← Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
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A
Back again, back again for another episode of the show, like it says in the opening, gets you from where you are to where you want to go. And today, I don't know, man. Is it a story of hope? Is it a story of peril? Is it a warning? I don't know yet. We're going to get into it, but I have live in the studio today, live from straight from Chicago. This guy can only be described as a legend in an industry that may have misstepped according to the US Government. Misstepped. Paid for it a little bit, but I mean, sold millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars through the infomercial world and now is, you know, paid for his sins, if you will, and is now on the comeback trail. And hopefully this is going to be a message of hope for you. But we're going to talk about mindset sales, what not to do, how to keep yourself out of trouble. But I don't know what's going to happen, but it's going to be good. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Kevin Trudeau.
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B
Hey, glad to be here.
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A
How are you, man?
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B
Fantastic. How are you?
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A
Yeah. So, you know, when I was planning the opening for this, I really don't, I don't know, man. I didn't know which way it's going to go because you're a legend in this space.
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B
You know, in the infomercial world, I was called the Infomercial king back in the 90s. I actually went on TV in 1989 and I produced more winning or profitable infomercials than anybody else in history. My biggest one and the start was Mega Memory how to develop a photographic memory.
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A
I remember this.
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B
We sold $480 million worth of the mega memory course. And then I did books such as Natural Cures they don't want you to know about. That book sold 50 million copies, was number one on the New York Times bestseller list for 26 weeks in a row and the best selling book in all of America. The year came out and a whole host of other personal development, self improvement type of products and courses on television and infomercials was the venue that we decided to emphasize. And most people knew me back in the 90s as the infomercial king because I was on. I had more impressions on TV than Oprah back then. So I was like number one. And the response from the people was really overwhelming because in my productions, we didn't use scripts, we didn't have teleprompters, we didn't rehearse we didn't have live studio audiences. We didn't have a lot of testimonials. For example, it was just like this. It was a live interview. And the person who would interview me about whatever I was promoting at the time, whether it was Mega Memory or the book Natural Cures or some of the other things, I never met them. Just like, you know, we sat down here and they would ask me questions and it was a real live show. And then we would take it unedited, one take and put it on the air. It was authentic and it was genuine. Everything in it was real because I was sharing something that I believed in 100%, that I used, that my friends used, that my family used, and that I wanted other people to potentially, you know, take advantage of to empower them as well.
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A
When you first got got into the infomercial space, right? So you were in it late eight
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B
or you started 1989.
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A
1989. Okay. So the space was already kind of going there.
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B
Was already started in 1984.
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A
Started in 84. So, you know, obviously there, you know, from what I understand just from the guys I know in the business, obviously there was a void in that late night space was really cheap. You could buy it inexpensively. And then, and then you started there. What got you into that first space?
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B
Well, back in the 70s, I was in direct mail, okay? And a lot of people didn't know that because I was very young. People didn't know how old I was, but I was doing direct mail. I was running ads in newspapers and magazines and selling different things. And I was also such a good copywriter and marketer that I would be hired by other people to write ads for them and then I would get royalties on those sales. So I had a very profitable enterprise. And I also started a whole host of other businesses around the world as well. The reason I went on TV infomercials is a very interesting story. I founded the American Memory Institute, which was the largest memory training school in the world. And we were teaching seminars and workshops around the world to business executives and sales professionals, like in the real estate business, teaching them how to improve their memory so they could remember names and faces, they could remember properties, details, statistics, make speeches without notes, which would help them in business make more money. And then we would teach kids how to improve their memory so they could do better on tests. That way they could remember everything for the test and go in ace test and they could study a third of the time because they could remember everything. So it was improving their self image. And self confidence. So it was a really profitable business. I was in New York City at the Carnegie Deli, having a Danny Rose sandwich. Half corned beef, half pastrami. And right there, sitting right across from me at the table, same table, was a guy that I recognized from TV infomercials, Bobby Singer. He was the blackjack expert. And he was selling a home study course on how to count cards and his method of winning at blackjack. All legal, of course. Yeah. And.
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A
And I said, frowned upon here in Vegas. Frowned upon, but legal, Right.
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B
So I said, hey, you're Bobby Singer, the blackjack guy. He says, yeah. I said, I bought your course. It's fantastic. And it was really easy for me because I have a good memory. He says, what business are you in? I said, I'm the founder of the American Memory Institute. And I'm a world famous memory expert. So your course was easy for me. He goes, tell me about that. So I told him about what I do. And he said, you should put that on a home study course and sell it on tv. I said, no, no, no, it won't work on tv. It has to be a live course. And the only people that really buy it are business professionals or maybe parents for the kids. I don't think it has a mass market appeal. He says, no, I'll put up all the money. I'll pay your royalty. You need to be on tv. I says, well, I'll think about it. Here's my contact details. He goes, I'm gonna send you a contract. So I went back to the Plaza Hotel. Cause I was staying in New York on holiday. I checked my home messages. Remember we had the home message machine? So I checked my messages and there's a message on there. It says, kevin, it's Dwarde. I'm in Reno, Nevada. I bumped into an old friend of yours, Ed Beckley, who was a TV infomercial guru. He sold the Millionaire Maker program, which is how to buy real estate with no money down. And he says, I told him what you're doing with the institute, the Memory Institute. He says, you should put that on a home study course and sell it on TV and commercials. I go, wait a minute. The universe, that's something in the same day. And I said, this is bizarre. Get. Give me Ed's phone numbers. I call Ed. I said, listen, I just met this guy, Bobby Singer. He goes, bobby's great. He's going to send me a contract. He goes, I'm going to send you a contract first. I said, okay, well, whoever sends Me the contract first provided the deal's okay. I think you guys are wasting your money. You're going to lose it all because I don't think it's going to work. So he sent me the contract. Federal Express. This is when nobody used Federal Express because it was a big deal. If the FedEx guy came to your
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house, it was expensive.
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You were like, wow, you got a Federal Express. So I got a Federal Express contract from Ed Beckley. I read it over, signed it. A week later, I get in the regular mail a contract from Bobby Singer. So I call up Bobby, say, hey, Bobby, you should have sent it Federal Express. I said, I already signed a deal with Ed Beckley. He goes, oh, Damn. Well, after $480 million in sales, Bobby Singer always said, you know, not sending it Federal Express and trying to save 10 bucks cost me around $50 million.
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A
Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. You know, it's funny you say that about Federal Express. It wasn't back then. That's still. That's still today. I mean, we teach in business relationship sales that if you want something open, FedEx. Because that white envelope gets open.
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B
Yeah, it's open. It gets open, Gets open.
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It will get on the desk of whoever you send it to. And it will.
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B
I use it all the time. And you have to send it overnight. You can send it, you know, just normal, the cheapest one. But when they get that, it's being open, it's being read. Because it has a. Has layer of importance on it. Yeah. And so that's how I got into the business. And it. It was obviously, I was kind of a natural, if you will, on. On camera. Because I said, listen, no rehearsals. I know what I'm talking about. I do this every day live, you know, in front of people. So I'll just. Let me do the same presentation and film it. And that's how we started.
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So, obviously, your life changes exponentially from. You have a good copywriting business. You're doing direct mail. That's going.
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I was making millions and millions of dollars. The only thing that really changed was not the lifestyle, because it wasn't like, oh, you can only buy so many jets. Yeah, right. You can only live in so many mansions. So it really wasn't that, okay, you have more money stashed away. But what really changed was every place I went, I was the memory guy. So I went into a restaurant. Hey, you're the memory guy. So you're on tv. You're the memory guy. So all of a sudden, what changed Was I became a celebrity. I was known everywhere. I mean, they talked about me on Jeopardy. I was a question on Jeopardy. Who wants to be a Millionaire? I was a question on who wants to be a Millionaire? I was on all the talk shows. I was even spoofed on Saturday Night Live and, you know, mad TV and things like that. So I was. I was kind of a big thing back then, and, well, very well known. So that's the major thing that changed. I became, you know, quote, a celebrity.
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Were you in your mind, were you lose. Did you become your Persona or were you able to stay grounded?
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Well, the difference.
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Kind of hard not to.
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Well, the difference with me was I'm this. I'm the same person on stage or the same person on camera or the same person on this podcast that I am when I go and have dinner tonight with my friends. Yeah. So there is no difference. Now, that's not usual, because normally there's a Persona. You know, if you go into radio and you listen to the radio guys, back in the day, you know, they had a radio Persona, but then when you met them off, off, you know, camera or off, off stage or off the radio, they had a different Persona. So they had two different characters. Well, I think.
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I think what I meant to say was, you know, one of the things where people get themselves in peril in general is when their identity starts to become wrapped up in what they do or who they are, it stops becoming their identity ceases to exist in things that are within their own personal control. Like what? Like, celebrity is a very dangerous slope with that. And I think that's why when you see people lo. Lose that status or lose that celebrity, they go spiraling, I. E. Lindsay. That stuff, because of that. And I think if you didn't get wrapped up in that, like, how. Like, how. Because, like, you go from, like. And I'm just saying, because I had. I had this on a microcosm, right, Because I was on a reality show. I was on the Apprentice with Donald Trump, and while that show was on, I was super famous.
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What year were you on?
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The third season.
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Okay. Because my. My friend Bill Rancic won the first season.
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I know Bill.
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Okay. And I know Bill. And also Troy McLean was one of the first. I know he's a good friend of mine.
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They were season one. I was season three.
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Right, right. But.
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And as you remember, knowing those guys, we were super famous for ourselves.
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Very, very famous.
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Right. And then you're not famous at all. You fall off a ledge. And so I had a little bit of a personal experience with that getting wrapped up a little bit in that Persona thing. And I'm just like, how do you. How do you not do that?
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B
Well, for me, it was different because you look at motivational speakers or people that get into, let's say, the celebrity world. You know, they want to be on tv, they want to be on radio, they want to be seen, they want to be known. So there's a person that goes down that genre because they want celebrity status. And a lot of it has to do with a poor self image. I have a lot of friends who are professional comedians. I did some standup comedy back in the day, and all the guys really needed validation because they needed someone to laugh at their joke. And that validated them. It affirmed them. Right. It gave them some acknowledgement. And they craved it so much that they had to go on again and again and again to get that. And, well, I didn't go down the road to become a celebrity. I went down the road on tv because the mega memory home study course at the time was so valuable to people. The letters I got from so many people, how it changed their kids lives because now they went from season Ds to straight A's or business people were making more money and all these great stories. It was like, I need to do this. This is my dharma. This is my duty.
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Yeah.
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Even though I really don't want to do it, I'm doing it because it's. It's the D beauty that I have. I have to do this for people, not for me. But if you look at motivational speakers or people that are on stage, they always say, I love being on stage. I love it. Yeah, I don't love it. I do it because it's my dharma and I benefit people. But it's not something I do because I crave it or love it. When I do a seminar or something today or do it a public appearance or even the show, for example, I do it because I know I'm helping people. But my favorite part of the show or the stage performance or whatever is when it's over. And that's really is the difference. And this is one of the reasons why I went and lived in Switzerland, in Zurich, because my shows weren't running in Zurich, so I lived in Zurich. And that therefore I could. I could be nice.
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Anonymity.
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It was. It was fantastic.
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You can walk around. So this is doing gangbusters with, with the memory thing. And then you make the leap into the weight loss arena, which doesn't that Seems like a pretty. Like it's one thing for Tony Little to go from the Gazelle to now I have this workout thing, but this is like apples and oranges, right?
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From one to the other. Well, that's a 15 year period of time. From Mega Memory to the Weight Loss Cure book. I had mega memory. Then I did mega speed reading with Howard Berg, the world's fastest reader, which was a course on how to read fast. And then we had Scott Flansberg, the human Calculator, teach a course on how to do math calculations in your head, which was fantastic for kids to get over math phobias. So these were personal development programs. Then there was Dynamic Health, which talked about different ways to become healthier by eating better, an alkaline diet, exercise, breathing, drinking good water, et cetera. And that was in the health genre. So everything that I was promoting was a personal development program that benefited people and helped improve their quality of life and standard of living. When it came out, the book Natural Cures They Don't Want yout to Know about that was a big, huge blockbuster. 50 million copies sold, as I said, number one in the New York Times bestseller list, 26 weeks in a row. But I had struggled with weight my whole life. And when I had found the HCG, Dr. Simeon's protocol in Germany, and I lost 45 pounds in 45 days and kept it off for a year and my appetite was normalized. And now all of a sudden I felt like my whole life is different. I said, I have to write a book about it because you just want to share because there's so many people that struggled like me. And so I wrote the book the Weight Loss Cure they Don't Want you to Know about, which also became a bestseller. And then I did the infomercial promoting that because it worked for me and it changed my life and my perspective toward food and eating and my own body. So this was really a revolutionary thing. And that's, that's consistent with what I would promote on television. I would promote things on TV that worked for me. I found benefit from, I gave to my friends and family and co workers and they benefited. And I said, this is something everybody else needs to know as well. Right.
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So where did you run into trouble first? So that, that 2004 issue, yeah, I
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never, I never was charged with any fraud. I had never had any consumer complaints. Tens of millions of customers, most repeat customers, never had a class action lawsuit. You know, Dr. Phil got a class action lawsuit. My friend Suzanne Summers, she got a class action lawsuit. From customers because they were unhappy. The customers loved my stuff, no problem. Lowest return rate in the industry in Australia. I was the consumer protection agency did a study and found that we had the highest customer satisfaction rate, so there was no customer issues. But then I wrote the book Natural cures they don't want you to know about. And I exposed the pharmaceutical industry how they worked in collusion with the FDA and the media to suppress the truth about non drug and non surgical ways to cure and prevent disease. And that's when the proverbial shit hit the fan. So that's when I started getting attacked by the government, not by any customers, and never with a charge of fraud. The only allegation was you're making unsubstantiated or undocumented claims. And I said, listen, government, you guys are the criminals. Because you just said I'm making undocumented and unsubstantiated claims. But you never asked me to provide you the documentation or substantiation. And I then provided 100 banker's boxes of documentation and they would settle the case with no finding of wrongdoing. So I never did anything wrong. So how did I get into real trouble?
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Yeah.
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In one of the settlements it said, I will not. Because I'm selling books, I will not misrepresent the contents of a book. Pretty. Pretty innocuous.
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Sure.
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Of course I'm not going to misrepresent the contents of a book that I wrote.
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Yeah. Something you felt you hadn't done to this point.
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How can I do that? I'm not going to do that. Everything that I do is reviewed by all my lawyers, line by line, and they sign off on it and say, this is compliant, you can run it. So I came up with the weight loss cure book show. And I said on the show, I did the protocol and I found it to be easy.
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Okay.
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And they said, we don't think it's easy. Therefore, you misrepresented the contents of the book, and therefore you didn't commit fraud. You didn't commit any.
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You violated your previous agreement.
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I should be held in contempt of court because I violated the agreement. And I said, wait a minute, how can you say that the weight loss cure protocol is not easy? Have you actually did it? Did you judge, did you do it? Ftc, did you do it? No. Then how do you know? I go, that's my subjective opinion. I'm giving my opinion, which is a first amendment constitutional right. And I have all these people, tens of thousands, that say they did it. And it Was easy. I'm telling you, I did it, and it was easy. Where's the misrepresentation of the contents of the book? Whoa. I was held in contempt of court, and I was given the longest sentence in the history of America for contempt of court. Ten years in federal prison.
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So my first. Okay, so did you ever. Look, we're gonna put our tinfoil hats on now, which. Cause this has definitely affected you. Did you ever start, like, trying to trace back the origin?
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Oh, I know.
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Where did this complaint start? And then look at the donors to that person.
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I know. I know where it came from because I was brought into chambers, and the judge brought me into chambers. He told me where it came from. So I know exactly where it came from. I know what I was supposed to do. Stop talking about the drug companies. This was the drug companies. I was exposing the food industry, how they work together. I expose that. The food industry. I mean, think about this. People start developing some weird disease, restless leg syndrome. It's never happened before. And then all of a sudden, when it becomes very popular that everybody has this disease, there's a medicine for it. There's a medicine that took 10 years to get approved. But how did they know 10 years ago that 10 years in the future everyone's going to have restless leg syndrome or some craziness? Because it's planned. The food industry actually uses chemicals in the food in certain combination, and they know what the food is going to produce as an illness down the road. The drug companies and the same guys are on the same boards. They then start producing a drug for the future epidemic illness that's coming. And that's what I revealed in the book. And this is when they went crazy and they said, we have to shut this guy out.
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And this is 2004. When is this?
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Yeah, well, it came to a head in 2013, but it was 2007.
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So here. So here's the funny. Here's not funny. It's terrible. I mean, obviously it's prison. But the thing about it is, now you look at what's out. You look at what Robert F. Kennedy is doing with artificial dyes, you look at all this stuff. And peptides.
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It's all in my book.
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And peptides are everywhere.
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Everything is in my book. Berberine, it's all in my book.
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Just everywhere.
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It's all in the book. So what I did back in 2005, in the book Natural Cures, that book is effectively the playbook for the Make America Healthy Again movement from rfk, red dye, high fructose corn syrup. Genetically modified food. Look at trans fats. I said in there, forget the trans fats. Bring back the beef tallow again. It's healthier for you. And now it's coming back, isn't it? They realize that the trans fats are what's caused all the heart disease. It wasn't the beef. It wasn't the saturated fats. It was the trans fats that scar the arteries and create the heart disease. I wrote this in 2005. So I exposed all this. But back then, nobody dared talk about it.
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But my point was, if this book came out today, nobody would even blink at it.
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Nobody would blink. So guess what? A new one is coming out today. At the end of the year, I'll have a new book. The new Natural cures updated version will come out. So that'll be coming out later this year.
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Okay, so with no class action suit, with no wrongful death, with none. None of that stuff.
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Oh, no, no, no. No happy customers. None of that. Nothing but happy customers. You get tens of millions of happy
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customers, you get 10 years in federal prison.
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Yeah. What.
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Okay, what is. I can't even imagine what that day is like.
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Well, this is something that people have a hard time grasping because the universe doesn't do things to us, it does things for us.
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Sure.
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And as we're going through life, if we're following our dharma, which is our duty, which is what I follow, I know that life is going to take an interesting and sometimes adventurous turn. Now, when we kids, we loved adventure. When we get older, we call them disasters. When we're kids, it was like, wow, what a great weekend, man. You know, I crashed a car. I fell off a bridge. I almost got killed. I got thrown. I mean, you talk about this adventure that you had. I got lost. We ran out of gas, had a siphon gas. The cops chased us. We talk about this and, like, this was the best weekend of my life. But if something like that happened today, we call it a disaster. So when this came down, I knew it was coming. I was told it was going to come. I wrote about it in the book Natural Cures. I go, the fact that I'm writing this book, that in the future, the government will wipe me out, take everything I own, and probably put me in jail. I put it in the book.
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That was in the book.
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It's in the book. I said, I know what's coming because I've been told if you write this book and publish it and sell it, that's what's going to happen. Which is why not one publisher would publish the book. I had to start my own publishing company, invest my own tens of millions of dollars, buy the books in hardcover inventory and sell them. And the book obviously did really well, 50 million copies sold. So it was very profitable. But what people don't know is I gave all the money away because right in the book Natural Cure, that says I don't make any money on the sale of this book, all, all the royalties that I get, I'm going to be giving away to charity, all of it. So I didn't do it for the money. I did it for the people and to educate and start the movement, which today is the movement. People now are more educated today about natural cures than ever before.
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A
Yeah. And it's interesting because around that same time that you were kind of dealing with the insurance companies in the government, I had something kind of similar that we had business. We spun up an insurance agency in Florida, and we found out that this was when it was just Medicare Part A and Part B before there was Medicare Part D that helped with drugs.
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B
Right.
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So you could get a gap supplement that would help fill in the gaps for your Medicare Part A and B. But seniors were on their own with their drug costs, and drug costs were out of control in the early 2000s. And we found out that apparently the drug companies had a handshake agreement with the US Government, which was as they said, hey, as long as we give away the medicine to seniors that meet certain economic requirements, you won't mess with us about drug prices. And the government said, yeah, no problem. And then they buried all the programs. So we became experts in these free medicine programs. So we would go into a senior's house and say, look, we're going to get you a new Medicare policy through us, but we're going to make your medicine bill go to zero. And we just crushed it. So. But to think that that kind of an arrangement, that there could be these programs that were just buried, they could. That millions of people needed.
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B
Yeah.
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I mean. Okay, I'm listening. I got my tinfoil hat on. I get it. And I can definitely see why at that, you know, with the relationship and the correlation between those, the health, the health industry and the US Government, I can kind of see why they wouldn't want that information out.
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Of course. And, you know, I exposed a lot of that. My book Free Money, where I exposed the government grant program and how. Who gets the grants? How it's the friends, relatives, neighbors of all the politicians, because there's only so much money on each of the programs and magically they're already gone before the average American can even apply for them. So it's all, it's all payoffs of all the donors in the free gr. So it I expose that. And I got attacked by that as well for exposing that. That and I was the first guy.
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A
I gotta tell you just from hearing this story though so far, right. I gotta be honest. So one of my fraternity brothers, if you just recently saw there was a documentary on Netflix called, I think it was Pill Dealers about the opioid epidemic and how they did that. One of the guys that was a sales manager for one of those companies in South Florida that was pushing those pills like crazy is one of my fraternity brothers who did go to jail. And I had him on here and I was, you know, you know, obviously it's not the same sort of thing, but, you know, here's a guy that did time in federal prison because of this thing and, and it was very much, you know, it was easy to see where he was at fault. I'm not seeing that with like I fully expected to come in here and have you like, well, there's a little class action suit and this happened and these people got injured and then yeah, maybe there was some stuff that was taken out of context, but there's none of that in this story.
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B
Give you another example of. Do you remember 1,800abcdefg that was hooked on phonics?
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Yeah.
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Sean Shanahan, a friend of mine, sold that program because I exposed in mega memory that the Department of education was taking phonics out of the school system, replacing it with the look see method. Basically making kids illiterate. They can't read. And today nobody can read because we didn't learn phonics. The kids aren't learning phonics. So Sean Shanahan said, without phonics, we're going to be dumbing down the American kids. So he came out with a home study course called Hooked on Phonics. What is the problem with teaching kids how to read? How could that be a crime? The government said, no, we want him done in one week. They had a three pronged approach. They sued him, they froze all of his assets, personal and business. And he got attacked on 60 Minutes and three other programs on TV. Plus all the media, they just lied.
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But why?
- [26:38]
B
Because the government didn't want phonics in the school and taught. They wanted to dumb down the kids, which is why they were putting, getting everybody on Ritalin back then. It was like epidemic, the amount of ADHD drugs and ADD drugs being get on the kids and a whole bunch of things. But the point is, they buried him, put him out of business and crushed him. They tried to do that with me, but I knew it was coming. So I had prepared for the attack, and I was ready to fight back, and which is what I did.
- [27:08]
A
But when they hit you with that fine. Because they adjusted the fine, right.
- [27:11]
B
It was no fine. I've never been fined, and I never had any restitution. The government had what's called an order to pay. And this is what people don't understand. There was no finding of wrongdoing except contempt of court. And the judge said, said, since people who bought the book on TV is about $37 million worth of book sales on TV alone, I want you to deposit $37 million into an escrow account with the FTC and then hold it there. If anybody wants a refund that way, the money will be there and we can give them the refund. That's where the 37 million is.
- [27:44]
A
That's it.
- [27:44]
B
And they said, and if people don't want a refund after a certain point of time, we'll give you the money back. So I was never fined, and I was never ordered to pay restitution because there was no restitution to pay.
- [27:53]
A
So why. So why is that so isn't that 37 still showing as unpaid debt?
- [27:57]
B
No. So what happened? I finally settled. All right.
- [27:59]
A
Okay.
- [27:59]
B
Yeah. So they. And at the time, I knew this was coming. So I had leveraged all my companies. We gave most of the money away to charity. So I said, listen, I'm not liquid enough to write you a check for 37 million. I come up with about half of it. I says, we'll pay off the other half in a few years. Besides, nobody's asking for a refund. What's the issue? No, we want the money now. So they appointed a receiver. Wiped out all my companies, Crushed everything. Sold things. 2 cents on the dollar. And the whole idea was, let's bankrupt him and let's put him away. That way we'll shut him up for good. And that just didn't work.
- [28:36]
A
So you go away for the 10, you go away for 10 years. And obviously, I did eight and a half.
- [28:40]
B
Eight and a half years. So it wasn't the full 10.
- [28:43]
A
And I'm assuming this was not. This was not San Quentin you were in.
- [28:47]
B
Well, I started Pleasant. I started off at mcc. Chicago Metropolitan Correctional center in Chicago. Unheard of, by the way. Contempt of court, white collar crime, where they took me into custody instead of having me. Self surrender. That's unheard of. So I was there for eight months with triple murderers. Guys doing life sentences for, you know, this and that. I saw two stabbings. I mean, guys right next to me at a table, was fighting over a piece of chicken, got stabbed. It was crazy. So I was there then, you know, shackled up, put in paper, paper pants and a paper shirt. Put on the tarmac, put on Con Air, shipped down to the transfer station in Oklahoma. Again, triple murderers, put in cages like an animal. If you looked at some of these facilities and compared it to animals and said, hey, is this something that is okay for an animal to have? The PETA would go crazy and say, no, you can't have this. But that's what we were in. Then I got transferred to the penitentiary in Atlanta, and I was there for a while, and then I got transferred to federal prison Camp Montgomery, Alabama, which was a camp.
- [29:53]
A
Yeah.
- [29:54]
B
Okay, so now we're in a camp, but it's still prison.
- [29:56]
A
Took a minute.
- [29:57]
B
Yeah. And it's still prison.
- [29:59]
A
There's no movie night.
- [29:59]
B
It's still prison. Yeah. You know, this is not a pleasant place. Nobody wants to be there, believe me.
- [30:04]
A
How'd you pass the time?
- [30:06]
B
Well, I took advantage of it because, remember, I know that the universe doesn't do things to us, it does things for us. And there's no such thing as good or bad news, just news. It's how you look at the situation. And the first thing I did was I read the book by Viktor Frankl called Man's Search for Meaning. He was in a Nazi concentration camp. So after reading the book, the first thing I said was thank you, thank you, thank you for me being here because I could find something to be thankful and appreciative for. Thank God I'm not in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II and being Jewish, okay? So now I'm in this facility and I said, I'm going to take advantage of this. I can meditate every day. I can do yoga every day. I can work like a maniac. I can shoot pool. I can play softball. I can be on this. I can play soccer. I can exercise. I can learn foreign languages. I can learn how to play bridge and become a really good bridge player. I can meet super interesting, fascinating people from a variety of economic backgrounds, different races, different religions, different, you know, life experiences. There's wealthy guys there like Jeff Skilling from Enron, the CFO from Enron, other billionaires that were there. Jesse Jackson Jr. Was there. So it was this fashion. I took advantage of this opportunity. I could read books that I've always wanted to read. I can write all the things I want to write that I didn't have time to. I said, I don't know if 10 years is enough time. That's how I looked at it. I said, this is going to be the opportunity of a lifetime that nobody gets a chance to do all the things you ever wish student wanted to do and have a complete reset. And when I come out, since everything's taken away, I have a blank canvas, I can create the life I want exactly the way I want. There's nothing I have to do or must do, you know, because you have all these responsibilities and things like that as we go through life. This was, to me, the blessing. Every night I'd go to bed and go, thank you. Thank you for this blessing, for this opportunity. And I'm going to take full advantage of it, which is what I did.
- [32:16]
A
There had to be a time, though, when you're sitting there where you're like, okay, it's a matter of reflection where you look back at how you were living before and said, I wish I would have done that differently. Or, no, not at all.
- [32:25]
B
No one bit of regret. You know, I go fishing up in Canada, and we live in very meager accommodations and we're cooking over a fire and we don't say, oh, boy, you know, I wish I was at the Four Seasons Hotel. We love it. It's like, fantastic. We haven't taken a shower in a week and we love it. It's like, this is fantastic. I wish it could go on for another two or three weeks. We don't have any regrets. We love it. So same thing with life. If you look at life and embrace life, instead of resist it, embrace it like we did when we were kids and just enjoy it for the splendor and wonder that every moment is. It's a different experience. One is not better than the other. Staying in the Ritz Carlton hotel or staying in a pup tent are two different experiences. If you say this is better than that, you're missing the point. They are two different experiences. You might have a preference at some point after a while, but you can embrace the experience for what it is.
- [33:27]
A
When you were in, what year did you get out? When did you get out?
- [33:30]
B
2021.
- [33:30]
A
2021. So you're already kind of. While you're in, you've got to be watching the climate change, about the things that you're really sitting in. Sitting in jail for. You're watching the opinions, and you're seeing this stuff come out and where people are talking about Berberine, if we're talking about all of these different things and HCG and peptides and all of that stuff, trt and all this becomes this huge fad that you can get done, and everybody's talking about it. And, I mean, are you watching this and watching the news saying, like, what am I doing here?
- [33:59]
B
Well, I really wasn't paying much attention because I really wasn't watching the news or watching tv. I was too busy reading and exercising and meditating and doing yoga and learning foreign languages and having a time of my life. So I really wasn't paying much attention. But I knew the landscape was going to change because I was following my dharma, my duty. And it didn't even matter what the landscape was when I got out. Because when I got out, I was thinking, why don't. I mean, when I come out, I have a blank canvas. Do I want to live in an ashram? Do I want to go fishing? Do I want to retire? Do I. Do I want to live in Europe? What do I want to do? Do I want to write another book? Not write another book? Do I want to start a business? Not start a business? I have a blank canvas here. I can do whatever I want. I can create the exact perfect life that I want because I have a clean slate. So when I came out, I never, for example, I never had a smartphone. So the question was, should I get a smartphone or not get a smartphone? I had a flip phone. So, okay, I'll get a smartphone. I'm thinking, maybe this is not a good idea. It's like, no, you have to have it. You can't even go to a show sometimes unless you have on your phone the ticket on your phone. Like, I walk into the show, it's like, I don't have my. Where's the paper ticket? You have to have your. On your phone. I go, I don't have a phone. And you can't see the show.
- [35:12]
A
So when you first got out, what was the first. Like, you had to have a plan. Like, okay, I've decided this direction I'm gonna go. Yes, the world is your oyster. What is the first direction you chose? You chose.
- [35:21]
B
I didn't. When I first got out, I just said, I'm just gonna let you know, things unfold and present itself to me. So when I first got out, I was in home confinement, which means I couldn't leave the house. So for many, many months, I had an ankle bracelet on. I couldn't leave the house. So I thought, you know, I didn't. I haven't had any good ice cream. So let me. Let me get some McDonald's ice cream. And I thought, this is not as good as I thought it was going to be. So I don't forget the ice cream. And so if the machine.
- [35:47]
A
If the machine's even working. Yeah, it's ever working.
- [35:49]
B
So I'm like, okay, so let me let you know. First thing is, is there any food I want? I go, well, let me. Let me make a list of things I need. I actually need clothes, since I have none. And there was this new thing called Amazon. You could actually go on the computer and you could buy stuff online, which was like, wow.
- [36:05]
A
It's like getting frozen and unfrozen.
- [36:07]
B
This was like, wow. And they'll ship it to your house how many weeks before, like, tomorrow? I go, what? Oh, my God, this is the coolest thing. So I started learning about all the new technology and said, okay, let me learn about technology. So let me figure out how to use the computer and use the smartphone, because I don't know how to use. And so I took advantage of that, and I thought, you know, what am I going to do? And we'll kind of play it by ear where there.
- [36:30]
A
I. You know, I just. I'm thinking about that scene from. Was it Wall Street? Like a sequel? Not the original Wall street, but the sequel. Like when Michael Douglas walks in a restaurant and talks to people that he used to know after, you know, he's out of jail and know no longer who he was. And there was, like, moments of, like, where it's like, oh, they kind of ostracize him. Did you feel any of that when you got out from.
- [36:49]
B
People know the. Quite the opposite. The opposite, yes, because I was in Chicago, and that was the hub of it. So I was on the news every single day, right? So. So when I got out, everybody says, kevin, you're out. I mean, when I would go anywhere, somebody would recognize me and know me and shake my hand and, you know, I support you and so forth. It was really an overwhelming response. And while I was away, some of my supporters founded the Kevin Trudeau Fan Club. So I had these, you know, hundreds of thousands of fans, millions of fans around the world that were supporting the fan club. And that allowed me to get a little money because they were making some contributions. So I had a little money to start and kind of rebuild because I didn't have a car. I didn't have any clothes. I didn't have a place to live, so I had to basically start over from scratch. Plus, I had a lot of legal bills that I still owed, so people would donate money, and I would use that to pay back the legal bills. And I was still negotiating with the government over how much money I owed them, if any. And that went on for a long time until I finally settled, which I did, and that's behind me now 100%. And what happened was people just started saying, we have questions. And that led to every month, I would do a live zoom call. I didn't know about Zoom, and I was like, you can do this online. I'm like, really? So I did this live zoom call, and people from all over the world would ask me questions about my experience and how I overcame the adversity, how I dealt with the adversity. And a lot of people had questions about the case, like you did, because they had misunderstanding. And so I would do these monthly zooms for people that were making contributions and became a partner in the fan club for 25 bucks a month. And I thought, this is bringing in revenue to help me pay bill get going again. Yeah. And I was giving back, and people loved it. And then people kept on saying the your wish is your command audios that you did 20 years ago. You need to put that in a book. You need to write it in a book now. And so that led to me getting the transcripts of the seminar I did 25 years ago in the Swiss Alps and then putting it into the book, your wish is your command, which is now screaming on. On Amazon and doing really, really well. When you.
- [38:53]
A
So when you. When you say they took your companies, did you lose the rights to, like, the memory?
- [38:56]
B
No, no, no, no. I kept all the copyrights. Yeah.
- [38:58]
A
Okay, you have all the copyrights?
- [38:59]
B
Yeah. So I have the copyrights of everything. Are you still selling all that mega memory? We're still selling. Yes. Yeah, mega memory. We're still selling the natural cures book. A new version's coming out later this year. And then I authored the your wish is your command book, which is. Is it brand new since I've been out?
- [39:16]
A
I mean, look, it's a story, obviously, of huge adversity that you've. You've managed to come back from. What do you think is it about you that allows you to have such a positive outlook through all of these things?
- [39:26]
B
Well, there's a couple things. Number one, success is a decision away. And everyone makes a decision of whether this is a good scenario or a bad scenario. And it's easier said than done because we all have buttons that can get pushed and triggered. We have memories, we have stuff in our DNA from our ancestors. So when something happens in our life, you get a fender bender, do you go, I can't believe I got that right. And are you even thinking about how you're acting? You go and rent a car. Hi, I'm here for car rental. I'm sorry, we don't have a car available for you. What do you mean? I have a reservation. Yes, you have a reservation, but we don't have a car. Car. How do you. Do you react to that or do you respond? Do you just snap? Do you have this uncontrollable irrational emotion and outburst? Most people do in various scenarios. So that's because of energetic imprints. If you clear that out, which is what I did, now there's nothing. You don't have any buttons. People can't push any buttons because you don't have any. So that's easy. So when you don't have any buttons that can be pushed, nothing can be triggered. Now, when you're dealing with a situation, your rational mind can look at it and go, I can choose to be miserable and upset, or I can just work through this, or I can choose to be a champion and win.
- [40:49]
A
You mentioned something earlier, you glanced over it. When you're talking about the phonics deal, you're talking about the dumbing down of America. And I feel like right now we are in a period of accelerated the dumbing down of America. I just feel like we are. I feel like the way that the algorithms are designed on social media, place people in echo chambers where they're only hearing their own voice rattling back around at them. And I think, you know, it's funny, you talk, we talked a little bit about the importance of what goes in your mouth. And I think we're at a place now where people are more aware of what goes in their mouth than what goes in their head. And when you look at what's happening, there was a movie that came out several years ago called Idiocracy about just the dumbing down America, where, I don't know if you saw it, but where we end up in. I feel like we're, we're on our way there. As somebody that has taught in education, obviously, and making self improvement has been so important to you. A, what do you think about that statement? Do you agree with it? And B, what Do you think can be done?
- [41:40]
B
Well, in America? Studies just came out maybe a month ago which shows cognitive ability in young people is lower than ever before, since they've been keeping records. So the brain's power of young people, we're talking teens and in their 20s, is lower than ever before. The ability to focus and concentrate is lower than ever before. The ability to calculate in your head is lower than ever before. Effectively, IQ is lower than ever before as well. So, yes, we are dumbing down people, and this is a plan. Okay, not talk about that, but the end.
- [42:21]
A
Going back to the tinfoil hats again.
- [42:22]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:22]
A
All right.
- [42:23]
B
But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter to me, because if there's a lot of stupid people out there, I just think there's less competition. I mean, look, I don't try.
- [42:33]
A
If it doesn't it scare you in the entire general direction of the country,
- [42:37]
B
because here's the thing. I don't try to make a pig sing because I will waste my time and annoy the pig. So I am not trying to force any opinion on you or anyone, but I will offer a buffet of options. And if you take it, good. And if you don't, good too. I have no problem with that. So, look, here's a program to help improve your memory. Because you remember. You can't remember anything. And today people can't remember anything. No, I mean, you can't remember anything. Like, I tell somebody. I'm on the plane. I'm on the plane, and I have my sport jacket. And I get on the plane and I tell the flight attendant, can you hang my sport jacket up? Yes, thank you. She goes, I'll be with you in a minute. Okay. The other people are getting on. The plane's about to. Excuse me, can you hang out my sports jacket? Oh, yeah, she forgot. I mean, it's. It's. You. You really forgot.
- [43:28]
A
Okay, I'm gonna recall 10 seconds.
- [43:30]
B
She hangs up the sport jacket. And then as the plane is landing, I said, excuse me, I have my sport jacket in there. She goes, oh, yeah, she forgot that I have a sport jacket in there. I said, can I get. She goes, well, I'm not gonna give it to you now. I'll give it to you in a moment, okay? Because she was clearing up some. Picking up some, you know, water. She forgot. She sits down, puts her thing on, starts talking to the person next to her. The plane lands. I goes, excuse me, my sport jacket. Oh, yeah, again, she forgot twice. This is not unusual. People can't remember Anything. Their cognitive ability is lower than ever before. They can't think. You look at a, at a movie, you look at a black and white movie and the way they film the movies is they have a camera and the camera is shot, let's say it's in a living room scene and there's three or four actors and the camera is not cutting. It's not doing a close up, close up. It's a wide angle. All the actors are in the scene and all the camera is doing is moving a little to the left, a little to the right so that everybody's in the scene and people are talking and talk and look at the number of minutes. Minutes, minutes. It's one shot. No cuts. You look at the movies today, it's virtually a few seconds before there's a cut.
- [44:46]
A
Yeah.
- [44:47]
B
Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. Close up, close up, close up. Close up. Wide shot, close up. It's cutting. Why? Because otherwise the person can't concentrate. They'll go. They'll start going into a difference. They can't think. Yeah. There's no, there's no cognitive ability. So at the end of the day, that's going to continue. It's not going to change. The number of people that are just going to be dumbed down is going to be increased. The number of people that are in a trance and are walking around asleep, that's going to increase.
- [45:17]
A
God, I always think about the movie, Wally. Or the people on the ship are just drinking, you know, shakes, watching, screams.
- [45:23]
B
Yes. Remember that? They were lying there.
- [45:24]
A
Yeah. They're just laying there, just watching the screens with the Slurpees that.
- [45:27]
B
Yes, I'm glad you mentioned it because I keep thinking, what movie did I see that? Okay, I'm glad you told me that because I want to show clips of that one. Yeah. But the point is. So what can you do? Well, you know, I wrote the book you Wish is yous Command how to Manifest your Desires where I outline the 40 point algorithm of success. Okay. If somebody reads that now, they know there's no excuse. But it doesn't matter if they apply it or not apply it. Maybe they'll apply it a little. Maybe they'll see a little results. Maybe they're not ready right now. Maybe they're not sick and tired of being sick and tired enough. Maybe they don't have enough pain in their life yet. And maybe at some point in the future they will have enough pain and they'll remember that book and they'll remember to go back to it and start applying it. If a person takes advantage of the different things that are being offered. And here's the good News, because of YouTube and because of these different platforms, there is more good stuff available now. Yeah, there's more crap available too. Okay, yes, that's probably overwhelming. But if a person is serious, whether it's making money, improving their health, improving relationships, becoming spiritually aware and enlightened and awake and conscious, they have no excuse. It's all available.
- [46:36]
A
The information's everywhere.
- [46:38]
B
It's information overload. But you can pick and choose what resonates with you.
- [46:41]
A
Well, let's talk about that, because in the age of CEO of Nvidia came out a couple weeks ago and there was an interview with him where he was talking about, you know, commodities and what he values and employees. And he said, you know, three years ago I would have said intelligence, but now intelligence is a commodity. I can buy it with AI. So in the new economy and in the new world, pushing forward with artificial intelligence, you know, you're a success coach. What do you think is that? What do you think are the skills that you're going to need to succeed? I'm not talking about practical skills of learning how to code or prompt AI. That's not. That's what I'm talking about. But what skills do you think are important to succeed in the new world?
- [47:16]
B
It is intelligence. Because AI is not intelligent. They give you wrong answers all the time. I asked AI, ChatGPT or whatever a question about let's say something, and they gimme the answer. I go, what about this? Good catch.
- [47:28]
A
Yeah.
- [47:29]
B
I go, good catch, good catch. I go, this is the obvious one, and you didn't even know it, so I'm not so convinced. So it's really cognitive ability and intelligence. Intelligence and the brain working very fast. I'll give you an example of something people can do real simple, and that is gps. If you can shut the damn GPS off and try to remember how to get to the place you've been to 10 times, how come you need GPS on the 10th time? I get it the first time, I don't know where it is. Okay, maybe. Okay, I want to make sure I'm there on time. I don't know how to get there. I'll follow. But the second time, use your memory.
- [48:06]
A
Yeah. Because you're not working it out at all.
- [48:08]
B
Not at all. And a lot of times I'll say, look, there are probably eight ways I can get home from here. Let me figure it out. And I'm going to enjoy having my brain do Mental gymnastics and mental exercises and cog. Wait a minute, I'm going the wrong way. I need to. And I play that because that's exercising my brain in the same way that when I'm walking in the airport, I don't take the escalator, I take the stairs. Because this is an opportunity for me to exercise my body. Why not? Why take the escalator? Why take the moving sidewalk?
- [48:41]
A
So all these apps are the escalators for your brain.
- [48:45]
B
So use your brain. Yes. Use technology effectively and be smart about it. But don't forget to exercise your brain.
- [48:53]
A
See, I think that for me, and I talk to my kids about this all the time. I have two teenagers and it's like, listen, having a high EQ, I think is going to be more important than having a high IQ in the future. Luckily, my kids are very smart. But, you know, because they're these. There's a whole generation of people in this country that walk around staring at
- [49:12]
B
a phone all day.
- [49:12]
A
And I say the most important skill set I think you can develop is being able to sit at a table like this and connect with another human being at a visceral level that makes them feel seen and heard. And I think that is going to be in short order.
- [49:23]
B
You know, interpersonal relationships is also horrible. No one knows how to have a conversation. No one knows how to go to dinner without their phone. No one knows how to meet somebody and interact. So interpersonal relationship is very weak. But there's a few things. I'll give you a list of a few things that people are really.
- [49:40]
A
Let's have it.
- [49:41]
B
Number one is initiative. People don't take initiative today. They have very little drive, motivation, or inspiration in activity. Why is that they don't take initiative? Because everything they do, they're being told to do do. The voice tells them, take a right, do this, do that. It's. They're constantly being trained, just like a dog, that you only obey my commands. So everything that's happening is we're obeying commands. So rather than take initiative, we're being trained to obey commands. So if a person will take initiative, which is doing something when you're not asked to do it, okay, that's number one. Number two, enthusiasm. There's a word called enthusiasm. Dale Carnegie wrote a book, actually, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, or Dale Carnegie, one of those two, wrote a book on enthusiasm, which means God within us. It's the energy within you. People are not alive. They have no inner. It's not motivation. Motivation comes from the outside. Enthusiasm comes from the inside. And they don't have the juice. They don't have a zest for life. They don't wake up in the morning, can't wait to get out of bed.
- [50:55]
A
Yeah.
- [50:55]
B
The only time we do that, if we're doing something that we absolutely love, like skiing. Right. I'm gonna. I'm with a bunch of guys. We're going on a ski trip. I don't ski, but I'm gonna be with my buddies. Four o' clock in the morning, they got the lights on and they're like. I go, what the hell are you doing? We're going skiing. They had. I go, you know, I've never seen you guys so enthusiastic in my life. Because now you're doing something that you love. Why don't you act that same way at your job or your business? And things will probably turn around. Now I'm enthusiastic when I go fishing because I get up at 4 o' clock in the morning. I can't wait to get out there and get on the lake and go fish for the walleye. So enthusiasm is really missing. The next one is curiosity. People are not curious. When we were kids, we're always curious, but we didn't have a need to know. So there's a difference between curiosity and a need to know. And there was a great book written about curiosity.
- [51:42]
A
Well, I'm going to say why I think people aren't curious. I think again, back to social media. Part of it has made people so obsessed, absorbed, self, completely self absorbed. I feel like it's so crazy. Like, I. There are people that follow me. And so I appreciate everybody that follows me on social media, but I literally could go on and make a comment about how the Choctaw Indians somehow influenced the geopolitical power and oil prices in Chile. And there's a couple people that. I don't care what I write, they're going to have a comment in their opinion on it. Yeah, like, it's like, you don't have to have an opinion on everything. One of the most liberating, powerful things that I've ever started saying is I don't, I don't have, or nor do I need to have an opinion on that. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And if more people said, I don't know, I think it's better. But I think that's why people stop being curious. Because they're waiting for their turn to talk.
- [52:35]
B
Correct. God gave you two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately. Listen more Than you talk and use the six honest serving men and use them till you die. They are what, when and where, who, how and why. When you're talking to people, collect data, ask questions, be curious, don't give your opinion, say I don't know, what do you think? And get their opinion. Because if you add that person's data to your data bank, you have more data in your computer that now you can calculate faster and more.
- [53:10]
A
More.
- [53:11]
B
So Curiosity. It was a great book written. The name of it was curiosity. And it was fascinating because people who are very successful and I hang around, you know, guys who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, run trillion dollar hedge funds. And when we're all around, the curiosity of this group of men and women is awesome because they're always curious, like, why do they do that? I wonder why they do that. But they don't have a need to know. When we were a kid, kids, we'd say, why is the sky blue? And then our dad would say, well, it's kind of complicated. Okay, so I'm curious, but I don't really need to know. So if you have curiosity versus need to know, and today people have this need to know, so they go down these rabbit, rabbit holes, you know, and now they get stuck and therefore they can't move forward.
- [53:59]
A
So you said those are the three. Curiosity and that.
- [54:03]
B
Yeah, initiative, enthusiasm and curiosity.
- [54:06]
A
Curiosity. Okay. What advice would you give somebody if, like, if you had, if somebody said, kevin, of all your wisdom, all your years, all your stuff, boil it down. Give me, give me the, give me the three minutes that's going to change me the most.
- [54:19]
B
Number one, find something in your life you're not willing to. You're willing, you're not willing to accept anymore. Find some pain point. What in your life are you fed up with that you are not willing to tolerate in your life anymore that's going to motivate you? That's the why behind the why. Champions love to win, but they hate losing more. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser. Right? Vince Lombardi. So that's number one. And nobody has that, because unless you find something that you are absolutely fed up with, you're not going to be driven. Number two, define exactly what you want with clarity and specificity and write it down. Next, see yourself in possession of that and feel now as if you would feel if you actually had it. And then most importantly, release attachment to the outcome of achieving it by saying, and if it never happens, it's perfectly okay. Maintain that good feeling and be thankful and appreciative for everything you have in your life.
- [55:16]
A
But if you lose the attachment to it of saying it's okay if it doesn't happen, where's the drive? I mean, shouldn't there be disappointment?
- [55:22]
B
Yeah, no, the drive is still going to be there. But what you eliminate is the fear of not getting it, which is a counterintention.
- [55:28]
A
Got it.
- [55:28]
B
So this is why people say, you know, it happened when I least expected it, because you released attachment to the outcome and then you allowed it to present itself. You were in a state of allowing, that's what Esther Hicks calls it. You're in the state of letting go. That's what Hawkins calls it. It. So it's releasing attachment to the outcome. But if you do that cycle that I just mentioned 10 times a day, you're constantly being driven, but you're maintaining a really good state because you're putting those rockets of desire into the universe, but you don't have any fear that it's not going to happen.
- [56:03]
A
You know, it's funny, I was reading something a couple of weeks ago I'm not even going to try to like. It was some Norwegian physicist and he was talking about the more desire you have for an outcome, the more the universe will stack against you to balance itself out, right?
- [56:19]
B
Because the word desire in that particular instance is being defined as needing something which is putting out a vibration of lack that you don't have it. And also the fear of not getting it. So you have two counterintentions going against your desire that you want to achieve it. So I want this, but I feel like I don't have it. So I have counter intention number one and I fear of not getting it, counterintention number two. So you get two against one. That's why you're not going to get it. But the fact is you do have to define your dream and have a burning desire for its achievement. But in that particular case, desire is an obsession and it's a difference. If you need something, you'll get it. Because now there's no option that you're not going to. The fear of not getting it goes away. Example, a guy who was teaching me this. I was in a swimming pool with a big burly guy, hair all over his back, you know, really strong. And.
- [57:15]
A
And why do the hairy guys look
- [57:16]
B
so terrible in the pool? But he was strong. I mean, a bull, right? Okay, like a bear. So he comes over to me and he was worth like a billion and a half this this is 30 years ago. That's when that was.
- [57:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, okay.
- [57:25]
B
That was a lot of money. So he grabs me by the hair. That's when I had a lot more hair. He grabs my hair, pushes me under the water, and he's strong as a bear. I can't get out and I start freaking out and I'm kicking and finally I break free and come out. And he says, when you want something as bad as you want it to breathe, that's when you'll get it. Because there was no option. I was getting out. See, that's why they say success is a decision away. When you make a decision, I'm going to do it. That's it. Period. Nothing's going to stop me. No one's going to stop me. I'm getting it now. The fear goes away, all the counterintention falls away. And the whole universe stands up and says, holy crap, this guy's serious. And actually comes to your aid and helps you.
- [58:13]
A
That's why I don't like the word goal. I like the word objective.
- [58:16]
B
Yep.
- [58:16]
A
Because I think, you know, like, you look like the NFL and preseason, they'll have all the coaches standing on the podium. They're like, coach, what's the goal this year? Win the Super Bowl. That coach already knows his offensive line sucks. He already knows his team might make the playoffs, whatever, but yet he throws that out as our goal to win the Super Bowl. Because they all do. But I would rather have, like you said, I frame everything as objective because that's something that we're going to achieve.
- [58:37]
B
Yeah. And another way to look at that is you have to have a big dream, but you can't live in a dream world. So you have to have a big dream to stretch yourself. What are we going to achieve this year? Well, let's dream that we win the super bowl. But our first objective is let's win the first game.
- [58:54]
A
Yeah. Let's win the first play.
- [58:56]
B
Right. Exactly. So you keep breaking it down to the next logical step. Step. And that's really the mathematical equation for success. Because if you dream really, really big, you stretch yourself. And then when you go back to the next logical step, something reasonable, something that's right in front of you that looks. Become very. It looks very easy. And then you, you get. That's why in sports it's like, oh, the quarterback made a two yard pass, another two. He's just trying to get some momentum. Yep. Right. He's trying to build some momentum because he's getting a bit little, little a win. I got a win. I got to win. I got a little success. A little success. So you always set yourself up to win. So you keep getting little notches on your belt. That's a win. That's a win. That's a win. And when you do that, you start building momentum.
- [59:37]
A
Yep. Well, Kevin, this. This was amazing. Thank you so much for coming in. It's, you know, hey, I, like I said at the beginning, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know where we were going to go. Man, that is terrifying. Kind of what happened to you, that could happen. And thankfully, it seems like everybody's come around to your way of thinking with some of these things. I know they have because it's everywhere. It's literally everywhere now. But, man, if you're listening to this today, this is the number one thing I'm going to take away from you. And if I had to say was, which is this? Which is through the ups and the downs and through the trials and tribulations, you understood what your course was. You understood what you said dharma was, what your. What your mission in life was. And you didn't let any outside forces sway you from that or take you off of that. And you always traveled that path with joy. And I think if we could do that in our day to day, you're probably going to be better off than you were yesterday.
- [60:31]
B
The journey is the reward.
- [60:34]
A
Yeah. See you next week. Oh, Kevin, if they want to find
- [60:37]
B
you real quick, the book you Wish is yous Command is available at Amazon. Or they can go to kevintrudeau.com keventrudeau.com, everything's available right there.
- [60:47]
A
Perfect. Well, thanks for coming by. And again, if you ever need anything, you let me know.
- [60:50]
B
Super. Good.
- [60:50]
A
We'll see you next week.