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The BetterLife Podcast
The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS): Run Your Business on Rocket Fuel | Gino Wickman (Ep 159)
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- [00:00]
A
This is the Better Life podcast where we talk about real estate investing, building wealth, and all in all, living a better life. My name is Brendan Turner, and I've spent my life investing in real estate to achieve financial freedom. And alongside My co host, Mr. Cam Cathcart, we want to help you do the same. On the show, you're going to hear from world class guests who have been handpicked to help you level up your investing, your leadership, your goals, your habits, and more to become the very best version of yourself. So join us as we explore the habits, the actions, the beliefs that it takes to build wealth through real estate investing without losing your soul, Gino.
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B
And I'm pronouncing that right, Gino Wickham.
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C
Wickman.
- [00:36]
B
Wickman. Wickman. Okay, Gino Wickman. So I know you as the author of Rocket Fuel, the author of Traction, you the author of Shine. You help entrepreneurs turn their businesses into actual businesses with system and structure. I have used you in my business. Brandon has used you in his business. We both coach other real estate investors and we talk about you all the time. So it is such an honor to be able to interview you today. And, and I know that everybody listening is going to get a ton of value out of this, so I want to talk about all of that. But before I talk about that, because we kind of know who you are, I want, I want to hear about, like, who were you? How. How did you get started in all this?
- [01:18]
C
Yeah.
- [01:18]
B
Yeah. Okay.
- [01:19]
C
Well, it's certainly not a linear path and certainly not a common path, but it's a, certainly a scrappy entrepreneurial path that would be the common thr. Grew up in entrepreneur in the making. You know, derelict entrepreneur in the making ADHD kid and just loved life. Had a lot of fun, wild and crazy. Barely graduated high school with a solid 2.3 GPA. As all my friends went off to college, I had no interest in academia any longer. I had to get the hell out. And I just wanted to go make money. And that's what I went and did and did all kinds of stuff, but started with working in a machine shop from like 18 to 21, making a bunch of money and saving it up, and then going out and becoming an entrepreneur. I did some real estate investing, tried a mail order business, tried to start a corporate travel agency, but ultimately I found my way into real estate as a real estate agent. And so what happened with some of the investing I was doing? I watched these real estate agents putting the commission in their pocket and I said, I'm going to put the commission in my pocket. Well, that's my way of stumbling into the real estate industry as an agent and did very well for myself. I was making six figures by age 23. And ironically, the family business. My dad created a company that was the number one real estate sales training organization in North America. And so as a real estate agent, I fell in love with the company. I wanted to take that company over and run it, shoot forward in time. A couple of years later, I found my way into the business, worked my way from the bottom up. Once I got my arms around the business, I realized it was in deep need of a turnaround and I felt I could save it. And so after a year and a half of working my way up through every department in that business, I went to my dad and I said, the company's in trouble, but I feel I can save it. And he basically handed me a check for 100 grand to pay some short term debt. And then I went to work on turning the business around. Turned it around in three years. Up till then, I was armed with two great mentors, My dad and a gentleman by the name of Sam Cupp. And for seven years ran that company. It was time for me to go, went to my partners, we worked out a deal, and ironically, we got a phone call and somebody bought the company. And then retired from that business in my early 30s and set out to pursue what I realized was my true calling and passion and purpose. And that's helping entrepreneurs get everything they want from their businesses. And so from there I just went out and found one entrepreneur that let me help them and then another, and then another, and they started referring me. And then I created what is now known as eos. And so I'll pause there and just kind of back up to, you know, got married in my early 20s. We were having kids by our mid-20s. I have a daughter and a son. They're now 29 and 32 and I'm a grandpa now with three grandkids and thank goodness, still married. And so, so life is good. Lots of friends, family and fun and love what I do still to this day.
- [04:26]
B
I love to hear that. And I do want to, I want to circle back and talk about family and building businesses with family and staying married. And I mean, all of that's so important. Yeah. And so, and actually EOS is probably a, a big issue or, or, or helping catalyst to that. A lot of entrepreneurs get into business and they run themselves ragged.
- [04:47]
C
Yeah, well, I hope we do get back to that. But.
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B
But you Said something that I want to. To kind of pinpoint because it's really surprising to me. Yeah. You said you were ADHD growing up. Oh, yeah. And it. That to me, just from reading your books, like, seems the exact opposite. Where it's like you're structured and disciplined and do. Yeah. So can you describe that to me? Because I feel like I'm adhd. I've never been diagnosed, but I chase every shiny object and squirrel and systems are not my thing whatsoever. Yeah. And so I am.
- [05:20]
C
Yeah, well, I am blessed and cursed with two things, OCD and adhd. So I have this crazy combination of that, you know, fanatical, you know, system focused, structure, focused mind, along with this very creative, wild and crazy mind with the adhd. And so it's this very unique, rare combination that has basically led me to create everything I've created and done everything I've done.
- [05:50]
B
Amazing. And so when you were building the family business or turning that around, did you. Is that where like EOS was birthed out of?
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C
Yeah, well, it's out of a couple of things. That's where it started certainly. Because in the family business there are a few very specific tools that were discovered in that business, you know, that I created real time. So the accountability chart was first created when I took over the business. I'm involved in this turnaround. We're a year and a half in and it's still just messy. There's three of us as partners now, and I just saw clearly the right structure to get the company to the next level. And I locked my two partners. One was my dad and one was our third partner at the Troy Marriott. I locked him in a room for a day and I designed the accountability chart and I said, I believe this is the right structure for the business and I believe these are the seats we need to be in from there. That is also where I created the visionary integrator concept. And so that's where I put my dad in the visionary seat, me in the integrator seat. Our third partner headed up sales and marketing, and then the business took off from there. So the accountability chart and the visionary integrator concept in Rocket Fuel was spawned from there. The other is the 90 day world, as I call it. So that whole rock setting process is really more about creating a 90 day world in every business. And what I discovered was my first big meeting that we held with the leadership team. We walked out of that meeting on the same page. Great, priorities clear. We solved all of our problems. And then I discovered about 90 days later, I didn't even recognize these people anymore. And so I call that the fray. And so the 90 day world is coming together every 90 days as a leadership team to avoid the fray and keep focused. And so that also started there. But then certainly my business mentor, he's the one that taught me the concept of scorecard. So yeah, in my 20s is where it was all percolating. In my early 30s is where I turned it all into a bunch of tools and put it into a system called eos.
- [07:53]
B
That's amazing. And so when, when you, by the.
- [07:57]
C
Way, by the way a cup cutting you off there on purpose because, you know, you talk about the ocd, that's all the ocd. And we're watching all these patterns and trends and so what happens is I just have this ability to see something happen a hundred or a thousand times and it's, and then I just see all the dots connecting into just like the perfect tool or discipline to solve that problem.
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B
Well, and I want to, I want to check because you have that, I guess that OCD component where you were the integrator.
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C
Yeah.
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B
A lot of people that I coach and talk with, they do not have that. They have the ADHD side of things. They do not have the OCD side of things. Yeah, I, before this, this interview, I went back and I looked at, I did the, the rocket fuel crystallizer results and my, actually I can pull it up right now. My visionary was like a, in the 90s and Integrator was in the teens, I think, or something like that. And so, and so I want to ask for, for somebody that's listening to this, me, if I love the idea of setting quarterly rocks, I love the idea of a visionary and an integrator. And we do that on my team. And then a week later, because I am the visionary and I don't necessarily have an integrator, we forget about it or we just don't stay on top of it. How do you, how do you get people to stay on top of it year in and year out?
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C
Yeah. Well, let me. So on that question, I'm going to zoom way out on you. So I trust you'll be able to hang in there with me and your audience will as well. But get ready, everybody. I'm going to create a little context that's going to help us anchor these questions, all of this content in the right place. Okay, so I'm going to start by saying I'm going to answer your question, zoom out, and then answer it again because I am the Rare bird that has the ability to be both visionary and integrator. I E. ADHD and OCD. One out of 20 visionaries has that ability. So you're in the 19 out of 20. That does it. Okay, so you're in company that's most visionaries. And so with that, for me, I was the integrator in the family business and then the visionary and EOS worldwide. Because I can do both in my life, I choose to be visionary. I have that luxury of being both. But it's vital. There must be an integrator in a business. Now, we're going to come back to that once I go to this context. And so now I want to zoom out, because as you ask questions and as we have conversation, I want to help your audience anchor it to the appropriate content because I want to solve all of their problems about running their business and being an entrepreneur right here and right now in the time that we're going to spend together. Okay, so with that said, you know, that was my, you know, backstory. Now I'm going to shoot forward all the way to today. And so I sit here today having created five pieces of content in the world. And those five pieces of content are all designed to help an entrepreneur, no matter where they are, on the entrepreneurial climb, as I call it, because we're all climbing a mountain trying to reach some destination of fulfillment that doesn't exist, just for the record. But I'll let the cat out of the bag there, and I'll come back to that point in just a second. So if you'll now follow these five pieces of content, you'll see that climb. And so the first piece of content is called Entrepreneurial Leap. Each piece of content has a corresponding book, but Entrepreneurial Leap is for any entrepreneur in the making, anyone who hasn't started their business yet, but they think they're an entrepreneur. This book and content will tell them if they are or not, or a startup entrepreneur that just started their business. And so the whole idea is to help them start a better startup. The second piece of content is what we're talking about right now, and that's Rocket Fuel. That's that visionary integrator concept. And that's for when that entrepreneur, that visionary, is ready to go find their integrator counterpart to take their business to the next level. That's a book called Rocket Fuel. The third piece of content is called eos or the book Traction. And that's for when that entrepreneur wants to build a leadership team and start to run their business. Like a Swiss watch. Fourth piece of content is the EOS life. And that's when that entrepreneur and their leaders are ready to live their ideal life. And then the fifth piece of content is SHINE. And SHINE is 10 disciplines and three discoveries to help that entrepreneur and those leaders live their absolute best life and go inside and find inner peace, shed all their stuff, and create an even bigger impact on the world. Now, that was a mouthful. That's why I prepared you for that mouthful. And so I just, I want to anchor what we're talking about, when necessary, to the right content, because right now we're talking about all things rocket fuel, that second piece of content, and the visionary and integrator concept. So all the way back to your question, now, every organization needs an integrator, okay? And what you're describing in your situation is every organization does not have the luxury of getting an integrator. And so what has to happen is that visionary, that entrepreneur, if they don't have an integrator, by default, they have to be the company integrator. And it sucks because they're not built for it. Visionaries, 19 out of 20, as we already talked about, suck at managing people, holding people accountable. They're terrible with systems and cadence and consistency. And so by default, sadly, that visionary has to be that until they go find their integrator. Well, the book Rocket Fuel teaches you exactly how to do that and when is the right time to do it. And certainly the advice is to get one as fast as possible. But just that awareness alone, when you realize, hey, as a visionary, at this moment I'm wearing my integrator hat, and at this moment I'm wearing my visionary hat. That alone will actually help you run the company better. Did that make sense?
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B
That makes complete sense. I think one of the hard things for, for, for me, and just because I, I do do a lot of coaching, is most of the entrepreneur entrepreneurs that I know are very high Ds and eyes on the disc assessment. They don't have any S and C whatsoever. That's me. So when you ask me to return an email, you might get it four months from now if you ask me to, to balance our books like it's, it might happen at some point, I want to run a million miles an hour and take ground. And so I would love just some advice for that person because there's a lot of solopreneurs that I would say are listening to this right now. Yeah, I would love some advice for that solopreneur that's like, I have the drive. I have the passion, I have the vision, but I am not the integrator whatsoever. How do they, how do they get through that stage? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
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C
Well, the first answer is going to be a shameless plug, but it's please read entrepreneurial leap and rocket fuel those two, those first two pieces of content. But now I'm going to give you some very specific tools and disciplines because we've got to start with that awareness and that understanding that you are a visionary, driven entrepreneur. That is a very unique being, that is a very unique DNA, that is a very unique ball of energy. Soul true. And when you understand that, it's very freeing because then you clearly know your strengths and weaknesses and you have a lot of weaknesses. And with weaknesses, the idea is to stop doing your weaknesses, not turn them into strengths, get rid of them all, delegate them all so that you're spending all of your time and your strengths. And so that's why it's important to understand both. The way that we get you into your strengths, this is why I was put on the face of the earth, is to free entrepreneurs up to be in their sweet spot to achieve what they're here to achieve. And so one example we already talked about, when you're ready, when you can afford it, get an integrator. You're not good at running the day to day your business, so stop making yourself crazy. This is mindset we're talking about right now. Stop me. You're beating yourself up and it's not healthy what you're doing to yourself on the inside. And so you just got to be good at saying I'm not good at these things. Now if you can't afford it, you got to say I'm not good at these things, but I'm going to suck it up and do it for the next six months so I can find this person or the next year or two too. That's how it works, unfortunately. But the other thing is if you have an employee or two or three or four, there's somebody in there that has some organization skills, hopefully, hopefully. And they can carry some of the integrator responsibility. They're not going to be your implementer or your integrator always, but they're carrying some of that load for you to free you up. Number two, my understanding is your organization and kind of your stratosphere and sphere. No EOs. And so if you're running on EOs, we have EOs implementers that can help you implement EOS in your business. A lot of times An EOS implementer will help bring some of that integration integrator organization to the business. Number three is at some point on your journey, you got to get a great assistant. So this is in addition to the integrator. A great assistant is vital. And that's when you talk about responding to an email. If I had my way, I'd wave a magic wand and no, no entrepreneur should ever check email ever again for the rest of their life. I haven't checked my email in 20 years. We should not be looking at email. Our assistant should be doing that. And there's a very specific email system that we teach all of our clients, which if you want to go into that detail, I can teach it in about three to four minutes. But you should not be looking at email that's draining your energy. There's nothing helping your creativity, your energy, your impact on the world by looking at emails. And so you got to free yourself from that. But then we can go through all the administrative tasks that you should not be doing. It's all about freeing you up, freeing up your energy and enabling you to just spend all your time in your sweet spot.
- [18:20]
B
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that, that's hardest for, for me and for other people is like we spend so much time doing things that drain our energy. Where, where, like, because it's not that we can't work hard. Like I can go like we were talking about before, before we started the podcast, being in Austin for our Better Life summit and there's about a thousand people there and I, I maybe slept an hour a night and it was just hanging out with people, talking with people, speaking like, and that stuff brings me to life and, and I wasn't even tired because it was so much fun for me and that, that gives me energy. But if you ask me to sit down and analyze numbers on a deal and respond to emails, I can do that for four hours and I've got to take a four hour nap.
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C
Exactly.
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B
It's. And so there, it's so important for entrepreneurs to realize like what brings us energy and what doesn't bring us energy and getting rid of the things that don't bring us energy. I think the hardest part is there is that period of time where you have to do both.
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C
And I don't want to cut you off.
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B
Go ahead.
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C
Well, so, so what's so important there and what it prompts. So now I'm going to take you to the first piece of content entrepreneurial leap. And what entrepreneur elite does is, is it first helps to confirm that you're even an entrepreneur. Okay, Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. Most people are not entrepreneurs. The math is it's like 4% of the planet is true entrepreneurs. And so an entrepreneur leap. There's six essential traits that make an entrepreneur. And so I'm going to share these so that your audience can do a checkup on themselves and then you do it on yourself right now as I take you through it, because we're going to use you as the example for the audience. But a true driven visionary entrepreneur is visionary, passionate, a problem solver, is driven, is a risk taker and is responsible. So let me just say a couple things. When you talk about you're not afraid to work harder. You work hard. Yes, that. I mean, when we have this DNA in us, when we have these six essential traits, we work harder than most. That's the problem. We'll go work hard on that thing we're not good at and we will burn out. So hard work is never the problem. But what's important here then you said it is. Sometimes an entrepreneur does have to do both things, the stuff they love and they don't love. But you've got to have clarity and a plan for when you're going to let go of those things and delegate those things to free yourself up again and maximize your energy. And in that is risk. And so one of the six essential traits, risk taker. There is going to come a time and let's pretend you're generating whatever the number is, 200, 300, $500,000 in revenue and it's time to free yourself up and you've got to invest in a person and a resource and you've got 200, 300, $500,000 in expenses. So you've got to take a risk because if you can free up 10 hours a week, get rid of administrative tasks that are draining your energy, reallocate that 10 hours into generating more revenue, it's a no brainer to go find somebody to support you administratively because you're going to get a 5 to 1 return every time you make that investment. But a non risk taker is going to say, oh, I'm afraid to spend the money. And there all of a sudden is the conundrum. So first and foremost you got to be an entrepreneur. And if you're not, it's okay to stay a solopreneur for the rest of your life. There's no shame in that. There are solopreneurs making 100,000, 500,000, a million dollars a year. There's no shame in being a solopreneur. Just know what you are, and if you've got these traits, you're going to build an empire, whether that's a $3 million empire or a $3 billion empire. Yeah.
- [22:04]
B
And I would say as you went through that, the only one that I was like, eh, it was responsible. Responsible. Responsible was the one where it's like, I don't know how responsible I am at certain times within our.
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C
Yeah, and here's, here's what I would suggest to you because I love that one of the six essential traits, because that one is the most enjoyable debate. Because when I get to that one, all the other ones make sense. And so for some people, it's like, responsible. How on earth does that make you a great entrepreneur? Well, it's simply this. Statistically, half the world takes responsibility and half the world doesn't. These traits are essential. They're essential, but they're also inherent in you. You're born with them. It's absolutely nature over nurture. And so the way you know that is when you have a family with three or four kids and half the kids are responsible, take responsibility and half don't. How is that possible with the same parents, same household, same upbringing? So it is absolutely, you know, in your genes, it's nature over nurture. With that said, half the world does not take responsibility. In other words, every time something goes wrong, they point at other people. Responsible people point at themselves. They take full responsibility. It is a psychological disorder to take too much responsibility. So that has its own challenges. But nonetheless, we entrepreneurs, our default is to take responsibility for the thing, whatever it is, whatever happens. We look to ourselves, we look in the mirror. We take responsibility for the problem, no matter whose it is, because that's just what we do. A solopreneur that's trying to become an entrepreneur and build a business that doesn't take responsibility spends a lot of time blaming everyone else for what's not working. And it's just a very dysfunctional environment and it rarely grows.
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B
Right. Yeah, I was, I was looking at responsible through a different lens when you said that of like, yeah, I, I might do unres. Irresponsible things at times, but. But I think taking ownership is the. I mean, that's one of my favorite things about being an entrepreneur is knowing, like, it does ride on me at the end of the day. Yeah, I can.
- [24:08]
C
That. That's why I wanted to explain it because there's no way on earth, Earth you don't have that trait, we would not be having this conversation. You would not be in the position you're in. So, so what you're describing is your adhd. We do a lot of stupid things as attention deficit disorder people. So those are just, that's your risk taker, doing stupid things. If we look back at our childhoods, we did so many stupid things that put us in so many bad positions because of the fact we took those risks. That's not responsible. That's just stupidity.
- [24:42]
B
Yeah, that, exactly. I would say that is stupidity. I would have been like, okay, I.
- [24:49]
C
Have done some of the dumbest things, made some of the dumbest investments. I mean, that is just all adhd, lunacy looking before I leap kind of stuff.
- [24:59]
B
So tell me this, because I think this, you brought it up about like hiring somebody out whether you're a 300, 500 million dollar revenue company. And I think one of the biggest things, like right now my companies, we probably have 30 employees. And, and one of the hardest things for me is to hire somebody. And I know, like, I know in my mind it does create revenue by freeing up time for the people that actually create revenue to go out and make, make more money. But it's hard for me to, to hire somebody that doesn't seemingly move the needle. Does that make sense at all where it's like hiring somebody to, to, to a CFO to do our books, Like I can do that if I really want to. I hate it, but I can do that. Does doing our books like directly affect our revenue? Probably you, you could say that. But in the, like the, the next two weeks, does it affect our revenue? No. Is hiring a great salesperson that's out there buying houses affect our revenue? Yes. And so I'm always, I'm always, when I have available cash to go hire somebody, it's like, what's going to make us more money? Does that make sense at all? I don't know if I'm making.
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C
I'm just waiting for you to finish with the question mark and I'm going to answer your question.
- [26:17]
B
So how do you get through that? How do you power? Like. Yeah, I don't know if I'm even making sense, but it is. Yes, total sense.
- [26:25]
C
I'm just waiting for the question to end. I can't wait to answer it.
- [26:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, answer it because I'd love to hear that because that's one of my problems.
- [26:32]
C
Yeah. And so a lot of times when I'm answering a question, I'll start by creating context. Because when someone gets the context, everything is taken care of. And I've answered 42 indirect questions, just so you know. But then I'll also do my best to just, you know, nail the question. So contextually, let me start there. You mentioned cfo. We're going to talk about other examples, but let's talk about CFO. Here's what I know from experience. 25 years of working directly with hundreds of companies, hands on. Let's pretend you're generating $10 million in revenue, hypothetically, and you don't have a CFO and you decide it's time to hire a CFO. I would bet $50,000 of my own personal money that you will get an ROI on that. And that's assuming you're paying that CFO a fair wage. Okay? You're not overpaying them, something stupid. CFOs are worth every penny when they're great because they're going to find that within months, 6 to 12 months, top. So that's what I've seen from experience. But I don't want to give you a bunch of examples of where you're going to get an roi, because you will with a cfo. There's my example there. You will with that salesperson, like you said. But yes, there are other roles that it's really hard to determine. But watch this. Now let me give you the whole other side of this. Let's pretend like you said, you can go do the CFO job because you know enough to be dangerous about it. But what is your time, energy, creativity worth? And so the point I'm making there is, let's pretend you're doing 3 million in revenue and you go hire a CFO or a controller or a county manager, whatever level you're going to hire for where you are. And prior to that, you were getting pulled into the finance function of the business. It was draining your energy, your time, your creativity to now free up that time for you, that energy, that creativity, the return on investment is now your ability to go out and generate and grow more you as the entrepreneur. So you have to understand that trade off. Because ultimately what we teach in the 10 disciplines, fifth piece of content is that you've got to know your hundred percent. Everyone has this perfect work container, everyone. It's non debatable. And that is the perfect number of weeks per year and hours per week that you work. That is your maximum output. For me, I work 40 weeks a year and I've always worked 55 hours a week. I've now reduced that to 40. But for 30 plus years I've worked 55 hours a week. That's my maximum output. This work container, 100% is where one more hour than that, you'll start to burn out. One hour less, you get bored. So the point is, let's pretend we know your work capacity, we know you're 100%. Well, if you're doing CFO stuff, it's either eating into your 100% or it's expanding your 100%. You're having to work 110% to get the job done. There's an ROI in there that is intangible. But to free up your time, creativity and energy to go grow the company, it's easy math because you're going to have the same dilemma. It's not just a cfo, it's an operations person, it's a maintenance person, it's a this, it's a that. It's hard to do the math. Most of the time you can do the math like I did for you with the cfo, some of it. Sometimes it's hard to manage. But if the company is at capacity and you are at capacity and you need to free up capacity, you've got to make a hire and then that is the risk. Will you go allocate that time that you freed up to revenue generating business growing activities or will you run to the beach and go surfing? In other words. So then it was a bad formula, then it was bad math.
- [30:21]
B
Yeah, that's good. And so with that, do you see a lot of. So let me, let me give context to this question. So I read a book a couple of years ago and I don't, I don't exactly remember what the name of the book was, but it just basically talked about like setting up your business to where honestly I think is what a lot of entrepreneurs dream of and it's not true, where it's like you don't have to work anymore, you've got all of your employees, you sit at the top and you've got, And I've, I tried to do that with my business where it's like I've got a sales manager, I've got my acquisition managers, I've got my project manager, you know, tried to set up my business that way. What I realized was I was managing all of those people and I didn't love that. And it took me out of what I actually really love doing, which is networking and sales and, and so, but to me, it's like as the owner of the company, I'm not supposed to be in sales. I, I think I had internalized that. Like, that's, I'm the owner, I'm not supposed to be in sales. And now we're reworking our company where it's like, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend 25, 30 hours a week in sales. One, because I'm really great at it too, because it brings me joy. Do you see that happen a lot with visionaries where they get back into the role that they, they got into this business because they love that role 100%.
- [31:40]
C
And that's the point. So I'm getting giddy as you're asking that question. So a little bit of context, then I'll answer the question. So the most common roles of a visionary. So if you're a true entrepreneur, a true visionary, you are great at sales, you are great at business development, you are great with big relationships, you are great at solving big complex problems. You are great with the culture of the business. And so those, that's just like a first cut. And what is most common, 80% of the time. So the point is, we need you doing those things. Absolutely. Most of my clients, most of my visionaries still sell because they love it. They absolutely love it. So I'm going to use you as an example because now I'm going to come back and answer your specific question for you. Let's pretend that is the magic formula. Your sweet spot, genetic encoding is networking and sales. I guarantee you, I promise you, I assure you, you can spend every waking moment of your time doing nothing but networking and sales. I promise you that. Now watch this. The reason you got mired in your business. Let's go back to the structure of your business. Now we're going to talk about accountability chart content piece number three. This is EOS accountability Chart says, what are the major functions for your business? And so you have a sales, marketing, ops, finance function. Let's pretend you have great people in all of those seats, okay? What you now need as a visionary is an integrator to lead, manage, and hold all those people accountable. That's where you have been, the integrator for your business. You're getting pulled down into stuff you're not good at. And I will tell you, if you go out and hire an integrator, put yourself fully in your visionary sweet spot and spent all of your time networking and selling, you'd be in heaven. The company would grow faster. You'd get a return on that integrator overnight. Now, let me add one more thing, because I'm going To speak from experience, EOS Worldwide, I founded it 20 plus years ago. I sat at the helm of that organization as the visionary for 10 straight years. We grew at 40% per year for 10 years until I sold it. I worked 45 days a year as the visionary. That's it. That was the devotion of my time to that company. And then I had a great integrator that ran everything. So my point I'm making is most of our visionaries for EOS out there are full time visionaries. They just have to know what their hundred percent is. Some work 30 hours a week, some work 80 hours a week. But you can, let's pretend you spent two days a week doing nothing but networking and selling and someone ran your business for you. That is possible. You will be in heaven. Your company will grow like mad. And I am an example of somebody that did that. Because all I ever did as a visionary at the top is I trained all of the EOS implementers. I ran all of our quarterly meetings, I ran all of the trainings, I did all of the coaching. I held the vision. And so again, I just had a very short list of things that were my gift. I put all of my energy time into that. I delegated everything else. You could do the same thing.
- [34:44]
B
Well, as you're talking and I, and I know that there's people listening to this that are in the same exact seat that I'm in.
- [34:52]
C
Oh my God. About, let's see, let me do the quick math. 20 million of you to be 20.
- [34:59]
B
And as you're talking, I think one of the things that, that I've struggled with is trying to be the integrator and then not only it draining me, but making me feel like a, a piece of crap where it's like we have our weekly team meetings and I'm supposed to hold people accountable and plan the team meeting. And I'm really great at the rah rah, let's get fired up. Here's the goal. And then everything else, like I get done with meeting, I'm like, man, I, I was supposed to be better prepared. I should have done this. I should. And I feel like I'm letting the team down and it's just not my skill set. And so like having somebody that can do that part would change everything. And just in my business.
- [35:39]
C
Yeah, let me try to anchor that and again, create a little context here because I mentioned that earlier how we beat ourselves up when we're doing things that are our weaknesses. And so, you know, let's again use you, as an example in what you just said there, you have this incredible visionary ability, but unfortunately you have this unfortunate integrator responsibility. And so you're these two things in your company. Well, the visionary are all your gifts and strengths, the integrator all your weaknesses. And so. Exactly right. I mentioned this earlier. You're beating the heck out of yourself because you're terrible at those things. With all due love and respect, you're never going to be great at those things. You can't be great at those things. I could send you 10 coaches, mentors, trainers to lock you in a room and try and make you great at it. You're not genetically encoded to do it, so why on earth would you try? Once you can afford it or are willing to take the risk, get an integrator to free you up from all that stuff so you can stop beating yourself up. Spend all that time in that visionary gift and you'll pay for the integrator many times over by keeping yourself at that level. I love that.
- [36:45]
B
Well, I want to shift a little bit.
- [36:47]
C
I just want to say one more, if I may, because I wanted to say this point on the earlier point is, you know, so it's like, here's the way my crazy mind works and hopefully this makes sense. But hypothetically, I don't know the number, but let's pretend you've got a $2 million company. It's throwing off $400,000 a year, a 20% profit. I'm just doing hypotheticals. And there you are in the position you just described, mired in the integrator seat. And let's pretend you can go find an integrator for 100 grand. Just simple math. An integrator is going to run you anywhere from 75,000 to 300,000. It all depends on the size of the company, the complexity of the company, how crazy the visionary is. But let's just for simple math say it was a hundred grand. So you go out and find your perfect integrator. To me, I would be happier making $300,000 in profit, completely being freed up from the hell and the beating the shit out of myself every day because of my weaknesses, I would take that $100,000 hit. Now what I know is very soon you're going to be generating a $500,000 profit or more. But at a minimum, the way I work to free up my energy, my creativity, my stress, it's a no brainer investment. Now if you're losing 100 grand a year and you decide to go spend 100. That's probably stupidity or a little too risky. And so this is not where you got to take a risk. Where does it make sense? So it's all about energy is as important as all the other stuff. When you're managing energy, everything happens faster. That's all fifth content, Shine stuff we're talking about there.
- [38:27]
A
So I know I'm fairly well off financially, right. But did you know I still house hack? Like that's right. I've got an extra a couple units at my house here in Maui and I decided to actually rent one of them out because, hey, it's like almost 2,000 bucks a month and I'm an investor, so why not? Do you know the first thing I did when I decided to rent that out? I went to turbotenant.com because there I can advertise the unit, screen for potential tenant, sign the state specific lease, get automatic rent payments set up, track my income and expenses, and even communicate with my new tenant via the app. It literally made the process so much easier. So whether you've got, you know, one unit or a ton of units, check out turbo tenant.com. i love it and I know you will too. Let them know I sent you.
- [39:07]
B
Well, and I want to shift over to Shine, but. And I've got it. I've got a question about unlocking like just true, what true financial freedom is. But before we do that, we've talked a lot about energy and so how would you tell people that are listening to this? How would they identify those things that bring them to life?
- [39:27]
C
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would suggest the best answer that's coming up for me right now is listen to your body. Okay? So pay attention to your body. In the Shine content content piece number five, Shine is all about going inside and understanding the root of fear based decisions and love based decisions. And when something is love based, it's a better decision. It's coming from intuition, it's coming from completely energizing. It's very creative. When it's coming from fear, it's coming from blocks. Pain, trauma, stuff that your ego made up from the past that is holding you back. Okay? And so let's pretend I waved a magic wand. Everybody got that concept. And we can talk more about it if you want to go there when we get to that concept. But the root of this is helping you learn to become aware and present and conscious of what's going on with your body. Your body will tell you when your body is in a great place doing stuff you love. It is peaceful. It is Silent. It is this incredible force when you're doing things that don't light you up. Your body has angst, you're making fear based decisions, you're insecure, you're not your best. So it starts by paying attention to what your body is telling you. But it's also really obvious in terms of outer world tangible things like you're selling better, you're making more money, you know, you're making an impact, people are getting excited, people light up, you light up. So there's a lot of external metrics, but the internal metric is listen to your body.
- [41:13]
B
Yeah, that's so one of the things that I did. And this was a while back, I don't do it anymore. But I was taking like very detailed notes on my day and then how I felt afterwards. And it was so eye opening where when I spent a day in meetings and sending emails, like after work, I would, I would be a, I wouldn't be a good husband or a dad. I would come home and I wanted to sit on my couch and scroll my phone. And if I have a day like today where like after this call, I'm going to be amped because I got to meet somebody that I really respect, have a great conversation and after this call, my energy levels are going to be off the charts. And so just knowing that about myself, where it's like, okay, I need to do more of these things and connect with people and network and hear cool stories and learn and less of the things that drain me. Yeah.
- [42:06]
C
And the book Shine is the how to manual for, for all this. But I want to give an example from that. And that is when you're sitting with another human being, regardless of who that is. But let's keep it in the business realm. Hypothetically, when you walk away from that get together, whether that's a coffee shop meeting with a potential client or whatever it is, but when you're with that person in a conference room, coffee shop, whatever it is, and then you part ways with that person when that meeting ends, do you feel uplifted and energized or do you feel drained? There's another way of paying attention to your body because we taking it to all aspects of our lives, we have people in our lives that when we spend time with them, it drains our energy. Well, listen man, it's simple math. That's a telltale sign that that's an activity you probably should not be doing. And the ones that fill you up, fulfill you, make you energize, you build your energy. Those are the things you need to do more of. This is all awareness. This is all paying attention to these wonderful data points in life.
- [43:06]
B
Yeah. Not, not business related at all. But for my wife and I, even relationally, we did that where we just made a list of our friends and like, or maybe some of them became not friends anymore. Of like, who are the people that we're seeing regularly? And who when we leave, do they. Do we. Are we encouraged to be better parents? Are we encouraged to be better spouses? Are we encouraged to be healthier? Are we encouraged to, to go make more money? And we, we literally ranked all of our friends. We were like, hey, these, these are people that we, we, we don't get a lot out of when we leave them.
- [43:34]
C
We're.
- [43:35]
B
We're a worse person. And here are the people when we leave, we're better people. And like, here's the people that we want in our life and we don't. And it's the same with work, it's the same with business, it's the same with anything. And so.
- [43:48]
C
And then I'll just grab a little point there as well, since we're drilling down on that content. You know, it's just a funny thing. And so it's what our ego does to us, you know, the stories it makes up. And so here you are as a human being, you know, whatever your age is. But let's hypothetically pretend you got 35 good years left on this planet. I mean, why on earth would you spend a second with a person that drained your energy? And the reason is because your ego keeps saying, well, you need to spend time with family. Well, if you leave, if you do that, that friend will be upset with you and, or they you. So you have these stories that you make up that make you feel guilty and like you're supposed to do it. Somebody told you something in the past that makes you think you're supposed to do that. It ain't true. It is not true. We are not destined to live in hell for the next 35 years. You have a choice, and you got to make tough decisions to do it. But life is too short.
- [44:38]
B
Yeah, that's. That is, that's so good. The, the life, even in, in my business. So I, I don't think I've ever actually told this story on a podcast before. And it's a, it's a, it's a little personal, but one of the reasons we, we talked about living in Maui, making the move from Missouri to Maui, One of the reasons we did was because in 2022, we were hit by a drunk driver. Me and all my kids in the car with my wife and going about 55, 60 miles an hour. And yeah, it was, it was, we were fortunately completely fine. The, all of us. We had just upgraded from a 2012 Toyota Corolla that was the family car to a 2022 Ford Expedition, and we were completely fine. But I remember I mentally, I was not fine mentally. I was replaying that moment over and over. If he would have hit us head on because kind of hit us from this, the, from the, the, and the tail end of the car. If you would have hit us head on, what would have happened? If I hadn't have just bought a new $90,000 vehicle, what would have happened? And I remember I actually went to a counselor about it and we started like, working through these what if scenarios of, like what? Instead of him being like, hey, here's some coping mechanisms. It was these like, what ifs, like, what if life ended right, right now for you or if something happened to, you know, one of your kids, like, how would you want to be spending your present day? And that was one of the reasons that we moved to Maui was like, I, I'm, I didn't love Missouri and we were making enough money to be able to do it. And so we, we did it. And who am I spending time with and what are the conversations that I'm having? And even like being on my phone, like all of these things became kind of obsolete when I realized the, the, how fragile life is. And so I think that's so important even in business where it's like, even if you're making a lot of money. You just said this earlier where it's like you would be happier if you paid somebody a hundred thousand dollars and made a hundred thousand dollars less. It's so true in life where it's like, I, there's, I don't know if this would be true, but like, I could go make $10 million and if I'm not happy, it doesn't matter. It literally doesn't matter. I, I, and so I think that's just a good point for everybody to, to, to, to realize it's listening to this and you've pointed on this multiple times like life is short and fragile and we should be living the best version of our lives right now. That's the whole premise of the Better Life podcast. How do you do that?
- [47:18]
C
And let me, let me anchor what you said there, because everything you just said in that incredible story you just told it's all awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. Everything you just described was you becoming of these things that, you know, for lack of a better term, are good for you and not so good for you. And it led you to making some great decisions to make your life even better. That was all awareness. And that's the point, because, you know, we're still basking in this first question you asked about, you know, how do you know what your sweet spot is? The answer is awareness. And that's what's happening. You're just aware of all these things. And man, I spent 35 years of my life not being aware. In terms of my life has been pretty good. My outer world life has been incredible. But I too went through these periods where I was so unpresent with my family. I was amazing about managing my calendar and my schedule. And I take the month of August off every year, so I have a very balanced life. But I realized when I was with loved ones and friends, I was not there, man. I was like, gone somewhere else. So these were amazing awarenesses where it's like, I don't want to live my life like that anymore. So you just, just start paying attention to life in your body and it is, it is transformational.
- [48:32]
B
Well, and I think that brings up a good kind of segue because I wanted to talk about family, like even before the call and at the beginning of the call, you talked about your wife and your kids and your grandkids. And you can tell that you absolutely love your family and have phenomenal relationships with them. And how do you do that running a business? I mean, you've helped over 250,000 businesses implement EOS and you're running a massive organization. And how do you continually put your family first still?
- [49:03]
C
Yeah, yeah. Well, it goes back to what I said. It starts with knowing your hundred percent. And again, it's like too easy of an answer to say. It's all in all the books, you know, there's the shameless plug again. So it's. It would take me a week to explain it all, but I'm going to try to hyper simplify it. And it's going back to what we talked about is knowing you're 100%. And so for me, I'm very disciplined about my work container. I know what that August sabbatical does for me every year. I know that maybe things grow slower, I make less money. You know, back when I was selling real estate in my early 20s, that's when I took my first August sabbatical. It was when my daughter was born. I lost three deals that month. I lost money, but it was worth every penny. So I know when I take August off, it recharges my batteries and magnifies my creativity and energy so much. I come back and I'm a force because I reset everything. So my point I'm making is in my hundred percent, like I said, I work 40 weeks a year, which means I take 12 weeks off a year, which includes that sabbatical. And when I'm working, It was always 55 hours a week. That's my work container. And it was non negotiable. And so anytime as I'm building these businesses, my work container starts to expand. It's time for me to delegate something. So that's like I'm taking you to the most basic principle, foundation, root of how you maintain a balanced life. It's exactly doing that. Because now all of a sudden, outside of that work container, it's all free time for me to spend time with myself, priority one, with my family, priority two, friends. So now I have time for all those other things. But it's all about protecting that. Because when you don't protect it, it's this ever expanding and contracting thing that you can't get your hands on and you're burning the candle at both ends. You've lost total control of your life. So I'm going to start with that basic premise and then we can keep drilling down deep into this one.
- [50:58]
B
Yeah, well, so you just said this and this is something that's so important, but I want to know how you do it. Is then a little backstory. I was talking to a guy who's a phenomenal leader and he coaches the thousands of people and he was in a really vulnerable spot and he was like, I'm, I, I am everybody's coach, but they don't realize how messed up I am inside. And I. You said you spend time with yourself first and foremost. And I think as a leader that is one of the, that's the top priority. Because if you are a healthy version of yourself, it spills over in every other aspect of life. And so how do you lead your, how do you lead yourself?
- [51:42]
C
Well, yeah, so there's just some practices that I have with myself. So I meditate most days. It's a really big part. Stillness is something that we teach in shine and in stillness, in addition to meditation, it also includes from time to time, contemplation, prayer, journaling. But it's quiet time. I need quiet time. Maybe 30 minutes a day, up to 60 minutes. A day and then two hours a week in Starbucks. And that's where I'm doing kind of my work related thinking time. But it's me time in business. So that's a big part of it. Number two for me is I need alone time. So I love to read. So when I read there's, you know, you talk about paying attention to your body. There is something that happens to my energy when I'm reading a book. So I need to be reading. I don't read a lot, but you know, I probably read 12 books a year, maybe a little bit more. Because when I read a book, I devour the book. I don't skim through books, but it's, but my energy is so uplifted and if it's not in the first 10 pages, I throw the book away and then grab the next one. But so reading is another example. Exercise. I sauna once a week. So I have this recharge thing that I do almost every Saturday morning and that's where I get up, I meditate, I do this mobility workout and then I sauna and then I do another lying meditation to kind of like cool down. It just completely reset. I'm like, I new human being after that. It's like I dusted off the whole last week. So those are some examples of, of disciplines and how.
- [53:25]
B
So talking about discipline and like the whole structure equals freedom, which is so true. And I know that in my life with, with working out, like, let's use that. When, when I'm consistently working out, everything in my life gets better. Yeah. But somehow, some way I trick myself into thinking I've got to, I've got to, like, I can't work out, I don't have time to work, work out. And I've gotta, I've gotta work. How have you structured your life to allow you to do those things?
- [53:52]
C
Yeah, well, I, first of all, you know, in the heat of things, I've never been great at working out. So I, I don't want to tout that. I've always been great with diet. I've always been great with these other disciplines I'm talking about. I've gotten much more discipline in the last five years with my exercise. And that's probably because I'm in my 50s, but I was not great. I've always done some form of exercise somewhere sprinkled through there. But I am not the guy that works out every morning. So right now my discipline is, I see a trainer once a week. I do a mobility routine two to three times. A week. And then I'm always doing something else. So right now I'm trying HIIT training, the high intensity interval training, but I'm doing it while running and I'm loving that, but that's always interchangeable. Yoga, bike riding, I'm always interspersing something. So that's kind of that routine there. But I, the last thing I feel confident about doing is preaching about working out because I would not be the walking example of that. So what I'm talking about in addition to that certainly, but mostly is just the quiet time. So I'm an introvert. That's another thing where I learned that I was an introvert. I used to beat the shit out of myself up until probably my early 30s until I accepted I was an introvert. I thought there was something wrong with me that I didn't love. Going to a family fricking cocktail party with strangers and small talking with people. I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than do that. So finally when I accepted that and forgave myself and realized there's nothing wrong with that, it was so freeing. So my point I'm making as an introvert, we, our energy is reset and recharged in silence and being with ourselves an extrovert, their energy grows interacting with people. So this way you just got to know yourself. So, so for me I need that quiet time to reset myself. Yeah.
- [55:41]
B
That's. My wife and I have had that same conversation because I'm the exact. I couldn't be more different from you where it's like I. Being around people energizes me.
- [55:51]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [55:51]
B
And I work from home. I've got a, an office, a detached office at our house. I don't see people throughout the day.
- [55:57]
C
Yeah.
- [55:58]
B
And at night I'm like babe, I, I just need to go to a restaurant and eat just to be around other people. And she's very understanding of that because she knows that's what recharges me. But there's other things and I think it's important. I heard somebody say like, like I, I went on a walk with my daughter last night. So I've got a seven year old, a five year old, three year old and then two twins that are due in the next couple of weeks. So. Yeah, not two twins, a set of twins. Yeah, yeah. So but, yeah, so but I went on a walk with my daughter last night along the beach and we just had had phenomenal conversation. She's seven and is like in that asking just really great questions right now. It's the time of my life. And I remember getting done with that. And so many times I put that off because I have to work or I'm too busy or, and, and I was just thinking, like, I, I, that is the most important thing to me.
- [56:59]
C
That, that walk, like, why am I.
- [57:00]
B
Giving up, why am I giving up those walks right now to, to work or something like that. And I also know intuitively, like, that's gonna make my business better in the long run when I, when I feel.
- [57:13]
C
Recharged with that 100% and that you're prompting another thought, you know, so you're talking about this very deep, important thing, a walk with your daughter. Watch this. I'm gonna give you a different example. So if you're an entrepreneur and you cut your lawn every week, and you don't love cutting your lawn if it doesn't fill you up, like, you couldn't give me one reason how that makes sense, because that one hour a week, you could free up to pay somebody 25 freaking dollars to give you an hour back of your life to do one of a thousand things. But to go for that walk on the beach with your daughter, to work the extra hour that week, if you choose to work, to spend time with your spouse, significant other, read a book, whatever it is. But if you're sitting there going, you know, I don't have time. Well, if you're cutting your lawn, you have time. You can afford $25 a week, you know, in the warm months to free up an hour. Well, now all of a sudden, look at everything else you're doing in that whatever it is, personal time, work time, what can you delegate? What can you pay somebody else to do? What can you stop doing? And I promise you, all of a sudden, you're going to find two or three hours in next week to allocate to something that's really important to you. Making money, being with family, being with yourself. That's.
- [58:36]
B
That's so good. Well, I've got, I know we're coming up on time, and so I've got a couple more questions for you, and then we'll move towards the ending. But one thing, and we've touched on this a lot, but it goes back to your, your book, Shine and I. The question I want to ask is, like, what is the key to unlocking true financial freedom? Everybody I talk to wants financial freedom. What is the key to unlocking true financial freedom?
- [59:03]
C
Well, you know, first of all, what we're teaching in SHINE is how to unlock true freedom. So, yeah, financial freedom so you know, the financial freedom comes from the first four pieces of content we talked about. And so, but, but I love the topic. So I, I could talk about finances forever just in terms of building wealth, understanding wealth. I've had to help more people get out of debt in my life, including myself, three different times that it's like, I don't know, somehow the universe needs me to go through these things to learn this. So I want to start with freedom and then I want to come back to financial freedom because I want to make sure we're speaking the same language. Because again, Shine is all about freeing your soul, freeing your true self, unleashing the magic that is you. And so again, let's go back to you networking and sales and business. It's like if that's all you did all day, every day, you'd be one happy fricking dude and you'd be making a lot more money. My humble opinion. And then delegate everything else. And then all of a sudden, let's go to your gifts in your personal life. So it's all about freeing yourself from your ego and what the ego created so that you can just live from love, make love based decisions, have love based emotions and feelings and thoughts all day, every day. So that's that, that's the level of freedom we're talking about. And in that level of freedom, money, time, all, nothing else matters. And it will all come in droves. In other words, it will come to you so abundantly in that place, you won't even be thinking about how to become financially independent. You will become financially independent. But now let's go to this very tangible outer world discipline and thought of becoming financially independent or free. So the answer is different for everybody.
- [60:57]
B
So I'm just going to give you.
- [60:58]
C
Like three high level mechanisms or levers around that. Because here's the basic thing that most of the world does not understand, and it's dumbfounding to me. If you want to be financially free or financially independent, you just need your investments generating enough income for you to never work again. There's the math. And so there will be an entrepreneur who has a $10 million business and they're paying themselves a million bucks a year and they're pissing away every. I want to say the F word so bad. I'm going to stop. I love the F word. They're pissing away every effing penny of it on boats and cars and houses and they think they're financially free, they're financially F'd. I want to Say the F word again so bad. There's no freedom in that. They have to work every day, all day for the next 50 years until, if they have a million dollar lifestyle, until they have $20 million socked away somewhere throwing off 5%, it's a count on 5%. Unless you're blessed in the world that you and Brandon are in where you get much better returns on real estate. But, but just plan on 5%. So, so you need to have enough money socked away that the 5% it throws off, you can live your lifestyle. And the day that happens, you are financially free. So in that, that's lever one, you got to understand that because that $10 million entrepreneur making a million bucks a year thinks they're financially free, that person is going to be bankrupt and die early with that formula. So lever number two is you must save at fifth, you must save at least 15% of everything you make for the rest of your life. I taught my kids this at 14 years old. You must. So that's the only way you're going to become financially independent. So the $10 million entrepreneur making a million dollars a year thinks, okay, well, no, no, I'm worth, I could sell my business, you know, for $10 million someday. No, it's worth $10 million. No, it's not. When you sell it, it is, but there's like a 75% chance or more your business will be out of business in five years. So you're not there. So just. And so I would urge that entrepreneur, you gotta be saving at least 15% of that million dollars a year that you're generating. And my advice would be save 50%. When I was making those kind of dollars and a lot more, I was saving 50% of that every year. So that's how you build the financial independence. And then the third thing I would just suggest is get your lifestyle under control, get your ego out of this thing. My God, how many cars do you need? How many boats do you need? How many houses do you need? So hold off on all that stuff. What do you need to live a great life and take care of your family? And so just watch your expenses because to get those under control, everything else can get socked away to create true financial independence. So I don't know if that's where you were going or what you were asking, but anytime somebody will listen to me, I give that simple math.
- [64:13]
B
I love that. And I think that's so important for especially just like looking at real estate investors where over the last five years you people have made so much money and that, that's kind of turning right now. Yeah, for sure, a lot. And I've seen so many people myself kind of included where it's like we thought that, that, that, that that was never going to turn off. The hose was never going to turn off where it was like I, I was making seven figures in my sleep. And then all of a sudden it shifts to where it's like we're sitting on 15 houses, we can't sell them, we're losing money. One of the things that I think I was, I was blessed with is my parents raised me on the Dave Ramsey method. And I think Dave Ramsey in a lot of ways. With zero debt, we've utilized debt to grow. But there's still so many principles that he teaches that has helped our life of saving money, not spending more than you make, buying things in cash like we, we have outside of our house, we have zero debt whatsoever. And I can't tell you what that's done for us. No credit card debt, no car debt, no student loan debt. That's because when I started making real money, I was paying every, I was debt snowballing. And so I think Dave Ramsey in the, in the real estate world gets a bad rap sometimes, but he has helped our life so much through things like that.
- [65:32]
C
Yeah. And then you prompt one thing I'm compelled to share. And this is something my business mentor Sam Cupp taught me and he Talked about the 10 year business cycle and this, he taught me this over 30 years ago and it's held true for 30 years. And he says in a 10 year business cycle you will have six good years, two great years and two terrible years that can potentially put you out of business. And what you're describing, listen, the storm is a coming, winter's coming, the two bad years are coming. And so if you just had a great eight year run, get ready brother, it's going to get tough. It always gets tough. Every 10 years for two years it's happened to me now again, 30 years plus running. So it's not always good. Make hay while the sun shines. And that's what happens is that $10 million entrepreneur making a million bucks a year hits those two bad years and they got a million dollar lifestyle. They are screwed, glued and tattooed.
- [66:29]
B
Yeah, that's, that's, that is, that's so good. And so I want to ask one more question before we get to the ending. And this is going to be kind of a weird question, but I love to ask it because it, it's it's actually you creating your own question. But I know that you're. You are interviewed on tons of podcasts all of the time you're speaking. And so here's, here's my question for you is what is something that nobody asks you about that you wish that they did?
- [67:01]
C
Okay, just give me a minute, because what I like to do with something like this, I just going to be still and silent for 30 seconds, so hopefully your audience can hang in there. I'm just going to see what comes up for me because nothing's coming up at this, at this moment. So thing that's probably coming up most or clearest is it's, it's like all the way deep into the root of the shine content. That's where you would find it, but it's like all the way to the root. And there's this. I'm going to try to articulate this, but there's this message I always send when we talk about the eos life and helping people live their ideal life. And it's made up of five things. Doing what you love with people you love, making a huge impact, making a lot of money, and having time for other passions. And when we share that, most audiences, the audience member is sitting there not feeling worthy of that, because it's like, why would you not do this? I have given you the answer for how to live that life with eos, but many resist it and don't feel worthy. And so I will then end that message by saying, you deserve it. I will look into as many eyeballs as I can. I will say, you deserve it. And I say that three times. And what I'm trying to do is go to that place inside of them that is not feeling worthy or deserving. And everything I teach those five pieces of content, I'm just teaching you my life. I mean, I don't know why I got this fricking job, but. But I'm just teaching all my shit, all my pain, everything I went through. I've had this incredible entrepreneurial journey. Some of the most brutal times, some of the most amazing times, and I'm that guy that didn't feel worthy, you know? And so it's like the question would be like, you know, do you know, do you ever feel pain? What is your trauma? What is your. And I disclose all my trauma, all my pain, the roots of everything in my life for not feeling worthy, why I never felt safe, why I felt like I had to prove everything in the world. Getting emotional, sharing it, that tells me that I'm answering the right question right now. So it's so, you know, I'm formulating what the question is, but it's just somebody asking me, you know, can you speak to that thing? And that thing is, you know, what I've gone through is a lot of work. Just like the therapist helped you, asking these amazing questions. I discovered all the roots. There were like 52 of them. And I saw all the connections and the linkages to them and why, and I was able to then release them, forgive the people I needed to forgive, forgive myself for the stupid stuff I did. And there was just a release that happened. And we call that shedding layers. Because the point is this pain happened. My ego then got a hold of it all to protect me. The ego is really thinks it's doing good things for us, it's trying to protect us. And so it made up a whole bunch of stories and protected me from ever feeling that pain again. And unfortunately built this incredible structure that did not allow me to be fully free. And so I just led a fear based life. And then when I went to those places and freed those things and got my ego to relax and leave me alone and only be used for strategic thinking, all of a sudden I finally felt free. You know, then I'm compelled to read this because the byproduct of it, somebody interviewed my family, my wife and my two kids and just said, how's Geno different in the last five years? And they said, he's more calm, he's more patient, he's more loving, open, freer, happier, more present, receives love. Now I could never receive love for decades more inspiring, less judgmental. And so my family's saying that I'll take that. But it was, it was as a result of going deep into the wounds and it comes up with as much pain as it went down. So get ready everybody. But it's worth it. It's so worth it. And then you will feel worthy of all of the abundance that the world has to offer you and your ego will stop messing with you.
- [71:32]
B
That, that's, that's such a good answer. And as you're saying that it's reminding me of, and this has just been of recent, of some, some inner work that I've had to do on myself. And, and I've never shared this before and I'm not gonna, I won't get emotional, I hope not when I'm. While I talk about it. But I think it's so important because have you ever like this in this, if you haven't gone through like, some of this, like, work, but, like, gone to like your inner child. And I know that sounds weird to people that have never done it, but I have this appetite for success and to, to be known and to make a lot of money, and it has hindered my ability to be present and to just relax into. I live in Maui in the most beautiful place in the world, and I find myself sitting on the beach thinking through like, what's next? What can I do? And, and I, I hate. I hates a strong word. I do not like that part about myself. And I've started just really exploring where does that come from? And I was talking with a buddy who is a counselor, and we were just talking through that. And one of the things that I realized is when I was, when I was in high middle school, high school, I've always been really outgoing, I've been pretty smart, energetic, charismatic. And I was raised in the church world and I always had, I mean, on a weekly basis, a grown up at that time, pull me aside. And they, and I think they were being encouraging, but they'd be like, you've got something inside of you. You're gonna change the world, Cam. You're gonna do great things. And, and they were being encouraging. They weren't doing this out of like, oh, we're gonna, you know, mentally f Cam and make him, when he's older, think that he has to achieve those things. But, but I, I carry that now where it's like, I. So many people, hundreds, thousands of people have told me during my life of how great I can be. And if I'm not always striving to do that, I'm letting people down. Instead of like, what do I want to be? Like, who do, who does Cam want to be? And sometimes I want to just be present and hang out with my kids and not have to think about making more money or building a business. And so as you were saying that that's kind of what, that's something that I've been working through is like, like, how do I, how do I go back to that, that 15 year old cam and say, hey, you can be who you want to be. You don't have to be what everybody else is saying that you need to be or what you can be. Does that make sense at all?
- [74:05]
C
Oh, so much sense. And I, I want to give you a response to that. And it's a little bit long. I'll keep it pretty efficient. But my God, did you, you prompt a couple of really important things because the Inner child work, you know, again, as woo woo as that might sound to some people, it is vital because it is what I'm talking about. I love that you went there because that's what I'm saying. You've got to go to the roots of what happened to you back then and why you altered the course of your life. Your innate self, your soul, your true self was born perfect into this world and was going to be perfect your whole life, but for what the world did to you. And so for me, my two inner childhood experiences were most profound at 7 and 14. And it's ironic you bring it up because I just did some work in March where I went back to that, hugged those two little children, assured them that they are loved. And so it's real stuff because that's where I experienced most of my pain and trauma. And that's when my ego went to work. At 14, I was this incredibly creative, loving, sensitive but tiny kid. At 15, alcohol touched my lips. It was never a problem, thank God. But it numbed all that pain and I created a facade. My ego and I joined forces and I created this fighting, working, drinking, tough guy image to protect myself from the world. And it served me well. For 35 years, man, I built an outer world empire on a whole bunch of pain and angst. Going back to that inner child and releasing all of that stuff is what helped me find the peace. And so with that point I'm making is like you asked me, what's the question? And so I pause, I waited for the answer to come up. This answer came. And so I think this is something I've never shared before. But it's in public, I've shared it with a few people in private, but it's like, I don't know why I have to be the one delivering this message. And I'm not the only one delivering this message, but I think I'm delivering it in a very simplified fashion. Because what I believe with every ounce of my being is that we can release all of that stuff and be free. I know we can. I know it. I've experienced it firsthand. Once we understand what our ego did, we can release it. And all of a sudden we are free. We are our innate selves, we are fully, fully true self souls. And so somehow I got this job to deliver this message and there's this number 70 million. I think I'm going to get this message to 70 million people and they're going to wake up and they're going to realize how simple the formula is because it's a simple formula. There's nothing special about me. I'm this screwed up kid that was screwed up and I just did what I could to survive. And there's a lot of us out there. 8.5 billion people on the planet. It's probably 98% of us. So 8 billion people. And I'll try and help my 70 million. But it's a very simple, profound, powerful message to free ourselves and be ourselves and, and let our freak flags fly.
- [77:12]
B
Yeah, that. That's. You said it. And that. I think that pinpoints exactly the feelings that, that I felt and had to go and almost retrain my mind. And I'm still working on it. It's a working process.
- [77:25]
C
Me too, brother. Me too.
- [77:27]
B
Where it's like I, and, and I had a great childhood there. There's not a lot of. I mean, there is trauma, but it was, it was out of. I think it was truly out of love. But I was always told, you know, you've got great things. And then as I've gotten older, it's, well, I have to, I, I have to prove them right. I can't be loved if I'm not successful. I can't be loved if I'm not continuing to grow. I can't be loved if I'm not seen as is. Is this incredible business leader, thought leader, or not? Only that. One of the things I was always good at was I was always just great at being joyful. And so, like, people would pull me aside and like, man, you light up a room. And then there's times where I don't want to light up a room. Like, there's times where I don't feel that. And I, and I feel like I have to like, what's up, everybody?
- [78:13]
C
How we doing?
- [78:14]
B
Like, and, and so, so I'm having to retrain myself. Like, I can, I can be me. I don't have to put on this facade. I don't have to, you know, buy the nice car so people think that I'm successful. And, and it's, it's just, it's so important for people that are listening. I'm glad we went this route.
- [78:35]
C
Let me, let me just, let me throw one more thing in there really fast because it's like, I think that's. This is the theme of our podcast episode is awareness. Because I now bring you back to that point and what I'm about to say is all in shine, but it's all about awareness. And so if we're aware and that's Aware of either fear based or love based thoughts, feelings, emotions and decisions. If we just become aware of, you'll know what a love based decision, feeling, emotion, thought feels like. And you'll know when it's fear based and you'll be able to chase it down to that thing from the past. Because the fear based ones, they don't feel good most of the time. They're in your chest, you're in your gut, they don't feel good and your body is screaming at you, this thing ain't good. And then it forced you to go to that root, you get to that root, you shed, it comes up with as much pain as it went down. But all of a sudden you are free of that block and now you're just a little more loving, you know. So it is a journey. I'm still on the journey. I have no idea If I'm like 1% clear or 100. I don't know where I am on this journey. But all I know is it just keeps getting better and better and better and better. And I just compelled to share that as well.
- [79:43]
B
Yeah, well, that's the beauty of life is just getting better every day and working, working harder towards fixing that trauma and that with those, those dark, deep rooted things inside of us. And so. But I have loved this conversation. I know that we are running out of time, so I want to take it to kind of like our ending. And so I've got, we got a, a couple questions for you as we're wrapping things up. And the first thing I want to talk about is we call it our three, two, one, pivot. Yep. And so with that I'm going to ask you what are three? And the whole purpose of this is like things that have pivoted your life and changed the direction of your life. And so what are three books that you have read that have changed the direction of your life?
- [80:29]
C
Gotcha. I would say Think and Grow Rich was huge. Yeah. Napoleon Hill. I would say Letting Go by David Hawkins was really powerful in this conversation we're having about awareness. That's a really powerful book on that work. And then this. I always have a kind of a different answer because quite frankly, right now I'm pulling from like 30 different books and just seeing what comes out comes to me at the moment because this one always seems odd to bring up, but Good to Great by Jim Collins. I can't explain it to you, but it was like a religious experience. He is such a genius. And that book was transformational in terms of my business mindset. Because that is a book on mastery and discipline. And so those are the three that come to mind. Yeah.
- [81:18]
B
Good to Great's one of my favorite books. Just like that's a goal level 5, level 5 leader, and it's timeless.
- [81:25]
C
Ignore the companies that are in there. Read the content, man, because the content is gold.
- [81:31]
B
But who are two people that have changed the direction of your life?
- [81:37]
C
I think I've mentioned both of them. So Sam cup, my business mentor, absolutely taught me everything. You know, a lot of what I learned about running a business. Incredible businessman. And then my dad, Floyd Wickman, he is my greatest people mentor. He's 83 now, but he taught me everything I know about leading inspiring people, be that one or 1,000. He is a hall of fame speaker in the National Speakers Association. His mentor was Zig Ziglar. He's just a force of nature. And he basically taught me everything he knew about speaking to an audience, speaking to one person, leading, motivating, inspiring, and so, so learned a lot from him.
- [82:17]
B
Amazing. That's, that's incredible to have your dad on that list. That's, that, that's, that's so.
- [82:23]
C
What a gift.
- [82:24]
B
So, yeah, with Father's Day just last week, like, just dads are the most important. I, I mean, they're, they're so important to, to kids lives. And it's my favorite thing in the world being a dad. So last question on this segment is a quote. What is one quote that has changed the direction of your life?
- [82:45]
C
You know, so this is one I interchange to, but there's only like, you know, a handful on this one. But the one that comes to mind today, and it might be, it comes from Zig Ziglar, but it's my dad. I heard him say it so many times, and I think it came from Zig Ziglar, but it's. You get everything you want out of life as long as you help enough people get what they want. That's probably the constant of my life, but that's a big one. That's at the top of the list. That really long Marianne Williamson quote about Shining is one of my favorites too, but I just can't remember that one verbatim. But that's what comes to mind. Yeah.
- [83:23]
B
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. We're powerful beyond all measure. It's great quote.
- [83:28]
C
Oh, my God, that one is just like that one. Sings to me every time I read it.
- [83:32]
B
Yeah. So, all right, last little segment. Past, present, future. And we're going to start with past. We're going to look at your, your past. So if you're, you could go back and you had coffee with 20 year old Gino, what piece of advice would you give 20 year old Gino?
- [83:50]
C
Yeah, you know, it's what we talked about is I would say let your freak flag fly and I would use the F word but I won't use it here, but F what they think, you know, so I spent decades worrying about what everybody thought of me, worrying about their judgment. And, and so it's like F them, F what they think be you let your freak flag fly and let them react to it. And so I spent decades twisting myself in a knot to please everybody and try to satisfy everybody and oh my God, is that exhausting. Yeah.
- [84:25]
B
So one thing that I was going to tell you at the end of the show, but I'll tell you right now, when you talk to people and you can just tell they're in alignment. Like their, their life is aligned, they feel aligned. Like that's, that is the, the, the vibe that I'm getting for you is like you are in alignment with your life purpose, what you're supposed to do with your family. You just, you have that. And I know it probably took a lot of work, years of work to get to that, but, but you give off that energy and that vibe and so appreciate that. Let's go to present. What is something you are doing currently right now that is making your life better?
- [85:10]
C
You know, I think the thing that comes to me there is what I shared earlier about going from 55 hours a week to 40 hours a week. So you know, for those of you out there, you know, I just, it was ingrained in me. You talk about ego in my twenties that you need to work five and a half days a week came from my dad. So I just always been this 55 hour a week guy. And then I stopped working Saturdays, but I would work 11 hour days Monday through Friday, you know, so that's 55 hour a week guy. For 35 years, maybe more. Last year I made the commitment to myself to get it down to 40. Took me almost a year to get there. But this 40 hour week that I'm working, I'm almost past all of the guilt and like you lazy slobs thoughts and all that kind of stuff. But it's, it's incredibly freeing to everything we talked about. Now I have these 15 extra hours a week for my personal life. You know, me, my friends, my family. That's probably the most profound, amazing love that.
- [86:12]
B
And then also with 40 weeks a year. I love that. That's incredible. And so, and you've set that standard for a long time, correct?
- [86:18]
C
I mean that goes, that goes back over 30 years. And I recommend every entrepreneur should be working 40 weeks or less. You can do it, just gotta delegate and elevate.
- [86:30]
B
Yeah, that's so in chat GPT, I, I did this where I uploaded just every personality assessment I've ever taken, told them about myself and I'm like, I just want to, I want, like give me a routine for work and chat GPT basically said that like your personality profile is set up for a sprint. Sprint and then a time of relaxation. A sprint and then a time of relaxation.
- [86:52]
C
So good. I have this friend, he's got a place in the Bahamas. He works three weeks a month and then one, I'm sorry, yeah, three weeks a month and then one week a month he goes to the Bahamas for a week. That's every month he does that. Just, just imagine that recharging of his batteries and then boom, he hits it hard for three weeks, he turns it off for a week. So that's his formula, we all have our own formula. So it's really important that you know that about yourself. Yeah.
- [87:17]
B
So, and then last question. This is one of my favorite questions and I'm gonna word it, it might, might sound a little strange, but hopefully this is a long time in the future, but you are going to pass away.
- [87:29]
C
What?
- [87:29]
B
And yes, it happens to all of us. It happens to all of us.
- [87:33]
C
Damn it.
- [87:34]
B
And your, your two kids, your grandkids are gonna get up on stage and they're gonna tell everybody about their dad and their grandpa. What, what would make you most happy if you were sitting in that audience to hear them say about their dad and their grandpa.
- [87:59]
C
So what's coming to me first and foremost is just they're saying that they knew how much I love them. They felt it, they knew it, they knew how much I loved them.
- [88:13]
B
That's good. Yeah, that's, that's the goal. That is the goal.
- [88:17]
C
I, I, oh, that and he had a 200 million dollar net worth. No, I'm totally kidding. I'm totally kidding.
- [88:24]
B
I'm totally kidding. Yeah, but I mean that is the, that's the goal. I, I, we, I was telling about my walk, you know, a couple days ago, or was it yesterday? And I was, we were talking about love and, and I was trying to, to explain to my daughter how much I, I loved her. And you know, you, words will never do it justice. It's, it's through action. It's through action over a long period of time. And, and my hope is that the love that I have inside of her that I can't even verbalize is conveyed to her throughout her life whenever, whenever I go. So know, yeah, I love that answer. But, well, you know, hey, it has been an absolute blast. I, I, like I said, I'm, I'm gonna get done with this. I'm gonna be energized for the rest of the day because it's been so much fun getting to talk with you. Where can people find you find your books? Where can people find you at? Yeah.
- [89:20]
C
So I'm gonna make it really simple. So Gino Wickman.com my website has it all there, all five pieces of content. I've written, written eight books that address that entrepreneurial climb and the five pieces of content I would urge you, you know, if you have less than 10 employees, you're this entrepreneur in the making. Go to the Entrepreneurial Leap Content and take the Entrepreneur in the Making assessment to find out if you have those six essential traits. Each piece of content has an assessment, but I'd urge you to go there since we touched on that earlier. But other than that, you'll find everything@genowickman.com and you can go down with whichever rabbit hole you choose in terms of those five pieces of content.
- [90:00]
B
Perfect. Well, thank you so much and I'm sure we'll talk again. All right. Can't wait.
- [90:05]
A
Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Better Life Podcast. We hope you enjoy the show. I hope you got some valuable insights to help you lead a better life for you and your family. Now, hey, if you found value in this episode, please consider leaving us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us to improve the show, helps us reach more people with this message of living that better life. And be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And hey, before I go, this show is all about the habits, actions, beliefs and strategies that can give you a better life. But in case you're interested and you want to know my opinion on what it takes to live the best life, not just better. And that's from like a more spiritual and faith standpoint. Check out abetterlife.com bestlife thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time on the Better Life Podcast.