Ep 501: 3 Insights to Build More Mental Toughness | Dean Stott Episode Recap
RV (00:05):
Let’s talk about how to be more mentally tough. I’m gonna share with you three insights that I think are a requirement for anyone to understand. Who wants to be stronger mentally, right? And when I say mental toughness, what I’m talking about, I, I’m talking about the, the, the, the, the process of training your brain to think in a way that allows you to continue in the face of adversity. Everyone who has ever been successful has faced adversity. You’re going to face adversity again and again and again. Your ability to overcome adversity is completely connected and tied to your mental toughness. The way that your brain processes rejection, the way that your brain processes pain, failure, setbacks, tragedies, challenges, however your brain responds to those elements will determine whether or not you are successful in this life. It will determine whether or not you have or achieve, or gain or acquire the things that you desire.
RV (01:20):
Because
RV (02:21):
Now, the first one I’m actually gonna take directly from Dean from this interview, ’cause I had never heard anybody say it this way. I’ve heard lots of people talk about this concept. So I know this is a truth because I’ve experienced it and I’ve heard lots of other successful people talk about it in, in our research, in our coaching, and working with people. But I’ve never heard anybody say it the way that Dean said it. And this is so powerful. He said, anticipation is always worse, almost always worse than participation. Anticipation is worse than participation. What is he
RV (02:58):
Saying there? He’s saying that whenever you are going to set out to conquer something meaningful, whenever you’re gonna set out to do something significant, whenever you’re chasing a new dream, going after a new goal, attempting a new endeavor, the anticipation is worse than the participation. Our minds make things up to be much more difficult than they really are. And by the way, if your brain does this, which I know it does, this doesn’t mean that you are someone who’s doomed for failure. When your brain does this, this is what the brain is supposed to do. Your brain is designed to keep you safe. So when your brain is doing this, it means that you have a perfectly normal, healthy, functioning human brain. Why? Because the brain is designed to keep you alive. Survival is the first and foremost function of the human brain. And the way that you keep somebody alive is by keeping them safe, which means doing things that are comfortable, which means preventing you from doing things that are new and unfamiliar and un uncomfortable and uncertain.
RV (04:14):
So the brain holds you towards certainty, safety and repeated behavior where you already know the outcomes. And so fear is the tactic that your brain uses to keep you safe, right? That’s why my favorite definition of fear is the old acronym FEAR for fear, false evidence appearing real. So what does your brain do? Your brain by design biologically goes into mental mushrooming. It goes into forecasting the worst possible scenario. That’s what the brain, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It is forecasting all the negative things that could happen might happen. What if you know, like, what if there’s things you don’t know? What if you fail? What if you go broke? What if you die? And that’s the brain’s mechanism for keeping you from pursuing new things which are risky and keeping you doing the things you’ve always done, which is safe, which keeps you alive.
RV (05:15):
However, if you’re gonna be a successful person, you gotta overcome that. If you’re going to do something that nobody else has done, you’ve got to think in a way that nobody else thinks. If you’re going to achieve things that you’ve never had, you have to do things you’ve never done. You have to become a different person than you are. You have to set out on a trail that you’ve never been down before. And so it doesn’t mean that your, your brain is somehow faulty when fear shows up, but it also doesn’t mean that that’s the truth about what’s gonna happen. In fact, it’s almost never the truth. And what Dean is saying is the anticipation is worse than the participation. It’s thinking about it and thinking about how hard it could be and how hard it might be. Much more that is much more difficult than the actual doing the things.
RV (06:09):
And so you have to just know that in order for you to be mentally tough, you have to know a little bit about neuroscience. You have to know a little bit about psychology. You have to know a little bit about how your brain works so that you can go, ah,
RV (07:06):
People who are mentally tough have resolved to say, if I’m gonna fail, I’m gonna fail to something that’s real. If I’m gonna endure setbacks, I’m gonna endure setbacks to things that really showed up. What I am not okay with is I am not gonna allow myself to never achieve and to never even attempt or pursue because I am going to enable myself to be a victim of a figment of my imagination. I am not gonna lose to what is fake. I am not gonna lose to what is made up. I am not gonna lose to what is not real. You have to make that resolution. You have to decide that if you’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose to a real opponent. You’re not gonna lose because you were too afraid to step onto the field. And 95% of people, probably 99% of people can’t get past that one hurdle.
RV (07:59):
You get past that one hurdle, you’re on your way because you realize that anticipation is often worse than participation. The second insight that you need to know to build your mental toughness is that you have to build a great plan and put your confidence in the plan, and then simply execute the plan, right? So what you don’t wanna do is be dependent on you having courage in every given any given moment, on any given day, in any given circumstance. What you don’t wanna do is be completely reliant on your gut instinct all the time. What you don’t wanna do is say, woo, you know, I’ll just fly by the seat of my pants and hope I figure this out. What you don’t wanna do is just run blindly into a fire. Like you want to have a plan, and you want that plan to be based on reality, data, experience, logic, rationale, other people’s experience, interviews, coaching, education.
RV (09:08):
You want to create a plan based on pragmatic logic. And what you do, and this is what all like peak performers do, right, is they create a plan and then they focus on executing the plan. Every professional athlete, professional coach, this is what they do. They create the plan. This is what the military does in life and death situations. What do they do? They create the plan. Do they sometimes have to deviate from the plan? Sure, they do, but they have a plan and they work the plan. They put time into creating the plan, and then they execute the plan, right? That’s what a budget does. A good entrepreneur creates a budget. Why? What is a budget? It’s a plan. It’s to go, look, if we have these financial goals, these are the things that need to happen. These are the inputs that need to happen to drive the revenue to this number.
RV (09:57):
And out of the revenue that comes in, we will plan to spend this amount on each of these things, and we will reinvest this amount to, to grow the revenue again. And then we’ll plan to spend X percentage of, of the revenue on each of these line items. It’s a plan. You create a plan and then you execute the plan. Now, greatness sometimes requires that you deviate from the plan, but you have to have a plan first. And you, you put, you put your self-esteem. This is something that I said and take the stairs all the way back in 2012. You put your self-esteem, you put your in your work habits, not into your production. You put your energy, you put your focus, you put your faith, you put your conviction. You, you, you, you put your discipline, you, you put, you put your, your, your faith into your work habits, into the things you control into the plan, executing the plan that you’ve laid out, doing the things that are pragmatic and functional and actionable, not in the results.
RV (10:54):
Because there’s things that show up that you can’t control. And you can’t always control the, you can’t always control the result. You can’t only, I can’t always control the circumstances, but you can control whether or not you set a plan and then you just work the plan. And part of how you overcome your fear of failure, part of how you overcome the fear of failing is, is to say, if I fail at something, my self-worth and my identity is not gonna be wrapped up in the fact that I failed at something. ’cause It wasn’t that I failed, it was that my plan failed. It’s not Rory as a person failed. It’s, I took the time to create a plan. I thought the plan was gonna deliver an outcome. I thought the plan was gonna deliver a result, and then my plan failed to deliver that result.
RV (11:44):
I didn’t fail. The plan failed. I only fail if I didn’t execute the plan. But that, or if I don’t have a plan, but I create a plan and then I execute the plan. Sometimes the plan works, sometimes the plan doesn’t. But if the plan didn’t work, you go, oh, I need to modify my plan. That’s it. It’s not, I’m a failure. I’m horrible. I’ll never be successful. I’m not spiraling down into some sort of de depression, and I’m not, my, my, my confidence, my self-confidence isn’t affected by the fact that I fail. See, people who are not mentally tough have fluctuating confidence when things are going well. They have confidence when things aren’t going well, they don’t have confidence. But people who are mentally tough constantly have confidence even when they’re failing. Why? Because their confidence isn’t based on the outcome. Their confidence isn’t based on result.
RV (12:37):
Their confident is based on their work habits. Their confidence is based on the plan. Their confidence is based on their effort, their discipline, their energy, their confidence comes from controlling what they can control. And if they’re controlling what they can control and they’re failing, there’s nothing to be upset about because you can’t control whether or not you succeed or fail. You can only control what you could control. So if you stay focused on that, you go, I don’t have confidence that fluctuates. Even when I fail, it wasn’t that I failed, it’s that my plan failed. I need, I needed a better plan. The plan was the issue, not me. Now, if I failed to execute the plan, that’s more of something that I have to face accountability for, and I have to take self accountability for, or I have to have accountability with a boss or a, you know, spouse or coworkers or colleagues or partners to say, yeah, we created this plan. I didn’t execute my part of the plan. I gotta own that. That is a, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a personal failure, right? That’s a character failure. That’s a, my me not executing. But that’s why you create the plan, put your confidence in the plan, and then you work the plan and you put your self-esteem and your self-confidence and your self-worth in your work habits, not in your results, not in your outcomes. Mentally tough people do that. Number three. Number three, this is big secret, big secret of successful people.
RV (14:01):
It’s not that you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to be successful. You just have to be willing to do the right things for however long it takes, right? A lot of people talk about doing whatever it takes. Eh, I don’t know about that, right? If it requires me to kill someone, if it requires me to steal, if it requires me to, you know, compromise my own personal health ever, if it requires me to like, turn my back on my family or not be available, right? It’s like, nah, I don’t know. What, what, what I will do though is I will say, if I want something bad enough, I will do the right activities for as long as it takes. Sometimes it takes a month, sometimes it takes a year, sometimes it takes a decade. But if I really, really want it and I still want it, I will continue on course until the mission is complete.
RV (14:58):
You know, I love the, the old sort of tongue in cheek saying that says, I’ve never lost. I’ve only been behind when the, when the clock ran out.
RV (15:44):
But here’s the thing, if you stay focused on that goal, I promise, like if you stay focused on the goal and you really focus on it, you will get the goal. Don’t be discouraged by the deadline. That’s a big part of the point here is don’t be discouraged if you don’t meet the deadline. I think deadlines are important. Deadlines drive stress. That’s what deadlines do. They create stress. Some amount of stress is healthy. A deadline goes, man, we are gonna prioritize this to be completed by this date. And part of that stress creates, you know, it moves you from the inertia of standing still, and it gets you moving and you go, Hey, you better start moving because there’s a deadline. That to me, is healthy. The unhealthy part of deadlines is to go, man, I’m doing everything I freaking can. I’m working the, the most I possibly can.
RV (16:33):
I’m doing everything I know how to do. I’m laying it on the line. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m doing the best I can do, and I’m just not gonna get there by the deadline. Well, if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be stressed and you shouldn’t be beaten up. You certainly shouldn’t be beating yourself up. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-confidence. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-worth. You shouldn’t have let that affect your self-esteem. You can’t control those things. If you go, man, I am control. I’m working as fast as I can, and I haven’t been able to get there by this deadline, that’s okay.
RV (17:05):
The question is, are you doing everything you can do? Are you doing the best that you can do? And are you willing to do it? If it’s a goal that really matters to you, are you willing to do it? Are you willing to pursue it for however long it takes? Right? And you go, I always thought this, this is gonna sound arrogant, this is gonna sound arrogant. I don’t mean for it to sound arrogant. This is just the straight up truth. The first time I went to the National Speakers Association meeting, I think I was 22 years old, and they were you know, they do this awards banquet every year where they induct up to, I think it’s up to five, maybe six. They up the induct up to five or six people every year into the professional speaking hall of fame. And I’m telling you, I was 22 years old, and I decided, I sat there, right there, and I was like, I’m gonna be a, I’m gonna be the Hall of Fame speaker one day I will be inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame.
RV (18:00):
I made that decision at 22, and it didn’t feel like a big gamble at 22 because a lot of the people who were getting inducted were in their fifties and sixties, and they didn’t start speaking until they were in their forties. And I was like, well, gosh, if I’m, if I’m half as good as these people and I do it, you know, like for twice as long I’m gonna get there. That’s kind of what I’m talking about. Now, what I didn’t say is I didn’t have the pressure to go, I’m gonna be inducted into the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame in five years, or 10 years or 20 years. It was just like, no, this, I’m gonna do this. This is gonna, one day, I’m, this is gonna be me. And I was inducted into the professional speaking hall of fame when I was 37.
RV (18:35):
So was that a success or a failure? Well, on the one hand, you could say that was pretty successful. I’m the youngest American in history to be inducted into the professional speaking Hall of Fame. 37 years old. That’s pretty, that’s pretty amazing. But on the other hand, you go, it took me 15 years. Like, that’s not any faster than it took anybody else. Like, that’s not some child protege. That just means, I started earlier, like straight up somebody who gets inducted in their late fifties if they started speaking in their forties, like I didn’t do it any faster than them. I just did it earlier, right? I did it sooner in my lifespan, but like, I didn’t get there any faster than anybody else, even though I was the youngest person in history. So that’s what I’m talking about is I’m saying like, if you want something, if there’s something that you want bad enough and you go, I’m gonna freaking get this.
RV (19:33):
I’ll tell you, one of mine right now is I’m gonna get a house in 30 a, there’s an area in Florida that I love. It’s just, it is the perfect, to me, it has everything that I dream of when I think of relaxation and God’s creation and what family life should look like and what a community should be like, and assuming that that community doesn’t change sooner or later, we’re going to be there, right? Like, we’re gonna have a place in this one particular area. Why? Because I’m committed to it. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take. It might take the rest of my life, like, or I’ll die trying, but like, it’s gonna happen and there’s a good chance it’ll happen sooner than that, which would be great if it does. But if it doesn’t, like this is gonna happen. Now, my goal might change at some point, and you know, that that area might become run down or whatever, and I go, oh, I wanna do a different area. But like, the point is, you have to be willing to say, I will do this for however long it takes.
RV (20:37):
And I think people go, I’m a failure. Like I launched a podcast and I didn’t get a million downloads. I, I started posting on Instagram and I don’t have a million followers. I wrote a book and I didn’t sell a million copies. Like I wanted to be a speaker, and I haven’t been on a thousand stages. And you go, well, you failed. By whose timeline? Like, is the clock? Did the clock run out? Like, who’s the person that said the time has expired? You only, you extend your horizon, extend the timeline, be willing to do it for however long it takes to get there. You say, I’ll do it. That person is mentally tough because that person isn’t looking for the shortcut and that person can’t be beat. You go, you go, even if I go slow, I’m not stopping. Even if I take one step, I’m going forward.
RV (21:24):
Even if I fail, I’m failing forward. You, I cannot be stopped from achieving this goal when I decide I will pursue it for however long it takes. And that’s tremendously freeing and it’s tremendously confidence boosting to go like, oh yeah, I’m 22 years old. Like, yeah, I’m a hall of fame speaker. I, I mean, I may not be today, but one day I will be, but like, I already, I already know I will be, I just don’t know when. And then when it happened, it was like, yeah, awesome. I was so excited about it. But it, like, it wasn’t a surprise. It was like, of course. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I’m so grateful. I’m so happy. I’m happy it happened when it did. I’m kind of bummed it didn’t happen earlier, but I knew it was gonna happen eventually. And it happened, it happened sooner than later.
RV (22:05):
So I’m happy about that. This is like, this is something that I’m gonna do. And then you get to live your life as operating. Like, yeah, this is gonna be me. I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a top salesperson. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great spouse. I, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna gonna be a great, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be a great CEO. I’m gonna, I’m gonna become a great author. Like, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not the year after. But like, if something matters to you and you go, yeah, I wanna change the world. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna start a podcast that changes the world. Can you do that in a year? Me? That might be difficult that you do it in three years, still pretty hard. Can you do it in five years? My guess is if you podcast for five years, even with as many millions of podcasts are out there, I bet five years from now, you start today, you’ll have one of them, you’ll have a very significant podcast that will make a difference in the world.
RV (22:52):
You do it for 10 years. I can virtually guarantee it. Why? Because most people die and they give out, like all you have to do is outlast most people, like straight up. The strategy for success in many ways is you just gotta outlast most people. And it’s the tortoise in the hare, right? This is the old story of the tortoise in the hare. And you’re just like, I’m just gonna keep trucking along. I’m not worried about speed, like whatever. I’ll get there when I get there. So this is what mental toughness looks like. You go, you can’t mess with that person. You can’t stop them because they, they, they’re un mess with a bull because it’s like, I’ve already given up on pressuring myself to do something by a certain time. I just know I’m gonna get there. So it’s like, you can’t stop me. You, you, you can’t, you can’t distract me. I’m on target and I’m committed to be like however long it takes and I’m going, you know, I’m already taking action because I know anticipation
RV (23:45):
Is worse than participation. And my identity is not gonna be thrown astray. I’m not gonna feel sorry for myself or beat up myself or be too arrogant, egotistical if I do achieve it or if I don’t. ’cause My self-esteem is in my work habits. My self-esteem is in the plan, right? If I get success, that means the plan worked. If I don’t get success, that means the plan didn’t work. I gotta modify the plan. But it’s not about me as a person. It’s about the plan and it’s about my habits. And I will show up and do what I said I’m going to do. You do these three things, you’ll be unstoppable, literally unstoppable. You will be mentally tough, and I promise you do these three things. You will be different than 99% of people. So just outlast everyone. Build these into your psyche, decide however long it’s gonna take. Put your self-esteem into your work habits, work to plan, and it will come true for you. I promise.
Ep 500: The Mindset of Relentlessly Pursuing Excellence with Dean Stott
RV (00:02):
Every single month, we probably get about a hundred cold pitches for people to be on our podcast. And we say no to at least 99% of them. We usually only meet guests by people that we know personally, but every once in a while, there’s one that will grab me and I’m like, this is a no brainer. And this is one of ’em. And I am, so I’m just meeting Dean Stott, who you’re about to meet. We’re just meeting for the first time ourselves. But when you hear this guy’s story, it’s gonna blow you away. So he started out in the British Special Forces rose to the ranks to be in, you know, the, the kind of the, the premier in that whole world, right? He was in Special Boat Services. And then what happened is, after that, he got into private security.
RV (00:48):
He has evacuated people from Israel and Benghazi and like, I mean, this guy has been in the middle of like the craziest war scenes you can imagine. So he also is a world record setting cyclist. So fast forward here to a couple years ago and he rode, I want to get this right. So he began training to cycle the longest Motorable road in the world, the Pan-American Highway. He completed a 14,000 mile route from Argentina to Alaska. In May of 2018, he achieved two world records. He raised 1.4 million US dollars for mental health awareness charities. In the process, he passed through 14 different countries on this expedition, crossing some of the most dangerous passages in the world. And in the very final stretch, he continued for 17 hours and covered 340 miles on his longest day. So he then recently released a book called Relentless, just kind of sharing this experience, this inspiration, and I think the overall mindset of unrelenting pursuit of excellence.
RV (02:02):
And so I was blown away by a story. Plus I like having a lot of personal friends who are in special forces. And, and so with that, welcome Dean. I’m so honored to meet you, man. Thank you for being here. Morning, Roy. Thank you for having me. So I wanna start with what your dad told you Yeah. Early in your life because I am someone who I pretty much do everything to avoid physical pain. And so whenever I meet people who do the extraordinary physical feats, I’m just blown away. And you’ve, you, what part of what amazes me about you is you’ve become, like the number one in the world in three completely different, at least three completely different areas that are very competitive areas. But it started, the first one was this British Special Forces journey, and it started, and it didn’t sound like your dad was so much behind what you were doing there in the beginning.
DS (02:59):
Yeah, no, my, my father, he was in the military himself, which was quite shocking when I, I know, I, I always wanted to be a fireman. And I went through school went to college, and I decided that I didn’t really want to go through college. And I, I, I’ve always surfed since a young boy. So I went on a surfing holiday, which was supposed to be for two weeks, and it turned out to be six months. And this was long before the mobile phone. In 1994, my father found me working in a surf shop and sort of highlighted to me that I’d, I’d wasted my education and what was I now gonna do in my life. And so to silence him, I said, well, I will join the military. You know, I’d always wanted to be a fireman, but at the time, I think there was 2000 applicants for one job.
DS (03:37):
There was a huge recession in the uk. So I was not gonna get that, that job straight away. So my mindset was join the Army, do three years, get get what I can from the military, get some discipline, and also build up in the way I wasn’t the physique that you, you see nowadays, I was about five foot seven and weighed about 130 pounds. But my father told me I would last two minutes. It wasn’t the, the comfort and words of motivation I expected. And so for me, I was like, well, I can argue with my father all the way back home now for the next five hours, or I could just be silent. And the best course of action was action itself. So the Monday morning, I walked into the careers office and I joined the Army. But then my father, once he saw that I was being serious, he then started to get, get behind me.
DS (04:22):
But I never had aspirations of doing the Special Forces. My father was the the Ted Lasso of the of the British Army. He was the Army soccer manager and coach. So his career was very sports driven and not like special forces driven. So I didn’t really have an insight into that world. And in a very short period of time, within three years, I’d done every arduous course you could do in the military. I was a para airborne, I was a commando. I was a diver. And already in the tier two special forces. And then the next, the next option for me was tier one Special forces. And as you touched on in the opening dress, I joined the Special Boat Service which is your, your, the equivalent here is SEAL Team six. But I was in ar I was in the Army, and I was told I couldn’t go to the Special boat service.
DS (05:10):
It was just for the Royal Marines only. But unlike here where Delta Force and Seal Team six have their own training, ours is actually combined. And so again, I ignored them. I, I still put my application in and we started with 200 candidates, and then six months later, I was one of the eight candidates that was successful and the first, one of the first to join a special boat service. And I think now 15% of the special boat service come from the Army candidates. So again, yeah, there was a lot of times in my career and in my life that I was told that I couldn’t do anything and I just, just kept my head down or tried to keep my head down. As they say, they tell you to be the gray man on these courses. I was the gray man for about two minutes.
DS (05:51):
RV (06:29):
Yeah, I mean, I love what you said of like, rather than arguing with your dad, like you just take action. I like so many people, their first step is to run their mouth and like brag about all the stuff they’re going to do, or they tell everyone like, here’s the new thing that I’m doing. And they receive all this praise before they’ve actually done anything or, or all this resistance before they’ve actually done anything. Like that must be one of your core philosophies.
DS (06:59):
Yeah, it is. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, yeah, as you said, they’ll run their mouth off. And some people don’t. I don’t think they realize what’s actually involved. And a lot of people, you know, I personally, I get a lot of messages from people I want to join the special forces. What, what can, what do I need to do? And they almost think it’s, it’s one pill, you know? Or it’s, it is 1, 1 1 one course that you go on. It is, it is an accumulation of, of stuff. You know, I’m not here now in front of you telling you my story because I did it in the last two years. It’s what’s I’ve done over the last 30 years to get here. And I think some people when they, they have the right intentions in their mind to do it, but actually when they realize how difficult or what’s involved, you know, and then there’s also things that can come in a way, you know, I’ve said it before, I’m gonna go do this, and actually something else happens and changes the course direction of my life, and then it, that doesn’t actually come to fruition.
DS (07:49):
So for me, I just think yeah, have it intentionally in your head. And also, I’ll give an example for some people say, I’m gonna run the LA marathon. I only only say that ’cause it’s next weekend. They have the intentions of doing it, but no one actually believes you until you’ve actually put a date in the diary or you’ve actually signed up for it. You know, that’s when I start to think, right? ’cause Once you’ve signed up for it, you’ve let the world know of your intentions, and then there’s that additional motivation to do it. Just talking about it, you know, you could keep talking about it for the next three or four years.
RV (08:20):
So, so this leads to a a, a question I wanted to ask you is, what happens when you sign up for something
RV (08:31):
And you have this moment where you suddenly realize it’s harder than you expected? Right? So, ’cause there’s the, there’s this like honeymoon period when you first sign up for something like, all right, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna run a marathon, or I’m gonna join, you know, special boat service, or I’m gonna be the the first guy to like ride 14,000 miles on my bicycle. And then there’s gotta be a moment where, you know, you’re in training and you go, whoa, this is harder than I, like, this is harder than I thought it would be. It wasn’t just proving to my dad, like in the moment, like, oh, I was gonna prove to my dad. But then you get into, you know, training or whatever, there’s, you’ve gotta have had those moments. What do you do in those moments? Especially the first ones?
DS (09:15):
Yeah. Well, like, like the 14,000 miles, and that was in 2018. If I was a young 18-year-old boy, I probably wouldn’t have achieved that, you know? So when I was in the military, as I mentioned, I had no aspirations of special forces. But each time I went on a course, whatever course it was, I was physically getting stronger, but mentally I was getting stronger. And so I sort of took that experience in, into the next course and then into the next course. So I do, I, I always say you can’t be experienced without experiences. So my bike ride was an accumulation of everything I’d experienced in my time in the special forces for my time in the private security. And I just adapted that to that. So, so for me, I was confident that I could do it, otherwise I wouldn’t have put my name to it.
DS (09:57):
So for me, I think, yes, it depends where you are in your life and whether you’ve had experiences before that’s gonna help you with, with the new challenge. But I like to get out my comfort zone. So for me, I’ll, I’ll go back to the bike ride. I’d only cycled 20 miles before I applied for the world record. Wow. But what they did is I managed to get as much information as I could from books that I was reading. I spoke to the previous record holders. And I just literally used that information. I got the experts around me to help me. I knew that I could cycle. I knew I had the endurance and the mindset, and I had to choose cycling because I had a parachute accident, which ended my special forces career. So I had to find a sport, which, which wasn’t gonna hamper my knee. And so for me, I, I had been tested before, physically and mentally, so I knew that I just had to do that on, on a bike. But everything else, it was the planning, the coordination, the logistics. My wife ran all that as well around me for me. So also having a good team around you helps you as well. And getting, and getting knowledge of the experts as well.
RV (11:02):
Yeah. So I, I hear you on that, like sort of preparation, research and sort of strategic selection. What about, what about the moments though, when you want to quit? Or like, I mean, like you’re talking about building this mental toughness. Mm-Hmm.
DS (11:50):
Yeah, I think you have to, you have to have a motivation, which is personal to you. You have to be motivated to do, to do that. You know, when I was in the Special Forces, there was some guys there and they, they were there because their dads were in the Special forces. Oh, that’s not a motivation. ’cause When it gets hard, you know, it has to be personal to you. Why do you want to be it? Why is it, you know, when it gets hard, when it gets scary, you know, you need something that’s gonna, that fire to, to push you through. So that, that was that. But with the, with the bike ride, you know, we did it for, as you touched on, for mental health charities, there was 11 mental health charities that we raised the money for. And so I knew that one of the charities called Place to be the, they were gonna get a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand pounds, which enabled 14,000 children to step into a school psychologist.
DS (12:41):
And so I would then revert that into miles. So every mile I was cycling enabled a child to do that. So there’s ways of tricking, tricking the mind. But actually, I, I never had pressure from the sponsors. I never had pressure from the charities themselves. I actually put my, it was my own pressure. I told the world that the ethos of the UK special forces was young, relentless pursuit of excellence. So how does it look to the world if I don’t finish this challenge? So I put myself under my own pressure, but my own motivations. But I also, that’s why I, I aim for the world record. So that’s why I applied for the world record. Sorry. So I had something to aim for, you know, in the military we’re very objective driven and target driven and mission driven. And so that was the mission.
DS (13:22):
And you know, I think after the first week I was 39 miles. The world record was 117 days. And I was aiming for 110 days because when I’d put all the planning together, looked at all the potential scenarios, it was natural disasters, coups, things that are out of our control. You know, you can’t control the uncontrollable. So I gave myself a week’s fudge. So should we encounter any of that along the way? It was eaten into that week. And I think the worst position I was in on the whole challenge was the end of the first week. ’cause We had such strong winds. I was 39 miles behind Target, but my target was still a week ahead of will record. And from then on, it was always gains. And so mentally wise, I was always in a, always in a good place. I was hitting the targets and I was now a ahead of target.
DS (14:06):
So I see people, other people doing challenges or doing, doing things, and they’re like, well, I’m 10 miles behind today, I’ll catch that up tomorrow. But you dunno what’s gonna happen the next day. You could have another bad day and then be 20, 30 miles behind. So that message with your head mentally when you go to bed. So I always say, stay on that bike, stay in that canoe, make those extra five phone calls at work. Make sure you where you are, where you are supposed to be at the end of the day because you are then in the right mindset and head space going in on the next day. You are not trying to catch yourself up.
RV (14:38):
Uhhuh.
RV (15:31):
I know that you have become perhaps what many would say is the, is the number one leading expert in the world in evacuations. Yeah. You’ve done evacuations in, you know, the, the highest stake situations you can imagine. Mm-Hmm. There you’re not facing pain as much as you’ve gotta be facing fear. Yeah. there is, you know, literally you could turn around at any second and lose your life. Yet you’re running into those situations. You’re going there repeatedly you’re thriving. How are you, what is your strategy for managing the fear in those moments of the, you know, the potential life and death at any moment?
DS (16:15):
Obviously there, there’s fear comes in all shapes and sizes. You can, there’s so many fears for me with, with this, I was confident in the plan. You know, I would be more fearful if I wasn’t confident in my plan or there wasn’t a plan in place. So the, the, the very first time I did this was back in May, 2011 in, in the Arab Spring in Libya. And I soon identified these, these largest security companies were charging six, seven figures, sums of crisis management evacuation plans, which weren’t actually in place. And that still seems to be a lot of the cases today. So I bought 30 weapons off the black market. I buried them between tuna and Egypt, and designed my own evacuation plans. And I put them in place. And then when your American ambassador got killed in Benghazi, I was there that evening and got an oil company.
DS (17:01):
And yes, there’s a lot of things going on, but where I’ve been successful in this is I don’t bring in westerns my own teams, guys that look like me. I use local resources. I use as many local people as possible. It’s understanding the demographics, the politics, and the tribal influences of the countries. So actually the success of the majority of mine has been down to local influence and, and support and sort of capitalizing on that. Because as you, as you touch on the Special forces, Hollywood doesn’t help matters. You know, what you see on the movies is called the offensive action. The bo the, the bombs, the bullets and the biceps. You know, that’s, that’s 25% of what we do. 50% of what we do is, is support and influence its hearts and minds. It’s being embedded by locals actually understanding what’s happening on the ground, ground truth, and not what’s being reported on the media. And so that’s where the success has been for me. And that’s, and going back to your question reduces my fear because I’m not fearful ’cause what I’m seeing on TV, because I actually know what’s going on the ground, the ground truth, where things are happening. And we are probably one or two stages ahead.
RV (18:08):
Interesting. That’s fascinating. So you said 25% is bombs, bullets, and biceps, 50% is influence, you know, the support,
DS (18:16):
Support, support and influence hearts and minds. Yes. Small things just being embedded with locals, working with better winds, working with tribes in all these countries and really understanding, you know, especially for ex for example, Libya. Libya has 167 tribes. You, you know, I mean, you have to really understand the nuances with that. So when I had the the Benghazi incident, the easiest option would be to drive from Benghazi to Tripoli in about eight hours along the coastal road. But coming from Benghazi, you can’t get a driver from Benghazi to Tripoli. You’ve gotta go through Misrata to Tripoli. There’s various tribes along the way. And so what I did is I headed south to Zella. I had a safe house in Zella. We stayed there for 36 hours. We just actually see what was happening because at this point we still didn’t know what was going on.
DS (19:04):
We didn’t realize the American ambassador had been killed. And that gave us this soap period. But unbeknownst to the drivers, I had other drivers coming in from Tripoli. And so I could send those drivers home and use those. Because again, if you didn’t really understand those tribal in infants and, and things like that, you could, you get yourself in trouble. You could think, right, I can just drive to to, to Libya. So they’re, they’re the sort of things I needed to understand is what people can I use, who are the best people that are gonna help me get to certain areas? And when I evacuated the Canadian embassy from Tripoli to T is 18 military in four diplomats. My fixer, he was from ra, which was the border of Tuni. So he knew everyone along there, but also his cousin was the president of the GNC, which was the new interim government.
DS (19:51):
So it’s really just having the right people, the right key people. And also the key to me is it is showing respect to the locals as well. So the British Embassy, when, when I evacuated the Canadian Embassy, the British Embassy got shot at, at every checkpoint the week before, which was obviously worrying the Canadians. So myself and my fixer went out to the checkpoints. We didn’t speak to the guys with the guns, we spoke to the tribal elders. And we actually just sat down with, and we were just very transparent. We’re like, this is who we are, this is our intentions, and this is when we’re gonna do it. And they, they let us in, let us through. It is just because the British embassy decided to speed through without stopping or even negotiating. So a lot of it’s, you know, it’s just simple communication and respect.
RV (20:36):
What’s the other 25%?
DS (20:38):
The other 25% is probably
RV (20:45):
Yeah.
DS (20:45):
‘Cause You obviously, you can’t act on, on any of that without without the, without the information itself. So surveillance.
RV (20:52):
Yeah, it’s fascinating. I mean, it’s almost like what you are doing also with like your bike ride you’re talking about. It’s like a lot of this is the gathering information and the intel on the front end. Yeah. Then, then creating a plan. And if you do that, then the last, it’s only the last 25% is like the muscle.
DS (21:09):
Yeah. Well, I, I, you know, one of the things we do in the special forces is I think that you guys in America, they call it a, a washup, we call it a hot debrief. So every time we came off the ground, whether it’s on operations, on exercise, anything we do daily before we clean our weapons, get showered, have food we do a hot debrief. ’cause It’s still fresh in your mind. And so as soon as the helicopter landed, we’d be off and the the ops officer would have us in. And it was three simple questions. It was, what worked, what didn’t work? And if you were to do that again, what would you do differently? And these are great lessons because each operation’s slightly different. So when I did the bike ride, I was getting information from books that I was reading and, and articles, but I wasn’t getting that critical information for my plan. And so I reached out to the previous record holders and I asked them those three questions and all their issues were in south and Central America, bureaucracy, languages, spares to the bikes. They all started in Alaska and finished in Argentina. So for me, I was like, well, why take a gamble with a second half? Why not get address those issues early? And so that’s what I did. I turned it 180, I started in Argentina and finished in Alaska. And that, that was my plan, and that was literally from the information I got from them.
RV (22:22):
Wow, that’s wild. They were willing to, they were willing to just talk to you and share it.
DS (22:26):
Yeah. Which was a great, a great surprise to me. Yeah. It seems to be, you know, with the world records, you’re there just to set a bar, you know, you want other people to help. You know, I’m helping a young gentleman at the moment who’s wanting to beat the world record next year. And so, yeah. You know, for me, I wasn’t a cyclist. I dipped my toe in it just to, to prove a point. I started cycling at the age of 40. And so, you know, he’s a younger guy. And so for me, I was like, well, here’s the information, here’s what I learned. And, you know, hopefully you can learn from that. But there are other factors that you can’t control. Weathers, you know, when I went through Nicaragua, I think four weeks later, there was a coup, you know, there’s certain things that are outta your control.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So I’d like to talk about that for a second, because, you know, let’s say you do all the planning, right? Like you’re gonna launch a business or pursue some goal or dream, right? You do all the planning, you get all the surveillance, you get the right people on board, they go to help you, you then, you know, overcome your fear. You’re in the situation, you’re doing the stuff, but then sometimes there are things that just happen outside of your control. Yeah. There, like, you could do everything. You could do everything, right? Yeah. And suddenly there’s this thing that takes place that you, there’s no way you could have planned for, you didn’t plan for. What’s the mindset that you use in those moments to, to sort of deal with or reconcile and move past the things that happened that are like, that you didn’t prepare for that just were completely out of your control?
DS (23:55):
Well, there, there was a, the, I would use, probably use the bike ride as a good example. You know, I, I headed from south to north. I 10 days off the South America world record. My wife was the campaign director. My wife, you know, she, she’s the team. You know, I would talk about the success of individuals, you know, people would’ve seen me on social media, but it was the team around me. My wife was very much the, the lead for that. But actually we had a a, a RV and a four by four, which was gonna get shipped from Fort Lauderdale to Panama. Because coming from south to north, we were having to change vehicles at every, every border crossing we could get one from Alaska to Argentina if you crossed the Darien gap. And so my wife rang me when I was in Ecuador to tell me the vehicles hadn’t been loaded onto the shipping container.
DS (24:39):
So that was out of our control. But my wife and my pa and a couple of friends they drove, they flew over and they drove the vehicles 4,000 miles in eight days from Fort Lauderdale down to Panama, through Mexico and all the la Central American countries. Wow. So that was, you know, we didn’t see that, but we reacted to the situation change, and it kept to the team moving. I then get into North America on day 70, and I’m 14 days ahead of the world record. So mentally I’m, I’m in a good place. You know, I’m now in America. Everyone speaks my language, the culinary options a lot better. And my wife then rings me five times, and I think, you know, normally she keeps distractions away from me. I think there’s something wrong with our children. And she then tells me that we’ve been invited to Harry and Meghan’s wedding, which was, which was nice.
DS (25:26):
No, prince Harry and, and Meghan. Wow. So I was like, and this was their, this was the charity that we were doing for, was for Harry, William and Kate. It was one of their charities called Heads Together. And I said to her, I said, that’s nice. She goes, no, you don’t understand. You are now one day behind. So going into that phone call, I was 14 days ahead, 10 minutes late, I’m now a day behind, because the last flight out of Alaska in time for this wedding was Day 102. So I had to change that I way that I cycled in, in North America. I had the luxury being able to cycle at night because in South America and Central America, it’s safer to be off the road. And so I I cycled North America. I had 17 days planned. I did an 11 and a half days.
DS (26:06):
I literally, I got to Lubbock in Texas the next day. We had 16 mile an hour winds in tornado. So it’s now two days behind. And there’s a, there’s an app on your phone called Windy tv, which is very popular with sailors and cyclists. And it gives you the strength and directions that the winds forecast for two weeks every hour. And so I just put pen to paper. I had to cycle 340 miles in the next 36 hours to miss the next weather window and just played chess with Mother Nature. So I was using what resources I had available to me. I picked up a 50 mile an hour tailwind in Cheyenne, you know, which covered 270 miles in 11 hours. And so that’s where I gained that time. And so, you know, the, the situation that the objective hadn’t changed the timelines had.
DS (26:52):
And so I got a week outside and then I got a in a town called Whitehorse. And I get a, a phone call from a friend saying, have you seen this guy who’s, who’s a professional cyclist sponsored by Red Bull? He’s already got free hover endurance wheel records. He’d come out on social media that day and said he wanted to be the first person to cycle the Pan-American Highway under a hundred days. So every time I kept hitting my objective, my objective kept moving. And so I was, I could have stayed on the bike and just, you know, come in at reasonable time, but I just, for me, I wasn’t happy. So I, I pushed myself even harder. I cycled I cycled for 20, 28 hours in the last 36 hours to come in, in, in in 99 days, 12 hours and 36, 56 minutes in minus 18 winds and snowing in,
RV (27:41):
It was what it was 99 days.
DS (27:43):
99 days. 12 hours and 56 minutes. So again, and I think on the, on the last two days, I had 250 miles to do. And I was like, well, I’ll do 150 miles today, I’ll do a hundred on the last day. And we’re well in under a hundred days. I did the first 50 miles and we got to a a roadblock and they, they, they were like, you cannot pass. I, I hit the roadblock at noon. They said, you cannot pass till eight o’clock tonight. So they took eight hours off me. So even to the very last day, there were things that are outta my control. So I just, you know, the success of this was a, was having a plan, but also being flexible with that plan, just reacting to the situation changes. You know, for me, first question is, is anyone gonna die? No. Then we can always make a plan, get the kettle on, and we’ll make a plan. But yeah, that wasn’t, when I was back in UK making that plan, I didn’t factor this other cyclist. I didn’t factor tornadoes. I didn’t factor royal weddings. There was stuff that were outta my control.
RV (28:41):
Those dang royal weddings, man. I mean, you get invited to those things, they just screw everything. They just really screw everything up.
DS (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah.
RV (28:50):
Well that’s so cool, Dean.
DS (28:51):
Yeah.
RV (28:52):
I so, so the book is, the book is called Relentless Ya. Where do you want people to go to like, learn more about you and the book and stay in touch with what you’re doing?
DS (29:02):
Yeah, so you go to my website, deans.dot com. You know, a lot of this stuff will be up on there. I’m on the normal social media, media handles Instagram and Facebook. And you can also buy the book either on the website or through Amazon.
RV (29:17):
And then if there’s somebody right now who’s listening, who is in one of those moments where like either they are experiencing pain, right? Mm-Hmm. They have a goal. They’re either experiencing pain, they, it’s harder than they thought, or perhaps they’re experiencing fear. There’s some threat that has showed up, or perhaps they’re just facing some, you know, outside circumstance beyond their control. Yeah. And you know, they’re sitting in that moment right now debating whether or not they should keep moving forward and sort of pressing towards the objective and towards the goal and towards the mission. What, what encouragement would you give that person right now?
DS (29:58):
I think what I used to use for some of my recruits on the commando calls when they were fearful on certain tasks that we were doing was anticipation is worse than participation. You know, your mind plays tricks on you. You think that is impossible. I’m scared. And actually, once you push through, once you leaned in and got through it, you look back and think, actually that wasn’t as bad as I thought. So that was probably my, my leaving comment for them.
RV (30:23):
I love that. I love that anticipation is worse than participation. Make the plan, take the action, have faith in the plan. This is so good. Dean, thank you for sharing your insights with us, brother. And thanks for the protection you provide and for the way that you push and, and, and challenge all of us through what you’re doing, man, we wish you all the best.
DS (30:44):
Thank you so much, Rory. Appreciate it.
Ep 499: Non Competes Are No More – What You Need To Know | Matthew Miller Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So non-competes are going away. What do you need to know to stay compliant as an employer? So there is a new ruling by the FTC, right? The Federal Trade Commission on non-competes. Here’s what you need to know, is that the new non-compete rule is going into effect on September 4th, 2024, right? So as I record this, we are heading into middle of May, 2024. So in a short four months, this is happening. So there’s a cushion of window to get yourself prepared. What does it mean? Right? So this new comprehensive ban is federal, which means it is nationwide, not state by state, and it is banning all new, non-competes with all workers, right? So employees including senior executives. So this includes 10 90 nines consultants, employees, including senior executives. The final rule states that it is unfair to have a non-compete as it’s preventing a method of competition, and therefore they are banning it, right?
AJV (01:15):
So that is happening September 4th for existing non-compete. So anything that is established and in place, I would say prior to today, which is May 14th, right? So as I record this, anything that is before today would be existing. Like if you know about this, it is wise and I would advise you, not legally, but as a, a friend friendly advisor to go ahead and put these things into place because they’re coming, right? So what I’m talking about is pre-signed employee documents that have non-compete sent for those. This has a different, a little bit of a ruling for senior executives, and then it’s so it’s different for senior executives than it is for I would just call ’em non-senior executives. So what is the defining tool term of a senior executive? Typically it is someone who is making more than $150,000 a year, who is also in some sort of policy or decision making capacity, right?
AJV (02:21):
So don’t hold me to that for the, to the dime, but that’s what is technically considered a senior executive role. They have decision or policymaking power making more than $150,000, give or take a thousand or $2, right? So for those, for those individuals, for senior executives existing non-competes can remain in place, right? So existing can, but here, moving forward, again, I’m saying May 14th, like as you know about this, don’t be trying to like, just like hire a bunch of people if that’s not in your best interest. But this, this ban on September 4th also includes new senior executive positions, and they will, that will not hold to them. So it will hold, if you have a non-compete for existing ones, it will not for future ones after September 4th. So that’s the first thing. So if you are a non senior executive, right?
AJV (03:19):
So all work, all other workers different than senior executives it is not, nothing is enforceable after the effective date. It’s just gone, right? So existing ones for senior executives will hold intact, new ones will not, and for all other workers, it’s gone, right? So all other 10 99 or W2 employees the non-compete will not be enforceable after September 4th, okay? That’s, that’s, that’s the general thing that you need to know about this. Now there are some things that you should also know that are not a part of like this, you know, technically this federal ruling which are non-solicitation are staying intact, right? So as non-competes go away, which there are pros and cons to this, right? I used to be in the consulting world and this would be very advantageous for me in that role to not have a non-compete. But there are some nuances to that thing of proprietary information confidential information trade secrets, right?
AJV (04:22):
So there are some things that are still going to stay intact for a, you know, consultant work for hire 10 99, where if I, I’m currently being hired by, you know, X company with certain trade secrets, confidential information, proprietary whatever I’m not able to go and compete with a direct competitor with those things during my timeframe of work. But as soon as my timeframe of work is over the very next day, no non-compete will be eligible to me, right? So that is very much in my favor, although there is still some protection for the company, for the business owner who is hiring someone to come in. And this is where you just really need to make sure that as a, an employer as a business owner, this, this, you get this four month window that you really need to meet with your attorney.
AJV (05:12):
This is the time that you need to do contract reviews service agreement reviews for you and vendors. If you, if you hire consultants or 10 99 make sure you’re talking to your employment attorney about your current contracts because as non-competes go away, that doesn’t mean that non-solicitation is going away, right? So I think it is a fair to go, hey, like, you know, there are free market free trade here, right? If you choose to leave here, you can go do your own thing. You, yes, fine, but you cannot take our trade secrets and use them. You cannot take our confidential information. And this is where you really need to get into the nitty gritty
AJV (05:57):
Cross your t’s, dot, your i’s and your agreements to make sure that you actually have provisions, you have clauses that that does protect your proprietary information, your systems, processes, methodologies, frameworks, your ip, right? Those need to be in your employment agreements. Now, I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is my opinion as a business owner that just has non-competes are going away. Doesn’t mean that you can’t still be protecting yourself and your business as you want to be free, open, and transparent with your team. Of course you do. At the same time protecting, you know, trade secrets and proprietary information as well as keeping your non solicitations intact, right? So just because an employee at free will decides to leave and go start their own thing, even if it’s in competition with you, they cannot recruit other employees.
AJV (06:50):
They cannot recruit away your clients and they cannot take your information and use it as their own, right? So there are some things here that are very much in favor of the individual, the employee, which is fine, right? But that’s where you as the business owner need to step in and go, great. And now I need to double down in these other areas with confidential information and my IP and non-solicitation and everything else to make sure that you are fairly protected, right? Not being overbearing or this is no time to panic. Most non-competes. We’re holding up in a court a lot anyways mo there are many states that have banned this years ago, like California. So yes, there’s a lot of talk and a lot of flurry about this, which is part of why we’re making this many podcasts right now about it.
AJV (07:44):
And at the same time, very few non-compete lawsuits we’re holding up in court anyways. So this is just kind of like making it a federal stance overarching of what really was hard to uphold anyways. But it’s a great opportunity and a necessary time to update all of your agreements as well as review and ensure that you do have other clauses protecting your information, your ip, as well as doubling down on non-solicitation as the non-compete will be no longer allowed. It will be illegal to have that. So you do need to ensure that all agreements are updated. Those are removed by September 4th because at that point people can sue, people can turn you in. The federal government even has a website and a form where you can go and submit people who still have this in their agreements. Don’t be one of those people.
AJV (08:39):
And go ahead and take care of this now. So quick high level update. If you need more information, talk to your attorney, right?
Ep 498: Important Things to Consider Legally When Starting a Business and Building a Brand with Matthew Miller
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here. So, so, so excited to get to introduce you guys to one of my closest friends, Matt Miller. And although I could literally spend the next 60 minutes just shooting the breeze with Matt, that is not the purpose of today’s conversation. So y’all, before I introduce you guys to Matt, I want to tell you what the premise of this podcast is all about and why you need to stick around. And then I’ll do a quick formal introduction. There are a lot of things changing in the legal landscape, and here’s what I know to be true. Most of us have no idea what they are,
AJV (01:01):
And so I have invited on a very, very knowledgeable wise individual to help us understand what it is that we need to know when it comes to protecting our business, protecting our personal brand, but then also just some things we need to know in the ever constant changing landscapes of what it means to do business today in the United States. So that is what today is about, which means if you’re in business, it pertains to you. So stick around. So now let me formally introduce you to Matt, formally Matthew, but I call him Matt Miller, who is a nationally recognized attorney and a legal advisor to businesses with a niche in healthcare companies as he lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Everyone has to do business in healthcare. But my love is that he has a focus on merger, mergers, acquisitions, private equity transactions, and general corporate law.
AJV (02:00):
I’ve been harassing him for months on how do you, how do you become my, my general counsel? I think eventually he will fold and say, fine, fine here. Here’s how we do it. But he is literally, when we say nationally recognized, he was named as one of the Bloomberg laws, 40 under 40, and being recognized as one of the nation’s most accomplished legal minds. He has been recognized in the best lawyers in America. He has overseen transactions ranging from a hundred million to over a billion dollars. That’s with a be. And that is why I have him come o come on the show today because I need someone who actually knows what they’re talking about to help us understand what is going on in the legal landscape today. So, Matt, welcome to the show.
MM (02:44):
Thank you, aj. This is amazing to be here. Are you guys a billion dollars yet? I think you’re getting close.
AJV (02:48):
MM (04:11):
Well, that’s, you know, like we said, broad questions are the name of the name, name of the game today, I guess. I mean, I, I think it’s amazing that, you know, a lot of people are getting their legal information off of Google today.
MM (04:52):
So what we do as lawyers is not just, you know, have the information in our heads and, and, and, you know, provide that to clients, but we try to organize and apply that information in a way that benefits the client. So I think with all that’s going on out there with, with the changes, and like you just pointed out, is it is an election year. There is is going to be potentially a change in the executive branch. There could be changes at the judiciary. There were certainly a lot in the last few years. There are changes happening at the regulatory level on the FTC side. There are changes happening at the antitrust level. There are changes happening in the small business domain. There are so many things happening. How do you get your mind straight around what’s important?
MM (05:41):
You know, what, what, what do I need to pay attention to? What is just you know, not applicable to me? And, and there’s a lot. So I totally see how it can be overwhelming at times for the small business owner. And, and that’s what I really would like to do, is help make that a little bit more accessible, make it a little more organized, make it a little more or understandable so that small business owners can go out and feel protected and, and have confidence in what they’re doing is compliant. So, I mean, I guess one of the, one of the areas I think, or I guess what I could say at the outset is, one thing that’d be good to like take off the table is that if you are a small business owner that is operating, you don’t need to really have your finger on the pulses of every legal, legal change.
MM (06:21):
I think you do need to be aware of a couple things. And those with, with, by and large, don’t change, right? So the typical rules around formation of your corporation, the tax rules around recognizing revenue and income those things, you know disclosures to your shareholders, if you have shareholders, how you treat employees, you know, discrimination, hiring and firing rules, all that doesn’t change by and large. But the things that do change, you hear about, right? And I, I think we were talking either before we started, or you just mentioned it, that we’ve all heard about the recent changes to the non-compete laws that have been proposed. And you, you’re right. I mean, the FTC, which is one of the agencies that oversees antitrust and anti-competition laws held a special session where they voted three to two to actually make illegal non-competition agreements for most workers.
MM (07:18):
Okay? Hmm. So this applies to both W2 employees and to consultants. And that’s a pretty revolutionary thing. And formerly you could apply a non-compete to an employee in most states. It just had to be narrowly tailored in terms of the scope and in terms of, you know, the geographic scope and then the duration of the non-compete. But what the FTC has said is that starting, and I, I, I apologize, I don’t remember the effective date of this, but it, you know, it’s not effective yet, but starting here in a few months, the proposal is that every non-compete would be defacto illegal in the United States. Now, there are a couple of exceptions to that. There’s, there’s the standing exception for if you sell your business, you’re not allowed to turn around and compete against the buyer. So non-competes in connection with the sell of the business will remain in effect, and non-competes for certain high level executives will be allowed, it seems again, with narrow prescriptions around duration and scope.
MM (08:19):
So that is one key area that has changed a lot, and it’s interesting to see that that happens right on the cusp of an election year. So you’re right to be mindful of those things. But I wouldn’t say that you need to be juggling all of this as a small business owner. You can talk to your tax accountant, talk to a CPA or talk to a lawyer who, you know or even if you have to Google it, and they’ll probably give you enough information at least, oh, ask an intelligent question
AJV (08:47):
Yeah. So on this topic of non-competes, like, just in case someone is listening, going like, okay, I hear this term tossed around a lot, but what does that actually mean? Can you like, help explain, like, what is a non-compete?
MM (08:59):
Right. Well, a non-compete is actually a it is a contractual agreement. It’s a restrictive covenant. Okay? So it’s a promise that you make as an employee or, you know, going forward a consultant that says that you will not participate in a business that is potentially competitive, or is comp actually competitive with the person or the company on the other end of that agreement? Right? So if you are an executive at a company and, and you’re privy to a lot of internal information, a lot of confidential information, then you go and leave that company and you want to start another business that your company will want to put certain restrictions around you to make sure that you’re not going to start a business that could compete and, and take away customers and take away take, take away business, take away employees to, to this new venture.
MM (09:56):
Mm-Hmm,
MM (10:48):
It goes beyond logos. You know, I think, you know, you talk a lot about reputation. It, it really is your, a reputation in the marketplace, or in other words, your goodwill. That’s the legal term for it. One way to really lock up goodwill is a non-compete. A non-compete means you can’t take that goodwill from one business and take it over to another one. It is restrictive. It is, it is in some cases could be deemed punitive. And so the law has always tried to reduce those and tried to make those reasonable and supported by consideration. But now it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, could be the law of the land. And now states have been doing this for many years. California has always made non-competes defacto illegal, and you can actually get in trouble if you try to enforce one in, in certain states. But the landscape is changed, is, is changing. And I think it’s important for brand owners to understand that it, this is actually a potentially good thing for them because it means that their, their goodwill is going to be protected and respected and not subject to unreasonable restraints.
AJV (11:58):
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because this whole concept of a non-compete or a consultant Mm-Hmm.
AJV (12:54):
It’s like, right. There’s a lot of different things there that probably was not okay when I was in that world just even six years ago. And today it’s going, no, like I could go do whatever I want with all of your competitors, but then also I wanna talk about it as the, as the owner, as the CEO, as the founder. If I hire a consultant, the last thing in the world that I wanna do is give them keys to the kingdom of everything we have built, and then have them also go call up John Smith, you know, my top competitor and go do it for them too. So I see how it’s advantageous in one, you know,
MM (13:37):
Out? No, no. You, you are exactly right. And it’s a very astute question, and I’m trying to get too in the weeds on this, but, you know, consultants, you can restrict their performance, right? Because one of the tests to see if someone’s an employee versus a consultant or not, is whether or not the company or the employer is exercising too much control over the service provider, right? If you exercise too much control, then they actually convert from a consultant or an independent contractor into an employee. And one of the ways that you exert too much control is, is having something that’s an expressed non-compete against a consultant. So they have or, you know, so you, you, you will see, you will see things like conflicts of interest policies where they will say that if you are working for us on this project, you cannot go out and work again, you know, work for a competitor.
MM (14:30):
While you know, you know, you know, while you have this information with, with us, that is, that is a non-compete that would be potentially struck down under, under the analysis the FTC is now putting out. So conflict of interest type policies you know, you have to really word those correctly to have them only apply, like while the service provider is providing services. And you really can’t have a post-term period of a non-compete. And so that is potentially challenging for the business owner and potentially liberating or freeing for the consultant. Mm-Hmm,
MM (15:43):
There’s lots of different ways that you can address this new liberality that consultants have under these non-compete under the loosening of the non-compete laws. But but yeah, I mean, previously consultants were the most subject to these kind of ancillary non-competes that were, were enforceable. Now they’re seeing a, a great lifting of those restrictions in their ability to go provide services after the consulting agreement is ended. So during, during the period of, of service, you know, a non-compete or some sort of conflict of interest policy that’s reasonably tailored, that’s probably okay. Mm-Hmm,
AJV (16:41):
So that’s interesting. So it’s kind of like with anything, it was, there’s this natural ebb and flow, right? You’re gonna have some release of some of these restrictions, but it’s very likely, very possible and probably in the, you know, business owner’s best interest to then tighten up some areas of contract or service agreements and other areas like, you know, confidential information and trade secrets, right?
MM (17:07):
And, and that’s, those are usually the information that, those are usually the terms that the business owners know least about. Yeah. And there’s not great forms that really cover they’re sort of broad based, you know, templates that are out there, but they don’t really address your unique business and your individual business and your situation, and they may not be tailored to your laws. Particularly trade secrets are operate under a wholly different set of laws than just typical confidential information operates. So those are kind of separate concepts. You know, I think something else to keep in mind is that non-solicit will still be enforced. So there are certain things that the law will allow you to continue to do that have been historically the way we’ve done business for a long time. And things like non-disparagement clauses, other restrictive covenants that prevent someone from leaving a company and then saying bad things about that company later down the road.
MM (17:58):
Those will all be those will all still continue as will just general releases when you, whenever an employee, employee leaves a company. And, and if, if, you know, if there’s a, if you get a release from them, those will be upheld and enforced so long as they’re supported by consideration. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (18:35):
Yeah. So it’s so interesting because, you know, on the one hand, you know, our former business was heavy on, you know, 10 99 and, and we literally had to like, you know, check every t dot every i for, you know, all the compliance things. And I wonder just like, how much of this is just to deter, right? Hiring 10 90 nines and kind of forcing everyone towards the more W2 environment Mm-Hmm.
MM (19:04):
Tax. Sure. Well, and, and there’s another thing to keep in mind too, is that a lot of companies will have arbitration clauses with their consultants, and you have to word that arbitration clause correctly. I’ve seen this a lot lately where an arbitration clause that does not have a carve out or protecting your confidential information means that you’ll have to go to arbitration in order to protect your ip. Right? Now that is difficult because you’re going into court where there’s not a judge that can give you an order that can allow you to do an injunction. You’re really in front of a binding judge. But that, but they’re not a court of, it’s not a court of law. It’s not under the laws of our United States and our federalist system. It’s more of like a contractual agreement between the parties to go to a commercial resolution Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:15):
And then you also mentioned the non-solicitation. So that will stand, so can’t solicit employees, can’t solicit clients. All of those things will stand, even though the non-compete will eventually fade away.
MM (20:30):
That’s right. Because, you know, that’s a restriction on on, on the, you know, not a restriction on someone’s ability to, to be employed and to go work where they want to work is different than the ability for someone to come and, and take employees from someone else. And now you, you can always generally advertise and, and invite people to come work for your company, and you just can’t do a targeted solicitation if there’s a non-solicit in your contract. And, and that will continue to be the case. But yeah, this is, you know, it, it, there’s a, there are also some changes happening that are relevant to the business owner in, in something, some things around corporate formation and reporting beneficial ownership. And I think, I think, you know, aside from the non-compete, there, there are some changes in the law regarding corporate information.
MM (21:24):
And, and that’s called the Corporate Transparency Act. You may have heard of it. This is a law that requires it, it was really put out for to prevent money laundering. And so people would companies were starting shell companies and no one really knew who owned these entities. And in order to deter fraud and, and in order to like cut back on Monday laundering and things like that, they have started requiring businesses to report their ownership. Now, it’s interesting because one of the carve outs or exceptions from the reporting obligation are large businesses or businesses with lots of employees. Those typically do not have to report their beneficial ownership, but small businesses do. And so this is one of those laws which is meant to target one group of, of individuals or, or, or companies or founders, but it ends up you know, having an effect on a d on a different class that they really intended.
MM (22:24):
A lot of people are still grappling with the requirements of the CTA. There are portals to register and, and to make reporting your information more efficient. Most people are not even aware of it, and there’s already a couple suits making their way up to the Supreme Court, hopefully about the legality of requiring people to disclose their ownership in, in these corporations. So that’s another development that if you’re not aware of it speak to your lawyer or talk to your even accountant would probably have some information on that. And then the the so,
AJV (23:01):
So on that note, really quick before you move on, so the Corporate Transparency Act is basically, so when you say small business, is this like under 5 million, under 10 million? Like, are, is it a revenue requirement? Is it employee requirement? What is it?
MM (23:16):
Yeah, I, so I think there is an employee requirement. If you have more than 20 employees then, then, you know, I think you, you fit into the large business. And I think that there’s, I, I can’t remember right now off the top of my head what the revenue requirement is. But we actually have a policy at our firm that any advice related to the CTA has to be run through a special team because it’s so new and it’s just so unclear what, what the process is. I mean, this happened January of this year, and now we’re just, just past April tax reporting season, and now people are starting to report for the first time. And
AJV (23:54):
How are people supposed to know about this?
MM (23:57):
AJV (24:30):
Yeah. So there’s a couple of things. So I just think this is so fascinating. I only knew about the Corporate Transparency Act because you told me and I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to tax law and corporate law. And I mean, there’s been two or three things that have come up here lately that I’m like, well, what, where did I miss the memo on that? And I am generally someone, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, I attend lots of webinars. I’m in different organizations to keep me up on that, and I’m still just like missing stuff left and right. And I’m just curious, for the average business owner who is head down in their business, who’s not checking in with an attorney on a regular basis and really only talks to their accountant during tax season, like, what are the repercussions for not doing this or not knowing about it? Like, are there gonna be penalties? Are there fines like,
MM (25:27):
Well, we don’t even know. That’s the point.
MM (26:22):
And if you keep that in mind, a lot of things that you think are the law, they could change because either they don’t align the incentives correct correctly, or they’re, they don’t promote efficiency. Hmm. You know, so that, that’s one of the things that’s, that’s cha challenging about the law, is that even when something is the law, like in the case of the non-compete that we discussed, that can change in a year or, or, you know, in, who knows, it may, it may come back and it may, it may be different in different states, but, but it, it looks like at least for now, that those are the two big developments this year are, is the change of the non-compete, which, which would be a federal law, meaning it applies to all states, and that a state could not go below that floor.
MM (27:07):
And, and the, the Corporate Transparency Act, which requires small businesses to report their beneficial ownership. I think it, if, if you could put that on the awareness radar of most of your audience and most of your listeners, I think then they can start asking the questions, well, what do I need to do? But in terms of the penalties for non-compliance, in terms of like, what happens if you don’t do it? You know, my advice would be do it follow the law, right? While it’s the law. But the truth is we don’t know because it’s so new. So even lawyers are grappling with these things.
AJV (27:41):
So fascinating. And part of why I wanted you to come on, because I think there’s just so much that, you know, unless you do have, like, you know, legal counsel on staff or accountant on staff, and most, I would say personal brands don’t, right? That this is a really hard thing to keep up with. So is there a place that if you don’t have an attorney that it’s like, oh, well, this is how I get federal updates or legal, like, does that exist? Like, how do you
MM (28:10):
Find this stuff out? You, you know, you know, unfortunately, it, I don’t, to my knowledge, there is no place other than having a lawyer to explain these things to you. There’s no place you can go that will give you legal advice. I mean, it’s, it there, the way that our legal system is structured and the way that our attorney-client engagements work, it’s very outdated. It’s very antiquated, and it, it, it, it, it’s not that it discourages the free full of information because you can get information and you can get people to help you. Like you can go to a conference, for example, Mm-Hmm.
MM (28:59):
You know, you know, about these changing trends, about these legal issues to the general public. Mm-Hmm.
MM (29:55):
I, I think the law firm model is, is really evolving from a, a fee for service institution to a, to a flat fee kind of project based or relationship based model where clients are able to get the information that they need based on their, their unique situation and, and not so much based on the billable hour as it has been in the past. And, and that, that is one big problem out there is that the affordability of good legal counsel, it’s hard, is not really available. Yeah. We don’t, and now, now there are legal clinics that are out there, right? There are, you know, there, there are services that will provide advice on a relatively budget basis but a lot of, a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurs that are actually making revenue and growing and growing businesses won’t qualify for a lot of that support Mm-Hmm.
MM (30:56):
AJV (31:57):
Yeah. Because at the end of the day, well, first of all, it seems like there’s a gap in the marketplace that you should go and fill. So I’m just gonna give some encouragement. There seems like a, well, I, I have,
MM (32:07):
I have some updates I can share on that if you, if you want.
AJV (32:09):
Yeah. Yeah. But then also I think it is kind of one of those things of, you know, really it’s like, it’s, it’s the beauty of content creation, right? It’s like the whole premise of, you know, give away the what for free charge for the how. Right? It’s like, just because I know about the Corporate Transparency act doesn’t mean I’m gonna go and DIY the whole thing. It’s like, tell somebody for free, tell me about it, and then tell me how you could help me do it. Right? It’s, you know, welcome, you know, to year 2024 attorneys. So,
MM (32:41):
Well, I mean, there are actually, there are actually in, in, in the, in the, for the average business, there are really five journeys that they go on and, and the lifecycle, right? And it’s, it’s starts with, with the, with the founding or the formation of the, of the business. And then it goes all the way through to the exit of the business. And as the business grows and evolves and goes through these different journeys, I like to call them their needs change. And so it’s not just about having advice at, at the stage that you’re at, it’s what are, what advice are you gonna need as you continue to grow and evolve? Because it, it does change every time.
AJV (33:19):
Yeah. So it’s a great transition that I think would be really good to talk about is since you have such specialty in mergers and acquisitions I would love to just hear from you, like, what are the things that people need to know or consider? Like if somebody is listening today going, Hey, maybe I’m in the beginning phases. Maybe I’m in growth phase, maybe I am, you know, ready to exit, whatever they are. But what are some things that you see that make a business worth buying? Right. Because I think there’s a difference in I’m trying to sell my business versus someone who’s trying to buy my business. Right? Right. And I think we just had this conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine of going, trying to sell your business means that you are trying to find someone versus someone who’s trying to buy it. So make it a business worth being bought. Right? Right. So, how do you make your business worth being bought? So since you’ve been through this, what are some of those things? Like what makes a business purchase worthy?
MM (34:22):
Yeah, so I mean, I mean, I, I guess the first thing is what you do in the early stages really matters at the end. Mm. And it’s not just, okay, now we’re ready to sell our business, let’s go to market. It’s, it really when someone comes to look at your business, they’re gonna do diligence on your business, and they’re gonna go all the way back to the moment that you formed your company till the present date. So things that you do in the beginning matter later. And that’s, that’s the first point. The second point is that, you know, the, the way you organize your business model matters a lot too. If, if you are going to be a services business, that is kind of one direction, if you’re going to be an ip business, that, that relies more on proprietary information and systems, that is another direction, right?
MM (35:06):
If you’re, if you’re gonna have a brand that does a little bit all the above, you know, that’s, that’s another business. And, and those businesses are valued differently and, and, and at the later stages of their, of their life than they are than the others. So not every process is the same, but, but what we look at when we’re trying to acquire a business is we wanna make sure that the risk is minimized as much as possible for the buyer. And that if anything was done that was not correct or not accurate you know, or not in compliance with law, that that risk remains on the seller. So you, you, it’s not like you can just sell your business and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I mean, the buyer will make sure that, that you are responsible and ultimately held accountable for that, and it could come out of the sales proceeds.
MM (35:56):
So it’s really in your interest you know, when the business is small and, and these things cost a few hundreds of dollars to deal with them now versus when they cost few hundreds of thousands of dollars later. And we see business owners have to put up large escrows large amounts of indemnification to offset certain risks and purchase price, price adjustments all the time because of things that were not caught early enough in the, in the process. So it, it’s really like, do yourself a favor. Save a ton of money later if, if you’re planning to ever exit by getting those things right today. You know, and I think as, I think really if you look at the early stage founder, one of the most important things that they can do is choose the right business partner. And I think that is something that often gets overlooked or, or not really fully appreciated, is that, you know, are you in business with the right person?
MM (36:53):
And does that person have the same vision as you? The same? Are the, are the skill sets complimentary? Are, are they gonna be able to take the business the long term? Do they have the same sort of goals as you, and, and, you know, it may be that they do initially and that changes over time, and that’s okay. I think it’s okay as long as you have the right documents in place. And that’s the third thing, is you wanna have, you know, the, the right business model, the right team, and the right documentation. And that documentation is really where the rubber meets the road, because say there is a change in the partnership, say there is a, a different direction that the founders want to go, and one founder wants to leave and the other founder wants to stay. And, you know, how do you negotiate that split? Because that is a very common that’s a very common scenario. Happens all the time. It’s nothing, it’s not like it’s a bad thing. It’s just you need to plan for that in some ways. Or at least you need to have mechanisms that allow that to naturally evolve without it destroying the business or harming the business. So that’s what we focus on a lot in the initial stages of the business.
AJV (37:59):
So when you talk about documentation, you mean like an operating agreement?
MM (38:03):
Correct. Yeah, the operating agreement. If you’re an LLC, if you are a corporation it would be something like a certificate of incorporation or a charter. Typically, we would organize businesses that want to raise capital. So if you’re a software business or a technology business, or you’re any kind of business that has a really high level of research and design r and d attached to it, you’ll probably, so if it’s capital intensive, you, you may need to raise money. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (39:07):
Why do they like ’em more?
MM (39:09):
Well mostly because they’re corporate in Delaware a lot of the time, and the Delaware corporate code is very investor friendly. Mm. Also for tax purposes, c corporations don’t have an automatic pass through. Mm-Hmm.
MM (40:15):
And you wanna protect the investors. So investors get a little, a little bit more protection in a, in a C corporation, but you can certainly invest in an LLC as well, like LLC operating agreements. Certainly can have investor provisions and they can issue units, common units and preferred units just like a corporation. They can even have you know, many of the same investor rights, hard is harder. And to, to make the same level of anti-dilution protections in an LLC as you get in C corp. And I’ve actually seen that a lot lately, or a couple times lately, where investors have been asking for anti-dilution protection, but it’s an LLC that they’re trying to invest into. And the way the partnership system works, because it is a pass through, it causes all sorts of issues from a tax perspective when you try to adjust for the varying levels of, of the company’s valuation amongst members in an LLC.
MM (41:11):
Interesting. So that’s one issue. And now it, now a lot of people have been asking about s corporations, and I’m not a tax attorney. But you’ll see people form S corporations or you’ll see ’em form LLCs and it’s Fast Corp, excellent LC and then right. And then file, then check the box, file a, it was called an 88 32 form election, which checks the box, and then they’ll file a 25 53, which is an s selection to essentially qualify for better tax treatment on their self-employment. And, and that’s fine if you are doing a consulting business or if you are, you know, just, you know what, what you don’t wanna do is start an operating company file an S selection and then go need to raise capital. Mm-Hmm. Because what you can’t be, if you’re an S corporation, is you can’t be a, you can’t be a business that has multiple classes of stock.
MM (42:07):
That’s one of the impermissible things in an S corp. And the moment you take investor money from investors, they’re going to want usually a preference or some sort of interest rate, and that creates a different class or different economic treatment on that stock. And that can invalidate your s selection. So if, if you’re forming an S corporation solely for the purposes of being a consultant and, and getting some tax efficiency on your, on your on your self-employment that, that’s one thing if you’re forming an S corporation because you want to be a corporation, but want to pass the treatment of an LLC but wanna raise preferred stock, that’s not okay. You’re gonna blow your s selection. So, oh, man, that’s one thing you can do correctly. And I’ve actually seen a business get all the way down to the end 10 years later thinking they’re an S corp and turns out that they had actually blown their s selection a long time ago, and now that’s a big tax bill that the company, the sellers have to come up with at closing in order to make the buyer comfortable enough to buy the business back.
AJV (43:11):
And not only that, it’s a very, make sure you form it correctly in the beginning. So it’s like really, like, you know, that old saying, start with the beg you know, start with the end in mind is
MM (43:20):
Like Yeah, yeah. Begin with the end in mind. Sure.
AJV (43:22):
This is such a great real life tangible business example of, I think a lot of people just rush to get their entity started, right? Mm-Hmm.
MM (44:03):
My, my favorite one is that people will say, I just want to do the simplest thing. I’ll do a 50 50 J, I’ll do a 50 50 LLC. So an LLC with each member has a even share. And, and most people think that’s the most simple way of going forward. It’s actually the hardest way to structure any entity formation because it raises all sorts of issues around voting. And the impasse you, when you, if you don’t have an agreement among the 50 50 members, then you can have a real problem. Not a, not a, not, it’s a, it’s avoidable. It’s fixable. Yeah. But you, it’s, it’s one example where most people think they’re doing the easy thing, but in reality, it’s actually the hardest thing you could possibly do. So it’d be much better to do, just do 50 51 49, please
MM (44:54):
Ah, but people often will say, no, 50 50, we’re just trying to be fair and reasonable, not realizing that they’re causing themselves a whole lot of information of, of, of, of a headache. Because now they have to go out and get a buy, sell clause into their LC agreement. And if they don’t have that, then they find themselves at an impasse where they have to really negotiate amongst themselves how they’re gonna wind down the business or, or, or come over or make a certain decision that might be a, a different change of direction for the company. And, you know, the company needs to have a decision maker. It needs to have someone at the helm and 50 50 LLCs are not always the best for that. So
AJV (45:32):
That’s good. All right. Last question. I know ’cause we’re running out of time, but since you do have a lot of this, there’s been a lot of talk and my circles at least around the, the valuation of companies has like, it’s like an all at, at an all time market low. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. ’cause I’m not in the business of buying companies and I’m definitely not trying to sell mine, but can you give us any updates on how are companies being evaluated today? I heard the other day it’s like, you know, what was getting 10, you know, 10 x multiple five years ago is like getting three today. What’s true, what’s not true? And what do we need to know when it comes to getting, you know, a valuation on your company today?
MM (46:15):
Yeah, so I mean, the thing about valuations, good businesses are selling at great multiples. Good
AJV (46:22):
To know.
MM (46:23):
Okay. So that, that has not changed. But, you know, a lot of valuation metrics are based on the appetite of the buyer and what they are looking to do with the business that they’re acquiring. In the healthcare space a lot of companies, private equity companies will go and acquire a, a healthcare practice, a a medical practice, and they’ll pay the initial the, the initial practice will, will get a high multiple, and then as they go and add other practices to that platform they, they will pay lower and lower multiples in, in order to arbitrage or or average out the average multiple paid. And then with hopes of growing the platform over time and then selling that platform to, you know, a higher bidder. By the way, healthcare private equity is also an area where there’s been a lot of change lately and a lot of attraction from the federal regulators.
MM (47:22):
So that’s also another area, but not so relevant maybe to your, to your audience. But you know, that it, it, you know, multiples are a function of the economy. They’re a function of, you know, interest rates. They’re a function of a lot of different socioeconomic and political forces. But ultimately good businesses will sell at the max multiple. You know, and, and, and that’s something that just won’t ever change. If a buyer wants the business bad enough, and if it’s accretive enough to their organization, their revenue you know, their, their own reasons for wanting to acquire the business, you know, they will pay it. Mm-Hmm.
MM (48:28):
You know, and that really is market timing, right?
MM (49:25):
And that’s really where brands come into play, right? Because ultimately a brand, the way that the law looks at a brand is, it’s a trademark, right? Mm-Hmm.
MM (50:15):
Mm-Hmm,
AJV (50:56):
Yeah, and I love that. ’cause It, it’s, it’s keep it simple. It’s like if you have a great business, then likely you would be naturally attracting a great buyer. And I love that. Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today. So much wisdom, so much information and I love most of all that there’s nothing that you said that should cause anyone to get in a flurry or a panic, but nonetheless, we all need good resources. And this was a great resource for our community today. So thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show. And for all of you guys listening, stay tuned for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. And we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 497: 4 Principles of Making More Money | Mel Abraham Episode Recap
RV (00:05):
I wanna share with you four principles of making more money, right? Like, how do you make more money? What do you need to know to make more money? And this was inspired by the recent conversation I had with Mel Abraham on our podcast. And I wanna start by highlighting a couple things that Mel said. So this is not part of the four things that I want to share with you, but there were a couple, there were two really beautiful things that he said that I do want to share with you. ’cause These, these are from him, not from me, but he said, you should focus on building safety first and growth second. Safety first and growth second. And I actually really like that. I agree with that strategy. And I, I think there are also two different parts of your life. There’s, there’s times where financially your focus is safety.
RV (01:00):
That is a different set of rules, a different paradigm, a a different, a set of strategies, a different way of thinking when you’re trying to build safety. And then you’re going for growth. Once you have safety, then you go for growth. And I think thinking about it as like two different strategies and first get safe, then focus on growth is important. ’cause If you try to grow before you have a safe foundation, I think that’s a big mistake. And I think that’s a really big risk. You’ll see that reflected in my four strategies. But I’d never heard anyone say that. And Mel said that. And I, and I love that. And the second thing that Mel said, which was my favorite thing that he said in our interview together was he said, your family doesn’t care about profit as much as they care about your presence.
RV (01:45):
Your family doesn’t care as much about your profit as they do care about your presence. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs run the risk of saying, I have to make more money for my family. And in reality, they’re using that as a justification to spend so much more time away from their family that it’s like they’re, they’re giving up. Well, the thing that the family really wants, which is just more of you. And they don’t need more money. They, they, they do want more of you and they need more of you. And I, I never heard someone say it quite like that, so I love that. So thank you for that, Mel. And if you haven’t yet, go listen to the interview of Mel Abraham on our podcast. It’s really, really good. So I wanna walk you through four principles of making more money, having more financial security, more financial stability, more growth, more excitement, just in your financial life. And the first one is simple. Be debt free. Be debt free. Now, I, I know that you’ve probably heard that before, but it’s such a critical one, and I wanna explain why. I wanna make sure that this really sinks in as to why being debt free
RV (02:58):
Is such a good idea and why being debt free is so important to building your wealth. So first of all, from a, from a emotional standpoint, okay? There’s, there’s an, there’s an emotional side of this and a logical side of this. The emotional part of being debt free is really where I think the power most lies, which is to go, your level of peace changes when you don’t have debt. Like your stress level goes way down. And maybe you don’t have a nicer car, maybe you don’t have a nicer house. Maybe you don’t have the nicest tv. Maybe you don’t go on the biggest, most grand vacations. Maybe you don’t wear, you know, brand new, you know, brand label clothes. But, but what you exchange, you give up all of that. But what you get in return, the payoff is peace. And I really believe that peace is the new profit.
RV (04:02):
What we really want is peace. And even people I know that are super wealthy, there’s lots of people I know that are super wealthy, they don’t have peace. And there’s people who maybe don’t have a lot of money, but they do have peace. And where you get peace from, and to use Dave Ramsey’s term financial peace, to me, financial peace is less the result of how much money you make. And it is more the result of how little debt you have. Financial peace is more, is is less of the result. Financial peace is less of the result of how much money you make. And it is more the result of how little debt you have. In other words, the lower the debt you have, the more peace you have. That’s what the real secret is, because when you have debt, you have to work, not just have to work.
RV (04:53):
When, when you have debt, you have to make money. You have to, because you owe money and you owe money on timelines, you owe money on deadlines and deadlines create stress. And so when you have debt that creates stress, you have to make money to pay off that debt. The moment you don’t have debt, you don’t have as much stress, right? There’s always some level of stress to have to earn, to make money, to provide food on the table. But, you know, it doesn’t take, but, you know, maybe a few hundred, several hundred dollars a month to be able to provide food. And you know, I mean, someone who could make $12,000 a year could, could provide more than the amount of food they would ever need. Now, you might also have shelter that you have to provide, but, but even somebody making maybe $24,000 a year, if you had no other debt and all you had was like rent and food and like utilities, you could do that on a couple thousand dollars a month or realistically in the, in the us.
RV (05:55):
And that’s not blowing it outta the water, right? Like that’s not being filthy rich. Like that’s just going, but you would have less stress. And this is something that AJ and I decided, and, and look, we’re we’re far, we’re, we’re nowhere near the richest people in the world, but we’re far, far away from being the poorest. And one of the decisions that we made in our marriage that I think has changed our marriage and it has changed our family, and I actually think it has increased our physical health, is we decided we don’t need more money. As much as we need less stress, we don’t need more money as much as we need less stress. So what gives you the least amount of stress with, with, with money is being debt free. That’s the emotional side of it. Now, the, the technical side of being debt free, and this is obvious, it’s not so obvious to so many people, but it’s to go look, if you have no debt, like if you have, you know, debt is money going out the door, right?
RV (07:05):
That’s money you owe that’s going out the door. Well, it’s kinda like if there’s a hole in your ship there, if you plug that hole, there’s no money going out the door. So if you plug that hole, then even if you make a little money, you get to keep that little bit of money and that little bit of money, you know, next month piles on top of the little money and that piles on top of a little bit of money and it piles on top of a little bit of money and it piles on top of a little bit of money. And so it’s not about the quantity, right? It’s about the idea that whatever is coming into you, you actually get to keep, and you actually feel yourself and you see your account making progress. You see your account growing because it’s not all pre-assigned.
RV (07:47):
It’s not spent before you have it. It’s not going out the door, right? When you get it, it stays there. And, and that’s the, the logical part that should be obvious. But it’s the not so obvious strategy when it comes to money is it’s like, even if you only make a little, you get to keep a little. And next month when you make a a little bit more next month, that little gets piled on the little you have. And so you have a little bit more and a little bit more. And, and, and so that’s really the power. But what, what’s stressful is keeping up with the Joneses and having to have the nicest house and the nicest car and the biggest va biggest TV and the, you know, the grandest vacations and all that sort of stuff that, that’s stressful. You don’t need it. You don’t need it. So be debt free. The second principle of making more money that I just, I want to share with you, and, and by the way, if you haven’t gone through my, my free training High Earner Habits, it is the seven psychological ways that wealthy people think that’s different from everybody else. You have to go through that training like it’s a couple hours, but it, it’s, it, it teaches the best of what I have learned
RV (08:54):
About money and wealth and financial freedom. And it’s free. And, and you can go to my Instagram page and you can just comment HEH down below on my Instagram page, or you can you can go to rory vaden blog.com and click on free trainings and, you know, sign up for hiring your habits that way. But like, you gotta learn this stuff and, and, and, and nobody teaches this stuff. It, it’s, they don’t teach it in schools. And, and, you know, most of, most of the people are broke. So who are you gonna learn it from? You gotta learn it from people who have figured this stuff out. And one of the greatest differences of wealthy people compared to everybody else is that wealthy people spend their money to save time. What most people do is they spend their time to save money, right? They’ll spend three hours cutting coupons so that they can save $20 at the grocery store.
RV (09:53):
Now, $20 is not nothing, but what if you put that three hours into something else that was more income producing, or they’ll park, you know, an hour away from a stadium or their meeting to save money on parking, where it’s like, well, you could pay the money for parking and you could be closer. Now it’s, it’s, it, it all depends on how much money you have in total and like what your circumstance is. But the point is, I mean, the other thing is people will go, you know, small business owners will say, well, I, you know, I will do everything myself so that I don’t have to pay the money to hire somebody else. But, you know, if you can’t hire an assistant, then you are an assistant making an assistance’s wage. And that I talk about in my second book, procrastinate on Purpose, five permissions to Multiply Your Time.
RV (10:37):
The whole delegate chapter is just understanding mathematically it doesn’t make sense. You’re not actually saving money if you’re spending time doing a task that you could pay somebody less money to do than the opportunity cost of you using your time somewhere else, making more money. And this is just, just, just something you just gotta, like, it’s a switch you have to flip. It’s, it’s a realization you have to make. It’s a habit you have to change. And it’s just like a paradigm that, that, that has to be transformed is that most people spend their time to save money. Rich people spend their money to save their time to, they, they, they spend money to get their time back. They spend money to pay people to do things so that they get more time so that they can reallocate their time into higher income producing activities.
RV (11:31):
And that’s just, that’s just the way that it is. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a hundred percent truth of every single like, you know, really old ultra wealthy person that I know. The third thing is that if you really wanna make more money, you wanna be, choose to be paid for your results, not be paid for your time. Now, you can make, you know, if you’re a top level executive at a very large organization, you can get good money for your time, but you’re still trading money for time. So that can be okay. Like if your financial, you know, vision is, is not past a certain point, I’m not saying it’s wrong to trade your money for time, especially early on, that’s the fastest way to make money, is to trade your time for money. But the least scalable way long term to grow your income is to trade your money for time.
RV (12:21):
So you have to find vehicles that are create money disproportionate to the amount of time that you put in. So it’s not wrong to do it, it’s just saying that if you wanna become super wealthy, if you wanna be ultra wealthy, like really wealthy, it, it’s gonna happen from separating your time from the results. And that’s why sales is one of the first ways that people become really wealthy because you get paid not for how many calls you make, not for how much time you spend prospecting. You get paid per sale that you create if you’re in a commission, assuming you’re in a commission based sales position. And that was how I started to learn how to do this. And, and, and that was where I first experienced the power of being paid for my results was to go, well, if I could create a lot of sales in a short amount of time, I can actually make an extravagantly disproportionate amount of money for the time that I was spending where I was just getting paid hourly or as a salary for my time.
RV (13:26):
Now, is that risky? Yeah, it’s risky. Is it scary? Yeah, it’s fricking terrifying. But if you can learn to do that and you, and you develop certain skill sets of being a great salesperson or sometimes it’s being an artist or being a content creator, or being an entrepreneur in general or being an investor, those are ways that you get paid not based on how much time. Now if you fail, you’re not gonna make anything and that’s the risk. But if you can learn those skills and you can succeed, then you can get more money for your time. The other thing is, man, if you get a, if you ever get a chance to be a part of a company, ev even if, if even if it as you’re an employee, but if you’re a part of a company where they you know, offer some type of a profit sharing plan or, or, you know, even if they’ll invest into your retirement and things, right?
RV (14:16):
That’s why investing is powerful, because investing, you’re, you’re, you are trading time for money, but it’s not your time, it’s just the compounding interest of time and your money, time turns money into more money. So as you have money invested, that money starts to grow. But it’s not, it’s, it’s separated from how much time you’re spending working but it’s connected to how much time you have that money invested. So, you know, investing earlier in your life, investing when you are younger matters even more than investing a lot of money when you’re older. So figure out ways to, to, to be paid for your results and not for your time. And there’s many ways to do that. There’s, there’s profit, there’s commission, there’s bonuses, there’s profit sharing, there’s investing those, those are the, are the main skill sets. There’s operating a business, which is, which is again profit or it’s just agreeing to someone to say, you know, give me your to-do list and I will give you a number and you pay me for a project.
RV (15:17):
You don’t pay me for a time. You know, you ask me to, you know, design you a logo and you pay me to give you a logo that you’re satisfied with and you don’t, you know, charge for whether it took one hour or 10 hours or a hundred hours, and you get really good at your craft and then you charge for a, a result or a project. And, and that’s the other thing is you get paid for results. You can be a consultant who doesn’t get paid anything for your time, and you say, just pay me a percentage of the growth or a percentage of the increase or percentage of the profit. Is it risky? Yeah. But that is really where wealth ultimately comes from, is you gotta be separating your time and, and being paid for your time. If you wanna get really, really wealthy right now, if you just wanna make a lot of money, you can be really good at your job, get a great company, your income will grow over time, and that’s awesome.
RV (16:02):
But if you can find vehicles where you can, in order to become really wealthy, you have to eventually detach money from time you have to. And then the fourth thing is, the fourth way to make a lot of money is to de-risk your own business. You de-risk your own business. Like being an entrepreneur and starting your own business is the best way to make the most amount of money because you’re in charge of your own destiny and you’re separating your time for results. Now it’s extremely difficult, right? Don’t think it’s easy at all. It’s very difficult. And for many years you’ll be underpaid, right? For many years you’re putting in more time than you’re getting paid for. But if you have those skills and you learn those skills and you get good coaching from people like us or others who can teach you marketing and sales and operations and customer service and finance and tax, and you know, it, and infrastructure and project management, like if you can master those skills, then you can build a machine that makes money.
RV (17:05):
Well you should always be the number one investor in your own dream. And I really believe where I go, man, the number one thing I could ever invest in is into my own education, right? Like, personal development is the number one investment because I will get that return the rest of my life, right? Whether I spend 20 bucks on a book or $2,000 on a course, or $200,000 on private coaching from someone very high level who can teach me a skill, it’s like, yeah, $200,000 is a lot of money, but if I have the rest of my life and, and, and that skill that I’m learning is very, very valuable, I go, I have the rest of my life to earn back that investment. So the number one thing you should invest on is your own personal development, your own education. But the number two thing to invest in is to your own business, right?
RV (17:50):
Is, is into your own income producing activities. And that’s where I go, well geez, you know, if I invest into the stock market, I, you know, hopefully I get eight to 12% on my money. If I build my own company that has a 20% profit margin, that means I’m getting 20% on my money. So the the, if you have a business, the number one thing you can do is invest to grow your own business. And that’s why it’s like, yes, get coaching, get technology, hire people, you know, build your personal brand. Like those investments are huge because they multiply over time again and again and again into the future. But now investing in your own business can be risky. What makes a, what makes any risky? What what makes any business risky to invest in is how volatile the business is. So how do you de-risk that investment of any business, but especially your own ’cause, your own, you have control over super simple.
RV (18:46):
You’re gonna invest in the three Ps people, product and processes, people product and processes. If you want to de-risk your own business, if you wanna make more guaranteed money from your own business, if you want more stability in your business’s ability to produce more income for you, you have to get great people and spend money, recruiting, hiring, training, developing, promoting people. You’re investing money into people. By far, our people are the number one expense at brand builders group. It, it, and it’s the number one thing we spend money on our, in our, on our life, other than maybe taxes is we spend money. We are paying people constantly. We hire people for all sorts of things personally and professionally. We are constantly hiring people. So that’s the first thing. The second is, invest in your product, have an amazing product, make it look awesome, make it be awesome, make make it made of awesome materials and, and, you know, create an awesome product.
RV (19:49):
Like if it’s a service, make it an awesome experience. Invest in making sure that the thing that you are selling is absolutely phenomenal. That will de-risk the investment in your own business. And then the third is processes, processes, processes, processes. You need better processes. The the better processes you have, the less risk there are inside of any company. And in your company, you’ve got full control. So you need to invest in processes. And, and that could be technology, it could be equipment, it could just be paying people to spend time while they’re at work documenting exactly how to do every task in the company. Why? Because if that person quits dies or gets fired, now you have a process that someone else can be hired and they can step in and they don’t have to figure it all out. They can follow the process. A company really is what is the value of a company.
RV (20:46):
It’s effectively the people in the processes. That’s it. And, and I guess to the product to some extent, but it’s really the people in the processes. And then you can create products. You have to invest in your processes. This type of thinking, at least for me and most of my life and most of my friends, was very rare. It took me years to learn these things. Heads of the hundreds of thousands of dollars I invested to learn how to think the way that wealthy people think so that I could become like wealthy people, you know, become wealthy and it, and it has worked. And so you’ve got to learn from people who have done, been there and done that and understand it and who are good teachers. Again, just type HEH down below on my Instagram profile, and I will send you my free training Hire Earner Habits, seven Ways That Wealthy People Think and Live.
RV (21:38):
Or you can go to rory vaden.com, click on Free Trainings, and you can sign up for Higher Earner Habits there. That’s a great start. It’s totally free. Like it, it is the best of the best of what I’ve learned about money. I give it to you for free. So I wanna encourage you to do that. But in addition to that, do these four things. Be debt free. Spend your money to save time, choose to get paid on your results and de-risk your own business By investing in people, products, and processes. You do those things, you’ll be well on your way.
Ep 496: Build Your Money Machine with Mel Abraham
RV (00:03):
Anytime we can talk about money and financial freedom and being more rich and abundant and helping you grow your business, it is a powerful conversation. And today is especially going to be that because we have my good friend Mel Abraham on the show. Mel and I have known each other for several years now, and he is one of the most genuine amazing nice individuals that I’ve ever met. And everybody who knows him in real life will say the same thing by trade though, he is a CPA and he is a deep, deep expert on, on the subject of all things money. He is a globally recognized thought leader. He shares the stages with shares the stage with 400 Fortune 500 companies. He speaks at some of the biggest public events in the world. He is friends with a lot of the most influential people in this space, and he understands online business, understands offline business. He’s also a cancer survivor, which was something that he endured like in and around the, the pandemic and went through some of his own financial, you know, kind of issues dealing with that. And he’s just an amazing, amazing, genuine human. So he understands our space and he understands specifically, you know, he’s an expert in, in finance and all things money. So, without further ado, Mel, welcome to the show, buddy.
MA (01:25):
Rory, it is so good to be here. Thank you for having me, man.
RV (01:29):
Man, I’m so excited about your new book. So, building Your Mon Build Your Money Machine, which I love the title, build Your Money Machine. This book is fantastic. It is. It has diagrams and tools and charts and tables. You do such a brilliant job of making it clear and simple, you know just helping people understand money. So I’m excited to talk to you. I I, I wanted to ask you, where did your whole journey start? Like, how did you get into money and like, what, what happened early? I know you, you talk in the book a little bit about some of your earliest, like money memories and how that impacted you and has really like, set the trajectory of your life. So I’d love to hear that.
MA (02:16):
Oh my God, thank you. So, yeah, I look, most of our money lessons are caught not taught. And, and I was no different. I, I remember my, one of my earliest money lessons was was seeing my dad cry for the first time. Now, I’m, I’m a son of an immigrant family. My dad came here at 17 years old with nothing. He came here to go to school and, and he fought to get here and built a life, you know, he was an engineer, you know, aerospace engineer. But in my life, I looked at him as this tower of power and everything. And here he was in tears for the first time that I’d ever seen him in tears. And I didn’t know the specifics. I just knew it had to do with money. It was my mom and him having a conversation.
MA (03:07):
And I hear my dad say, I just feel like I’m letting down and disappointing the people I love. And I, I, and that hit me. And I didn’t realize how much it hit me, but I ended up carrying this idea that if I don’t make enough money, you’re gonna disappoint the people you love. Hmm. And I’m, it, it became this, this chase for me, the, the challenge was obviously I was wrong,
MA (04:02):
And Jeremy, at six years old comes running in and says, daddy, daddy, I drew a picture of you at school today. And so I kneeled down to grab this picture and look at it, and there I am, and blue felt tip pen, a stick figure with two computer screens and a phone in each ear, and the one on the desk ringing. And that was a mirror into my soul. He, he in a moment looked at me and said, dad, you know, you, you may want the profits because it pays the bills, but I don’t want the profits. I just want your presence. And that’s, it was in that moment where I ki I kind of looked at things and said, how, how is it and is it possible for the dream to be an entrepreneur, the dream to, to build and impact lives, to coexist with the gift of being a parent, giving, being, being a dad.
MA (05:01):
Because I knew that no matter what my financial success was, if I screwed up and messed up the parenting part, then I was a, I failed. I failed. Mm-Hmm.
RV (05:46):
Yeah. I love that. Well, so, so let’s talk about that specifically in the context of entrepreneurs, because there’s a part of being an entrepreneur that is like, when, when I think of it financially, there’s like these different buckets, right? So first of all, it’s like I have to make a lot of money. Like I have to generate revenue. That’s a, that’s an important part of being an entrepreneur. Then there is I have to manage expenses and I need to not spend more than I’m making. Then there is whatever past I had, like the debt I came in with to being an entrepreneur in the first place. And so I have to like, resolve that. But then it’s like, I’m also planning, I also have to plan for the future, right? For like retirement. And, and then I have like my personal finances. So if, if I just think about like, the businesses, okay, we gotta make money.
RV (06:43):
We have to spend money wisely. We have to pay off debt that exists. We have to plan for the future, and then we have to like pay our expenses now. And like, it is freaking hard. Like just, just even saying that out loud is overwhelming. It’s going like, yeah, I do feel like I need to get back to work. Like to do those five things really well is incredibly difficult. And then you go, how do I do that in some reasonable amount of hours inside of a week where I can still be a present dad and, you know, mom and friend and not, not work all the time? ’cause It’s scary going, how the heck am I gonna do those five things? So where do you think is the, is the, is most often the first place to focus? So like you look at those buckets, there’s making money, they’re spending money wisely. There’s paying off the past planning for the future and then like, you know, managing our personal, our personal lives. If, if, if, if that’s sort of overwhelming to me, where do I start first or just, you know, in those various areas, what are some things that we can do to kind of get more control Yeah. Financially.
MA (07:53):
So before we get there, I think the first thing that we wanna make sure we have clarity on is our direction. And that’s why everything I think starts with life. What is that life vision? What do we want for the business? What do we, you know, are we trying to, like I look at the stage of, I, I’m at my desire is to impact people as much as possible and have as much reach. My desire isn’t to build this huge organization. And so, so we, we need to be clear that we’re running our race first, because the tendency, and I watched, I watched a dear friend of mine start hiring a bunch of people because everyone else around him was hiring a bunch of people, and he felt it was the thing to do. He was miserable until he skinnied it back down to a small team to do the things that he really wanted to do. And, and so, so I think the very first thing, whether it’s in the personal or the business, is to ask ourselves, what’s my race look like? What’s my finish line look like? Where am I trying to go and why am I trying to get there? Mm-Hmm. Because then we allow that. So that will inform the plan. The vision will inform the plan. The plan will determine the strategy. The strategy will dictate the tactics. And then there.
RV (09:09):
That’s so good. That’s so good too. Because like, if you don’t, if you don’t do that, you literally, you scroll on social media and you see Lamborghinis and Ferrari’s and private jets, and you’re like, oh, my whole life needs to be about this. And then one day you wake up, you go, I don’t even care about that crap. Like, I don’t want five houses, five houses sounds like a fricking nightmare to me. Like all the, all, you know, mowing five yards and cleaning, having five, even if you’re not doing any of it, it’s like managing the contractors. It’s like, what a nightmare. But yet, if you don’t do this deliberately, you get like swallowed up into this current, like this, this mainstream current of like, more is better, bigger is better, nicer house, nicer car, bigger, nicer vacation. And, and you’re like consumed chasing something you literally don’t even want.
MA (10:01):
It’s, it’s so true. Patrick Beda, I saw an interview with him and he made a comment, he said, when we were growing up, and he grew up not far from, from where I grew up. And he says, when we were growing up, we would see a kid with a new bike. And that became our comparison set where we’re looking at new bike, I kind of want the new bike, but now because of social media, the comparison set is the Kardashian’s new jet and starts to create this, this need, this desire. And that that’s the definition of success. But the reality is, is that your definition of success might be a tent in Montana. And, and that’s okay as long as it’s of your own hands, of your own doing. I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that came out of the drawing that Jeremy made was because I had so many people saying, Mel, you have to get work-life balance.
MA (10:54):
But balance is a myth. This idea of a weight on one side, a counterweight on the other side, playing tug of war. And on average you’re balanced. And it’s like what we really needed was harmony. And harmony comes from intent. And I think when we become intentional with our life, with our time and our money, now we can direct it in a focused way to, to achieve the things that we’re trying to achieve. But too often we’re diluted in our, in our focus because we’re getting all, we’re getting barraged with all these messages, and we haven’t taken the time to define really what our lane is and what our race is
RV (11:31):
Gonna look. So when you define it, when you define it, like what, what does that mean? Does it mean like, I need to say exactly how much I money I wanna retire with, I need to describe exactly the kind of house I wanna live in, how many cars I want to have, what kind of college I wanna send my kids to, if I wanna send ’em to college? Like, what are the elements of going, this is what it means to be clear on the race that you’re running.
MA (11:58):
Yeah, so, so I look at it and I say, we’re gonna look at all the domains of life. So we’re not just gonna, so, ’cause it’s, it’s how we wanna live our life that matters. And then we put the price tag on it. So relationships, what do we want our relationships to be like? What do we want our family to look like? Where do we wanna live? What does our career look like? What is our health? So we, we define that and say, okay, what does it take to get there? Now let’s just be really clear. We can get as specific as we want, but we’re not gonna be exact. Because if I had that kind of crystal ball, then I’d be in a totally different business. I don’t have that crystal ball. So I look at things and say, where do I want to be in a decade?
MA (12:41):
Let’s just use a decade to start, because then a decade I can break to a five year milestone to a one year milestone, to 90 day increments, to action steps and projects. And it allows me to look at things through those eyes knowing that life’s gonna change. When, when my son was born, life changed. When I met my wife, life changed and things changed. And we have to revisit it. When my granddaughters were born, things changed. When I got cancer, things changed. So, so what we’re doing is setting a trajectory for a horizon to get us going the right direction and give us the boundaries that we want to operate within. And then as we start to live our life and we get closer to that time, we’ll refine it. And a lot of that refinement is realizing, I actually don’t like that, so I’m gonna put it away and I’m gonna just focus on this.
MA (13:38):
Like you said, I, I don’t own a ton of real estate directly, and part of it is I don’t want that lifestyle. I, the, the thought of having a bunch of properties and to manage it, even with a management company just stresses the hell out of me. I don’t want it. And so we tend to, to not do that. So the first thing is, is this is, let’s just figure out an idea of where we’re going. Let’s put a price tag a an estimated estimated price tag on it. So we kn we have something to go towards. Because the risk is if we don’t do that, we have no idea what the finish line is. And we don’t know how close we are, how far we are, and we have nothing to judge. So I just want to have something there. And every year, every couple years, you’re gonna revisit it and get more precise.
MA (14:28):
Then we can look at it and say, okay, great. Now I have an idea of where I’m going. Let’s look at where I really am. Because once I have those two points, my current reality, my desired future, we know the gap in between. Now we know the work we have to do. Mm-Hmm,
MA (15:19):
We gotta get a bigger shovel. We gotta get more income. And I think one of the biggest things, especially in a personal brand type of environment is that, is to ask ourselves, do I actually value myself? Do I actually own the value with conviction that I bring to the table because, and am I getting paid for it? Because that we grew up in this, the industrial age thinking of time clocks and time sheets and hourly rates and, and, and billable hours and all that stuff. Commoditize everything and, and cheapens it. And that’s the risk we create when we start to think in terms of a math equation, especially if we’re talking about expertise and personal brands and that kind of thing that we have to get away from that math equation. So one of the biggest, so how
RV (16:15):
Would you price it instead of that, right? Like how would you think of it instead of using like the math equation and is there a different way to think about it?
MA (16:24):
I look at, so part of it is, is looking at the, the value of the solutions you create. So for instance, in my world, what I originally started doing was I was A-C-P-C-P-M, still a CPA, I was valuing businesses to buy and sell, but I was also valuing businesses for purposes to fight, you know, tax, tax situations and litigation. Well, someone brings me in to do a valuation for an estate that’s gonna pay an estate tax at 40%, and I have the ability to create a value, you know, to come up with a valuation that supports a reduction of that, that tax by a million dollars. Me sending them a bill for a hundred grand is a drop in the bucket. And so I look at it, I started look at my business and say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna price it based on the solution that I’m providing more so than the hours it takes to do it.
MA (17:29):
Now, in some cases I got burned. In other cases, if you reduced it to an hourly eight rate, I got paid $10,000 an hour. You know, but I’m trying to, because the other thing is, I think it’s important for us to have the conversations with the potential clients. And, and in, in, in the frame of, of value, we don’t talk price without the context of value. It just, it just doesn’t, it doesn’t play well. And in the, the, the risk, I had a, a, one of the top tax attorneys, he, he since passed away in Beverly Hills. He brought me into to meet with a client, have the conversation, see if I was gonna be the one that they would hire. And then when the client says, how much is this gonna cost, I hemmed and hawed and I didn’t. And I, I hesitated.
MA (18:19):
And once the client left that the attorney Elliot looked at me, he says, if you ever do that again, I’ll never bring you another client. He says, you need to understand that you have a specific set of skills and expertise that you bring to the table, and you have to own them. The reason you hemmed and hawed is because, one, you didn’t own it. Two, you believe that it is your job to justify your price and your value to the client. He says, no, it’s your job to own your value. Put it on the table and sit there quietly. And the client is the client’s job to deal with it. And either they will or they won’t and, and leave it. Leave it that way. And so all of my pricing, other than government contracts, which required an hourly rate that I did all of my pricing was, was project pricing based upon what I saw the value of the solution was. And either they, they decided to hire me or they didn’t, and I was okay with it.
RV (19:16):
Mm-Hmm.
MA (19:23):
Yeah. And then, you know, and with, you know, post-cancer and all that stuff, you start to value time and, and, and your life. So I start looking at things and saying, how much of my life force is this gonna take away from me? Do I really want to get on the plane? Do I really want to do that? So, so I start to price things out saying, that makes it worthwhile for me. Now, is there a math equation behind it? Likely not. It’s, it’s me sitting back saying, I’m, I’m okay, this is the value of what, what I, what I can create for you and I’m willing to, to, to, to own it.
RV (19:59):
What if it’s not an empirical thing, right? Like it’s one thing to go, I can save you X percent on your taxes, or I can help you grow your revenue. You know, I can help you double your revenue, but what if it’s more you know, I can say, help you save your marriage or, you know, or like, I can help you get in better shape. I can, I can, it, it, it’s more per I can restore your relationship with your kids. Yeah. I, I get, you know, some of these like non non empirical types of scenarios. Is there a way to still do that, do you think? Or do you, is it, does it only work in certain environments?
MA (20:37):
You know, it’s, it’s harder to do it in there because it’s, it’s, it’s not as easy to quantify in, in that perspective. But I look at it and I go, the first doctor I went and saw for my, when they, they found the tumor was very flippant when we went in, he says, ah, it’s my bread and butter. And he just kind of, and, but he sat on the, on the original CT scan for 11 days. And I thought, and now he says, I need you in surgery right now. And I said, how is it that now it’s an emergency, but you sat on the CT scan for 11 days and I, so we made calls to different doctors and this, this one doctor came up three times and called his office sitting in the parking lot of the original doctor before we left. We called this doctor’s office. He says, we have an opening tomorrow morning, 9:00 AM do you wanna come in? And I said, yes. I didn’t ask the price,
MA (21:32):
I didn’t care. Now I was for, I’m fortunately in a financial position to not worry about it. But, but the solution was because I looked at it and go, this could be the death of me. You know, this could mean losing my life. And so I don’t know how to put a price tag on that. And so I didn’t ask the price, I didn’t look at it from that perspective. I just said, give me the best and I’ll figure out a way to make this work. Because the pain of losing life, not being here to live with my wife and my kids and the grandkids and all that stuff was too great. And so there was still a, a transactional analysis, even though it wasn’t monetary. It was, it was, it was still something. I looked at it and said, I, I can’t put a price on it other than the fact that I wanna be here.
RV (22:26):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (23:30):
It’s like, I’m, for my business to work, typically I have to be all in on the business. And it, it, it’s like having a baby, right? Especially the first five years. It’s like, it consumes all of your attention. So how should we, as entrepreneurs be thinking about retirement and, and are there any sort of retirement strategies specific to personal brands that you think that, that really lend themselves well to like experts, right? Yeah. Speakers, authors, coaches, financial advisors accountants, doctors, lawyers, like professional service providers, you know, people like that, direct sales, et cetera.
MA (24:38):
All right. I thought he would, I thought he wouldn’t bark, but
RV (24:41):
It’s all good. It’s all good. All good. We’ll edit it out. I made a note.
MA (24:47):
So this is a, this is a really important question to, to look at and to answer. The first thing that I, I’d like everyone to understand is that wealth creation is a muscle group. It’s, it’s a, it’s a behavior. Our ability to build that wealth is more about our, our actions and behaviors than it is about our money. So I’m not as concerned at the beginning, especially when you’re first starting out with how much you’re putting away. What I am concerned about is that we’re getting into the habit of putting something away. So, so no matter who or where you are, I just want you to put a little bit away and we’ll talk about where in a moment. But I, but I want you exercising the muscle. And so that’s, that’s one piece of it. The second, and I hear this all the time with entrepreneurs saying, I can make more money if I just reinvest in my business.
MA (25:42):
Mm-Hmm.
MA (26:46):
And so, so, but we set, we tend to just look at it and say, I can make more in the business by putting all my money back in the business. And the answer’s yes, as long as you can run the business and it can continue to run. But if that, if either one of those is not true, then you would’ve been better served to have a little bit put aside somewhere else to give you some cushion. And so that’s, that’s the, the foundational just philosophy behind it. I also look at things and say, I wanna build safety first, growth second. So my job is to keep, keep people safe. The way you keep ’em safe is, is to, to have some diversification, but also keep simplicity in it. You know, you mentioned all kinds of things, crypto and real estate and all that stuff. And you’re right, you’re trying to run a business.
MA (27:39):
You can’t learn about all that other stuff. And if you don’t have a passion for it, it’s gonna be hard to learn about it. So keep it simple. If all I had was 50,000, $10,000 to invest, you’re not going to buy a piece of real estate. At least you shouldn’t. Because again, we come back to risk. I can ba buy one property. If I have a bad tenant, a tenant that doesn’t pay someone I have to evict long-term, vacancy, bad repairs, all those things. I can’t carry it because I got into it and I don’t have safety first, growth second. And so I tell people when you first start out, let’s just keep it easy. I want you to put it in a diversified ETF or index fund. Buy 500 companies, 3000 companies. Make it easy. We know long term, 94% of the time in over 10 years or more, that that market’s gonna go up.
MA (28:38):
We’ll make eight to 10% in it. You have diversification, you have liquidity, and you’re in the game and you’re doing it simply. And if you’re not sure what to go into, you go into either an s and p 500 fund, a total stock market index fund, or you just turn around and do something called a target target date index fund. Say you don’t need the money for 30 years. You pick a 2055 fund with Vanguard or something and, and you just park it there and let it roll. There’s no, there’s not a lot of thought, there’s not a lot of analysis, there isn’t a lot of management, there isn’t a lot of fees, there isn’t a lot of expenses, but you’re in the game and the money’s starting to work for you. But it has to be long-term money to do it that way. And so that’s, and
RV (29:24):
That you can park that it started inside of an IRA, right?
MA (29:27):
Yeah. So I was just gonna go there so you can, you can park it inside of an IIRA. Now in the book, I talk about the wealth priority ladder, and I literally break down where you put each dollar, depending on where you are in that ladder. And, and so, so one of the things that we might do is early on, early on, if you’re not making a lot of income, we might have you put it into a Roth IRA first, because that’s gonna grow 100% tax free forever. You know, so, so early on, I wanna take the, the, the, the tax advantaged kinds of things, especially if I’m a low income bracket, low tax bracket. The tax deduction doesn’t mean a lot this year. Put it in, I’ve got a kid, 16 and a half year old kid who joined one of my programs. We had a conversation, 17 years old.
MA (30:23):
He says, he got, I got a job, what do I do? I said, open a Roth. I said, great. So three weeks ago we’re on a call and he says, I funded my Roth. I said, he says, I don’t know how to invest it, what do I do? I said, how much do you fund it with? I said, you’re still 17? He says, no, I just turned 18. So he’s 18 years old. He funded a Roth. And, and so I’m thinking he’s 18 years old. What did you put in it? 500 bucks, a thousand? And I said, how much you put in? He says, well, I fully funded 2023 and I already funded 2024. I go, hold on a second. You’re 18. You’re telling me you put 6,500 in for 2023 and 7,000 already for 2024? And he said, yeah, he says it helps because I’m living at home. But here’s what happens. If he just put it in an s and p 500 fund, let’s just say it grows at 8%, it will go up 107 times before he, before he ever get, you know, is at, at retirement age. That means that he’ll have $1.2 million or more without doing a thing. It’s in a Roth. He put 13,000 in, he gets 1.2 million out. He never pays a diamond tax.
MA (31:35):
And, and so at the very beginning, if I have low income and I’m eligible, ’cause there’s income limits for Roth, I’m probably gonna tell you to put it in a Roth. Take the tax advantage, have it tax free down the road, then you’re not not worried about it. Then as the income grows and we do, we have more income in the business, we might put a solo 401k in to get more because the Roth is limited to 7,000 bucks. Now but if I put a solo 401k in, I can put 23,000 and if I put a profit sharing piece to it, I can put up to 69,000 or so in there and more if I’m over age 50. So the, there is a, just like a recipe, you need to know the ingredients, the amount of the ingredients, and the timing in which to do it. So there is a hierarchy that I break down that literally says, if you’re here, this is what you do. If you’re here, this is what you do every step of the way. Because every dollar that comes into our life must have a job description before we earn it. If we want it to do the things intentionally, like we talked about the way to, to get us to the goal, we want
RV (32:45):
IEA budget and a plan or just a plan for that dollar. It’s a plan where, where it’s going. Yeah. A, a, a plan. Well, so that is, that’s why you need this book. You also building your money, build your money machine. And like I told you, like Mel has a knack for making it simple, breaking it down, the visuals, the ladder, the, this kind of stuff is super duper helpful and straightforward. So where should we, where do we want people go, Mel, to buy copy of the book and connect up with you?
MA (33:15):
I’ll go to your money machine book.com and you can, you can, you’ll see the, the links there to different booksellers in the uk in Australia, Canada, us You can buy the book, come back, give, give us the receipt and we’ll, I’ll give you some, some other wealth resources and gifts to help accelerate your path to financial freedom. And some additional trainings around, around that and resources. So, so yeah, that’s, that’s where they do
RV (33:44):
It. I love it. Your money Machine book.com. Mel is also a brand builders group client. So if even if you don’t wanna buy the book, you should go to your money machine book.com to see how he’s got his page structured and he’s given away some killer incentives for pre-ordering his book which are super duper valuable. And Mel, I’m so grateful for you, man. I, I, I’m grateful for your friendship and just for your partnership and, and letting us speak a little bit into your life and you speaking into ours today. Brother. We’re praying for you and your family and all the clients you help and, and we just wish you all the best.
MA (34:19):
I appreciate you, my friend. It is, it has been a journey and it’s good to have you on, on the journey with me.
RV (34:24):
Thanks, buddy.
Ep 495: Trademarks. Do I Really Need One? | Autumn Witt Boyd Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
So wanna know how to protect your personal brand. I just got off of an awesome conversation with a friend of mine, autumn Witt Boyd, who is the founder and owner of a WB law firm, which is kind of a unique law firm in the personal brand space that she really caters to people who have personal brands, courses, books, keynotes, podcasts but anyone who would consider themselves a content creator. So if you’re listening to this going, I don’t know if I’m a content creator, I’m an entrepreneur or a small business owner. If you have a methodology or a framework to your business, this applies to you. You are a content creator. If you have a robust website or our blogs or you put out a bunch of free content, guess what? You’re a content creator even if you don’t think you are.
AJV (00:50):
And so we had this amazing conversation on the influential personal brand podcast, and I thought it was worthy enough to recap it in a shorter conversation of just how do you protect your personal brand? And one of the first things that we should really consider is how do we do that in a proactive manner, right? So there’s things to do on the backend. Those are always more time consuming and more expensive. So what are some of the things that we can, as we’re getting started, or even before we get started to protect our personal brands? So, couple of quick things that I thought were just worthwhile to share with you guys. Number one, make sure that you’re starting from a clean slate, right? So if you’re in the very beginning phases of your business and you haven’t come up with even a name for your business or your personal brand, or a title for a book, a keynote, a course, a, a curriculum, a framework, a methodology, whatever it is, right?
AJV (01:43):
This is the best place to start, is make sure that you’re starting on, you know, solid ground. And there’s, there’s nothing else in the marketplace that’s already being actively used, right? And there’s some nuance to that, but I just thought this was a good, healthy checklist is as you’re, as you’re coming up with the name or the title for your things, right? So again, those are variety of things, right? Could be company name, brand name book title, course title, keynote title, podcast title. Just think titles, right? Names brands, right? Brands have names. So these, these are some things you wanna just do to make sure you’re just
AJV (02:59):
That that’s a first round filter as you’re kind of going through what we call the title tests. This is what we call the availability test, right? So if you’re a part of the Brand Builders Group community we talk about this and finding your brand DNA, which we did trademark. So on that note this is one of the five title tests. And one of the things is going, is it available? Don’t take something that’s not available. So that’s the first round filter. Is it trademark, right? Is it already active and in use by someone else with a, with a legal trademark? Number two do a thorough Google search, right? These are DIY things. You don’t have to have an attorney to do these things, which means it costs your time, but it’s saving you dollars. So do a thorough Google search.
AJV (03:42):
What do I mean by thorough? Go at least to pages 5, 6, 7 on Google to see if anything pops up. And for all intents and purposes, screenshot all of the work so that you have proof. Make sure that when you’re screenshotting things, it shows the date on your calendar of like, Hey, on this date, right? Screenshots, also share dates. Don’t delete that, right? Label it with the date. But it’s better if it can share. Show your calendar for proof. But those are really important. Same thing with the US Office of Patent and trademarks. Whatever you can do to have proof that on this date, this is what I took, this is my proof, my documentation. Same thing with Google. Because to today, it might not be there, but a week from now it might, right? So it’s always good when you came up with something to make sure that you’re, you’re just taking the one extra step of documentation for proof and just wanna put those in your archive files.
AJV (04:39):
Save ’em for a rainy day, hopefully you’ll never need ’em. Third thing is check social media platforms for that title, right? So, you know, I use the brand title better than ever, so I’ll just use that, right? Not in use on anything with Google. It was not trademarked. It was there’s no podcasts, there’s no books, there’s, you know, there’s all the things, right? So that’d be the next thing. Do an Amazon search and just see if it’s in use. One of the things that we talk about on the podcast interview with Autumn Whit Void is just because it’s a book title does not mean you can’t use it. Doesn’t mean you should, but you cannot trademark a book title by itself. You have to have an entire series of things for it to actually get trademarked. So it cannot just be a book title. So if you have a book title and a keynote title and a course title all with the same title, now that’s a brand, but a book is not a brand. So you cannot trademark a book title. So just because it pops up doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It just doesn’t mean you should, right? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should always. So you just wanna go and, and do the, the due diligence, right? If it was an Amazon book that was released 10 years ago
AJV (05:57):
And five people bought it and there’s no reviews, but the, you know, just use your common sense knowledge there of like what you should and shouldn’t do. But, you know, those are things that you wanna check, right? So check for book titles just to go, like if you find it there, then pull up the website, right? Is it in use? Is there anything else in there? Even if they don’t have a trademark, is it in use elsewhere? Because you don’t wanna be competing about what someone else already has claim over. There’s enough ideas and enough other titles that we can come up with. So those are just things to pay attention to. Next one is do a podcast search, right? So go through the iTunes library or wherever you listen to your podcast and do some title searches. And go, Hey, is this title being used here?
AJV (06:42):
Right? So you wanna be doing you know, clearly the US patent and trademark search. You wanna do Amazon search a good thorough five to six page deep Google search do a podcast search and then you know, the social media, right? And then do it for anything that would be on handles on the primary platforms that you would be using, right? So if you’re gonna have a YouTube channel, make sure it’s not in use on anything else’s, right? Make sure this isn’t someone’s handle on Instagram or make sure this isn’t a title actively in use on LinkedIn. So those are some of the key places that will just help you make sure that when you come up with something before you get emotionally invested in it do these availability tests and make sure that it’s available. ’cause Starting with a clean slate is one of the most important things you can do to have a good secure brand.
AJV (07:35):
And then it also gives you proof when you do all this documentation that you were first in use, right? So there is this idea of there is a race to use. In other words, there is a race to who’s gonna use it first, be the first. And if you’re gonna do it, then last but not least, take the necessary steps to get what you can trademarked or copyright, right? That doesn’t mean everything needs to be, but if you’re gonna have an entire brand bill around something, take the few hundred dollars or a couple thousand dollars even and protect that. If that’s gonna be something that is gonna make you money, it’s gonna stay in the test of time. In other words, you’re gonna be using it for a while and you have an emotional investment in it, then it is worth the time and the money ’cause it’s gonna take time to do it and some money.
AJV (08:24):
But if this is your business title, your brand title, it is worth it. So once you find that it is clear, it’s available, it’s in use, take that next step. Do the due diligence, get an attorney and file your trademark and protect your brand, right? The more you do it on the front end, the less expensive it’s gonna be later on. So how do you protect your brand, make sure it’s really yours, and then take the next step to legally protect it, to make sure that you get to keep that brand and nobody else can take it from you.
Ep 494: How To Protect Your Personal Brand with Autumn Witt Boyd
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand Podcast. So excited to get to interview a newer friend of mine, autumn Whit Boyd. And although we are just getting to know each other over the last several months we actually have a long history in common that we discovered at a Christmas party where her husband and I grew up in the same hometown, which Dalton, Georgia is a pretty small hometown, very small, so
AJV (00:52):
So we’re gonna be talking about different things you need to know in terms of maybe trademarks, copyrights, just intellectual property in general, but then also it’s in the litigious environment that we tend to live in here in the United States of America. What do, what do you need to know that you don’t know? And so, again, this is kind of one of those episodes that doesn’t matter where you’re at in your journey, this is going to be helpful for you. It does not matter if you are a beginner or you are super established. I promise you, there is something that you’re like, oh, I’m so glad I listened today. I had no idea. So this is one of those episodes you wanna stick around for. So let’s me formally introduce you to Ms. Autumn with Boyd. So Autumn is the founder and owner of a WB law firm, which in my opinion is really a law firm really built for personal brands.
AJV (01:47):
Now I’ll let you define that in a second, but I think that’s really important because I think that you have a really cr you have created a really unique niche in the market that you cater to the individual, the solopreneur, the entrepreneur, the small business owner who also has some sort of, you know, personal brand as a part of their business. And anything from contract templates to custom built contracts, to just even strategy on your ip, which is one of the things we’re gonna talk about today. This is a really unique business model that you have created to cater to people like me and everyone listening today. So to help them get to know you a little bit, I would love to hear from you, how did you create this niche in the marketplace? Because it is different than most other attorneys and other firms that we have met, that we have talked to over the years, because you have a deep knowledge in the personal brand space. So how did that happen?
AWB (02:50):
Absolutely. By accident. It was not a grand plan. I quit my last job, hopefully we’ll never have another one. And started this firm in 2015. And I tried a couple different things. I tried working with startups. I tried working with creative, more creative entrepreneurs service providers. And what I found is I tried lots of different things, was that my favorite people to work with were these personal brands, mostly folks selling either education products, doing speaking a lot of coaches. So all of them had a deep mission at the kind of core of their business. So they wanted to build something bigger than themselves. They wanted to have an impact. And they were just energetic and creative and fun to work with. My background was as a copyright litigator, so I used to go to court and mostly worked with photographers and stock photo agencies.
AWB (03:42):
So I have a deep knowledge of copyright. And what I found was for these personal brands, you know, I ended up building a team that we can really do everything they need. The good news is the business model is fairly simple, even as it scales now, as it scales, the complexity of some of the legal needs becomes more significant. But you know, in the beginning there’s not a lot of revenue streams, there’s not a lot of moving parts and pieces. So it’s easy for us to come in and really make a big impact with not a huge amount of, you know, legal spend or a lot of you know, complex legal protections.
AJV (04:19):
Yeah. So that’s a great opening to this conversation, and I love that you went to, like, you were in litigation for different copyright. Like yeah, that’s one of the biggest things that I think our audience, it’s just unaware about. And I think it’s, ’cause it’s one of those things where there’s just a lot of nuance to what can you copyright, what do you trademark, but what should you copyright? Yes. Or what should you trademark? So can you just like, define it, like what’s the difference between a copyright and a trademark?
AWB (04:51):
Yes. So we’ll dig in. So when we think about copyrights, think about content. So if you have a curriculum or a framework, things that you teach, a signature talk that you give all of that is going to be protected by copyright. Also, things that you think of more as like true art. So photos, sculptures, paintings, movies, music, all of that is covered by copyright. When we think about a, a trademark, think about a brand. So it could be your name if you are the personal brand, we certainly have helped some of our clients register their names as trademarks. Often it is the name of a signature concept, or it could be the name of a business. If you have a signature course or offering, it could be that name, it could be a podcast name. Anything you think of that is attached to your company. So the purpose of a trademark is to help customers find you basically, and to know that when they find you, you are the thing they were looking for. So in a more traditional corporate sense, think of like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. Like those are big, big brand names. So you know, when you get a Coke off the shelf, you know what you’re getting because it has that Coke branding on it.
AJV (05:56):
Oh, that’s a really great distinguishing factor. And I love how simple that is. It’s just like copyright is content, right? Yeah. And I think, and I love too, it’s like it’s, it’s, it’s art is considered into like photos and anything like that, but it’s the, the creation, right? So it’s what have you created, whereas trademarks or anything associated with the brand, so your name, company name, curriculum names, so titles, yeah. And ultimately helping define that you are who you say you are and helping other people find you.
AWB (06:29):
Yeah. There’s a little bit of overlap when it comes to logos. So think of like, Mickey Mouse is my favorite example here. You know, that is a creative work, but it also signifies the Walt Disney brand. But for most of the people in our space, you’re not really gonna have a lot of overlap. Logos are
AJV (06:46):
So it’s interesting. So then with all of the people that you have worked with, like what do you think people should be like in our space? Right? So most of the people listening to this are in some sort of content creation Yeah. World, whether it’s you’re writing books or creating speeches, or you have coaching programs, consulting programs, or you’re just trying to come up with methodologies and frameworks for your existing business, right? So what should we be thinking about when it comes to, well, what should I go and get, you know, a trademark for what should I try to get a copyright for?
AWB (07:20):
Yeah. And I forgot to give my standard disclaimer, aj, which is, I’m a lawyer, but this is not legal advice, so I’ll plug that in. And I’m a bit of a contrarian when it comes to trademarks. So I really think for personal brands, the folks who are listening probably don’t need a lot of registered trademarks in their business. So what we usually recommend, we’ll kind of take an inventory when we start working with a new client, you know, what are the different brands you’re using in your business? And we’ll look at them and we try to prioritize what is making you money
AWB (08:04):
But usually there’s one or two that bubble to the top of like, oh, if someone copied this, you know, it would really confuse my audience. Or like, I would definitely lose sales. So we kind of prioritize it that way. Is it making you money? Number two, are you going to stick with it for a while? Because in the United States, the trademark registration process is expensive and it takes forever
AWB (08:53):
So I wanna make sure that you’re gonna stick with it long enough that waiting that time, spending a couple thousand dollars, usually if you’re working with a lawyer on a trademark registration, it’s not cheap. And you wanna do it the right way, very easy to mess up on your own. So I wanna make sure you’re gonna stick with it long enough to see some benefit from having that r in a circle. And then the last thing I always ask is, you know, would you be upset if it were copied? So sometimes there are things that aren’t necessarily a money maker, but they’re just very personal or you feel really attached to them. And so maybe it is, you know, if you do have the you know, extra funds in your business, it may make sense to register that just because you would be, you would feel very violated if someone else copied it.
AWB (09:36):
Mm. And what a trademark registration does for you, it gives you an easier way to enforce your rights. So if you’re not willing to send a cease and desist letter, if you’re not, if you don’t want to kind of become a little bit combative, now you don’t have to file a lawsuit, but to maintain a trademark registration, you have to enforce it. That’s one of the requirements. Or it will just basically become worthless. So you have to be monitoring the mar marketplace, seeing if anybody else out there is starting something similar. You gotta keep your eyes out. And then, and we do that for a lot of our clients and then you know, take appropriate action. So send a cease and assist letter or try and figure out, you know, can we coexist in this marketplace? Can you stay in your lane and I’ll stay in my lane? So the getting the registration is really just step one of a much longer process of protecting that brand. Yeah.
AJV (10:25):
So that’s a really good conversation. So registration is step one. ’cause You may not even get it right. Right. You may apply for it and be denied, but assuming you do get it, that’s really step one because then you have to have things in place to monitor the marketplace to see if any else is using it. And then you actually have to be willing, right. Both in emotion and in dollars Yes. To actually enforce it. So, and I love those questions. You said it’s like, Hey, is it making you money? Are you gonna stick with it? And would you be upset if somebody else was using it? And if the answer is yes to all of this, it’s gonna be a couple thousand dollars and a year and that stuff, or
AWB (11:02):
More, it could be two or three years depending on kind of some of the speed bumps that you may come across.
AJV (11:07):
Yeah. But they approve based on date of application date of when it was in use. How does that work?
AWB (11:14):
So there’s two ways you can file an application in the United States. One is you’re actually using the trademark. So that’s called an in use application. Those go the fastest. But you can also file an application if you’ve got an idea or something you’re planning to launch in the near future. And that’s called intent to use. So you go through the process and then you kind of hit a speed bump and you still do have to show you’re using it. So you can’t get to the finish line, but it will put you ahead of the line of somebody who comes after you to try and apply. But in the US it, the, the rights are all based on use. So we have what’s called a race system. So it’s a race to be the first to actually use your trademark in connection with selling something. So it’s not enough to just have a landing page up or a coming soon. You have to actually be using it in commerce.
AJV (12:01):
Yeah. So this is so
AWB (12:02):
Interesting. So it can get tricky.
AJV (12:04):
This is so interesting. So I have a question. So what about ’cause you mentioned slogans, but like, what about quotes? Mm-Hmm.
AWB (12:15):
It can be. If it’s something now it has to be used in commerce and you have to prove that to the US patent and trademark office. And they have specific ways they wanna see you using it. So it has to be used kind of near where you’re selling something. So you’d have to use it on a sales page or you know, in a brochure that has a way that you can call and buy something. There’s different ways, but they’re always looking for you to use it in like an advertising or marketing way. It can’t just be, I say this thing on my podcast a lot.
AJV (12:43):
What if it was something that makes sense? What if it was something in your book?
AWB (12:47):
Yeah. So you’d have to show that you’re using that quote, not just in the book. It would have to be featured in, you know, again, like a pull quote on a sales page or something. Yeah.
AJV (12:58):
Interesting.
AWB (12:58):
It’s very strict. They’re very stringent. This is why a lot of applications get denied. And that’s why I always say, you wanna work with a trademark lawyer who knows what they’re doing
AJV (13:06):
To have it in the right and necessary places, but really they wanna see it. How is it being used for commerce?
AWB (13:12):
Yeah, exactly. That’s what trademarks are all about. Copyright, you know, it could absolutely be in the book and be protected, but it has to be you know, a a quote would be too short to be protected by copyright. It has to be considered a, a work.
AJV (13:26):
Fascinating. Does that
AWB (13:27):
Make sense? Yeah.
AJV (13:28):
So what, what do you see are the biggest mistakes that people are making when it comes to copyright and trademark?
AWB (13:35):
So, on the trademark side, since we’ve been talking about that, the biggest one is choosing a brand and then not checking to see if anyone else is already using it. Because again, we’re a race system. So if somebody else, you know, you come up with this really great slogan or brand idea, someone else is already using it. It doesn’t matter if they stay very tiny and you, you know, achieve this great success and huge exposure, they would still have what’s called priority. So they, they win the race, they could come after you, you know, years later after you’ve really built that brand invested time and money into promoting it. Okay. So, so we always wanna start with a nice, fresh, clean brand that is really just yours that you can own.
AJV (14:19):
Agreed. So what should people be doing to go, oh shoot, is my stuff already being used out there? Like, where’s like the safest place to check? How would we do that?
AWB (14:29):
Yeah, so I usually recommend a couple. You can do these on your own. Now we have a paid tool that we use at the law firm. So if you wanna register your trademark, we’ll do a deeper search. But you can absolutely do it on your own. I always start with a Google, but go to like page five or six, like do a deep Google check any social media platforms that you may be using. So if you plan to be on LinkedIn, go check LinkedIn and see if that brand pops up when you search. Same if you intend to start a podcast, go check the podcast players, type in the brand, see what pops up. And then also the US Patent and Trademark office. But there are so many unregistered marks that could still cause you problems because in the US you can have what’s called common law rights, even if you never register your trademark.
AJV (15:12):
What’s that?
AWB (15:14):
So it just, it, you can file a lawsuit, you can take action to protect your brand, even if it’s not registered. It’s a state law, right? So it’s not quite as strong as, you know, the federal rights that you get when you register your trademark. There’s definitely advantages to registering. But there are people out there with common law rights that can cause you problems. So again, that’s why we wanna make sure we search and we see it’s not just the registered ones that could cause us problems.
AJV (15:41):
Yeah. So back to this litigious environment where anyone can file a lawsuit for anything for any reason.
AWB (15:48):
Correct.
AJV (15:49):
Yeah. That’s, thanks Americans that is that is definitely something to be on the lookout for pros
AWB (15:56):
And cons for sure.
AJV (15:57):
Yeah. And I, and I love that it’s like, do a Google search, you know, go through podcasts, right? Search, you know, apple, iTunes clearly the US Patent and Trademark office social media platforms what about Amazon? Like, should we be searching like Amazon for book titles, or does that really matter?
AWB (16:16):
So a single book title is never a trademark. Okay. But if you’re doing a series of books that can, because book titles are generally, you know, not really a brand when you think about if you’re looking for something Sure. Yeah. But if you have a book and a course that goes with it, or if you have a book and you know, a workbook or a series of things okay. That can’t, now there there is confusion among book titles, but I mean, I’m sure you’ve noticed if you search up a book title, there may be five different books with the same title. That’s pretty frequent.
AJV (16:45):
Yes. Or I usually don’t just like one word different. Yes. Yeah.
AWB (16:48):
I usually don’t worry too much about that if the plan is just to make it a book. Okay. Now, if you’re planning on making it a, a big brand, you may wanna consider choosing a different title ’cause you don’t want that confusion.
AJV (16:58):
So I wanna be clear really quickly. So using my husband as an example, who has his first book Take The Stairs, which was a, a New York Times bestselling book. So you’re telling me right now if some other person today decided they wanted to write a book called Take the Stairs? They could. And it’s not a big, like,
AWB (17:18):
It’s not a violation of any rights. Yes, I know.
AJV (17:22):
But we have
AWB (17:23):
Authors don’t like that
AJV (17:24):
AWB (17:34):
Not for a book title. Book titles are, are generally never a trait. But if he has other things connected to it that could be become a brand. Like does he have a signature talk or like handouts or, yeah, so usually there’s like a, a universe that grows a, around something when it’s
AJV (17:53):
Fascinating
AWB (17:53):
A slash like that.
AJV (17:54):
I think this is a really unique and important topic for our, the brain
AWB (17:58):
Vendor for sure.
AJV (17:59):
Right.
AWB (18:06):
Like a freebie. And a lot of people do this in publishing now. You know, you buy the, you buy the book early, you get some sort of online resource. Yeah.
AJV (18:14):
I
AWB (18:15):
You’re very familiar with that, aj.
AJV (18:16):
I know that and that’s why I’m asking. ’cause I just like, out of all the things, like this is something, it’s like, hey, it’s like if you’re gonna write a book, then you need to make sure you have, you know, the coordinated keynote speech to it. You wanna have some sort of like, Hey, free download it, you can get ahead. Yeah. And they, and they all need to have the same title. Correct. And then in that regard, if you had your, now it’s
AWB (18:34):
A
AJV (18:34):
Brand. Now it’s a brand. So now we can go and try to trademark trademark it. Yes.
AWB (18:38):
Exactly. Yep.
AJV (18:40):
Y’all deal. And this is always
AWB (18:41):
Something, a big deal, and this is always something I negotiate when my clients get book deals, is making sure that they own the trademark to the title. Because that is not something that most publishing companies think about.
AJV (18:51):
Yeah. But that is a huge deal.
AWB (18:53):
It’s a valuable asset for sure.
AJV (18:55):
Yeah. If you’re gonna publish this book, then we need you to at least publish this free workbook that’s three pages that goes with it and have your keynote title the same thing. Now we have a brand, now we can go trademark it. And that’s a really
AWB (19:09):
Important thing. And now you can exclude other people. Yeah. Yeah.
AJV (19:12):
That’s so nuanced, but so vitally valuable for every single person who has listened to this, who goes, one day I wanna write a book. ’cause We do this thing. So we have what we call the five title tests. And a part of those tests is, one of them is the availability test
AWB (19:47):
I Yeah, no, I agree. I would avoid it. Yeah.
AJV (19:49):
Find, find a new title. But ultimately if it’s just that somebody else could go, no, I’m gonna go for it, I’m taking it. It’s true.
AWB (19:57):
Yeah. If you’re really connected to it. Yeah.
AJV (20:01):
But that’s a big deal. Yeah. You know, our whole thing is like, Hey, if they’re already taken, let’s find something that can be unique. No,
AWB (20:08):
I agree.
AJV (20:09):
I agree. For sure. But somebody could on their own go, wow, they don’t even have a website, they don’t have a podcast, they don’t have a thing, they don’t have anything else. I’m going for it and I’m gonna take it. Mm-Hmm.
AWB (20:55):
Yeah. So when we think about most of those things, they’re gonna be protected by copyright, not trademark. And we, we’ve all probably heard you have automatic copyright protection as soon as you create a work. If you haven’t, good news, you have automatic copyright protection. As soon as it’s out of your brain, it has to be in a computer document or written or something. But in the United States, you cannot file a lawsuit until it’s registered. So it’s kind of the, the opposite of with trademark, you don’t have those common law rights. So if you have something, again, that’s a really key asset in the business, a signature course, a signature talk, something that would really have an impact. If someone copied it, we highly recommend registering that with the US Copyright Office. And it doesn’t mean you’re ever gonna file a lawsuit, but if you did have to send that cease and desist letter, you know, if I get a cease and desist letter and I check and it’s not registered, I’m like, I’m not really worried about it because I know they can’t really do anything. They, you know, it’s kind of an empty threat. Yeah.
AJV (21:51):
So that’s interesting.
AWB (21:52):
The good news is the copyright process is much simpler than the trademark process. So, and it’s really it’s almost the opposite. So with trademarks, they’re giving you a monopoly on that brand. So they’re very, they make it very difficult. It’s very hard to get through that process on copyrights. They want to encourage creativity. So the process is much simpler. I would still recommend working with an attorney, but if you want to try and DIY it, it’s pretty forgiving if you make mistakes.
AJV (22:18):
So what are some examples of things that people should get a copyright for?
AWB (22:23):
So an online course or curriculum? I have seen people do keynotes. Podcasts are hard to do because it’s episode by episode and that’s just a slog. It’s a lot of work and time and money books for sure. And if you’re working with a publisher, they may take care of that for you. They may not. That’s something to check your contract on whose job that is. But definitely, definitely a book. I’ve registered the copyrights to entire websites, especially if they have a, you know, a rich, you know, history of blog posts or really good content. Wow. so again, the analysis is, is it valuable to your business? Would it impact you if it was copied?
AJV (23:04):
That’s fascinating. So again, everyone who’s listening courses, books, yeah.
AWB (23:10):
We register a lot of courses. Yes.
AJV (23:12):
Yeah. And, and that’s a lot. The thing that,
AWB (23:14):
Yeah. The thing I will say, though kind of on the the flip side of this, people often ask, you know, how can I stop someone from copying my course? You can’t, you can’t actually stop someone. You can set yourself in a good position so that if and when it happens, you know, you can take action. But I usually tell people, don’t worry too much about it being copied. You know, go ahead and put some protections in place and then kind of put your blinders on. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (23:48):
That’s right.
AWB (23:48):
It’s not just that they wanna learn about Facebook ads or they wanna learn how to garden or whatever the thing is that, you know, you’re teaching about. So it’s very hard for a competitor to just copy your content and have any kind of impact. Yeah.
AJV (24:00):
And I love that you said that. ’cause That is so true. It’s like they could go learn this anywhere else. They’re coming to you because they wanna learn it from you. Right. Right. And I love that you said that there’s a time and a place to go, Hey, let’s, let’s be wise and protect the things that are valuable assets that make you money, that have meaning to you, that, you know, whatever. But at the same token, remember at the end of the day, they’re coming to you because it’s you. And No, I love that. I think that’s a really good checkpoint of not creating panic
AWB (24:35):
Can be, it can be a huge energy drain. I’m sure you’ve seen this. Oh yeah. And it can be very dis very distracting and very upsetting when you find that you’ve been copied so it doesn’t feel
AJV (24:45):
Good. So, so on that note, so what do you do if you discover that you have, right? Like if somebody has copied your work, like what do you do? What should you, yes.
AWB (24:56):
Yeah. So step one is always create a record
AWB (25:39):
And then step two, once you’ve got all that collected and organized depending on kind of how important it is and who it is, this may differ a little bit, but I like the idea of reaching out to the person before you involve lawyers and before you get really mean and strict about it. Mm-Hmm.
AWB (26:21):
Like whatever in your eyes would make that feel okay. And I would say 99% of the time they’re super embarrassed. Mm-Hmm. And they will comply right away. They’ll either take it down, they’ll apologize. And then that 1% of times, you know, they may get their backup and say like, no, I created this. Or they’ll deny it. And sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s a little more of a gray area, like they’ve copied your ideas, but they haven’t copied your exact words. And that’s where it becomes a little harder. But then sometimes we do have verbatim copying where they say, no, I’m not gonna take it down. And that’s when you probably wanna get a lawyer involved if it is something that is, again, valuable to you because lawyers are expensive. Yeah. so not everything is worth, you know, spending thousands of dollars on hiring a lawyer to help you with. But if it is something essential to your business, then that would be the next step to kind of ratchet things up. Yeah. Is get a lawyer involved who can help you. You know, sometimes people can say things accidentally that they don’t know could hurt them later. Uhhuh,
AJV (27:22):
Anything you say can, will be
AWB (27:24):
Used, can and will be used against you. Yes.
AJV (27:26):
But I think that, I love that where it’s like, you don’t have to go right to level 10 immediately send a cease and desist. It’s like, Hey, make the person aware. Ask them to take it down. Make sure you take the proof. Then it’s like there’s a system of escalation. Yeah. Yeah. To
AWB (27:43):
AJV (27:45):
Which is good because nobody really wins in a lawsuit. The only, you know, I had, we were in a lawsuit once trying to get our IP back and you know, the lawyers were really upfront and they just said, I just wanna be upfront with you day one. You do not win here. The only people who win here are your attorneys, the lawyers.
AWB (28:05):
Yes.
AJV (28:05):
We just want you to know you. Even if we win, you’re not winning. We are winning. Right? Yes. And they were so correct and I was so appreciative of like, oh yeah, like, you won big time. You know? Yeah. Because it’s, it’s, it’s an emotional drain. It’s a financial drain. It’s a time drain, and it’s like, you better really be sure. Right. And, and also that should on the other side, people don’t wanna be involved in that on the other side too. Right. So I love your approach of most people are gonna be embarrassed and they’re, they’re gonna want to avoid that as well. So start with doing that before you involve attorneys. Now I do have a a, a personal question, and I’ll leave any names out of it, but in my husband’s first book, there’s a very famous quote Right. That he uses in, in his speeches in, in our courses and the book, it was just kinda like one of those signature pullout quotes. We call it the rent axiom, which is, you know, the rent is always due. And people really like that and took that. And
AWB (29:10):
This is his original Right. He didn’t borrow it from anyone else. Yeah,
AJV (29:14):
Yeah, yeah. And they took it and used it and quoted it and put it on t-shirts and put it on posters, shared it on national television and never cited it. Yeah. Now, I believe that some of these very well-known famous people probably didn’t know where it originally came from. They just heard it Right. From a, from a whomever. From a whomever, from a whomever. So what do you do in those cases where you’re like, Hey, like you are saying this and not giving yourself credit, but taking credit for it. What do you do in those cases?
AWB (29:46):
Yeah, I think again, you have to decide, like, is that impacting your business enough to spend the time and energy chasing it? And maybe it is, maybe this is something that’s really personal and means a lot to him, and that he wants to be attributed. I mean, I think if you see like memes and quotes, they are misattributed all the time. Totally. And so you’re definitely playing whack-a-mole at a certain point, trying to go after all the places that have, you know, cited that incorrectly. But there may be a couple, you know, if it’s Oprah, that you try and get in touch with their people
AJV (30:38):
Yeah. That’s interesting. So you’re kind of just SOL kind of
AWB (30:42):
A little bit. Yeah. Again, we all have limited time and resources, so even though I’m a lawyer, like you could spend all of your time and energy chasing after this stuff, and most of the time it’s not really having an impact on your business. So I’d rather see you focus on growing the business, being proactive.
AJV (30:58):
Yeah. And I, and I love that because what it is having an impact on is your banking account with all that money coming out. Yes. Yes. So back to be selective, be protective, but be selective. Yeah. Right. I love that.
AWB (31:10):
Yeah. You don’t, not every battle is one you have to fight.
AJV (31:12):
Amen. I love that. So, okay. What else do we need to know to protect our brand?
AWB (31:18):
Okay. This is the one that nobody talks about. ’cause Trademarks and copyrights are sexier. But contracts are
AJV (31:24):
Really Yes.
AWB (31:25):
The biggest, most important. Yes. Like legal foundation. This is really, even though we’re IP lawyers here at the A WB firm, we spend almost all day, every day working on contracts that may touch IPN may not. Mm. So tell me how you see contracts coming up with your clients. Like where are, because I can, I can think of a couple, but I’m curious what you’ve see.
AJV (31:47):
You know what’s so interesting? I feel like most people wonder if they need them
AWB (32:20):
I was about to say. Yeah. It’s, it’s
AJV (32:21):
In flux. It’s except for, except for right. Executives for X amount of periods. So there’s these nuances to it. And if you don’t live in the legal industry, which I do not, but I’m in the EO group with you, right? Yes. Entrepreneurs organization. And that’s just a really added bonus that people are always talking about these things. And I catch ’em really in the peripheral. Yeah. But for those of you who don’t, so like, this is a great example with this new non-compete walk. Does that mean that all of us as business owners need to go update all of our contracts today? Do we need to go and, you know, have previous signed assigned employment agreements refreshed? Like what do these laws mean? One thing that they passed, but then what are we expected to do? And if we don’t know because we’re not attorneys and we do have ’em in there, and then someone’s like, that’s illegal. Like, you know, so I think those are the nuances where I hear, I’m like, well, I didn’t know that. It feels
AWB (33:19):
Very overwhelming, best to
AJV (33:21):
Know that. And so I think it’s one, do I need a contract? But then two, it’s like, what do I need in the contract? And I’ll tell you the number one thing that people I hear from, at least our audience, is I don’t wanna 13 page contract and I want, I don’t want it to sound like some attorney wrote it. ’cause No one can understand that junk. Like, how do I get a normal everyday language agreement that I can understand and my clients can understand? Yeah. So, and that’s kind of hard to do.
AWB (33:48):
It is. So going back to the first question, a contract is better than no contract, even if it’s not perfect. So I will take an imperfect contract all day long. All a contract is doing is setting expectations between two people or two companies about what’s gonna happen, value that’s being exchanged, you know, if there’s money being exchanged services if you’re selling a course or curriculum or licensing your content to somebody else to use. So there’s still gonna be a lot of good stuff in there, even if you mess up some of the specifics. So, and most things will not go to court. So that’s the good news. Most of the time you’re negotiating with the other person if something goes wrong. So using a contract is better than not, even if it’s not perfect. Mm-Hmm. As far as keeping up with all of the changing things, I understand that is overwhelming. I have a resource to recommend, which is the a WB firm firm newsletter. So we send out a newsletter every week or so with these kinds of updates. So if you are in this industry you know, I can’t promise we’re gonna cover every single thing. But it’s a nice way to just get little, you know, snippets about things that could impact your business. And you’re not getting a bunch of junk that applies to like a giant corporation. It’s really focused.
AJV (35:03):
I give online business, I’m gonna give you a plug for this because I subscribed to this and the one that came out I think last week was are you mandatorily required to hand over sales recordings to your clients if they ask? Right. And I literally sent that to our VP of sales. I’m like, I need you to listen to this. Right. And it’s like, but it’s like, those are like things that wasn’t even on my radar, right? Yeah. And it’s like just subscribing to this newsletter. And just so you guys know, I’ll put this in the show notes. I’ll have all of the links for everything that you need and want and sh should do, even if you don’t think you do. But this one, if you go to awb firm.com/newsletter, a wb firm.com/newsletter, you can sign up for it. It’s free. But like, this is a great example of like, this is like things that I’m busy doing other stuff with. I’m like,
AWB (35:58):
Right, you’re not a lawyer, it’s not your job.
AJV (36:00):
Do we have to send these sales recordings and what are they gonna do with it? You know, so yeah. Little things like that I think are really, really valuable. Just a plug. Yeah.
AWB (36:09):
And the other thing I would mention is the way we approach legal protections and keeping up with all this stuff is proportional to the size of your business and to the risk of your business. So if you are just starting out, if you are getting your brand, your personal brand up and going, a lot of this stuff really doesn’t matter because you don’t have a lot of money in the business. You don’t have a lot to lose if you mess something up and you’re unlikely to be a target, frankly, for someone to sue you report you, you
AJV (36:36):
Know, bonus being a beginner. That’s
AWB (36:38):
Right. You’re, you’re, you know, little business, little problems
AJV (36:58):
Yeah. And I think that’s, so that’s so why so on some of these specifics, like just because these are things that I know have come up in our community a lot, like non-disparagement can’t do it. So at the same time though,
AWB (37:12):
In some scenarios,
AJV (37:13):
AWB (37:42):
Yeah.
AJV (37:42):
So is that in line? Is that okay?
AWB (37:45):
Yes. And that was our, sorry, that was already illegal. Like that’s liable or slander saying things that are false. So what defamation clause is really out, if you have a defamation clause in a contract, what it prohibits is saying things that are true
AJV (38:05):
That’s, but that’s you know, one of the things that’s come up in my eo, it’s a
AWB (38:08):
Fine line. Uhhuh.
AJV (38:09):
AWB (38:22):
Yeah. So if you were gonna sue someone for liable or slander for defamation, it can’t be a feeling. It has to be a fact. So it has to, it has to be a false, you know, statement that you could test or verify. And it has to have a negative impact on your business, succeed.
AJV (38:38):
So succeed, lemme give you an example, succeed. Yeah. this was something that came up in like one of the like forum chat groups I’m in and they took a screenshot and somebody had put on like Yelp or Google reviews or something, worst business ever. Worst money I’ve ever spent. And it’s like really was is it really the worst business ever of all time? Is that truly accurate? Is it really the worst money that Right. Spent really? It’s like, have you eaten at, you know, the gas station? I don’t know, like Right. You know, it’s like really? Right. So what do you do with stuff like that?
AWB (39:14):
I mean, that stuff is just part of being in business. You gotta let it roll off your back. You can try and respond, you know, I mean, I, I don’t know about you. I’ve had some clients get canceled and it’s often over like really silly things and it’s very painful, it’s very hurtful. Awful. But often the best advice is just to ignore it. Like, just to move on. Yeah. Go do something positive to kind of shut out the negative noise. But I understand a lot of them are like, well, I wanna sue them. And I’m like, that is a
AJV (39:43):
Waste of your time.
AWB (39:45):
Kind of the worst thing you could possibly do. ’cause Now your answer just attention.
AJV (39:48):
It’s just attention. It’s just attention. Yes.
AWB (39:50):
And I’ll often say, this is not a legal problem, this is a PR problem.
AJV (39:54):
Yeah. That’s good.
AWB (39:54):
So some of it you have to kind of handle that way.
AJV (39:57):
So what, so why did so what was the basis for getting rid of these non-disparagement clauses? Just
AWB (40:04):
They’ve been legal for a while, but no one was talking about them. Yeah,
AJV (40:07):
So I this is, I don’t know why it is like it’s, this has been in the last two years and
AWB (40:12):
People, it’s, yeah, it’s been talked about more. So it’s a federal trade commission rule and it’s consumer protection. So it’s meant to protect customers from being able to speak truthfully about their interactions with a business. So you can’t, it’s kind of like a gag on them being able to, which is why a lot of people want to include non-disparagement in their contracts with their customers. So it’s, it’s still legal in other scenarios. It is becoming a little more iffy in the employment scenario. And I’m not an employment lawyer, so Yeah. I’m not gonna misspeak about that. But it, it is nuanced there. I do know. Yeah. so if you are wanting to include a non-disparagement clause in a, like a severance agreement or a termination agreement, talk with your lawyer because first mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:04):
But I think just everyone, as you’re paying attention to that, just make sure that you are looking at your contracts to make sure they do say things that people are aware of. It’s like you cannot falsely exaggerate or make false claims. And I do contract reviews for some of our clients on occasion. Anyone listening, do not email me.
AWB (41:28):
You’re delighted to review your attorney, your
AJV (41:30):
Contract. Correct. In passing, like, Hey, can you look at this, this? And it’s like, and you don’t have anything in there about cannots. And I think that’s back to setting proper expectations of Yeah. However common sense at things. Sometimes it’s good to have common sense in writing. So that would be one. And then since you’ve kind of like, this kind of came up for both of us, like this new non-compete bill that has passed. Yes. Which will be nationwide.
AWB (41:53):
Yeah. And so that is actually a regulation from the Department of Labor. So it’s not a law, it’s a regulation, but it has just come out. It has not been, you know, they have a publication period where people can comment. So it has not gone into effect yet. And actually we’re sending out a client alert, I think it’s like on my desk to review
AWB (42:39):
But just kind of like, this is a great time to just see if this even matters to you. If you’re drafting new agreements, you might consider leaving it out because it may or may not be valid. One thing in the rule is it, it says if you include a non-compete after the rule goes into effect or maybe if you have one, I can’t remember exactly, but you have to actually send a notice to the person who signed that contract. Like, Hey, that non-compete you signed is no longer valid. Oh. So I think most pe most people don’t want to have to do that.
AJV (43:08):
Interesting. So, so what about preexisting signed contracts? Those stand, it’s just anything new?
AWB (43:14):
No, the non-compete would not be enforceable,
AJV (43:17):
But, but you wouldn’t have to send out something to previously signed yeah.
AWB (43:20):
Don’t quote me on this because it is detailed and nuanced, but read our client alert,
AJV (43:25):
AWB (43:28):
We had a Slack conversation that was like very long about all the nuances,
AJV (43:34):
It’s not simple. This is kind of back to the conversation at hand. It’s like, what do you need to know? And if you don’t know, how do you stay in the know? Right. Yeah. So that’s my last question for today. Other than signing up for this newsletter as a very entry level basic, have some sort of source of information. Yeah. Yeah. If people don’t have an attorney on demand or they don’t have a legal counsel, or they don’t, you know, that’s most people, right? Yeah, absolutely. How on God’s screen earth are we supposed to stay up to date with this stuff?
AWB (44:04):
You’re gonna do the best you can. And that is, you know, again, proportional to the size of your business and the risk. You know, this is something a lot of people start taking more seriously around half a million, a million, several million in revenue. So if you’re there and you still are not really up to date on all this like judgment free zone, do not beat yourself up. But you can always do better tomorrow.
AJV (44:27):
But
AWB (44:30):
Yeah. I mean, just the bigger your business gets, the, you know, some of my clients come to us saying, I feel like I’ve got a target on my back now. Mm-Hmm. And like, I’ve really gotta make sure I’m all buttoned up and that if somebody comes at me that I’m like ready to go. Yeah. So there, there will hit, you will hit a point in your business where it becomes more important. And I’m not saying ignore it, but
AJV (44:47):
Once you’re doing like seven figures and annual revenue, would you say, Hey, like this is,
AWB (44:51):
You definitely need a lawyer. Yes. Yes.
AJV (44:53):
So that’s everyone who’s listening.
AWB (44:55):
I would, I would say probably like half a million to a million is a great, that’s a great entry point for us. ’cause There’s enough to do you Mm-Hmm.
AJV (45:10):
You know, and I, you know, I say this lovingly because we’re friends, but not everyone really wants to pay attorneys. Like people don’t really want.
AWB (45:17):
I understand. It is not the most fun money to spend. I know. Oh.
AJV (45:20):
But I think that’s a good benchmark for everyone listening. It’s like, even if it’s, sometimes you just have to spend money even when you don’t want to, but
AWB (45:27):
In your budget, it’s like, it should be in your budget just like marketing or just like working with a bookkeeper or a CPA. Like, it really is a cost of doing business. You cannot ignore it.
AJV (45:37):
And I would just say from our experiences, it’s much cheaper when you’re proactive. It’s cheaper, it’s always cheaper when there isn’t anything pending. Right? Mm-Hmm.
AWB (46:07):
Information, not advice.
AJV (46:08):
Thank you,
AWB (46:11):
I’ll plug one other thing. Yeah. I’ll plug one other thing before we go, which is we have our own podcast, the Legal Roadmap podcast, which I have stopped publishing new episodes, but there is a ton of evergreen content. So if you’re looking for like the latest and greatest, it will not be there. But if you’re looking to learn some basics about copyrights, trademarks, employment law, all these things that you need in a personal brand business, go check out the legal roadmap.
AJV (46:34):
Yes. And we’ll put that in the show notes as well. Autumn, this is so helpful, so, so knowledgeable and helpful. And y’all just all got at least $650 worth of free legal information. That advice. Just information. That’s right. So thank you. This was so, so helpful. And again, I just wanna do one more plug for the newsletter because I subscribed to it and it is super helpful and I’m constantly telling people on our team, listen to this one, go watch this. Like, read this. It’s a wb firm.com/newsletter. And then also if you wanna just stay in touch with Autumn, get additional tips, learn stuff, and also the a WB firm, check them out on Instagram. A w firm is their handle. Again, I’ll put all of that in the show notes. And last but not least check out the podcast even though that they’re not posting new episodes you can go and get some evergreen content, which is the Legal Roadmap Podcast. Autumn, thank you so much. This was so helpful. Thank you hj, for asking great questions. This is a fun conversation. And for everybody else, check out the recap version that we will pose shortly. We’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. Bye everybody.
Ep 493: 5 Ways to Create Limitless Power | Jim Kwik Episode Recap
RV (00:01):
I wanna share with you five of the greatest lessons that I learned from Jim kwik. So Jim is a client of ours and a friend, and somebody that I very much would consider a mentor, and recently interviewed him on our podcast. If you did not listen to it, you have got to go listen to this episode. It was absolutely incredible. And what I wanna share with you, here are my five biggest takeaways from that interview. Jim originally told me that he only had like 20 minutes for the interview. I think we ended up going 45. He, he got into this mode of just really pouring out his heart for our community and what we do, and sharing his story. And it’s inspiring for mission-driven messengers. But so there’s so many takeaways that came out of it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna pull my five favorite ones that just immediately spoke to me.
RV (00:53):
So number one is that your labels are your limits. And if you continue to fight for your limitations, then you get to keep them. That is one of his direct quotes that hit me so hard because it’s absolutely true, right? First of all, your labels are your limits. And sometimes our, our labels initially come from somebody else, right? Somebody calls us stupid, somebody calls us, you know, poor, or somebody else says we’re weird. Somebody else says, we’re like, you know, we don’t have what it takes. We’re not, we’re not cut out for it. We’re not from the right family. We, right? And so those labels sometimes become our limits, but then we often allow those limits to set hold in our life, and we start to fight for ’em. And we say things like, we start to make that our narrative, and we tell other people, and we tell ourselves why we can’t do things.
RV (01:50):
Oh, I’m getting so old. I, you know, I can’t exercise anymore ’cause I’m so old, or I’m always so bad at remembering names, or I’ve never been good at math, or like, yeah, I’m just not a good salesperson. Or like yeah, I don’t, you know, I don’t understand the social media stuff or like you know, I, I just, I’m, I’m too busy to, you know, do whatever, like, give back in whatever way. And we fight for those limits. And those limits, like what Jim said, is the, the problem with that is that when you fight for your limits, you get to keep them. That is a sobering truth, a sobering moment. The next thing that he said that really stuck out to me was when he was telling this story about meeting the, the, the father of his friend who changed his life. And he said, he said, Jim, you’re this close to changing your life. You’re this close to changing your life. And then he was pointing at his head, you know, the distance between his own brain, right? And, and going, it’s the six inches inside of your own, like your, your own head. You’re we’re
RV (02:58):
That close. You’re that close to changing your life. You’re that close. If you change, if you change what you think about yourself, if you, if you can, if you can change the way that you what you tell yourself about yourself, if you can learn about how your brain operates, we’re that close, right? You’re that close to changing your life a few inches. It’s getting your head straight. It’s getting your mind right. It’s getting your, your thinking ironed out in my take the stairs book. I talk about the creation principle of integrity. How you, you know, you think it, you speak it, you act, and then it happens. But it starts with the thought. You have to get the thought, right? First, permanent changes in your actions are require permanent changes in your thinking. They require permanent changes in your thinking. You can’t cover up, you know, poor thinking with actions.
RV (03:57):
That’s a diet, that’s a fad that you will change temporarily and it will go away. You have to rewire your programming. You have to rewire your thinking. If you want to create a permanent change in your life, that’s, that’s different. That’s, that’s rewriting the neural programming. It’s not just pos, it’s not just positive thinking. It’s not just personal development. It’s neuroscience, it’s psychology, it’s biology. You have to form new neural pathways in your brain. That leads me to the third, my third favorite thing that Jim said was when he said that if you’re struggling, if you’re thinking about quitting, if you’re hitting a ceiling, if you’re being blocked, if you’re plateaued, if you’re stuck, if it’s not working, you need to change your perspective. And the two fastest ways to change your perspective are to get new, to get around new people and new education, new education, new people, and new education.
RV (04:57):
That’s so true. That has been true in every moment of my life. Every time I pursued some new goal that seemed impossible, some new dream that I, I had no business doing, trying to, or, or, or coaching somebody else on that journey or, or trying to work with them to, to accomplish something that’s never been done before. Getting the right people, getting around the right people changes everything. And getting new education, getting education from the people who have done it before. It changes everything, right? And this is why, like, I, I, I just have to encourage you unapologetically that if you are somebody who wants to build your personal brand, if you are someone who wants to become an author or a speaker, you need to go to free brand call.com/podcast and request a call with our team. Jim Quick is a client of ours, right?
RV (05:43):
You could listen to the interview, right? Listen to what he said about how we’ve helped him. Now, he was massively successful before us, but we’re working with, like people like him. We’re, we’re, we’re adding value to people like him. And we’re, we, we see what people like him are doing behind the scenes. And we know something about this. And so, if you’re stuck, if you’re, if you’re speaking business, your coaching business, your consulting practice, your, your professional services firm, your network marketing company, your entrepreneur, your entrepreneurial endeavor, or your side hustle. If they’re not growing as fast as you want them to, you need to be around new people. And you need new education. That’s what we do specifically for those people, experts, entrepreneurs, right? Professional service providers. Like, that’s, that’s our world. Request a call with us, talk to us free brand call.com/podcast. Get perspective.
RV (06:34):
If it’s not us, get it from somebody, right? Get it from somebody. And, and I will, I will again underscore and, and highlight Jim’s book, limitless, right? I don’t read every book of every person who comes on the show. I can’t, right? Like I’ve got a stack of other things that I’m also reading, but like, this is a book that I highly recommend, limitless. I have read the book. It is so powerful. It is a, a, a, a user manual for your brain. It’s, it’s important. I think it should be mandatory reading for like every, I think it should be mandatory reading for every 18-year-old person to read, to read this book, and to read Take the stairs, and to read the trust edge and to read financial peace. Those are like some of the books that I go, man, everybody should have to read it.
RV (07:17):
But if you haven’t, read this one. Get it and get new education. Or, you know, get it from somebody. If it’s not from us or it’s not from Jim, get it from somebody. The fourth thing that Jim said that I absolutely love, that was a complete, you know, just great reminder is you’re one step away from completely changing the direction of your life, right? It’s one thing to go changing your life is hard work. Changing your life takes some time. You don’t change your life instantaneously, overnight. But you can start changing your life with one step, one moment, right? To, to biblically. There’s a beautiful word in scripture that the word is repent in the English language. But many people think the word repent means to be sorry, but that’s not really the nature of the word. Repent. The, the nature of the word repent means to turn in the opposite direction, which is part of how you demonstrate that you’re sorry for something.
RV (08:18):
That’s part of how you demonstrate that you wanna change, that you wanna change your life, that you wanna change your behavior, that you wanna change who, who you are as a person is to repent, to turn another direction, to take a step in a different direction. And you go, you know, the moment you turn your life isn’t completely different, but your direction is completely different. And once your direction is completely different, your destination will be completely different. And your destination is the inevitable outcome of your direction. So while I can’t change your destination in the snap, the snap of a finger, like you can’t immediately fast forward to the destination you can in the snap of a finger, in one moment, change your direction. And if you change your direction, you ultimately will change your destination. Because the destination is the inevitable byproduct of the direction and the direction you can change overnight, the direction you can change immediately, the direction you can change with one step, change your direction.
RV (09:17):
That’s so powerful, such an important reminder. And then the fifth thing that Jim shared, which is where I just feel like we’re brothers from, we’re brothers from other mothers, is to go, you know, you can sense this guy’s story, right? This guy’s, Jim’s superpower for most of his life was being invisible, was being unseen. He was hiding deliberately because he was the kid with the broken brain, right? Because he was the kid that the other students made fun of. He was hiding. And then even once he sort of found his power and he found his gift, and he was able to make money, he still never wanted to become well known. And he didn’t want to do that. He, he, he was, he’s introverted. He, he was shy, he was fine living, he was comfortable living in the shadows. So why then did he break free from that?
RV (10:10):
Why did he break free and start one of the biggest podcasts in the world with a hundred million downloads? Why did he start one of the most successful YouTube channels with one and a half million subscribers? Right? Why did he, why did he write a book, right? Why did he even ever work with brand builders group in the first place and, and, and write a book, and then rewrite the book and, and sell a million copies of his book? Like why did he do that? It was because of number five, ultimately, even though he wanted to hide ultimately, even though he was a master of being invisible, ultimately, that even though he didn’t care about fame or nor notoriety, ultimately all of those things fell subservient to a moral obligation to serve, a moral obligation to serve. That’s what it means to be a mission-driven messenger. It means you have an a moral obligation, you have a duty, you have a responsibility, you have a calling, you have a command, you have a summoning, you, you have a voice that you cannot quiet because it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the people out there in the world calling you and saying, I need you. I need your help. I need your wisdom. I need your perspective. I need your expertise. I need your advice. I need your strategies. I need your technique. I need you.
RV (11:34):
It’s not about your fame, your vanity, your riches, your followers. It’s about service, a moral obligation to serve. And if you’re a true mission-driven messenger, you have to stop hiding. You have to get out of the, get out of the shadows. You need to come out from behind the curtain. You need to, to, to get out and share with people. Share your story, right? Think of how many people, Jim’s life, his stories impacted the kid with the broken brain, the kid that was made fun of the kid who was dropping out of school, the kid who was letting his parents down, then becoming one of the smartest people in the world, and the brain coach to Will Smith and Hugh Jackman and Alex Rodriguez and the Rock and the, and half of the Fortune 500. I mean, what a transformation. And then sharing those because of a moral obligation to serve. It’s your duty, it’s your divine design. That’s what I think, right? I think it is God’s divine design of your humanity. The reason that you have struggled, the reason you’ve had challenges, the reason you have had setbacks and obstacles is because it was part of God’s plan all along to use you to impact other people.
RV (12:56):
And so to resist that calling to me is to defy God himself. That’s how I think about it. But a moral obligation, whether you believe in God or not, but like to, to, to realize and go, I’m gonna be subservient. Yeah, maybe it, you know what? It is uncomfortable to get out there and promote your stuff. It is annoying to have to learn about social media. It is a pain to have to figure out how to build a personal brand and create websites, and launch books and do speaking and, and sell tickets to events. And yeah, it, it’s a pain. Like it is a pain, but the fruit of it is you get to impact lives. You get to make a difference. You get to help people. You get to serve people. You get to add the meaning of all of the things that have happened to you suddenly have meaning as you add value to others. That’s what this is about. That’s what this journey is all about.
RV (13:55):
So my friends, don’t let your labels be your limits. Don’t fight to keep your limitations. Realize that you’re six inches away from every dream you’ve ever wanted by changing what’s in your mind. Get a new perspective. Be around new people. Get new information. Take one step in a new direction, and that will ultimately determine a completely different destination and operate out of a moral obligation to serve. That sums it up. Show Jim. Quick some love. If you would, if you would, if you got anything out of this episode or this recap, go just say hi and tell ’em where you found him. Say, Hey Jim, I love your stuff. Heard you on the influential personal brand podcast. Heard you from Rory and Brand Builders Group, Rory and AJ and Brand Builders Group. And just tell ’em, say, Hey man, thanks for your story. You know, if you can buy the book, check it out. He’s got good stuff. And share this episode with someone in your life who needs it,
RV (14:50):
Right? Share this with somebody in your life who needs it and keep coming back every single week. We’re working hard, right? We work hard to, to get ac get you access to people like Jim Quick. It’s not easy to get to people like Jim Quick. It’s been years of developing a relationship with Jim so that we could get him for 20 minutes to come on and, and, and talk to you and, and share this. And, you know, he ended up going twice as long ’cause he feels the power of you, the power of this community. So thanks for, for being the community. Thanks for being the reason he’s here. And thanks for being the reason why we do what we do. We’ll catch you next time on the Influential Personal Brand Podcast.
Ep 492: Creating a Limitless Life by building a Limitless Mind with Jim Kwik
RV (00:02):
Well, I’m honored to introduce you to one of the people who is my favorite friends and one of the smartest people I think, on the planet and truly has become one of the biggest personal brands in the entire world. And Jim Quick is someone that I just got to meet maybe just over a year ago. Actually a couple years ago. We met at Ed Mallet’s book launch. We became friends. He became a, a client of Brand Builder’s Group. And every time I meet this man, I’m just blown away by his brilliance, his network, his commitment to service, the depth of his expertise. You may not know this, but he is a brain coach that’s been has worked with people like Will Smith, Hugh Jackman, Jim Carrey, Alex Rodriguez, the Rock. I mean like major, major celebrities. And he’s well known for his speed reading and memory techniques, as well as just helping people optimize their brain overall.
RV (00:58):
He’s got millions of online followers. He’s trained many CEOs, obviously celebrities. He’s spoken for world renowned organizations like Virgin and Fox Studios, Nike, Zappos, Harvard and he’s been on the Today Show and all over national media. And then, you know, he wrote this book, limitless, which sold several hundred thousands of copies, became a New York Times bestseller. We got a chance to work with Jim on the expanded edition of Limitless, which just came out. And you can learn more about [email protected]. Anyways, Jim, thanks for making time for us, man. What an honor to have you,
JK (01:35):
Rory. I I really appreciate not only what you do, but the manner you do it. So thanks for your friendship. Thanks for your support and helping us with our brand. Yeah, we’re on a mission to build better, brighter brains. No, no brain left behind.
RV (01:48):
Yeah, man, I I, I love that. I, I for the people that don’t know you, can you just tell us the story of, of, you know, it’s in the book and you talk about it, but like why you started working on sort of brain optimization in the first place from your, from your personal childhood?
JK (02:03):
Yeah. I mean, I know your listeners are interested in this. ’cause Entrepreneurs, they, you know, your number one wealth building asset you have is your mind, right? I mean, and the faster you can learn, the faster you could earn today, knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit. And so the more you know, the better decisions that you can make, the more you could expand your business, your bank account, and your brand, you know, the effect that you have in the world. One of the ways I share my messages on stages, we’re in front of about 250 to 300,000 people every single year. As a public speaker, you know, this is my 32nd year of, of speaking as a brain coach. I usually do, if there’s time these demonstrations, I know you and I have shared the stage numerous times.
JK (02:49):
For me, if I have time, I’ll pass around a microphone in an audience and maybe 50 or 60 or maybe even a hundred people introduce themselves and I’ll memorize all their names, or the audience will challenge me. Amazing. Memorize a a hundred numbers or a hundred words. Yeah. And I’ll do it forwards and backwards, but I always tell people, I don’t do this to impress you. I really do this to express to you what’s possible. Because the truth is every single one of you listening, you could do that too. Regardless of your age, your background, your career, education level, financial situation, gender history, iq we just weren’t taught, you know, school is a great place to learn what to learn, like math and history, science, Spanish, but there are zero classes on how to learn. And I think if there’s one skill your listeners like that, there’s like one idea to take away from this.
JK (03:32):
Your ability to learn rapidly and translate that learning into action is the ultimate competitive advantage today in the 21st century. Right? And I know it’s possible for all of us because it’s such an advantage, but I didn’t grow up with that advantage when I was five years old. I had a traumatic brain injury. I had a very bad accident in school. When head first into a radiator. I was rushed to the hospital, lost all this blood passed out. I mean, but really where I showed up was in school. I had learning disabilities after that. I was put in special education. I had poor focus, poor memory. I had migraines every single day when I was five and six, seven. I just thought it was like normal when I was, it took me three years longer just to learn how to read. When that was very frustrating.
JK (04:21):
It really laid into my, my self-esteem, my self-worth, you know, a lot of self-doubt because if I wasn’t like all the other kids, I would work hard because I came from immigrant parents. But it’s, you know, that installed that discipline. But I, I just didn’t do well. And I just felt like it was kind of unfair When I was nine years old, I was being bullied and, and teased for slowing down the class. ’cause I just didn’t understand lessons. Teachers would’ve to repeat themselves over and over again. And I would learn to pretend, but I didn’t really understand. And teacher came to my defense when I was being teased, pointed to me in a fellow class and said, leave that kid alone. That’s the boy with the broken brain. Oh. And I could tell you Rory, that that label became my limit. I didn’t understand it at the time.
JK (05:06):
Adults had to be very careful, their external words, ’cause they often become a child’s internal words. So every single word it play out. Every single time I did badly in school, which was all the time, I would always say, oh, ’cause I have the broken brain. Or to my parents, I didn’t do well on this quiz ’cause I had the broken brain, or I was in pick for sports. ’cause I have the broken brain. And you know, we’ll talk a little bit about that in terms of learned helplessness and how our self-talk. I believe our brain is this incredible supercomputer. And our self-talk is the program it will run. So if you tell yourself something like, I dunno, maybe your listeners say to yourself, I’m not good at remembering names. Right? Something pretty common. You won’t remember the name of the next person you meet.
JK (05:45):
‘Cause You program your supercomputer not to. Right? Your mind is always eavesdropping on, on your self talk. And so I struggled and then eventually I found a mentor at age 18. So I struggled. Those 13 plus years got introduced to the power of the mind, the power of the brain. I started leaning into starting getting curious, like, how does my brain work so I can work my brain, right? How does my, my memory work so I can work my memory better? You know, how does I got curious about how to make it practical every day. You know, if they say your brain is this incredible gift and superpower, why wasn’t I able to, why do we forget the keys? Right? Why do we forget what we just read,
JK (06:28):
So you know, and after I learned these things, I started to teach. And my, one of my very first students I started to tutor, she was a college freshman. She read 30 books in 30 days. Wow. Not skimmer scan. And I know you’re a book lover and reader. Yeah. But can you imagine that advantage? And I wanted to find out not how I taught her how to speed read, but I wanted and to understand even more than she would. I wanted to find out not how, but why I am always interested like you, why, like why do people do what they do? Right? How many, so many people know what to do, but they don’t do it. ’cause Common sense is not common practice. And I found out that her mother was just recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and doctors gave her mom only 60 days to live.
JK (07:13):
Wow. And the books she was reading were books to save her mom’s life. And with that leverage, you know, it was just, I, I wish her prayers six months goes by, I don’t hear from her. And I get a call one, one morning and it’s this young lady and she’s crying profusely. But when she stops, I find out there are tears of joy that her mother not only got, you know, survived, but it’s really getting better. Doctors don’t know how or why they were calling it a miracle, but her mother attributed a hundred percent to the great advice she got from her daughter who learned it from all these books. Wow. And in that moment, I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And it’s a superpower we all have. It’s just, you know, people are struggling with their focus or their memory, or their overload or distractions, whatever.
JK (08:00):
It’s not really your fault. You know, we just weren’t taught how to be able to use your brain doesn’t come with an owner’s manual and it’s not user friendly. So that, that’s why I wrote Limitless, to be an owner’s manual for your brain, your most valuable asset that controls everything to be able to read faster, focus better, improve your memory, remember client information, product information, you know, give speeches without notes, do all these things. But yeah, I just feel like we wanna fill in the gaps of the education system, you know, for both education and, and professional personal development. And I feel like it’s a gift that everybody could give themselves.
RV (08:39):
Yeah. I mean, it, that’s what it is. It’s, it, it is an owner’s manual. Like it is an instruction guide and there’s mindset. There’s motivation, there’s daily practices like, it, it’s such a powerful book. And you, you know, you, you mentioned that your, that label became your limit, right? Early on. What do you think are some of the most common destructive labels that people have? I mean, like, you mentioned their names, right? Like, I’m bad with names, but like, when it comes to, let’s talk about personal brand specifically, right? So like, you had to overcome this learning deficit, this sort of, you know, these mental challenges with like your development. And you then became one of the world’s leading experts. And then you went, you know, kind of from being like, you’re pretty, like a lot of people don’t, maybe don’t know this, but like you’re pretty introverted guy. Yeah. And yet
JK (09:32):
Very, very,
RV (09:32):
You are one of the, become one of the biggest personal brands in the world. You’re reaching maybe a few hundred thousand people a year in your speeches, but millions through your videos and your podcast and social media, et cetera. Like, what were some of the labels you had to overcome or that you think personal brands often have to overcome to be able to get their message out to more people?
JK (09:54):
So for me, I, I believe it’s the person in the mirror. It certainly was in my case. My two biggest challenges growing up were learning. And because of it, public speaking, I would I remember I was failing high school English, and they called my parents in, and I was so ashamed you know, I wasn’t gonna pass the class. And the teacher, you know, talked to my parents, talked to me, and felt a little empathy and said, I’m gonna give you one last chance you could do this book report on Albert Einstein of all people, and to get extra credit to be able to pass, you know, class. And, and I I said, I’m gonna do it. I told my parents, told the teacher I made promise to them and myself. I spent this was back when people spent time in the libraries.
JK (10:41):
This, I was dating the, you know, pre-internet
RV (11:22):
Oh no,
JK (11:24):
I froze. ’cause At this time, you know, I never gave a speech before. I, I was my superpower. I talk about superpowers a lot. I was really being invisible. You know, as you mentioned, I was very, I’m very introverted, but I, back then I was extremely shy and awkward. ’cause I never knew the answer. So I was being, I would always shrink down ’cause I didn’t wanna be called on. ’cause I just never could know. I didn’t know anything. Wow. And I would sit behind the tall kid and even my posture was like slumped up to take up less space. I didn’t wanna be seen or heard, or maybe I did, but I didn’t, you know, want to. So out of fear. So I think fear is a big obstacle for a lot of us. It’s interesting that my two biggest challenges growing up are learning and public speaking,
JK (12:07):
‘Cause God has a sense of humor. You do it for a living. Those speaking, yes. All I do is public speak on this thing called learning. But it’s just a reminder to everybody that your struggles lead to strengths. Right? Our challenges lead to change and adversity can be an advantage. Like, I, I believe that sometimes there’s some things we can only learn in a storm, right? And some, some storms come to be able to clear our path. And we don’t know until hindsight looking back years from now, why things happened the way they they did. But I do believe I was guided and, you know, grateful for what I went through. But I bring this up because the things that kept me from growing even the impact was, you know, self-doubt. You know, people struggle with things like imposter syndrome. Who am I at 20 years old to be able to go into companies as I did and teach people three times my age?
JK (12:58):
Right? Like, and, and it was, it was interesting. So I, I would say the person in the mirror was, was my biggest obstacle. The doubts, the fears not being good enough, your failure. A lot of trauma that I had to kind of unravel growing up. And I just, even with the book, people Assume when the book came out in 2020 that I had like lots of books. But this was my first book. Mm-Hmm.
JK (13:46):
I feel like if I had that drive, I’ve maybe even helped more people. But because of it, you know, over 30 years, every opportunity to really scale, I always said no media book deals, train the trainer. I met with Kaplan, the franchise, you know, like to open up quick learning centers, you know, different places, infomercials and PBS specials. All those offers came. And I always said no. And then one day I, I was in a car accident and I I almost died and I definitely could have. And the next day that week, I, I signed the book deal that was in my inbox for like, 10 years. Wow. Because it just made me think about legacy. And you know, just to everybody listening, I don’t know who I’m talking to, but creating the life you want, you know, the contribution, the character that, you know, all whatever is important to you, it can be scary, but you know what’s a lot scarier is regret.
JK (14:45):
You know, I, I spent a lot of time in senior centers. I, I lost my, my parents, I mentioned they immigrated here, had many jobs. We lived in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at. Didn’t speak the language or anything. My grandmother took care of me because my parents were always working. And when I was going through my challenges at five years old, she started showing early signs of dementia. And she, she eventually passed of Alzheimer’s when I was seven. So all those things like really informs where you go. Like, my inspiration really was my desperation to feel good enough to feel like, oh, is my brain gonna work when I’m older and, you know, with my accident? So, you know, it’s the idea where people listening where you make a decision where you take your mess and you turn it into your message.
JK (15:34):
And I totally agree with you that we are best suited to support and help the person we once, you know, were, you know. And so like, I want to help that 9-year-old boy that had so much doubt and, you know, was being teased and ridiculed and feeling like they weren’t enough. And I think we can improve our confidence, our self-esteem overnight if we just understand our, our, our brains. Like, ’cause it’s so fantastic. And, you know we’ve dedicated our life to getting this out there on stages. And we have one of the top where we’ll cross a hundred million downloads on our podcast this year.
RV (16:08):
Wow. I didn’t realize that it was that, that’s awesome, man.
JK (16:12):
Yeah. And the book, thanks to, you know, yourself, your team and the other supporters, like, you know, we’ve done over, over a million copies just, you know, on on limitless on audio books and Kindle and print 40 different languages. We’re just very, very, very proud. We donated all the proceeds to charity. We built schools in Ghana, Guatemala, and Kenya also supported Alzheimer’s research for women. Women are twice as likely to experience Alzheimer’s than men. So in, in memory of my, in my, my grandmother. But it’s nice. You know, I feel like, you know, we’re just getting started and you know, our goal is to be able to support people, you know, having their, the brain they desire and deserve.
RV (16:53):
Yeah. And I, I think, you know, that concept of, I, that’s probably one of the reasons why I was drawn to you right from the first time I met you. You know, we were backstage originally at, at that, at my lead event, and there were so many like major VIP important people both speaking and just like in general
JK (17:14):
That, that was, that was a, who’s who I remember was Jenna and Mel and everybody. Yeah.
RV (17:21):
But you were, you were so humble. And it was like what you just said, I think is what spoke to me was like, I’ve never ever caught a sense of ego from you or a, an ounce of like, posturing or positioning or who I know. I mean, before we started this interview, I had to even ask your permission to share. Like, are you okay if I tell people that like, you work with Hugh Jackman and the Rock and Will Smith? ’cause I know you’re like, you don’t share those things very often. And I’ve gotten to know that and I’m just like, I mean, this is amazing, Jim. Like, it’s, it’s incredible the, the, the, the people that you’re working with. And, and yet it’s the heart of going, it’s your heart of service, which has been really powerful to see and to go look at all the good you’re doing from your, from scaling.
RV (18:05):
Like look all the money you’re doing for charity and all of the people you’re reaching. And I just, I love that because to me that’s what, you know, we just, we define our audience as mission-driven messengers. Hmm. And it’s not that we don’t care about money. We do care about money, but, but money is subservient to the mission. And I’ve always felt that way about you. And I can’t say that about everybody else in this space. But I do feel that way about you and, and I and, and, and I, you know, I love that you, you know, you’ve got one book, like you put every so much into this one book. Not, not everything, you know, but like so much into this, you could have written 15 books. But like you’ve, you, this is one of the things that we, we tell our clients about books is a book should be a conclusion, not a hypothesis.
RV (18:55):
And a lot of, a lot of authors write books that are hypotheses. They have like, oh, an idea and then they put it out there. This limitless is, this is a series of conclusions of a lifetime of work and study. And it’s like, it’s banked. Dr. Mark Hyman wrote the Forward for this. Y’all like the, the, the, the doctors, some of the leading doctors in the world. Come on Jim’s podcast and everything. And I just, anyways, I, I love what you do and most of all, like the, the way that you do it I, I got one other question for you before you go, but, but, but where do you, before that, where should people go, Jim, if they want to, you know, connect up with you, obviously they can get limitless, expanded. Well else would you send them?
JK (19:38):
The book [email protected]. You get to where support your local bookstores, you know I would say social media, you know, take a screenshot of this conversation wherever you’re consuming it, and tag Rory, tag myself. Say hi. I’ll repost some of you know, some randomly and gift out a few copies of, of Limitless to your community as a thank you for having me on your show. We, we were not, we’re, we’re not hard to find, you know, just search my name in your podcast app. We just crossed a 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube. So we put, you know, regular content there and help how to read faster, improve your memory, best Brain Foods, changing your habits, unlocking limitless motivation and, and so, so much more. Yeah.
RV (20:29):
I mean, it’s amazing. And if you, if you just think about like the a hundred million podcast downloads and the, the millions of subscribers, all the people you’ve helped that never buy a book or never buy one of your courses or programs. Like what a what a what a gift.
JK (20:46):
Nine 95% of what we put out there is completely free. You know, we’ve just, again, we wanna positively impact at least 1 billion brains. It’s pretty bold and audacious. That’s why we appreciate you and your community and just helping us show people build a better, brighter world. I believe you change your brain, you change your life, you change your brain. You could change the world. And yeah, I’m, I’m very optimistic of, you know, what the next, in the years are for everybody here that’s listening, you know, in terms of their own potential and on performance.
RV (21:20):
Yeah. So last little thing. You know, if somebody is sitting in that moment right now, Jim, they’re listening to this and they, they have a label that’s a limit, right? They had somebody say something to them. Yeah. Or they had, they said something to themselves and maybe they, they do have a vision to go, I want to impact millions of people. I want, I wanna, I wanna create videos, I wanna create content. But they’re struggling in that moment. Like, what, what, what encouragement, what last little bit of encouragement would you give to that person?
JK (21:47):
I’ll if it’s okay, I don’t, I’m, I don’t really share this, but how I got started on my career, maybe people get a couple of little nuggets that they can relate to. When I, when I got accepted into a local university I thought freshmen meant I could make a fresh start. And I wanted to show the world that I could do it and make my parents proud. I’m the oldest of three siblings and I wanted to be a good example, right? And I took all these classes freshman year and I, I did worse because it’s so much more difficult. And I was ready to quit. And I don’t know if someone’s at that place right now, that they’ve tried a few things and they’re just kind of ready to quit. But but hear me out. Like I, I told a, a friend of mine that I didn’t know how to tell my parents because I didn’t, I didn’t have the money to be in school in the first place, so I didn’t wanna waste it, right?
JK (22:45):
And my friend said, Hey, why don’t you come with me to visit my family? I’m going this weekend and get a different perspective. And I, that word perspective really changes things for me. I think that if you’re anyone feels stuck, like they’re not making progress in some area of their life, maybe their brand, their business, their followers, their impact or income, whatever, it helps to change your point of view, right? And how you do that, you change your place or you change the people you’re spending time with. And I end up going the weekend visiting his family and pretty well off family, a beautiful home on the water. And the father walks me around his property before dinner and asked me a very innocent question, which is the worst question you could ask me. He says, Jim, how’s school? And I just, I start, and you mentioned how introverted I am, I start bawling, crying
JK (23:53):
It’s not for me. Don’t have the money. They don’t know how to tell my parents. I’m gonna be a total disappointment to them. And he’s like, Jim, he asked me a new question. He’s like, well, why are you in school? And besides perspective changing the place and people you’re with, maybe we need to ask ourselves new questions. ’cause I didn’t know why I was in school. I just thought, that’s something you do, right? You go to school, get a career and do that thing. But, you know, I was like, I didn’t have an answer ’cause no one’s ever asked me that question. And you ask a new question, you get a new answer, like a, a question like what’s the best use of this moment? Or what if it would’ve succeeded and I didn’t do it right? Like, it’s just a different thing. And, and then he says like, well, Jim, he saw I was struggling with the answering.
JK (24:38):
It’s like, well, what do you wanna be, what do you wanna do? What do you wanna have? What do you wanna share or contribute? I didn’t have any answer. And he really was patient with me. And I start to answer and he takes out a piece of paper to stop just, and he asked me to write it down, right? Like a bucket list, like all the things I want to do before I kicked the bucket. Mm-Hmm.
JK (25:22):
Yeah. Things I’ve never shared with anybody or even realized until I wrote ’em down myself. And when he’s done. And we’re all scared of being judged, right? Like, that’s why I was shrinking down all the time. ’cause I didn’t wanna be judged, right? Other people’s opinions or expectations. And I realized that if we fuel your life with other people’s opinions, then we’re gonna run outta gas. Right? It’s just not very sustainable. And I would remind everybody, don’t take criticism. ’cause That’s what keeps us from acting is like what people are gonna think. And you don’t wanna be criticized. I I, I live by this thing. I have this on my wall. Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. And so he’s reading it, I don’t know how much time goes by. He’s like, Jim, you’re this close to everything on this list and I’m spreading my index fingers like a foot apart.
JK (26:09):
And I’m thinking, no way. Gimme 10 years. I’m not gonna crack that list. And very wise, ma man who was mentor to me, he takes his index fingers, Rory, and he puts ’em to the side of my head, meaning what’s in between was like the key that’s gonna get me everything on that list. And he takes me into a room of his home I’ve never seen before. You would love it. It is wall to wall ceiling, the floor covered in books. Awesome. And I remember I had my reading difficulties. I’ve never read a book cover to cover, and it’s like being in a room full of snakes for me, right? I’m so intimidated. But what makes it worse, Rory, is he starts going to shelves and grabbing snakes and handing them to me. And I’m freaking out, right? Because I’m thinking like, what does he want me to do with this?
JK (26:52):
And yeah, I started looking at titles of these books. And there are these biographies of some incredible women and men in history and some very early personal growth books. Like Norman Vincent Peele, the Power of Positive Thinking, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, right? All the classics. And he says, Jim you have to read to Succeed. I want you to read one book a week. And I automatically go and I say, are you kidding me? Like, did you hear anything? I was saying, I have a brain injury. I’m a poor reader, and I’m not that smart. I have all this schoolwork. And when I said schoolwork, he was like, Jim, don’t let school get in the way of your education. Right? That’s like a Mark Twain quote. And I was like, that’s very insightful. And yet I can’t commit to doing that. ’cause If I say I’m gonna do it, I have to do it.
JK (27:41):
I can’t. And I, people do this to me all the time at events. They know a memory guy. They’re like, Jim, I’m so glad you’re here. I have a horrible memory. You know, I’m, I’m just getting too old. And I always say, stop, if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. Hmm. If you fight for your limits, they’re yours. Right? But I’m fighting for my limits of, and I mentioned the schoolwork and he’s like, don’t let school get my education. I’m like, yeah, but I still can’t do it. Right? And then, very smart man, he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out my dream list, which he still has. And he has the audacity Rory, to read every single one of my dreams out loud. Oh my gosh. And imagine that, right? Like this insecure self-doubt. And you hear like someone who’s obviously doing well, complete stranger.
JK (28:24):
You hear your dreams and somebody else’s voice, enc canted out into the atmosphere, right? Yes. And it messes with my mind and my spirit something fierce. ’cause A lot of the things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family, you know, for my parents, things they, they can never afford to do. Or even if they had the money, they wouldn’t do it for themselves. Right? And with that motivation, having going back to purpose, if you have a reason, you’ll get the result. ’cause Reasons, re rewards, right? And a lot of people, they’re not, you know, if they’re, if they’re holding back with their brand or their book or something that they know they wanna get out there, like I did for so long, I didn’t have a, you know, I wasn’t, I knew intellectually the reason, but I wasn’t feeling allowing myself to feel that reason.
JK (29:08):
And with that leverage, I agree. ’cause I wanna help my family to read one book a week. So fast forward, I’m back at school and I have a pile of books sitting at my desk. I have to read for midterms. I have a pile of books that I wanna read that I promised to read, and I already couldn’t get through pile A. So what do I do? I don’t have the time. So I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t work out. I don’t spend time with, you know, people and anything. I just live in the library for weeks and weeks and weeks. And one night at two o’clock in the morning in the library, I pass out, out of sheer exhaustion, I fall down a flight of stairs, hit my head again. Oh my gosh. And I woke up in the hospital two days later.
JK (29:46):
And at this point, ’cause I wasn’t eating, I was very malnourished, hooked up to all these IVs. I was down to 117 pounds. Wow. Right? So I lost all this weight. I thought I died. And it was the darkest time in my life. And when I woke up, I thought, there has to be a better way. Right? And when I had that thought, and you know, God speaks this in in different ways, like the nurse came in and brought a mug of tea. And on it was a picture of Albert Einstein, you know, the person I did that book report about. And it was interesting that learning that he had learning disabilities and he processed things differently and all this. But on the mug was a quote that said, the same level of thinking that has created your problem won’t solve your problem. And it made me ask a new questions like, what’s my problem?
JK (30:35):
Well, I have a broken brain. I’m a very slow learner. Well, how do I think differently about it? Like Einstein, I was like, well, maybe I could fix my brain. Maybe I could learn how to learn faster. And I was like, okay, where do I do that? Well, school. And I asked the nurse for a course bulletin for, with all classes for next semester. And I start going through it a couple hundred pages. And they’re all classes again, of what to learn, but not how to learn. So I set my schoolwork aside and I started studying these books and then other things in the area of neuroscience, adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory. You know, I wanted to, I was obsessed, like, how does my mind work? So I work my mind. I wanted to know what did, what did ancient cultures do to remember things before there were printing presses and, you know, computers, right?
JK (31:20):
And I started studying that, and then light switch went on. And I just started to understand, you know, about 60 days into it. And my grade shot up. And so did my confidence in my life. But to, to bring it back to my career, how I ended up teaching it was, I, I was upset that I struggled every single day for 13 plus years when there were solutions out there. And, you know, I felt a moral obligation to help people around me that were struggling the same way. And that moral impetus, I started to tutor and I wanted like friends just for free. And then I was like, well, how do I get more people? I was like, and I had that thought. There was a classroom that wasn’t being used on a Thursday night at seven o’clock. I was walking past. I said, okay, next week, same on Thursday at seven o’clock, I’m gonna just put five or 10 people in there, teach them for free for a couple hours.
JK (32:15):
And then maybe afterwards, one or two of them wants to be tutored and I can help them. And I go back, this is my first marketing. All right? So this is how free public seminar. Here it comes,
JK (32:58):
Not a lot. Fast forward to Thursday. The next Thursday I’m walking at seven o’clock and I just pray there are five people that show up, right? I turned the corner and outside of the room, there’s a crowd of people. And my honest thought Rory, was, wow, I hope whatever’s going on ends soon so I could do my thing. Right?
JK (33:47):
And I, I pushed my way in and packed, right? All the seats are taken, people standing in the back, and lo and behold, no one’s teaching. Right? And it takes my slow brain all that time to realize why they’re all there and who they’re all there for. And remember, I’m 18 years old. I look like I’m like 13 years old.
JK (34:37):
But when the class ended, I remember leaving the class, I, I reach into my book bag and I take out that, that professionally bound book report. And I, I threw it in the trash. And I think it symbolically it was like giving up hope. You know what I mean? Or my dreams or my potential. But that’s why Einstein coming back to me and giving that kind of, that, those words of wisdom. But going back, I, I still haven’t done any public speaking. So I’m freaking out. My heart’s being outta my chest. I I even talking about it, my mouth is going dry so I leave. Right? And, ’cause I can’t even talk with all those people there. You just left. Yeah. ’cause there’s not five or 10 people. I do a head count and there’s 110 people. Oh man. Right? So I leave, I told you it was a good hook.
JK (35:20):
It was a good marketing
JK (36:10):
And there’s a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher that says, life is the letter C between the letters B and D. Or B stands for birth and D stands for death, life, c, choice. We always have these choices, right? Our lives are the sum total of all the choices we’ve made up to this point. You know, I believe these difficult times, they could distract you these difficult times. They could diminish you or these difficult times they could develop you. You decide. And I made this choice to go back to the classroom. And I go there, I apologize, but I don’t remember what I talked about for two hours. But you ever, like, this stream of consciousness just kind of flows through you. And when I’m done, Rory, I came out of this trance. I was like, I don’t know how to help all of you, but if you’re interested, I need about 10 hours to teach you what’s working for me.
JK (37:00):
Maybe two hours a week over the next five weeks I get $30 an hour. This is what I got teaching tennis back in high school and just making this up there. And I say, I’ll be in the student center tomorrow at noon. If you’re interested, I’ll answer your questions. And I swear, Rory, a hundred people stand up and they leave. Not one person talks to me. Huh? So I am sitting 10 o’clock at night in an empty classroom and I’m totally confused. And I’m so exhausted. ’cause You know, when you do something you never thought you could do, I end up passing out on the carpet and it was the best sleep of my life. I get woken up the next morning, the class coming in at eight o’clock and the next morning and I run, I’m embarrassed. I run back to my dorm room, shower, go to breakfast, go to class, 12 o’clock I promised to go to the student center to answer questions.
JK (37:50):
And I’m going to the student center running a little bit late. And I just hope one person believed in me, just one. Right? And when I get there, Rory, that same crowd of kids were there. And at the end of 90 minutes or two hours, 71 of those students signed up for a program that didn’t even exist. And at $300 a, a person. ’cause I didn’t do the math. 10 hours times, $30 an hour. And I didn’t realize that students could go, they have a plastic card that goes into an ATM machine that takes out $300, right? Because I didn’t have that. And so I’m not even 19 years old and I have $21,000 cash in my pockets and my, my book bag. What? And, and I don’t even know, like, it’s so surreal. ’cause That’s a lot of money. But that was definitely a lot of money.
JK (38:38):
30 back then. Yeah. Years ago. That’s a lot of though. Yeah. And so I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, what do I do with this? And I hear my mentors phrase, don’t let school get in the way of education. I use practically all of it to travel the country by every program, go to every seminar get mentored and coached by some of the best people in the space. And I, I really feed my mind. And one of those 71 kids was this young lady who read 30 books in 30 days and saved her mom’s life. Wow. And that’s why I continued on the journey, you know, but I, I just wanna, men, you know, reiterate that it was, it was perspective. If I feel, feel stuck changing the people replaced to get a new point of view, asking new questions of yourself. ’cause You ask new questions, you’ll get new answers.
JK (39:31):
And stepping in a direction, making a choice, right? ’cause One step in another direction completely could change your destination. And if you’re listening to this, I feel like there’s a reason why to, to our, to listeners that, you know, maybe they could relate to some aspect of my story. That they feel like they’re here for a reason and they, and they went through adversity and they, they learned something from it. We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. We do not hear a lot about the other side post-traumatic growth. People have gone through such difficult times that you wouldn’t wish upon anybody. But you discovered something. You discovered something about yourself, or you got clarity, or you found a mission, you found a traitor, a strength, right? And you, you know, and you want change what happened, right? And I feel like now’s the time that we have to so many people, like we dim our lights.
JK (40:23):
Like I was shrinking all the time because we didn’t want those light to shine in somebody else’s eyes. And I feel like we live in a, sometimes in a dark, dark world. And we need as many people to shine as possible. And and do the things. I feel like life is difficult for one of two reasons. Either you’re leaving your comfort zone, life gets difficult, right? And you’re in the unknown. Or life is difficult ’cause you’re staying in your comfort zone. And I feel like that for a long time, I stayed in my comfort zone because I just wanted to have my small little learning center and teach, you know, the, the a hundred people a month that I was teaching or whatever. But I also feel like that moral obligation that, you know, we’re here for a reason. And I feel like at the end of our life, I feel like that it’s like I, I visualize myself meeting the person that I could’ve been.
JK (41:20):
You know? And I just don’t wanna be disappointed. And my message for everybody here is that there is, and I promise you, I, I coached half of the Fortune 500 companies in the world. I, I, I, I, we have students online in every country in the world have a lot of feedback from people. And I could tell you without a doubt that there is a version of yourself or your brand, or your book or your bank account. There’s a or your brain, there’s a version of yourself that’s patiently waiting. And the goal is we show up every single day until we’re introduced. Right? And I just feel like we’re all on this quest to reveal and realize our fullest potential. And when, when would now be a great time to make that choice. You know? And it doesn’t have to be a big one.
JK (42:07):
It could be like little, a little thing you could do to kind of keep your momentum, you know, for me it was about getting my brain and my mind right? Because I knew everything was gonna come from that. But things have to go from your head to your heart, then to your hands, right? You know, it’s, it’s your mindset. It’s your motivation. It’s also the methods. So that, that, that’s, that’s what limitless is for me. I love that Limitless is not about being perfect. It’s not about, you know, it’s about progress. It’s about advancing and progressing beyond what you’re currently demonstrating or you believe is possible. And I just know that this is available to all of us. That I’m not, definitely not special in this case. You know, and so I, I look forward to people like staying in touch with, with both of us. ’cause I, I, I’m, I’m hoping that I get to read their books or see them on stage or watch their, their videos or however they’re getting their, their message out to the world.
RV (43:01):
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s so powerful. That’s why I get my kicks, I get my kicks these days from watching clients succeed and when they win. And it’s just awesome to be a part of it. What an inspiring message, buddy. So y’all get limitless. Follow Jim. Say hello. Learn from his stuff. I’m telling you guys, this is a guy has a heart of gold. And it’s, and, and, and brilliant insights that’ll change your life. Jim, you went way over time, buddy. Yeah. You gave us so much extra time,
JK (43:33):
RV (43:48):
Come on now. We’ll
JK (43:49):
Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’ll, we’ll talk, we’ll talk about that. But thank you, thank you for what you do. You’re, you’re an inspiring force of nature, you know, and unstoppable force for, for good and for God. So thank you.
RV (44:00):
Thank you, brother. Well, we’ll link up to everything y’all and Jim, we’re praying for you. We’ll talk soon, buddy. All the best.