.

I mean,

this is, I hope, I hope people can resonate with this.

People want to do business with people they like

that are positive, that make problems slash puzzles not an issue.

Easier.

And oftentimes it's not even, do you have the skill to solve the problem?

Is when you work on a problem, are you jovial?

Are you kind?

Are you funny about it?

Do you take yourself seriously?

Or do you just, do you crack a joke from time to time?

Yes.

Because that's what people want.

I want to be around people that make life lighter, not make them harder for me.

So I think that energy, that's why I tell the kids, because check this out.

If you woke up today and you don't feel proud of where you're at, I can guarantee there was a day back in your past, six months ago, six years ago, doesn't matter when, where you went from an upward spiral to a downward spiral.

And that one day, that one decision, it was little, where you got upset at somebody when you knew knew you knew better.

You didn't apologize.

You should have been quicker to apologize.

Something happened to you.

You assumed that they were trying to be malicious.

You should assume a positive intent and you started a downward spiral.

Isn't that interesting?

Like if you wake up and you're 20 pounds overweight, there was a day where you ate a little bit more than you should have and you didn't go to the gym.

It's never like the one day.

It's the multiple days.

That's why for me, that upward spiral, downward spiral and the energy and that frequency, it's something I've been teaching my kids since they could understand language.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

It's because again, it's who you are attracts things into your world.

The world isn't as it is.

It's as you are.

But how come that, you know, people watching and listening might say, oh, that sounds great, Dan.

And I understand that.

But why are there so many wealthy or rich people who are nasty and are mean and treat people poorly?

How do they have money still?

Because money is not,

and Tony Robbins talks about this.

He said, there's a science of success and then there's the art of fulfillment so there is a science of being successful just like there's a science for being healthy and if you go into a caloric deficit and you do hypertrophy training you will be ripped

if you sell something for way more than it costs you to make and you can scale it up ta-da you're rich

the art of fulfillment is completely different

and that's the that's the world we live in But we're talking about frequencies also, like personality and frequency and identity and beliefs and attitude, which I believe also.

When someone, when I'm at a restaurant and someone is like just got the most positive attitude who's waiting on us, I'm like, I want to over-tip, right?

I want to give more because I appreciate and I value positive energy.

So I value that.

But there's a lot of wealthy people also who are mean and angry and short.

Exactly.

And all those things.

And just like, you know, the least amount of tip or whatever it might be.

And so,

how do they get away with it or how do they succeed in spite of a lower energy frequency in some way?

Yeah, it's such a great question because I'm not saying you can't be successful or rich without it.

Uh-huh.

It's just then you don't have the fulfillment.

Right, right.

And you can be that, but then you don't have good relationships and you might be successful.

So, let's talk about what they have that the people that are looking to create and have impact and have more fulfillment should consider.

it's the worthiness.

See, that person that uses what I call dark energy to create, and I use it too, in my early 20s, proving all those people that have second guessed me.

I'm going to show them, I'm going to win so big that it's going to be undeniable that they were wrong.

Like that was a very dark, like kind of diesel.

It drives you.

It was powerful.

It's got a lot of torque.

Problem is it also, it eats at you.

It's dirty.

It feels hard.

And I think that's why you see a lot of billionaires want to be Buddhists, but you don't see any Buddhists who want to be billionaires.

Because they got the fulfillment.

They don't need the money to feel good.

They don't realize that I could have felt good the whole time.

Yeah.

That's a beautiful place to come from.

Right.

And so what I would encourage people that want to be more

full of positive energy and be successful to consider is just know that you're worthy of it.

Because it doesn't matter how great of a, and we all know these people, they're so kind, they're so giving, but almost to a fault right they create opportunities for people all the time but they don't feel worthy of getting a piece of it or being participating it or collaborating around it wow so they lack yeah i i have a friend that mutual friend that i know he's given to me for 15 years and i continuously ask him every year when can i help you and he's just like oh it's all good man i don't want to bug you wow dude that's not cool like for real man like i really want you know and now i'm like kind of upset it's like hey man like like, do you think my help ain't good?

You know what I mean?

Like, what's going on?

Right, right.

So I do think some people can be financially successful, but when it comes to the art of fulfillment, that that takes a different process.

So I want to get back to this

process

from

identifying your money story

and then realizing that's your money identity and personality once you've created, identified that story.

And once you've realized, okay, this is my identity, this is my personality, and this is how I make decisions day to day, or this is how when money comes in my bank account, I feel something.

I either feel excited, I feel anxious, I feel avoidance.

I have this attachment style to money.

How do we break free of an attachment style to money that is harming us

so that it...

When money comes and goes, it flows.

It feels good as opposed to anxious, avoidant, or stressed emotions.

Because growing up, I had a lot of anxiety around money.

And now when money comes to me, I say thank you.

I appreciate it.

I don't care if it's a penny or $100,000 that comes in the bank.

I'm like, thank you.

And I learned this from my friend Ken Honda.

He said, when money comes to you, ask it where it wants to go.

He said, where do you want to go?

Do you want to go towards food?

Do you want to go towards rent?

Do you want to go towards giving it to people for free?

Do you want to go towards investing in something?

Where do you want it to go?

And I like that philosophy of like just paying attention of where you want it to go.

What else would you say that we should be considering around when money enters our account or it comes in our hands?

What should we think

and what should we do with the next steps?

Yeah, you kind of touched on it.

I think that

one belief I would encourage people to consider that would help with the receiving is the belief that you're a steward of it.

Oh, okay.

Some people can't receive money that well, right?

No, because it's hard for them to let someone pay for them for a meal or to take it.

Not only that, they stress themselves out.

If I put a million dollars in a lot of people's bank accounts, they'd be worried that somebody's going to rob them tomorrow.

They'd be worried that they're going to mess it up and the government's going to say, you now owe us $2 million.

Like they, there's so much angst around receiving.

And one of the big ideas that I've- Is that a worthiness conversation?

Is that a value conversation?

Why is there angst around receiving?

I think it's a fear of not knowing, right?

Because it's new.

A lot of people, you know, I call them factor of 10 problems.

Most people start with $10 problems and

those are meaningful back then, right?

Cell phone bills, a little extra, and you're like, whoa.

And you're calling up and you're spending three hours trying to get that $10 back.

And then we go to $100 problems, right?

And then $1,000 problems.

And if you think about the mindset to the degree that we can become comfortable with bigger quality problems, I remember Oprah one time, she was being sued by the mad cow people because of something she said on the show for a billion dollars.

And somebody interviewed her and said, Oprah, like, how do you sleep at night?

You're being sued for your whole life's work, your whole net worth.

And she said, I'm just grateful to be the kind of person that could be sued for a billion dollars.

Wow.

Huh.

She got really comfortable with receiving and being.

So I think that the first idea is to understand that it's not ours.

Money is not ours.

It's nothing's ours.

I mean, I love that you bought a new house.

Eventually when I leave, it's not mine.

It will, and there could be, exactly.

So if we actually just get into the headspace that everything we've created in our life, there's a lot of in per

like it's not permanent.

Then all of a sudden, like you said, it's where does it want to go?

How do we want to use it to shape it?

How do we use it to help other people, right?

We're stewards of it.

If you see other people that are rich and you're upset that evil people, you're like, they're rich, then go be rich.

Take that resource and deploy it the way you want.

So I think the way I look at it is

money coming into my life is a byproduct of the value that I created,

right?

So if I want to have a bigger impact, I want to do more good.

I want to create more.

Even as an artist, in the book, I talk about Andy Warhol and how he created the factory and he had he had teams of people supporting his art.

He decided, I'm going to use this resource to do more.

And I think that when you correlate that, and I think that's why tithing for a lot of religion is really important.

Like I follow the same process and I believe you do as well.

like when you get money and you know that that money is going to help people for example my buddy mark he came to my house one day and he's like dude i have i have money mindset problems i just can't charge you know five thousand dollars for what i do and we're sitting in my son room and i said, interesting.

I knew he's a person of faith.

And I said, what?

I think he was charging two.

And he knew he should be charging five because everybody else charged five.

He just

felt guilty about it.

I said, well, what if you knew that every dollar you made, 10% of your income went to your church?

Dude, I saw his whole body.

Meaning shifted.

Yeah.

He lit up.

I want to charge 10.

Of course you do.

Right.

Because he aligned his desire to serve.

Right.

And I just thought that was just a beautiful way to think about what beliefs do I have around money.

Now, it doesn't solve it.

It doesn't fix the skill problem.

You got to become more skillful and more valuable, but it helps you receive because you know that as I receive, it's not mine anyways.

I don't have to protect it.

I don't have to worry about losing it.

And it's now a resource that I get to use to then go create other things I want to see in the world.

And ideally, hopefully, it's to help people.

When someone, hoards their money, what are they saying?

They're saying to the universe that it's fixed, that I won't get anymore, and I better protect it.

Wow.

And typically those people cannot live a fulfilled life.

Wow.

How much should we, I mean, we live in a material world and there's, there could be challenges in the future.

So how much money should we be putting aside of the money we're bringing in for paying our bills and expenses in the future and making sure that we're not day to day?

This is, this is the stats because I always, I'm a data numbers guy.

If you look at the worst case scenario, and we kind of went through it with with the global pandemic,

it may be a year at most.

Most financial experts will say you should have six months of overhead expenses set aside, available, liquid.

That way, if you ever had to restructure your business or you got laid off or whatever happened, you could weather that storm because it takes, that's about it.

And, you know, and some experts will say in the business side, it's about three months of operating expenses, six months.

Some say a year.

I think that's a lot.

But let's say worst case, everything else above that is really about, okay, what's the allocation?

Do you want to invest for the future?

Do you want to set budgets aside for creating experiences?

And I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer because I think depending on the situation, how old somebody is.

They might want to, you know, I know, I love the, the book, Die with Zero.

I think you've had the author on.

Yeah.

Super cool book because the philosophy of actually designing the leverage, because he talks about the go-go years, the slow go years and the no-go years, right?

So like if I have money, especially if you have kids, there's two concepts from the book that I thought were phenomenal.

One is if you want to bless your children, bless them when they're younger.

When, like, for example, I call my, as soon as I read the book, I called my dad.

I said, dad, do you have any desire to leave money to my sister?

And he goes, yes.

I said, you should give it to her now.

Why?

It'll have way more value to her now when the kids are teenagers in regards to the life decisions she can make and experiences than when she's 60.

Think about it, an extra 100 grand or whatever the number is at 27 years old will have a completely different impact on your life than at 57 years old.

And unfortunately, a lot of parents that want to gift their children, they wait till the end of their life and they don't do it.

And he talks about it that you want to do this when they're around the perfect ages, like 27, 28.

So that was one big idea.

The other one is, you know, people and the memory dividend of it, right?

Like you get to experience it and you get to have those memories for the rest of your life.

And you're alive.

Yes.

What a crazy idea.

It's like you can actually see it in their eyes.

Like, oh my gosh.

And you see the impact it had, not after you're not here anymore.

Right.

And the other one was

that when you, whatever age you want to say you retire, I'm not a big fan of retirement, but

that there's the go-go years, right?

You know, 50 to 60 or 65.

And then there's the slow go years.

So a lot of And then there's the no-go years.

The no-go years are like 75 plus.

You're not moving much.

No.

So most people don't realize that the amount of money they save for retirement, you can buy insurance in case you're worried that it's going to run out.

So that protects you on the upside that you live to 100, but you're not doing a whole lot of backcountry skiing.

Yeah, yeah.

For most people, every once in a while.

Maybe on a cruise or something.

Yeah.

I'm like, wow, you're 82 on the back mountains.

But I just think that

a lot of people worry about accumulating for, again, it's anything to extremities.

It goes back to if the primary reason you're making this decision is only for money, then that's where you feel a prisoner of your money.

And it doesn't matter if you have 10 bucks in your pockets or 100.

It's a big idea.

I know a lot of really wealthy people and they are prisoners of their wealth.

Really?

Yes, that unfortunately is the norm.

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so what does it break that down

how should we be thinking about it cost versus worth i mean think about okay i could go on this trip and it would cost me ten thousand dollars right and they're like man that's a lot of money it's a lot of money but the experience of bringing your children, especially if they're like 17, 18, you don't have a lot of, like, most people don't realize this.

It's so important.

Like, the life is, I think that if everybody just got really comfortable about how they're not going to be here forever and that this time, like, dude, today I don't get today back.

I plan my life in five-year increments.

I think it's enough time to do something meaningful,

not too little time to be wasteful.

Yeah, yeah.

And I feel like if every year I sit down, I reset.

for another five years and I try to figure out like, okay, so we do, for example, we just got finished doing a vacation with 18 of my siblings and

my nieces and nephews.

That's a trip that my brother and I finance for the whole family.

Sure, yeah.

We do it on Ski Hill.

all of us.

Yeah, one house, 18 of us, side of a mountain.

Yeah.

We do it once every two years.

Dude.

And it is the best.

So cost-wise, big number.

Big.

Worth,

dude.

Take everything.

Take the McLaren.

You know what I mean?

Like, take the jet.

I don't, that's not important.

Wow.

That one week together is like.

If you asked somebody, they had two weeks to live.

Yeah.

And you couldn't tell anybody else.

What would you do at your time?

They would get in a one house with their family members, pour into them to the degree they could.

Wow.

And on the last day, they'd have to say goodbye.

You're not taking anything with you?

Nothing.

It goes back into the pool.

Wow.

It's like you played the game of life and you put all the chips in.

And at the end of it, it's somebody else.

It just gets crazy.

Everybody gets it back.

And I think that if people

use that perception or perspective in making decisions, especially money decisions,

they would live a richer life.

This is why I love Ramit Sethi's work around living a rich life because he's not about you know scrimping and saving your way to wealth right he's about like hey let's set it up automate it so that your mindset doesn't even become part of it let's take care of like where things should go and then now let's talk about how do you increase your value yes so that you have more to then live a life we were talking earlier about like you know travel and expenses One of the ways I had to overcome this is put money aside that had to be spent for trips.

Really?

Yeah, because if not, then

you're like, man, that's a $20,000 trip.

Dude, this is the problem.

Every time I was making it as through a money level.

Just a business class or just this, or should I go to this hotel?

You're like, uh, yeah, should I took that?

Should I take that 20 grand and put it into my business?

Exactly.

Look what I could do with this money.

Yeah.

So because 10 laptops with this,

I always think about iPhones.

I'm always, and it's like five iPhones like an 80.

That's all I was getting on.

That's so awesome.

But I thought that was a good way for me when I remember somebody talking about this, like set the budget aside.

Yes, because then you can't, you have to spend it.

And if you don't spend it, you lose it next year.

Right.

And then what does it do?

It forces you to prioritize.

Wow.

If I know I've got 20 grand a year for trips, whatever the number is, and I'm not looking at the cost of the thing.

I'm looking at the worth.

And then I'm prioritizing because if I don't use it, I'm not sure.

You're scheduling the dates for it.

You're doing all that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're making it a priority.

You know, when people say like, my family is important to me and my health is important to me, I go, show me your calendar, right?

Show me your calendar.

Where are you investing your time for your health?

Bank account and calendar.

Yeah.

It does not lie.

And people that say that it's important to them and they haven't date night in there, they don't have family trips.

They don't have investments in their relationship, like seminars where they can do together.

They don't have any money spent on it.

Do you know, like, the entrepreneurs that will spend 50 grand to hire a consultant to come in to help them with their marketing, but won't spend $500 on buying a book or a course for their marriage?

Wow.

That's unfortunate.

But that's the norm.

Yes.

Right.

Because again, what do you think you're worth?

Yeah.

What is the biggest money problem you have today?

Such a great question.

You know, it's funny, man, is I don't think I take advantage of the biggest opportunity in front of me.

What do you take advantage of instead?

Smaller.

Safe.

I know, and I'm a guy that buys a company a month.

And I'm not sure.

What's the biggest opportunity in in front of you?

That you don't?

That you don't know.

That's my biggest worry.

I, I, when I think of

where the like, cause I don't think about money.

I think about value creation.

It's the same thing for me.

So when I, when you say money, I just rewrite value creation.

When you say, what's the biggest value creation block or thing stopping you?

I think I bet there's something I don't see that is bigger than what I'm doing.

that I don't want to see because it would mean having to renegotiate some things.

Like what?

my time and my commitment and my my success whatever that is but essentially for me to go for something bigger that's scarier that's unknown

that's usually the thing and it could be it potentially could be just doing more of what i'm doing now but giving it even more resources um

that is the that's probably the thing that i think about the most wow yeah yeah i love the power of questions and i love that question of what's a opportunity that is right in front of you that you're not taking advantage of?

That's a beautiful question.

And that's kind of the one I kind of keep thinking is like, is it this?

Is it this?

On the money side,

I would say in the last few months that I've gotten world class at, but it was really bugging me is I had so many open loops.

What do you mean?

Dude, I had and still have in certain cases, 26 credit cards.

How?

I have.

three banks that I deal with and spreadsheets of accounts.

Just the the complexity of my business empire.

I've got

travel points.

Like we're talking millions of points.

I'm a hoarder when it comes to points.

Dude, I just

got the jet net.

Okay, if you want some, I'll send them to you.

But it's so funny because the other day I was like, and I have different reward points, programs, right?

Because I remember I decided one day, I was like, I want status on everything.

So I like did the whole credit card thing.

I don't know if you've heard of this as a thing, but it added complexity.

And so here's what I know about going forward.

You can't move forward until you clean up the past.

Think about that.

Isn't that true in relationships, also?

It's in everything.

Wow.

And when I think of it, I remember I sat down, opened up a Google Doc, and I just wrote down, I think I called it like money cleanup.

And it was just like a list of all these loose ends I knew were there.

It's so funny you're saying this right now because in the last two months, I have cleaned up so many

energy, I guess, open loops in relationships.

And I've been, and it takes a lot of courage because you have to use your voice, you have to speak up, you have to take actions, you have to disrupt situations and relationships, and things are going to shift and move.

And so I've been using my voice in every different relationship that I have when there's something I feel like that just feels off to me.

Whereas I used to just say,

I'm going to be the nice guy.

I'm going to take the high road.

I'm going to, you know, not ruffle any feathers.

But now I'm just like, there's too much energy that's seeping everywhere that I need to reclaim.

Yeah, it's almost like the holes in the dam.

You had to go like plug them.

Yes.

Right.

Because you're, it was all that energy on the backside of the dam was leaking.

And the more I do it, the more powerful I feel.

And it's not doing it in a, in a mean, aggressive way.

It's being conscious.

It's being considerate.

It's being, you know, communicating with kindness, I guess, but being firm in your communication of what you need or the boundary you're creating or closing a loop.

And I think it's interesting you're doing that with kind of all these credit cards and points and things, just things that are out there.

Just these things are just out there and you haven't.

And they're just open loops that need to be closed.

Yes.

Right.

They're the friend of mine said it once recently.

It's so good.

It's hard to do your homework until you clean a room.

You know, it's like he said, he goes, I bet all the potential in your business is on the

other side of unexpressed conversations.

Oh, man.

I was like, dude, isn't that fascinating?

Yeah.

That

the conversations you've been avoiding is where your potential sits.

That I feel that.

Literally, Gary said this yesterday on the interview with him.

He's like, I've got 2,000 employees, and my biggest flaw is my lack of candidness.

Directness.

Yeah.

He's like, I'm very candid and honest with my audience.

He's like, I can say whatever I need to, but when someone's been with me for a year or three years and I really like them and I know about their family and their life, but they're drastically underperforming, i haven't been able to be candid and say here's the action plan you need and or you can't be here anymore you know so he's like i've carried people on my back by doing more speaking by doing these things because i don't want to be candid with them and i was like man isn't that interesting but he was like if i just was candid more frequently and have those uncomfortable conversations, they would either step up or they would move on.

And then somebody better would come in.

Exactly.

Bring up his time.

And we would grow and expand.

Right.

And I was just like, man, it was so challenging.

Need that.

It's challenging.

Yeah, it's interesting because I like that damn metaphor as you shared that.

Because when you said, the more I do it, the more I plug the holes, the more powerful I become.

Yes.

Think about it.

The more energy, because the water blows up.

Like a geyser is now boom.

And it's, I mean, that's the, you know.

Energy will flow where attention goes.

And if you've got those people taking your attention.

Just like little thoughts throughout the day.

Ah, this is frustrating me.

A little overseas, man.

That's why people don't sleep well.

I know.

When I say when they're like, when clients of mine are not sleeping well, it's very simple.

Have a journal.

Write it out.

Yeah.

Because if not, you think that that process is going to resolve itself.

You just have to write it out.

Okay.

I did.

Have you heard about the 12-hour walk?

What's his name that did that?

He has a, it's called the 12-hour walk challenge.

I forget the guy's name, but amazing explorer.

He's just like a world-class explorer.

He wrote a book.

So I decided, to just, it's literally, you wake up and you decide to walk for 12 hours.

Holy cow.

So I was like, I do Iron Mans.

Like I can do this.

Yeah.

That's hard though.

I did not realize how hard it is.

It was the most, it was like doing, it was like between a half and a full distance Ironman.

It was legit.

And I started it.

I did it January 1st.

And I started in the morning and it was 6 a.m.

Cause 12 hours I wanted to be finished by dinner.

And I went walking.

And luckily, somebody gave me some advice on how to have the best experience because some people have had horrible experiences.

So do some research.

But, like, for example, somebody suggested have a series of questions that you that you meditate because you're walking by yourself.

There's no devices, there's nothing.

It's just you and yourself.

Oh, no, zero.

So, one of the questions was a quote.

It wasn't even a question.

It was a quote, Joseph Campbell quote that said, The cave you fear to enter holds the secret or the key of the secret you're looking for.

Wow.

The treasure you've been looking for.

All those.

So I'm walking in the woods, Lewis, and I'm screaming.

It's just me.

What's the cave?

I'm willing to look at it.

Just, I just tell me what it is.

And as I had my journal, I had something to write in, and I would just get these, these, what you just said, these open look, conversations,

things that have been just left unsaid.

And I remember this, like, one of them, it wasn't even a big deal.

It was just a group that I was in that I didn't want to do anymore.

Dude, I just had to call him up.

Dude.

And I told him and he goes, man, I didn't even know you were still in it.

Oh my gosh, man.

Dude, that was one of the things I did last week.

I removed myself from a group.

And you think it's like the biggest thing?

And they're like, I can't believe you stayed.

And so, like, I just thought that that question of the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.

And if you're willing.

to go in.

There was some crazy stuff.

I was like, oh no, I can't do that.

I must do that.

That was my to-do list when I come back.

But that 12-hour walk, I thought was one of the most fascinating experiences.

I mean, talk about therapy.

Wow.

Yeah.

Right.

Just you and physically, oh my gosh, seized up.

I was all ambitious.

I'm going for a steak after this.

I, dude, I fell in the parking lot.

Like, I got out of the car, meet my buddy.

And I just, oh, yeah.

I just fell to the ground.

I was like, anybody see that?

No, okay, cool.

Let's get to the bar.

I got to, I got to sit down.

Wow, man.

Yeah.

But it was, it was, I think like,

meditating against questions of like,

again, just open loops, man.

Right.

Into the, because what are you telling yourself?

It's, and in many ways, it's, it's helping you build that worthiness.

Yes.

Because if you ask yourself, why have you not had it?

It's like, well, I just don't want to create issues or disruptions or friction.

Or it's like, well, why?

Well, I'd rather take it myself.

I'd rather be maybe the martyr.

You know what I mean?

It's interesting because I love Gary's stuff.

I think Gary, he's the compliment to me because I am too direct sometimes.

And that, that's literally, I went from being the person who was too quick to hire, too quick to give feedback to now when I hear Gary, and he is a world-class operator that I don't think people give him enough credit for.

It's even the way he operates, people don't understand.

Like his philosophy is continuity is a competitive advantage.

He's like, and again, it's funny because it's a double-edged sword.

He's like, I keep people around so I have a competitive advantage, but I don't, I'm not quick to upgrade the talent.

So it means I deal with the downside of that.

But all things said and done, there's no other leader that I can point to that I feel truly care about the people he cares about, the things they care about.

That's leadership.

You need to care about the people you care about, things that they care about.

He does that at a world-class level.

And I think he's got a photographic memory.

I mean, I've never seen anything like that.

He remembers when he met you, how he met you, the conversation he had with you 10 years ago, where you were.

He was telling me this in the interview.

Thousands of people a year.

It's amazing.

Yeah, so he's got to have a photographic memory.

We met in 2009 and he goes, I remember exactly where we were.

We were in a world market in saint louis and this and that and then i went in your car i drove them somewhere we were like connected on twitter and i was like how do you remember world market i can't remember where i was last week i know it's crazy man it's a it's a gift yeah we all have our talents um speaking of talents and what people lack what do you think is the the the three habits that keep people poor

Oh, there's so many.

The first habit that keeps you.

Because you're talking about a lack of worthiness.

You talk about talents.

i've got the habits okay the first habit that keeps people poor is blame

it's not being accountable for their life man so many people love to stay in victim blame mode as opposed to responsibility feels so good dude if how i would love to stay there it's like being on a beach in the sun like how good would that feel when nothing that i'm experiencing that's negative is my fault that's awesome that feels great like i get it it's just it'll keep you poor

right step one is understanding you are 100% accountable for your life and nobody's coming to save you.

If you don't believe that,

then you'll never create.

Yes.

So I think that's the first habit is just that negative belief around blaming other people.

The other one is

the habit of not investing in their skills.

Right.

The habit of, and it can come from, I don't feel I'm worthy, but it's really simple because it's not about working hard.

I know a lot of people that work hard that really struggle to make ends meet.

And I know other people that on the surface, you look at them, they go, they hardly work.

And they are wealthy AF.

Right.

Why is it people that seem to work, some people that work extremely hard don't make that much money?

Because they're not working on the right things.

They're working hard on the work.

They're not working hard on themselves.

What do they need to be working harder on in order to break through to the next financial level?

They got to find out what does the market value,

right?

What does your boss value?

If you've never talked to your boss or never talked to your customers and say, here's what I'm doing for you today, what could I do that you would find more valuable that I should consider learning how to do?

Yes.

That conversation has, then you're missing the boat.

Because the world rewards people that creates value.

Like there's a reason why there's hedge funds managers making a billion dollars a year.

Crazy.

Some people hear that and they go,

that's not fair okay he made a billion but he made a hundred billion for people right that's value do you know how to do that

like i don't know how to do that

and if i did i think that's pretty awesome so again it's that's the extreme there's people at that level but if you're making 50 an hour 25 bucks an hour you got to ask yourself what's the next level of value that i can create so that belief that the habit of not feeding their mind i mean louis there's people that are in troubling situations that don't even read books.

Like, I don't know about you, man.

The answers are out there.

I am shaped by books.

I've read 1600, continue to read every day.

Why?

Because for $30,

six hours of my time, maybe it takes me a month, maybe it takes me a week, depending on how much I'm reading.

I can learn a person's perspective on a topic that took them 25 years.

And I'm looking, and when I read, I'm looking for one nugget that's going to add value to my life to make me more valuable.

And if I can do that, then the market will reward that.

So one of my mentors said, he goes, don't read.

This is a big, this is, this might shift everybody's perspective.

Don't read for yourself.

Read for your customers.

What does that mean?

It means acquire knowledge to be helpful to other people.

See, most people, when they start reading, they're like, okay, I need to be more powerful.

Yeah, it's all for themselves.

Money management, productivity, time management.

No, no, no.

What business are you in?

You're in solar.

Cool.

Go read the customer, like read the books that your customer should be reading, right?

About home maintenance, whatever it is.

And then that way you're

valuable to them.

You're differentiated amongst all your peers to that customer.

So that was like, when my mentor Tim said that to me, I was like, oh, I had a different lens on even just reading and investing myself.

The third habit I would say is they don't understand money.

It's really just the they don't have the knowledge about what money

habits,

right?

They're wasteful.

Uh-huh.

They don't spend.

It's it's it's it's literally that habit of like show me your bank account and I'll show you your money beliefs.

Yeah.

Like like what people don't realize is the environment definitely is a reflection of your beliefs.

Your bank account is environment, your body is an environment, your house is environment, the city you live in is environment, country you live in.

These are all containers.

What you eat, all these things, yeah.

All of it.

And it, it says something, but the words you use is your environment, like the language.

Yeah, people don't audit themselves, so I think that that's a big part of it: the money.

People say, I'm not good at math,

keep saying it.

Can we add a comma yet to this?

Keep saying it, you're gonna believe it.

Yeah, and I think that's why language matters.

So, I think those are the three things: just make sure that you focus on them, and then that's good, you'll overcome them.

What is the, I mean, we haven't really talked about buying back time, but I'm curious about, but have we?

We have, yeah, but I'm

if people can get one thing from your book, buy back your time,

what is the main thing we need to understand about

how to do this?

Why we need to do this?

And is there a simple framework that we should think about when it comes with time and money?

Yeah, 100%.

And it's, it's in chapter three.

It's called the buyback loop.

And it's kind of the core framework.

The unique part about this book, the perspective, is that we don't hire people to grow our business.

We hire people to buy back our time.

Because if we do the second, we get the first.

But if we do the first, we definitely don't get the second.

Interesting.

Think about it.

How many times are you like, I got to hire six people?

And all of a sudden, I don't have any time to do what I was supposed to do.

Right.

So it's really about how we look at the, what I call the, the sequences and the steps, what's the right step.

So the buyback loop states that whenever you feel pain in your life, okay, and this, you don't even have to be an entrepreneur, you can be just a person working on a team.

First off, you do a time and energy audit, and that's a two-week review of your calendar.

Really?

Yes, because dude, this is what's crazy.

What does that look like?

Is there a process?

Yeah, it's in there.

Yeah, yeah, it's time and energy.

Uh, chapter three is the buyback loop, and the time and energy audit.

Yeah, there it is.

That's the buyback loop.

Okay, so I teach the whole like calendar review, and you highlight things.

But here's the philosophy: is right off the bat, there's probably things that really um

suck your energy that would cost very little to have somebody else to do.

Yes.

Like even in your home, like have a cleaner come in and clean for you.

Hire somebody to do meal prep.

We have meal prep, even though we have somebody in our home.

We still, so like there's all these relatively low cost things and it frees up your energy.

So it's not even about being more productive in time.

It's being able to go from thing to thing to thing with things that light you up.

So time isn't created the same.

I don't know about you, Lewis, but when I was in math class and I looked up at the clock, it took forever.

Forever, man.

School.

Dude, it was like the hour class felt like three hours.

It was exhausting.

Go to math class.

Clock, clock rings.

For you?

For me.

Oh, math.

Or sorry, our class.

Every subject for me.

Oh, yeah.

Jim was the only thing.

Okay, so take that one.

You go to gym, the bell rings, and all of a sudden an hour is 17 minutes.

And you're like, oh, I don't want to leave yet.

So time is not created equal in the sense that the energy that we feel within that time matters.

So in the time and energy audit, we look at what we're doing with our time and what things would cost very little to pay somebody else to do that we don't want to do.

And then we go to the next step, which is transfer.

So audit's the first one.

Transfer is the next step.

Once we transfer that stuff the right way, right?

Transfer what?

The task.

How do you

do that?

Yes.

So I teach the camcorder method and I teach the process for documenting things and how to do what I call transformational leadership.

The camcorder method is you filming something

recorded.

Yeah.

I don't even create the

Dude, on your phone, you can actually pull down your control panel and add screen and voice recordings.

Most of my transfers are

in your control panel.

Scroll down.

Yeah, so I have it right here.

It's this button right here.

Yeah.

You see the little one?

Does that record audio there?

Dude, that button right there.

Oh, shoot.

Next level.

So it records on the screen.

On the screen.

So I'll hit start recording like that, and then I'll pull up the app and I'll show someone step by step.

And it's getting.

I say, I'm going to take the next 26 minutes.

I'm going to walk you through how I process my inbox and I go through it or how I think about scheduling my flights or how I want you to maintain my road bike or whatever the thing is.

And then when I'm done, I hit save, right?

I hit stop and I upload it to a shared iCloud folder.

It synchronizes in the background, sends them a notification.

And then they create

the process.

That's the key.

Why?

Because then I can see based on what they created if they watched the video and did they get what I was saying.

And if you taught it well.

Yes.

And then if they didn't, I can either train them up or i can add some stuff to the process so that's how we transfer so audit for time and energy transfer to other people and then phil atf what's phil phil is most beautiful part phil is what we've been talking about we're gonna fill your time with

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Phil is literally what we've been talking from the beginning.

That's why I was loving that we were having this conversation.

Phil is, who do I need to become to be able to deal with bigger problems?

What do I need to learn?

What value do I need to create?

How do it with skills?

It's literally, don't wish the the world is easier, as Jim Rohn says.

Wish that you were better.

Yes.

Who do I need to become to go from $10 problems to $100 problems, thousands of?

I want billion-dollar problems.

Lewis, I want you to have billion-dollar problems, dude.

And they shouldn't be daunting at that level.

No, because you've developed yourselves.

Like, it's funny.

One day I called my brother, I was hiking and we were talking.

And he goes, How's things?

I said, things are incredible.

And I'm a little worried.

And he goes, why is that?

I go, It's not normal.

Like, usually at my scale, there's always a thing, like a meaningful puzzle.

I got to deal with.

And he goes, well, what's going on in your life?

I said, well, there's this, this, this.

And he goes, he laughs.

He goes, dude, last year, those things would be big things.

He goes, have you ever considered that maybe you've just evolved where those are now little things?

I was like, oh, snap.

That's, that's what happens is over time, the problems, puzzles, challenges are still evolved.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, they just don't, they don't resonate.

The first time somebody quits on you on your team, it's like somebody

got you in the heart.

Yeah.

And then it happens.

You're like, okay.

And then it happens 100 times.

That's a blessing.

The hundredth time you're like, I didn't even lose.

Like, there's no losing sleep.

Exactly.

Yeah.

They quit or the whatever.

So I think that's what happens.

So the fill part for me is the ladder of success.

And I think of it through, you know, skills.

How do I become more valuable?

Beliefs, what are the world views, the money beliefs I have?

And then what are the character traits that I need to develop, right?

The mental fortitude, toughness, consistency, productivity, like there's, there's character traits.

And that's how we evolve to become better.

And anytime we feel the pain line and we need to scale, we go audit, transfer, fill.

The coolest part about this framework, Lewis, is it works with our team.

So you ever have a team member come to you and they say, I feel overwhelmed?

Yeah.

Give them the book.

Yeah, yeah.

Do the process.

And by the time they go through it, they'll be like, I'm good.

I could see where I was spending time on stuff I shouldn't have been.

I didn't need to be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or things I said yes to, I needed to say no to, or I need to renegotiate timelines.

Or I just felt overwhelmed because I didn't have clarity.

Most people feel overwhelmed because they don't have clear direction.

This gives them the roadmap and the process to overcome it.

And then that's where we spiral up.

That's why it's the buyback loop.

Wow.

Yeah.

Speaking of team, you know, a lot of people struggle with meetings.

And I've heard you talk about meetings are a waste of time.

Big waste of time.

Why do you think, do you think people should have meetings with their teams?

If so, how should those look like?

Or should we eliminate meetings altogether?

I think for most people,

if the meeting isn't a scheduled reoccurring meeting, then it's usually a byproduct of poor communication and leadership.

So I can almost correlate the amount of meetings a company has to their performance as a team.

And the more meetings is bad.

Yeah, because if you have a good process, for example, to review the strategy, decide communicate it to the team review it on a quarterly basis in a cadence have the measurements in place right the goals the metrics all that stuff yeah yep i have the mission vision values i've got my my metrics i've got my project management so like to the degree you have that built in

then the meetings are not really needed they're there if you have to collaborate which is fine new project or communicate something hey i need this thing ideation phase when i talk about the 1080 10 rule for sure you need a meeting meeting to do the ideation.

But it's not in response to lack or response to something went wrong.

And I think for a lot of people, their default tool, they have one tool in their chest and it's a meeting.

And again, meetings for me are an indication of poor leadership.

My whole philosophy on leadership.

Do you do weekly meetings, like check-in meetings or like scheduled meetings, I mean, like with the team though?

Yeah.

So there's different levels.

At the bottom level, let's pretend I was the CEO.

I don't believe anybody should have more than five to seven direct reports.

And those five to seven people are the people you've decided that if I want anything more to happen in my business, I must work through them.

It's a big idea.

So a lot of people, they're like, I want to do this.

I want to do that.

It's not, can you do it, Lewis?

Does your team have the bandwidth to do it?

It's called management bandwidth.

So I can only have five to seven.

So when Gary is like, hey, I have a hard time letting people go.

If he created that constraint, I bet it would create a forcing function for him to go like, but I want to go do this other thing, but I don't have the person.

So you don't want to add more because what happens is people get overwhelmed when they have 15, 20 people reporting to them.

So my rule is five to seven.

I work through those people.

Those I have.

weekly one-on-ones.

So anytime I see anything where it's like I saw an email and something happened, I want to give you feedback, I just write it in a Google Doc.

So I have a notes, your name, and I just write it down.

My weekly meeting, I sit down and we have a format and I just review it with you.

Yeah, yeah.

That's where we do our.

So you are doing doing weekly meetings with certain people.

Yeah, yeah.

Your direct reports.

Yeah, yeah.

But that's it.

And then, and then if you lead a department, you'll have a weekly meeting to review that department's progress.

Got it.

Right.

And if there's a project that you're involved in from an ideation point, you might be in that project.

Sure, sure.

But what I encourage people to do is get the planning done at the beginning of the year for the year.

And ideally, you have a 10-year focus.

Then you do quarterly.

kind of iterations.

Wow.

And then everything's measured.

I mean, the big difference about how I lead is, again, I don't tell people what to do.

I teach them.

And then I do what's called transformational leadership versus transactional leadership.

So this is, this is all the entrepreneurs are going to be like, oh, no, I do that.

Here's, here's that looks like most people do a tell check next loop.

Tell them what to do.

Check they got done.

Tell them what to do next.

Problem with that is at about 12 employees.

You hit a ceiling and it hurts.

Yeah.

Because you wake up in the morning and you spend your whole day just trying to make sure everybody else is pulling on the rope in the right direction.

What I do instead is a transformational leadership, which is I'm very clear on the outcomes.

Let's say we're going to hike a mountain.

I'm going to talk about the top.

I'm going to talk about how it's going to feel.

I'm going to talk about where we're going.

I'm going to give you a GPS coordinate.

Then I'm going to do a measurement.

Okay.

So outcome, then measure.

Here's how I'm going to measure your progress.

Every day, you need to report back how many feet of elevation gain you've made that day.

We're hiking a mountain.

At the end of the day every day, each person reports back how far they've gone.

Yep, how many feet?

Wow.

And that's the feedback loop.

Why?

Because it lets them know if they're making progress.

They know, did I do better today than yesterday.

Cool.

You have one day.

Like, I think most businesses just don't have a measurement for each person on the team.

So now you're going to report.

And if there's a huge deficit, the third step is coach.

See, what I find fascinating is the amount of coaches that I work with that have training companies that are, that are, you know, really good at teaching that don't coach their team.

Wow.

It's fascinating.

They'll spend 98% of their time in their calendar with clients, zero working on actually developing the skills.

So the coach framework I teach, yeah, it's anytime like if somebody made 100 feet elevation, 100 feet, and then they had two, I'd write that down.

I'd sit down and be like, hey, I noticed you only did two feet of elevation.

What's going on?

Well, I got off track and ended up down a ravine.

Interesting.

Then I use the 131 rule, which is what's the one problem, the three solutions, potential solutions, and what's the one recommendation you have.

Not what you want me to give.

Never.

Lewis, I heard once a guy said, if you want to be rich, be lazy.

If you want to be wealthy, be incompetent.

My job is to not give people answers to the test because I rob them from the opportunity to learn yes so when i coached them i asked them hey i noticed you only went two feet yesterday what do you think happened well i ended up going off the track cool what are three options of not going off track well i probably could have followed somebody i probably could have bought a map i could have done this i said sounds great those are all good options they're all good which one do you want to do i'm going to probably buy a map Sounds like a good idea.

Yeah, yeah.

So what happens is over time, that transformational leadership approach allows you to develop people

so that you don't become the bottleneck.

The reason they call it a bottleneck is because it's at the top.

Again, most people build businesses they grow to hate because they don't know a different way of leading and creating and training so that the bigger they grow, the more time it takes.

My philosophy is the bigger it gets, the more time you get back.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's, I mean, it's the funnest thing to show people because once they see it, it's like so logical.

If I'm always hiring people to buy back time out of my calendar, it's impossible for me to get to a place where I feel overwhelmed.

You should have more time every time you hire.

Every time you hire, the rule is start with the calendar, audit it.

Okay, here's the bucket of things.

That's the only people I'm going to hire to buy back that time.

Things that I didn't want to do in the first place that don't make me a lot of money.

Then I transfer it.

Then I fill my calendar with things that make me money I enjoy doing that develop me

so that I become more.

So I've, it's kind of awesome.

That, and you've seen me do it for a decade.

This is literally how I do it.

I love it, man.

This is awesome.

I could ask you a lot more questions questions around this, but I want people to get the book, Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by my man Dan Martel.

Make sure you guys check this out.

Get a few copies for some friends also.

This will be a game changer for anyone.

And I think, again, people want to feel free.

They want to feel light.

And it's hard to feel free.

If you're stuck doing too many things you don't want to do and you're not evolving beyond that.

And there's always going to be a season, or maybe this is a limiting belief, but I've been through many seasons of like, oh, I don't have the skills.

I've got to go do something that's going to take time and energy at a rate that I wish I was making more at to go develop skills until I get to the next level.

You know, I was a truck driver.

I was mowing lawns.

I was doing all these different things.

I was like, that's not what I want to be doing, but I've got to keep developing the value within me, the skill set, filling up my time.

wherever I can get it to get more skills to then go showcase my value and exchange it for some type of money that I want.

Right.

So I think this has been a beautiful conversation.

I love this concept of kind of knowing your worth, but also understanding your value, because everyone can say, I'm worth this, but unless the market agrees, wants that value and is willing to pay for that value, you're worth what you're getting, I guess, right?

Yeah.

So there's a difference there.

Where can we follow and support you the most?

Instagram is my favorite.

It's just like, I give away every, my plan is to die empty, right?

I want to die, give it all away.

Um, a lot of people that read the book are always asking about like how to manage your executive assistant.

Uh-huh.

So, I'll do something for your audience only, Lewis.

If they, if you guys message me, follow me on Instagram, message me, Lewis.

I'll send them direct link, no opt-in, no nothing, to my Google Doc sanitized for my internal standard operating procedure for working with my assistant.

I think it's like 42 page.

I asked and to clean it up.

So, just for this audience, message me, Lewis, EA.

I'll then know and I'll send it to you over on Instagram, Dan Martell on To LMR, Dan Martel on Instagram and Dan Martel on YouTube and all platforms.

And yeah, I mean, the big thing I want people to understand, I kind of call them the three universal truths,

is

I think the biggest way for us to become more valued as we talk about worthiness is first off,

realize that we become what we talk about.

So people talk about visualization.

The problem is visualization is that a lot of people visualize big dreams they don't tell anybody about.

So you talk your future into existence.

That's a big, that's a big, like for me, that's why I've always shared.

These are my goals.

This is my vision.

It's what I'm doing.

Number two is

I think that we will receive what we desire for others.

Think about that.

When we talk about money, if you want to be wealthy, I know how to do it.

Go help other people become rich.

Right.

Right?

If you don't want your boss to become rich, you might have a money mindset problem.

because you will receive what you desire for others.

And the third one, especially as it pertains about worth and the concepts in the book, is that the work instills the worth.

The work instills the worth.

When I had no self-worth, when I was a teenager trying to figure out my way in life, all I knew is that if I could just show up and do the work, be consistent, right?

Because I think confidence is eaten away when we're not keeping the commitments we make to ourselves in private.

So the work instills the self-worth.

Yes.

And you can't think your way to that.

It's a doing.

It's proof when I show up and I, and I'm consistent for 45 days, 60 days.

Lewis, when you've done this podcast for so long, the work instills the work.

Like the

every week for 11 years.

Those are the three universal truths.

I think that if people would consider, it would just transform their whole mindset and perspective.

And weren't you in jail for a period of time?

I did, man.

I got a drug on Juvie.

Well, I know that's what we connected earlier with your brother's story.

Yeah, I ended up.

How old were you?

I was

15 the first time, 16 the second time.

I'm laughing.

It's not funny, really.

But it's crazy, dude.

I'm just curious, what is the, you know, what I love about your story and my brother as well.

The cool thing, my brother went to prison for four and a half years.

Yeah, I think when you were eight, right?

Yeah, eight to 12.

And one of the coolest things, and the thing that I'm really happy for him is last month, after 27 27 years of him being out, he got pardoned by the state of Ohio.

The governor gave him like a full forgiveness pardon and everything.

And it's cool to see that, you know, we can make

mistakes or go through dark times and still have a life of success and fulfillment if we put in the work, if we're willing to reshape our story, our identities, our actions.

And so I just want to acknowledge you for the constant journey you've been on because, you know, you could have gone down a much much darker path twice in in juvie i don't know how long you were there for a few months each time or

you could have kept making those decisions based on a belief and a story that you were worthless or not good enough or bad or wrong or whatever it was but you have decided continually to upgrade those beliefs and be of service to others so i want to acknowledge you for that my man it's it's beautiful to watch I wish you lived in LA so we could hang out more, but now you got your jets.

You can come down anytime.

So I just want to acknowledge you for the service, man.

It's cool to watch you put yourself out there more

and share this wisdom with the world in such a way where you understand processes and also

you can teach it so people can consume it and understand it and make it easier.

Because some of these concepts can seem daunting to understand and to implement.

But with your book, you give people the tools, the processes, the frameworks, and the stories on how to take these kind of baby steps and grow beyond these old beliefs.

So I acknowledge you for that.

Appreciate you.

Final question for you because you shared my three truths question already.

My final question.

You just went right into it, which is great.

What is your definition of greatness?

Such a great question.

You know, I still remember the call when you'd bought greatness.com.

Really?

I do.

I remember where I was at.

What did I say?

I was asking what was new and you were all excited.

There was a bunch of stuff.

I think you just finished doing a big photo shoot with Nick.

And he said, hey, dude.

And I also bought greatness.

And I said, I remember thinking, oh, that's a big dog move.

That's a big move.

You know what I mean?

That was a, nobody in our space was doing that kind of stuff.

And I was just so proud of you.

I was just like, yeah, Lewis, like, let's go.

I remember Noah, Kagan, got like sumo.com.

Yeah.

Before that, I think.

And I was like, I need to do something.

I need to own

more than my name.

A word.

More than just my name, which I was like, I can't really, don't even go so far with that.

And it's limited by me, but owning a word is like and did you ever do that dude the book i mean it's awesome yeah like i read your last book and it was i love that book you have an incredible book thank you um i think greatness is very simple is that are people better

after having you around them

Like are if you look around the people you spend time with, are they better for having you in their life?

If that's true, that's greatness.

My man.

Dan, appreciate you, brother.

Oh, honor.

Thanks, man.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

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Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

And I want to remind you: if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out there and do something great.