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Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money Through Strategic Relationships and Mentorship, feat. Gil Petersil
00:30:25
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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's our mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I have a new friend, Gil Petersill. Gil is a global speaker, entrepreneur and strategic partnership Expert with over 25 years of experience building companies and high trust business ecosystems. He's co founded over 20 venture, delivered over a thousand talks worldwide, and helped founders generate measurable growth through partnerships and relationship capital. Many leaders working with Gill report 20 to 50% revenue growth within six to 12 months through strategic collaborations with 50% of or 50 to 70%, excuse me, of new deals coming from intentional relationship ecosystems. So Gil is unique in the fact that he talks a little bit about the things we talk about on both of my podcasts, which is making more money and building better relationships. So I'm excited to have the conversation with him today. Gil, what's up, man? Welcome to the show.
- [01:03]
B
Yeah, thank you for doing this. Thank you for bringing me on board. Thank you for how it is that you're serving the community. We need more people like you.
- [01:11]
A
I appreciate you taking the time, man. I know you're a really busy guy, so let's go ahead and jump right in here. Tell me the first time you were ever excited about a dollar that you made. The first time you got paid to do something and you were like, I cannot believe I just got paid to do this.
- [01:23]
B
I love that. You know, it's funny, but no one ever asked me that question. People tend to ask me the other way around. When did you set up your first business? But the first dollar. So I'm going to mention the one that I earned, not the one that I was given as an allowance, the one that I earned was at the age of 13, told my parents that I wanted to make some more money so I can have. Funny, I said, I want to have more money than you do. What do I need to do? That said, start a business. And the shopping mall next to my home had these kind of Sunday markets inside the shopping mall. And I said to my dad, can I set something up? Can I sell something there? And. And he's like, what do you want to sell? I'm like, I don't know. I'm 13. You know, this is going back 35 years. You know, it's going back a while. And I said to him, you know, I'm happy to try something. And we ended up finding one of his friends that had these old school audio cassettes. You know, many of your listeners might not even have seen those, but you know what I'm talking about. And I ended up getting these audio cassettes that were all about holiday songs from one of his friends on consignment. I didn't even know what consignment meant back then, but that made a difference. You don't have to buy it up front if you sell yourself, you don't, you give back. And that was great lesson for me at that age. And I remember that Sunday that I made money and I felt so good about selling, about the exchange of like, I have something that this person wants, I gotta convince them why they want it and they give me money. And I knew at that age, my dad told me, every time you sell one of these, $10 will go into your pocket. It's pure profit for you. And I remember that that weekend I made more money than I made an allowance in the past month and in one day. And it taught me a lot about this independence and having money and what do I do with the money. And of course I wasn't thinking about savings or anything like that, but there was a lot of excitement, there was a rush that was going through me. And I remember I ended up wasting all of that money the next week on one girl in high school.
- [03:30]
A
Was it, hey, was it a waste, Gill? Or was it an investment to learn what not to do in the future with spending money?
- [03:36]
B
You know what I mean? It definitely you're right. It wasn't a waste because she might be listening to this. She's still a good friend of mine. I thought she would end up becoming my girlfriend, but no, she ended up telling me that she likes actually one of my best friends. So it was one of those like crushing moments and my heart at that age. But you know, at that age it's okay to go through that.
- [03:58]
A
You know what's so funny man, is I asked that question a lot to a lot of different people who've made a lot of money doing a lot of different things. And it almost always comes back to a story about when they were a teenager, when it was like just. It was. It's sort of this realization point where it's like, oh, I can actually have control over the amount of money that I get paid on something versus just I went and got a job. You know, it's almost Never. Like it's. Every once in a while it's that way if it's like a really meaningful first job or that a great boss or great mentor at the first job or something like that. But it's almost always something exactly like that. Well, I was 14 and I started mowing lawns for my neighbor. And they actually paid me money for it, even though I was just doing it to be. To do them a favor, you know what I mean? But I think those, those early, those early lessons, especially while your brain is still developing, are meaningful. They have the ability to completely change your perspective on how the world works and how to make. I'm curious, was your. Obviously your dad was super supportive during this and, you know, was. Was helping you through this process. What did he do for work?
- [04:59]
B
So my dad, since I've been born, has been a carpenter. You know, he was that guy that could fix anything in your house. As from a very early age, I would be his. His helper. So I would go sometimes after work, after school, and I would go on the weekend and I would work with him and he would pay me that kind of allowance, kind of as an employee to work with him. And I remember that when I made that first money, I was like, hold on. Well, I made more money in one day that I have made with you for working with you for a long time. So I remember that there was a very huge transition because for that. But one year or so, I was kind of not wanting to quit on my dad, which was quite unique because he was being an entrepreneur himself as a carpenter. But I was more looking for other entrepreneurs. And it was almost like the whole rich dad, poor dad thing, where I started looking, I wouldn't say for jobs, but I started looking for opportunities where I could get a job. But it was more about like, can I find another boss that's cool to work with? Back then I was like, well, my dad is not a cool boss. Or back then I was thinking, well, I don't want to be a carpenter. This is not interesting. It's like hard work. And I remember at the age of 14, is like illegal to do back in Canada, but I get my first job as a telemarketer? And I was like, well, hold on. Are you telling me I could sit here in the office, in your office, after school every day on the phone, make money? And I started finding the. I don't want to say schemes, but I started finding these shortcuts, these hacks of life. How can we make money? And over those few Years. While I was in high school and a little bit of college, I explored over a hundred different jobs. I literally used to just call jobs. Get the job, go for the interview, maybe, like, they love me, let's go do one day of the job. And if I don't love it, I would, like leave in a nice way. And I would literally do that a few times a week. I would just get jobs, try them out for a day or two, just say, okay, okay. Like in this job, this is how I would make money. I was a dishwasher, I was a telemarketer, I was a DJ assistant, I was a jewelry maker. And all of them lasted sometimes a day or a few days. Whereas, like, and it was back then, it was not about like, let me make money so I can invest. It was like, let me make money so I can be a little bit more independent. Or I could buy things so I can, you know, take care of people. I always love buying gifts for people. So it was very much an experiential kind of time in my life where it's like, what does it mean to make money?
- [07:43]
A
What did you end up doing post high school then?
- [07:47]
B
So, you know, high school was not easy for me. You know, English is my third language and from the age of 10, I'm, I, you know, I understood already the age of 10, 11. My parents told me I didn't know what it meant back then. Went to see some doctors, dyslexia, adhd, ADD from, you know, from an early age, I'm an immigrant, so I had to learn English the hard way. And French became my second language. So what I had to do is I had to find a way to go through high school. Very, very honest. I've said it out there on podcasts by cheating. I couldn't pass. I got kicked out of multiple high schools. I just couldn't go through it. Which is why getting jobs or making money became easier because it was almost like a hustle. Like, I can figure it out without reading the book. I can learn how to do that without trying to sit in a classroom. It was the hustler kind of mentality. I didn't know what hustler meant back then. After high school in Canada, we kind of tried to figure things out. So we go to college for a little bit. Again, I was not doing well in college. While in college, I was getting 101 different type of job opportunities. I've done dozens and dozens of telemarketing opportunities. And I remember at the age of 18 when I was like, that's it. I'm not going to make it to university. No university is accepting me. I'm not. I don't want to continue trying to go from job to job. Let me start a more serious business. And I, I got an opportunity to start a little business and I was living in Canada, but back in the US just for the summer, like one of those summer jobs where it's actually my own business. And that just created this catapult of like an entrepreneur that wants to make it. And that created an opportunity for me to show off my skills in front of this super successful entrepreneur. Very, very successful man in Canada. He's like, hey, you want to move to Toronto? I was living in Montreal back then. He was like, you want to move to Toronto and you want to help me run the business? And I have like five different companies underneath it. And I was like 18 years old, you know, like, like, yeah, let's do it. You know, I had nothing to lose. So I understood that being an entrepreneur my own back then, it wasn't easy for me. And I don't know if it was my intuition or it was the successful failures or maybe the, the fear of failure, but it was like, let me try to figure things out with his money. Let me try to figure things out with his support. Back then, I didn't know what the word mentorship meant. Now, of course, we understand that, you know, that for me was the ideal and first big mentor in my entrepreneurial career. And I just started a really, you know, aggressive serial entrepreneur kind of career, moving from one thing to another while having maybe a job and having some sort of an entrepreneurial activity on the side.
- [10:43]
A
So I have some bad news for you, Gil. I don't know if anybody told you this, but you actually can't be successful unless you graduate from college. So, yeah, I don't know if anybody told you that, gave you the information, but
- [10:55]
B
it's funny, but so it's not. Like, unfortunately, people told me that, like, even my parents told me that. And I remember that in my, in my late 20s, when I got a couple of interesting opportunities to speak in front of an audience for the first time, my dad didn't get it. He's like, how. What are you speaking to them about? You never went to university. How do you do that? And I shocked him when, at the age of 33, I was living in Moscow in Russia at the time, and this epic entrepreneurial life there, and a local university, which is a very famous local university there, but quite famous in Europe asked me to come and become a visiting professor. I ended up being there as a visiting professor for five years. I spoke at, like, seven different universities around the world. But my parents, even at the age of 33, career is going well. I'm making money. Didn't get it. How. How are you a visiting professor? They literally gave me a business card from this university, and I was a networking professor. I was like, yeah, it's like, how without a university degree, like, yeah, that's. That's the Gilway.
- [12:06]
A
Yeah, exactly. Well, it turns out you don't have to be the best student in the world. Like, a lot of ways. It's almost. They're. They're almost opposing forces. You know, the entrepreneurial brain and the really good student brain are almost in opposition to each other sometimes. And it's. There's. It's just that you just got to take the path that, you know, that you can take and not live life depending on what everybody else is telling you, what you should be doing. And it. And it just. It blows my mind because it's also just like, the degree is not the goal. Education is the goal. And there are many, many, many ways to get a good education. There's many ways to learn. And you talked about one of them a second ago, which is you found a great mentor, somebody who was willing to extend a helping hand and help you overcome some of the maybe early obstacles that you might have run into. How do you help people figure out ways to attract a solid mentor into their life?
- [13:06]
B
Beautiful question. You know, I had to go through a lot of mentors to start understanding what a mentor actually meant. And for me, it ended up becoming. It's that professor at university that I never got to meet because I never went to university who suddenly found me. And I found them through life. And then the lessons became deeper and deeper. It's like, not, what could I learn from them? It became a lot more spiritual. How can I serve this person? How can I become very valuable for this person? So not only do they want to teach me, but they want to keep me around. They want to give me everything they got. They feel an exchange. And over the years, it became very exciting for me to find a bigger mentor or a richer mentor. I had some sexy mentors, some women really beautiful mentors. Like, wow, working with this woman, this is amazing. You know, I'm like, working with this billionaire. Like, yeah, this is great. I'm loving it. And over the years, I. This was. Again, it started when I was working with some of the University students and a lot of startup academies and a lot of accelerators and incubators where they asked me about mentorship and I was like, well, one of the reasons I believe we network is to find mentors. I have two reasons to network in life in general. The one reason is to find collaborators, people I can maybe do something with. A collaborator for me, could be a friend, it could be a business partner, it could be someone I'll do a hobby with, could be a. Maybe like a collaborator is just someone I'm going to spend some time with for whatever reason, not necessarily business, you know. And the other reason is mentoring. But back in the days, I didn't call a mentor. I just someone I can learn from. I really want to learn from someone and in many, many cases I learned from them during that 5, 10 minute conversation and event and it was great and it was over and, and then I learned that follow up is actually incredible. And the power in mentorship is to reconnect with mentors. So I started teaching people. Don't just go to event and find someone that you can learn from and ask them for advice and oh my God, you're in front of like a very famous entrepreneur, a very famous author. Ask them for the question right now. Take advantage of the opportunity in the moment. There's a window of, window of opportunity. Like take advantage of the moment and ask the question so they can help you right now. But why not also offer to reconnect? Why not also offer to add value to them, to exchange information, to find a way to collaborate even deeper with them? And that gave me a lot of power, not just for myself, but teaching others. How can you reconnect again and again with people where every time you're reconnecting you're thinking, well, can I prepare myself? Can I prepare myself? What can I help? Does my mentor need potentially, can I read articles about him? Did they write a book? They have a social media account? Get your curious mindset going to understand what can I add value to this person? And that's been one of the greatest practices in my life because I've learned that most human beings don't have strong enough self value and they don't know how much, how valuable they are for others, how resourceful they can actually truly be. If they understood that all they need to do is listen. Boom. Adding value. All they need to do is recommend the book, bring them lunch, bring them a cup of tea, connecting with someone, help them carry a bag. There are so many easy ways of adding value to a Mentor. I remember one of my greatest mentors, super incredible rich billionaire. And I understood that what he wanted from me without him telling me, is to practice his English with me. English was also his third language. And he's like, gil, wow, English is your third language? You, how did you make it so how did you get it to become so good? And I told him a lot of tv, a lot of really good movies, and practicing with people who are also not having English as their first language. And he's like, can we meet up every single week for lunch? Talk about anything you want. I'll pay for lunch, and you just help me get my English to improve. I'm like, a billionaire asks you to meet up for lunch every week. And to even improve that even better. I completely hacked how we could build relationship with mentors where with this specific man, I convince him to send me every single day a one minute voice message about anything he wants. And that was really powerful for me because one, he loved practicing one minute, one minute with me. Because, you know, sometimes in networking, all you need is one or two minutes of conversation and you're good. You don't even have to be able to speak if you're a billionaire especially. But what I love the most is that he gave me the opportunity to respond to him. So I would also respond to him with voice messages. And I got into voice messages when no one was into them. I'm talking about like a long, long time ago where you had to press multiple buttons to actually get a voice message out on a phone. And what was amazing, it's through my voicemail. I started asking him for advice. So imagine you got this billionaire mentor who thinks that you're adding value to him the whole time because he's practicing English, but he's actually telling you how he made negotiation work for him today in a specific deal, or how he made a decision on who to hire for his team. Like, oh my God. I was like, okay, today, leave me voice message about how you recruit. I was like, this is great. So I'm telling people, identify the kind of people you want to work with as a mentor. Find ways of adding value for them, develop your curious mindset as much as possible, and practice reconnecting. One time is never enough.
- [19:09]
A
Yeah, you touched on something really, really important throughout that entire response. But at the very beginning, you said something like, I didn't go into it thinking about what's in it for me. I went into it thinking about how can I serve them. And all relationships are based on some form of A mutual exchange of value. And the perfect win win scenario is exactly how you described it, where in his mind he's getting a ton of value from you because he's practicing his English and that was something that was meaningful and valuable to him. And then in your mind you're like, I can't believe this billionaire is sending me voice messages about things that probably somebody else would have to pay. Six figures, multiple six figures, maybe not even ever be able to get from this person. But I'm getting them for free every day because I'm actually helping him do something that he wanted to. And that is probably the fundamental misunderstanding that most people have, especially in any form of a mentorship relationship, is that, is that they, they come into it thinking like, well, how can this person help me? Or I want this thing, so let me just ask for this thing. And it's like, well, you don't have any sort of relationship capital to be spending. You, you're, you're, you know what I mean? You're, you're starting from a deficit here. It's your job to invest into this relationship, into this quote, unquote bank account, so that at some point there's actually a balance there that you can withdraw from and then receive the value that, that you might be looking for during that. During that time. But it starts with the mental shift from going from what's in this for me? To asking what's in this for them? Because it's obvious what's in it for you? You know what I mean? It's not obvious what's in it for them. So what do you get somebody who has everything? What do you get somebody who, who can, at the snap of their fingers, can get whatever they want. They can buy whatever they want. They can meet almost whoever they want. They can, they can do whatever they want. How do you bring value into that conversation to then, to then where they recognize that enough to go. There's something about this person that almost reminds me of a younger version of me. And I wish that I would have had this help.
- [21:15]
B
I think.
- [21:16]
A
And I'd be curious to hear your, your perspective on this skill. My perspective has been, I think people like that get a bad rap from society, culture, and they get painted, this picture gets painted that, you know, they had to be selfish or they're bad people, or they're an a hole because that they, like, there's no other way they'd have this money. My experience has been quite the opposite for the most part, is like, those people are very generous people. They want to give back. They want to help people. It's just that they're so used to everybody else being a leech, they just suck all the value they possibly can out of them, and then they just bounce. So when you can come to the table with something that. That. That says, like, I am here to offer value to you as much as I possibly can, they want to help you, they want to give back. You know what I mean?
- [22:01]
B
100%. And I love. You know, this is very. This is a lot of wisdom here, because there are hacks to all of this. Sometimes you can add value to John so much, and suddenly you want value from Chris, and you can ask John to give you a good referral and introduce you to Chris, and suddenly Chris wants to add value to you. So I'm a big believer in karmic points. I studied with Geshe Michael Roach, who wrote the book Karmic Management. So there's a lot of credits that can move around just like money can. And I've also learned that sometimes mentors might not tell you what they need help with, because in general, society has not taught us that asking for help is a sign of strength. In many, many cultures, asking for help is a sign of weakness, unfortunately. But what I've always done is I found ways of doing the research. So, like, when I knew I was going to meet Richard Branson, I did research on what was most relevant to him. And when I walked into this room, it was backstage, like 20 people in the room. I understood that a lot of people are asking him questions that they can read all of his answers that he's answered a hundred times where I asked him a question. And inside the question was more of a, how can we help you achieve this opportunity or problem that I recently read about? And suddenly the whole room looks at me because I kind of rephrased the question I had for him in a way that we could potentially help you with one of your challenges. Same thing when I wanted to connect with Tony Robbins. You know, I've been working with Tony for 13 years. For many of those years, I was known as one of the biggest promoters in the world for him. Brought over 10,000 people to his events. Millions of dollars I've sent to him. But I remember that when talking to his team, they didn't have strong representatives in Eastern Europe. And at the time, I was living in Eastern Europe, and I didn't know anything about promoting an event. I didn't know anything about bringing people across the oceans to someone else's event. It was totally not my business, but I was like, well, Tony is amazing. He's helped change my life. I want to go to his next event. What if I could bring 20, 25 people with me? And I did, and it was amazing. And the next year brought 200 people. And next year we brought over a thousand people. And then we actually started holding new standards, bringing people to his event like no one else have. And we just kept on raising the standards. Not because he told me what help he needs. I was noticing sometimes we could just pay attention. We could be curious to see and to try to understand what do we think this person needs? And every single human needs help. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire, the most resourceful person in the world. Everyone needs help. Everyone is a human at the end of the day. And you might see them on tv, you might see them on stage, and everything is perfect. But you know what? At the end of the day, their shit also stinks. They have problems with their kids, they have problems with their health potentially. They might not have problems with money if they're a billionaire, but they have challenges where they might need somehow a human being to connect with them. And for me, I believe in this so much because throughout my life, I've been wanting to find business opportunities with people that I can add a lot of value to. So, like, for example, in the last few months, I partnered up with an organization called Human Garage, which is now one of the fastest growing wellness movement in the world. And it's amazing, just last week they had over a billion impressions on one of their posts. And I fell in love with what it is that they're doing because it's all about fascia maneuvers. I didn't know anything about fascia maneuvers months ago, but I knew that in the past year I've been looking for a mentor that I can add value to, but that could bring health to my life. I just turned 47 last week and I wanted to be healthier than ever before when I get to 50, ever before. So I was like, well, instead of finding a mentor that would help me with my business like I've done in the past, or this, or this, or this, let me find someone who's got a business, got a community, all about health and wellness, and I can add massive value to them. And again, whether your audience believes it or not, I believe that we can manifest human beings into our lives. There's 8 billion people out there. We can manifest those people that we need into our lives. And I manifested this beautiful man, Gary Lineham from Human Garage into my life and now I'm fully inside of this organization helping him and getting help, you know, every single day.
- [26:27]
A
Gil, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show, man. I know you're a busy guy. Don't take that for granted. Where can people go to get more from you?
- [26:34]
B
You know, I'm the only Gil pedestal online, so LinkedIn, Instagram, easy places to reach out to me, sending me a one minute voice message telling me who you wish to meet and why. I love that very much. My biggest passion is really being there either as an advisor, as a coach, sometimes as a collaborator to help people go global. That's really who I look to work with. People that want to expand not just everywhere around the world, but into new networks because that's what I've been studying for the last 20 years, the arts and sciences of human networking. So people can reach out to me, they can follow me. But I really love for people to just reach out, say hello, tell me what they like, tell me what they learn, tell me where they heard me, tell me you heard me on, on, you know, on this podcast and find ways of staying in touch is something I love doing.
- [27:20]
A
Gilpetersil. That's G I L P E T E R S I L at Gilpetersil. Over on Instagram, go check out some of the stuff that Gil's been putting out over the years. Gil, I appreciate you taking the time. Everybody else listening. Remember, money only solves your money problems. But it's easier to solve the rest of your problems with money in the bank. So let's solve that one first here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch. Next time, peace.
- [27:41]
C
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