Respect The Grind with Stefan Aarnio

The owner of Identified Talent Solutions, it's a talent recruitment company and this company has grown to the point where it's in the ink 500

Paul David

Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. Respect the Grind with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show where we interview people who have achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who's achieved mastery and examined what it took to get there. Today on the show we have Paul David. He is the owner of Identified Talent Solutions, it's a talent recruitment company and this company has grown to the point where it's in the ink 500 of feet. Indeed Paul, welcome to the show. Respect the grind. Good to see you, my friend.

Paul: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me Stefan.

Stefan: Awesome. Yeah, I love having guys like you on the show because we got so many real estate people. I'm a real estate investor you know, I teach flipping houses and rental properties and stuff like that. And I love having someone from a different field and so for the people at home who don't know you that well Paul, tell us how'd you get started in the talent recruitment business? That's something that I'm sure is an awesome business. I've just never thought about it. So how did you get started?

Paul: Sure. It was about 15 years ago, right out of college. I got into a firm that does third party recruiting. So basically they provide candidates, they provide employees to other companies. I did that for about six months. Very salesy position. Didn't think I was very good at it. I was really, really shy back then. But then I went into a mortgage company, they shot as a recruiter, mortgage was booming back then. I learned my whole entire trade from that particular point. After 10 years I decided, well it's about time to go on my own, utilized a lot of the relationships that I had over my 10 year career and I built the business basically in my garage.

Stefan: Wow. I love stories where it starts in the garage. I think Apple started like that. All of these, I think Harley Davidson started in the garage. They all start in garages. I think Google started in a garage too.

Paul: Yeah. Amazon started in the garage.

Stefan: Yeah Bro. It's great. So really pertinent topic I think is recruiting. And a lot of people listening to the show, maybe they're solo preneurs or maybe they got like two employees or one employee or they want to recruit more. How does somebody effectively recruit? 'Cause I'll let the cat out of the bag here Paul. Every recruit I've done for my business has always been a referral. I've never done well with a head hunter. I've never done well with somebody recruiting for me it's always been through someone I know and I've tried agencies before. I've spent money before for whatever reason they don't stick. The talent is good if they don't know my brand or they don't know me in advance for whatever reason doesn't go. So how do you effectively recruit talent for so many companies and how does that match really work?

Paul: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean I think what they need and recruitment's really tough because it's not only a matter of just the skill set that they have, but it's also how do you fit that person into a culture? Even if they have the incredible skillset. I mean that person might be really successful in one company, but then they go into a different culture and then they're completely off. So it is a little bit of a difficult process, but you said that most of your hires have been referrals. That by far is the best way to hire people in your company. Is if somebody in your company or yourself or someone that you know and trust vouches for them then that's fantastic. It's almost kind of like dating. If you meet someone and they're like, yeah, they are a great person, then generally you're going to trust that.

Paul: But, if you don't have that capability, it is really important to stream that person properly. Now there's no silver bullet. So I mean you've kind of seen it. There's no silver bullet in picking the right person off the bat. I mean employment's like a dating process. So what we do is one, we're very narrow in the things that we do. So we know the skill set. So if you're a generalist and you're trying to do everything for everyone, like the larger staffing firms, it's really hard to understand what kind of skills are looking for cause you have to master one particular vertical. So what we do is we're mastering one specific vertical and understanding the skillset so the candidate is an optimal candidate from a skillset perspective. Then what we need to do is really, really build that relationship with the client. What is their team like? I mean not only the culture of the company, but what's the team like? How do they operate? What are they composed of? I mean what do they like to do? So you can look at the intangibles and the tangibles and place that candidate properly.

Paul: So that's kind of how we do it. We really have to, I mean it's like a dating process. We got to make sure that we know our client really well so we know exactly what kind of candidate put in there.

Stefan: I like what you say about the dating and I teach people real estate investing and they'll say, "How do I get a good deal?" And I'm like, "Bro, you got a good deal in real estate just like dating." You pick the most beautiful girl at the school, the Prom Queen. And if you go ask on stage wearing her sash that says homecoming and her tiara, you're never going to get a date. But if you wait for her to break up with her boyfriend and she's under the bleachers crying, wearing some dirty sweatpants with makeup running down her face, that's the time where you go in there and go, "Hey baby, look, let's grab a cheeseburger." And she's like, "I've been hungry for years. Let's go." And so it's really interesting 'cause I think people always try to over complicate business.

Stefan: We always go, "Oh man, it's different. My industry is different. This business is different. This time it's different." It never is. It really is just dating. It's relationships. And I like what you said about, it's almost like a marriage. These two people have to come together, the culture has to come in with the skill set and it has to fold together. What do you think when you're out there recruiting people Paul, what's the most important thing that you look for in any candidate? Maybe like is it grit? Is it drive? Is it just general intelligence? What's something that when you're just meeting talent that you want to see in just about everybody?

Paul: For me what I'm looking for is an intangible skillset. You can have someone that has the most impressive resume, the most impressive of education, but if they don't have a personality where they can build relationships, well I mean, at the end of the day, the fundamentals of business is relationships. If you do not know how to build a relationship, then you're just going to fail, period. I mean like, you know, I don't care how much you automate things, all the click funnels I hear, if you do know how to shake hands, talk to somebody and really build that relationship, you're not going to be successful, period. So I want to make sure that one of the things that we make sure it is how do we converse with this person? Will this person be able to influence other ... I don't care if it's an individual contributor or a manager. They need to be able to interact with people regardless if they do software development or if they're a nurse.

Paul: So relationship skills are very, very important. Communication skills are very, very important and that's what we look for first and foremost. It's not a complicated thing, but I think people would really want to work with other people and that they can kind of get along. And if that happens then what happens is you build trust, right? So once you build trust, because you [inaudible 00:06:37] then you can kind of work through anything else.

Stefan: I love that. So is it more, would you say, are you looking for more he EQ or IQ? I guess you're more of an EQ guy. Emotional quotient.

Paul: I'm an EQ guy. I mean most of the people that I have, you know what I first did this, I was looking for skills, but when I started my company, I was looking for grit. I was looking for someone that had tenacity. Someone that wanted to improve, I can teach them the skills, I can't teach them to drive.

Stefan: You just got to respect the grinding bro. Yeah there go. You've got a gong already. A gong's been hit man. I like that. You know, grit is something that in the military academies, they noticed that that's the number one thing that keeps people going. And one thing I say all the time is, I fail at 80% of the stuff I do. I'm failing all the fricking time, man. I'm an entrepreneur, so it's constant failure. And then the 20% I win on is so big. It handles all the losses and then some. Now, how would you describe grit? What is grit? What is the ability to keep going? What is that?

Paul: You kind of hit it on the head. It's like for me happens after my why. Why do I want to achieve something? Why do I want to, what is it that's important to me? Once I fundamentally understand why something's important to me, then it's the dedication. What I've learned about grit is grit really is the ability to embrace failure, right? And really learn from that failure. 'Cause here's the deal. I don't care what you do in life you're going to fail. I don't care if it's walking down the street. One of these days you're going to fail. 'Cause I look at things this way, you're going to fail or you're going to succeed. And those two instances for failure, I'm going to learn something. I'm going to learn something really quick so it doesn't happen again. And if I do that, then I'm going to succeed. So I try to rush into failure as much as I can.

Paul: I try to embrace it as much as I can and I look at it, I think being able to have grit is you can look at that failure not as a failure itself, but an opportunity to learn. Because all of us entrepreneurs, if we don't know how to learn from our failures, we're never going to be succeeding. So I've kind of looked at it in a different perspective. I actually enjoy failure because it's like, "Oh crap, I didn't do this right. Well let's try to figure out something else." So that's how I see it. So I think grit is the ability to understand that failure is more of a learning opportunity and something that sets us back forever.

Stefan: I like what John Maxwell says. He says, "You either win or you learn."

Paul: Yeah. That's in his book Failing Forward.

Stefan: Yeah, you win and you learn. And that's just something I started to do in my life. I had some pretty hardcore things happen to me this year is what's the meaning of this? What's the story? What am I learning here? And I don't know if you ever read the book Man's Search for Meaning. You ever read that Viktor Frankl? It's one of Tony Robbin's favorites, and it's about a man who was thrown in the Nazi death camps in World War II. And he had a book manuscript, I guess he was like a scientist or something. A book manuscript he was going to publish and the Nazis took his book and they I don't burn it or ripped it up. They took it away from him. And what he noticed when he was inside the death camps was the optimist died first. So the people who were "Oh, we'll be out by Christmas, we'll be out by Christmas, we'll be out by Christmas."

Stefan: Christmas comes, they die of a broken heart. But the people who lived through the death camps were the people who had meaning and they had a child to see. They had a book to write, they had a spouse to go find after the camp. And that to me when something bad happens to you in life, it's so interesting because there's two meanings. There's the victim meaning you can have, and then there's the, what am I learning meaning. Is that something you see in some of these very successful people where they have major setbacks and kind of the bigger the setback, the higher they climb?

Paul: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people that have overcome tragedy, have been very, very successful because they know how to adapt to it and they know how to get over it. I think when we first started talking, I told you I never really wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was kind of forced at it where my wife died of cancer at 36 we went through a four and a half year battle with cancer. I was left with a four year old. I had $150,000 in debt. And it's like I had to make a decision at that particular point. I had to look up my why, which was my daughter. What am I going to do? Am I going to crumble? Am I going to fall apart? I mean, that's not an alternative that I want. So I did, and I had no idea how to start this company.

Paul: All I know was I needed to do it. So with that intensity and that drive, I said, I have to make this happen. And after that what's all your focus is I think from tragedy, once all your focus is pointed to one direction, then you'll start to see the opportunities that you've never seen before. So, I mean, I think people that have gone through tragedies and really decided to not let that tragedy define who they are, but let their choices make them who they are, that you see magic when that happens. Because intensity to succeeding and making sure that they're never defined by what happened to them in life so.

Stefan: Bro I'm giving you a gong. I love you, man. Dude, I love you man. You know that story you have. I'm so sorry to hear your wife died. I mean that's just the most brutal thing. But I love that you picked up the pieces and I love that you saw the why in your daughter. And I love that you were able to get that emotional charge 'cause so many people would have folded like a lawn chair. It's so easy. Whenever you go downtown, you see a homeless guy on the side of the street. That's someone who folded a lawn chair, but you said, "No, I'm going to use this. I'm going to use it as fuel." And it's tremendous to see what you built. Now shifting gears a little bit, Paul-

Paul: I actually wanted to kind of comment on that I don't know it's going to be ... I have colleagues and friends that have children right? And every time I hear them they say like, "Well, I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't do that because I have to take little Johnny or little Cathy or little whatever to the baseball game. I can't do that." I decided and I think people should decide that you know what? You don't make your children your reason why you can't do things. You make them your reason why you do, do things.

Stefan: Oh, another gong. Bro. We're hitting today. Church of the grind is in session. Damn. Instant replay on that. I want you to say that again for the kids at home. Paul, one more time.

Paul: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I have colleagues and I have friends that continuously tell me "I can't do this because I have to take little Johnny, or they have to take their children or their little Kimmy to their basketball game. Their ballet practice." But you know what? You have to be able, I mean, either you're going to choose to have your children be the reasons why you can't do something or you make them your reason why you can. So that's the different mindset. I mean, you have to make your kids a reason why you can achieve your dreams. Because that's the truth of the matter is if you don't, they're going to learn from that. Don't ever make your children your reason why you can't do something for yourself because that's not their fault.

Stefan: You know, it's like the old seminar story. I don't know if you've heard this story, but there's two brothers and they're identical and they're twins. And one brother says he's living in cardboard box downtown and it's raining on this cardboard box and he's with the woman that's ugly. And they fight and they hate each other and he doesn't know where his kids and he can't hold down a job. He's got no money in his bank account. His creditors are coming after him all the time and life is horrible for this guy. And he says, "My life's a failure 'cause my dad was a drunk who beat me and my mom was a prostitute, smoked weed." And then I cross the tracks. And the nicest part of town is his identical twin brother who's in a mansion, the gorgeous wife and they have great sex and they've got lots of kids and the kids love the dad and they love the mom and they'd go on four vacations a year and they got the dream car and money in the bank and they sleep well at night.

Stefan: And he says, "Man, I'm a success today 'cause my dad was a drunk who beat me. My mum was a prostitute who smoked weed every day." You know that same thing happened to those two guys. But on one side, one guy says, "This is my fuel." And the other guy says, "Oh man, this thing totally devastated me." And I love your story, man. Massive, massive props to your story because I come from a family, my dad was the son of an alcoholic and he had the dad who beat him. He says "Oh, I can't do this. I can't do that. It totally froze him." And with me, I use it as total motivation you know, my why. I think these interests are the whys, you're talking about your why's your little daughter. With whys I notice it's either people's parents that they want to save or it's their kids.

Paul: Sure. Yeah.

Stefan: And it's just either they want to help their parents who are screwed up or fix the parents or whatever, or they want to help their kids. And you know, how important do you think Paul to have a reason and a meaning outside of yourself to succeed? It can't be all about you.

Paul: Oh, 1000%. I think if you don't have a reason outside, I think as human beings we're called to do something bigger than ourselves. And the reasons have to be more than ourselves. So I think innately, if you do not have a reason outside of your own personal gain, then it's going to be futile at the end because the drive stops. The why stops. So it's like when people are only motivated about money or cars or whatever, and they get that, then what happens after that? Right? If you have a purpose that's intangible and that can create a change for everybody else and the reason outside of yourself needs to be there. I mean it just has to.

Stefan: I love that. We're going back to the Viktor Frankl Search for Meaning. You know, Man's Search for Meaning. What is the meaning of all this? And I think that one thing that's common across all of our shows, you're a very successful guy, especially in the space you're in. Is that the darker people get, the more they go into the darkness, the more they're in the light. And the worse it is and the deeper that pit of despair is, I call it the pit of despair. The deeper people go into that darkness, the higher they're able to climb after. And I think there's so many people at home that want to, they want to have it easy. They want to get a job, they don't want to go through any of the risk or the pain, they don't want to have their whys die, anything like that. But in some ways, Paul this is an interesting thing, like that event of losing your partner in some ways is that the best thing that ever happened to you?

Paul: Yeah. I mean it's the worst and the best thing that happened to me. When I look back at it now, it's been about five years since she's passed away. But I look back at it now and even when we were struggling, right. And it was even before that, I mean we were homeless when my daughter was born and she was three months and we were sleeping out of our pathfinder and then a year later she got cancer. I mean we were going through a lot of crap, but I look back at it now and I think about it. If I didn't go through any of those struggles, it wouldn't have made me who I am today. Because I had to choose-

Stefan: I'm going that. I'm gonging that bro.

Paul: I had had to choose to be better. I had to choose. And I think seeing my wife pass away at an early age, that kind of pushed me too. 'Cause I think what happens is people don't realize how delicate their life is. Right. They can always wait until tomorrow. They can always wait till tomorrow. They can always wait till tomorrow. And you never know. You never know. Like my wife never knew she wasn't supposed to die when she was 36 so.

Stefan: Right, right. Well that's super young men and like most women live till like 86 or something. So it's like 50 years too early.

Paul: Yeah really early.

Stefan: One word that you use and that I love those, the word choose. And the one thing that no one can ever take away from any of us, even if we're thrown in a Nazi death camp, is the choice to choose.

Paul: Yes.

Stefan: We can always choose the meaning of things. We can choose, what does this mean? This horrible thing. Is this going to be a wake up call? Is this going to be your fuel for the future? I had a big event in my life when I was younger and it was my parents' divorce. And it's interesting, my brother loved them to pieces. He uses it as a reason why he can't do stuff. You know, he says, I remember once he was yelling at my mom, he said, "Mom, if you guys didn't get divorced, I'd be in the NHL Right now." I'm like "Really?" I'm like "Dude, I don't know about that. You're a December baby. December babies don't make it in the NHL. You've got January, February, March, April go in."

Paul: You've got a lot of Malcolm Gladwell.

Stefan: Yeah man. I'm a Malcolm Gladwell reader. But it's so interesting 'cause I was with one of my girlfriends at the time and she said to me. I remember she came to one of my seminars and she said "All this stuff that you do and all this that you built, you do it for him." And I said, "Who?" She didn't know me that well and I didn't know her that well but she in two seconds as a woman with her intuition knew that the education company I've built is for my father 'cause my father never had that. And that was, yeah, there's such a deep meaning there and there's such a big why and it's so much fuel. 'Cause in life you got so much shit thrown at you all the time. They just, it's buckets and buckets of shit over and over again. And the people with a strong enough why can bear any how. What do you think about that famous quote? I think it's a Nietzsche quote.

Paul: Yeah. No, I absolutely believe that. I absolutely believe that things that get you through the day. And the thing that gets you through life is why are you doing it? If you don't know why you're doing it, you're like a sailboat without a rudder. I mean, you're just kind of going endlessly through and through life, you know? And I think nowadays, I look at it nowadays with how instant everything is. Postmates, instant coffee instant, instant this, instant that. We're forgetting that the true gift of success is actually the journey that you go on. It's who you have to become, to become successful. That's what the gift is, not the actual achievement. It's who you have to become to achieve that. So like, yeah and to achieve that, you need to know your why and why you do it. I mean, so yeah, I absolutely believe in that quote.

Stefan: Wow. Yeah. Now, I love what you're saying about the process and you know, this show's called Respect the Grind, right? You've got to respect that 10 years, respect the 10,000 hours. You can't cut the line. And we live in Instagram life, it's Instagram, Insta popcorn, Insta sex, Insta phone, Insta everything. Right? And I wrote about my book here Hard Times Create Strong Men. It's my fifth book I wrote. And it's interesting, right now there's like a porn and video game epidemic with young men. And I did the math. It's 10,000 hours to master let's say business or something, right? 10,000 hours. Well, you can master a video game in 500 hours. So where we give up our 10,000 hour endeavor, like maybe becoming an artist or a musician or an athlete or maybe starting a business.

Stefan: Those are all like really worthy things. We go play World of Warcraft for 500 hours and we're at level 100 torrent shifting or something. What do you think about, does that translate into the workforce now with you recruiting young people? I mean, are there people out there who just don't get it and they're playing their world of Warcraft but they're not willing to put in the 10,000 hours?

Paul: That's funny that you're saying that because I've visited Blizzard many times for one of our clients.

Stefan: Dude, I want to work for Blizzard when I was younger, they didn't return my phone call though.

Paul: Oh man. They give away like swords and shields when you hit your five and 10 year anniversary. Quite an organization but to your question about the younger generation, you know we do a lot of work with this particular segment because they're the incoming generation, they have to take over in the workforce. Right. You know what we are figuring out, it's not that they're not intelligent and it's not that they're not motivated or driven. They just want to get from A to B as fast as possible. And you and I both know it's like that's not going to work. You can't master anything. I don't know taking an online course or skipping out of school or whatever it is. You've got to learn the fundamentals and the basics. It's like building a house, right? If you're building a house and you decide that you don't really want to do and you think that the foundation, you just build it on the rock side it came on, it's got to fall down eventually.

Paul: So we forget that I need to build that. But yeah, I mean I think because of how society is propagating this instantness that we're having, we're not putting in the fundamental work to make sure that not only our minds are strong, but our characters are strong, our will is strong, our drive is strong, everything is strong. So it is getting a little bit harder to recruit the younger folks just because they want things more instantaneous than before. And what they do is if they don't get it, they start moving to a different place of work or something else. I mean, I think the statistics were that the new grads, the last two years of college graduates, their average tenure at a company's eight months. So after eight months they're out. If they're truly a millennial, the average tenure at a company is 18 months. So we're seeing them just take off. So even if you get into a company, there's no level of mastery yet in that.

Paul: And even if you're an entrepreneur, because it seems like everyone wants to be an entrepreneur now, but it takes a lot more than 18 months or eight months to really master a craft. You can't do that automatically. And if you do, you're probably going to lose it in the end. If you get lucky, you'll make a lot of money, but you lose it in the end because you don't have the fundamental to see it through different types of market.

Stefan: Yeah. You know, those numbers are scary to me, man. I mean, I'm an employer and what happened to me last year, I came out of the jungle. I was fasting in the jungle for last year's 18 days, I'm going on a 40 day water fast actually. Yeah bro. So I came out of the jungle last year and I wrote this book, Hard Times Create Strong Men because I came out of the jungle and my young 21 year old, 22 year old millennial employees were saying like, "You're mean, I don't like you. You make me feel like a piece of shit." You know, they started complaining. And I was like "What's wrong with these guys? What's going on?" And you know it's interesting 'cause their tenure, those young millennial boy's wasn't very long. Probably right in that timeframe that you mentioned. And what happened was I went home and ... Well first I had to give these guys a talk. I gave two three hour talks one week in my office of how to be a man, which is like the most, that would never happen in the 50s. That would never happen in the 60s right?

Stefan: The sixties you'd like smoking a cigar and a scotch and everyone just knew how to be a man. That was a normal thing. But I give this like six hour how to be a man talk and do your work. Being a man is about your work and that's what you do. We don't have a uterus, we don't have ovaries, we can't bear children. You're a dad by proxy, but you didn't have that thing come out of you, man. I mean you planted some seeds and walked away right?

Paul: I didn't do it. I did the fun work.

Stefan: You did the fun work yeah. It was like two minutes. So like-

Paul: One and a half. You're being too generous to me.

Stefan: One and a half minutes yeah. And I'm going to give that a gong. Bang. So these young boys, they're like, "Oh man, I want to be the leader of the company. I want this big salary. I want to make all this money." And what I found that was really interesting was these boys who were complaining like teenage girls never had fathers. And it was so interesting because you know, look at the stats 50% of the couples are divorced now, the marriages fall apart. And then I don't know what the status for dads sticking around, but dad's typically don't stick around 'cause either they don't want to stick around or the laws are so bad, the guy isn't around. And then you've got this entire generation of young men raised by young women and they don't know how to be a man and show up to work.

Stefan: So I wrote this book Hard Times Create Strong Men and the cycles of history go hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.

Paul: That's absolutely right. Right.

Stefan: And we're in this like weak man time and it's so interesting, my sales manager Ian, he had a very strong relationship with his dad. And his dad has a farm, a goat farm out East and the we're in Canada up here. And he had a great relationship with his dad and because he had a great wish up with his dad, he has a great relationship with work. And it's so interesting cause the guy with the good dad, he's a great worker, he does great work. And then the guys with problems still at my office guess what? Have daddy issues. You ever notice this where there's like daddy issues on some of these men and then they creep in your workforce and now they're bouncing after eight months. You ever notice that?

Paul: Yeah. I think there's a strong linkage between how someone grew up and what their family structure was to whether it work [inaudible 00:26:14]. When people say that there's a work life and then there's a home life there's no difference. You're going to blend your personality with both. So yeah. I see there's a strong linkage. And also there's a strong link to you what you just said about your book where like, you know, when we're looking at World War II where all these young kids were born in a battle, right? They're after depression. There was a lot of adversity. But then you look at our times now we've been going through a lot of prosperity, especially in the last 10 years. I think we're both old enough to understand. In 2007 2008 there was a crash. Nearly all of us were getting our house foreclosed on and everything.

Paul: So you've got these kids that have been going through this prosperity. I mean, you can throw anything at the wall and make money nowadays. And they haven't seen that [inaudible 00:26:54] yet. And then I think it's problematic in our domestic workforce too, because like especially in the technology field, because if you think about it, we've had all this prosperity and it's been a little bit easy, but then you have these emerging countries, these emerging markets like India and China that were oppressed for a long time and they're like, "Screw this shit." You know, like I want to work. Right. They were what we were going through back in World War II and the depression and things like that. So now they're becoming the very, very strong capitalistic societies that were a little bit more weak. So, I don't know it just, you made a really good point about your book because I completely agree with you on that.

Stefan: Yeah. Well, they're hungry. Right. And like immigrants in America are four times more likely to become millionaires than native born Americans.

Paul: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I know that 'cause I'm an immigrant, so I get it.

Stefan: Where were you from, man?

Paul: I'm from the Philippines. Yeah, my dad- from Manila.

Stefan: Okay. Awesome. Yeah, I'm up here in Winnipeg and we got, I think 16% of the population is from the Philippines. I would flip houses and I'd sell them to the new immigrants. So I'd give him the Canadian dream for like a 100 grand or 129 grand. These houses look like little mansions. Right? And I always have these customers from Manila and they'd see it and they go, "Oh man, I got to have that house." And we actually just got a Jollibee bro.

Paul: Oh my God. That's awesome.

Stefan: We got some spaghetti and like a chicken leg or like a mango pie. They're pineapple pie or mango pie at Jollibee?

Paul: It's a mango pie.

Stefan: Oh, a mango pie. I haven't been there, dude, I haven't been to Jollibee yet, but I heard they play the song, the Jollibee song and-

Paul: Yeah, you got to go, man.

Stefan: Man. I'm trying to look after my health here, man.

Paul: You can do it once.

Stefan: Yeah go try it once man. Do they have a hot dog spaghetti at Jollibee too?

Paul: Yeah they do. So the Spaghetti they put a little bit of sugar in there to sweeten it up.

Stefan: Oh, of course. Of course. My dad's from Sweden, so I have an immigrant dad, and I remember going to Sweden when I was 12 and we're sitting down at the table and like Sweden is like, it's one of those countries, I looked it up, I was like, what's a racial slur for a suite? They call the Spanish people spics and they call Italian people waps and I looked up the Swedish one there isn't one because they're tall and they're beautiful and they're smart. So nobody's the Swedish people. But I'm over in Sweden and it's such a developed place. And they had these like Woodfire pizzas back in the day and they had like nice little pastries, they're so civilized.

Stefan: And then we sit down at the kitchen table at my aunts or great aunts, I don't even know who these family members are. We're sitting down at the kitchen table at their house and they're making spaghetti. And I'm like, "Oh damn, I love Spaghetti." You know, my mom makes a great spaghetti back in Canada. We sit down at the table and they give us these like white boiled noodles. So it's like plain ass noodles and then you know what they do. And Paul you're going to be horrified at this man. They put the ground beef like straight up on noodles. So you got just playing ground beef, not taco meat. It's just like plain like gray brown ground beef on these plain white noodles. 'Cause like in Sweden they're not into spices. It's like salt is the white band spice over there. Salt and bill pepper.

Stefan: So they put the ground beef down on the noodles and then I was horrified. They pull on a ketchup bottle and you cover it and ketchup. I know Bro. Ketchup spaghettis, you haven't ground ketchup and it wasn't just white noodles. I went to house to house to house. I was like "How are you guys eating this ketchup spaghetti 'cause you know we got like Oregano, we got basil, we've got garlic, we got all these great things written in the Ketchup Spaghetti." But I digress. I digress Paul. Now, let me ask you this. A lot of young people listening to this show, 12 years old, 15 years old, 18 years old, different ages, younger people. Do you think in 2019, it's going to be 2019 in like a week. Do you think that it's still good to get a degree today? Or do you think that no degree is the way to go and just get some skills and figure it out?

Paul: That's kind of a controversial topic, but I promote education. I think you should at least get your college degree. And the reason why you should do that is, and this is just what I truly believe is that college is an opportunity for you to, it's kind of like a playground, right? You're accomplishing something. A four year degree isn't easy. So it's the first step I'm trying to accomplish something before you do anything else from the studies. I got my degree in Kinesiology, which is exercise physiology. I obviously don't use that, but what I learned from college is I communicated with a lot of people. I had to collaborate with my other students. I had to do projects with the other students. I had to get them to buy into a lot of things. I was part of a fraternity, so I understood that organization.

Paul: So it's much more of an experience than anything else. And that's what I grew out of. But I look back, I mean I even got my MBA, but a lot of the reasons why I did that was because of the networking progress and the ability to build relationships during that. So I was really active in college and that's why I think it meant something to me. The stats don't lie, I don't know the stats exactly off the bat, but college graduates tend to earn twice as much as high school graduates. People with masters have by 40% more earning potential then that someone with just a high school degree. Now we have to understand that, okay, well don't go to college and then start your own business. But the failure rate of business is 99%-

Stefan: I was going to say 99 bro. 90 in the first five, 90 in the second five but 99 yeah, you're going to die man.

Paul: Right. So it's like go ahead and not have any education and then you have nothing to really kind of I don't know fall back on I guess. And not to say that a degree is going to help you out because I'm in recruitment, so you have a degree and you don't have skills, it doesn't really matter. But what I've noticed that every time I do interview someone, someone that has been active in college and has gotten through college, they will most all the time be better communicators and be better at being able to grip through their job. So I mean, that's my opinion for whatever it's worth, I still believe in it. I come from a very highly educated family. My Dad's a physician, so I don't know, look at the statistics. Most of the billionaires have a college degree, so I wouldn't dash it I guess.

Stefan: Yeah. There's a lot of BAs actually in the billionaire club, bachelor of arts, which is interesting. I got a degree in English. So I went to school, I went to music school 'cause I want to be a rock star. So my mom says, "Oh if you want to be a rock star, get a music degree." Right? So I go and I'm studying jazz of all things, which jazz, it's funny it's all over here up in Canada, 2005 so like I don't know what is this. Like 50 years after jazz is relevant. They opened this new music called Jazz [crosstalk 00:33:23] behind. So I went and got a ... I was working in the jazz faculty there and I was a professional musician and then I realized I don't want to be a jazz musician 'cause it's a very hard and horrible life.

Stefan: And then I dropped out of that and I went to the business school and I dropped out of that. Then I went into computer science, I dropped out. I was very good at computer science. I wanted to work for Blizzard bro. That was actually ... And then I ended up dropping out of computer science and I went to the registrar and I said, "Hey, can you recommend a way for me to get out of here without dropping out that won't piss my parents off." And she said, "Yeah, take two poetry class, you're going to have an English degree." So now I have an English degree with a minor in music. And I remember 2008 that was when I graduated, it was May 2008 and I went to go get a job. And the only thing I could get with an English, was a call center job in the middle of the night selling luxury hotel rooms to rich people, and you actually needed a degree.

Stefan: And it was, we were making minimum wage, it was just like hardcore minimum wage. And I remember having like a post grad depression about that cause I was like, "Man, I spent my whole life, I spent 12 years plus kindergarten or whatever, plus four years of university and that degree got me here to a call center job. I could have just painted houses." But here's the bittersweet flip side of it is I'm a resourceful person. So I've written five books now, I'm 32 I've written five books. I'm sure the English degree helped with that a bit.

Paul: Probably.

Stefan: And then Mark Cuban, the billionaire in Texas, he says that today in today's world, an English degree is suddenly one of the most powerful degrees to have because we live in the world of content. People need more and more content. All content comes from writing. And so it's interesting, I used to totally bash on my degree. I used to totally beat on it. I still beat on it, but I kind of have to shut up about it now because I've published five books. By the end of this year I'll be up to eight books. I'm an avid blogger. On the flip side though, I wrote my first book when I was 12 before I went to school. So it's an interesting thing. I think it's a catch 22. I throw out resumes with degrees in my office. When they come in, I got a stack a degrees and it's actually kind of sad.

Stefan: I get guys with PhDs, they go in the garbage. I get guys with MBAs or master's. It's pretty sad man. 'Cause a lot them are applying for entry level sales jobs. Now let me ask you this, Paul. I mean degree in school versus learning to sell. What do you think is more valuable? Someone who knows how to sell and make money on commission or somebody who has some sort of degree. We don't even know what it is. Mystery box. It could just be a mystery degree. What would you say is more valuable?

Paul: Selling. Hands down. If you know how to sell, you'll beat out a degree.

Stefan: So, okay. I love that answer man. I mean that's powerful stuff and I think being good at sales, it's funny like the Mormons in Utah, they all go on missions and they sell bibles door to door. So they have all these fantastic call centers up in Utah for these educated smart, street smart salespeople who speak two languages or more. With learning to sell, what are some of the best places that people can go to learn to sell? 'Cause there really isn't a degree in that there isn't a school. Nobody teaches it. Where do you think people should go and learn to sell?

Paul: You know what? I'm kind of lost for like where people would want to sell. I mean, like when I'm talking to my sales guys I think the most important thing before any sales techniques is again, going back to the ability to build relationships. I don't think anyone likes to be sold to, but I think in order to be an effective salesperson, you have to be in a relationship with somebody and understand what their problems are, what their needs are, right? You can't just push it on them not knowing that there is a need. Right. I think the ability to be able to problem solve is one of the highest, well, one of the most critical abilities that there is. And the only way to do that is to be able to get into relationships.

Paul: So, I mean, as far as sales techniques, I mean I don't know I guess I'm kind of lost as far as I think the best thing that you could possibly do in any kind of sales is really understand what the problem is. Or who you're dealing with and get into a relationship with them and make sure that once you do it, you can understand what their problems are and then you can fix it.

Stefan: Right. Right, yeah. I love what you're saying man. I got a book I wrote here about sales called The Close: 7 Level Selling. On the back I put stop selling, start serving. That's just the main thing you said nobody wants to be sold these days. But it's funny 'cause everybody wants to buy.

Paul: Yeah everybody wants to buy.

Stefan: And they want to buy but they don't want to buy in some salesy way where they feel like you're manipulating them. They want to buy on their own terms. So how do you make it so that they choose you? So they decide and they want you. Coming back to dating. It's interesting like the man might choose the woman he wants to date, but he has to make the woman choose him.

Paul: Yeah, I mean it's the same thing I think we're talking about. If we understand what the wires. So like let's take for instance our clients. If we get into a relationship and understand okay where their inefficiencies are, what's happening, what their troubles are with their current staff, what we can do. Once we understand what's keeping them up at night and what's keeping them desperate and what's keeping them in pain, people want to alleviate pain. So the minute you understand what their pain is and then you bring up a solution, you're not selling, they're going to be buying all day long.

Stefan: Bum. You know, I heard a great quote weeks ago, I was down in San Diego at a conference and one of the speakers said "All human beings, all purchases are either avoiding or alleviating pain or elevating status."

Paul: Yeah, true. I would bet it's more about pain. I think people are motivated by the carrot or the stick, but I think most people are motivated by pain. They don't want it. Why do we follow rules? Well, I don't want to get in trouble, right? Sometimes people don't understand the pain. So you have to be like, "Hey, you know what? As an expert, here's what's going to happen if you don't do that." So you've got to sometimes the pain understanding that you got to do good for them. You can't just create pain and just sell them crap. You've got to make sure that whatever you are doing is going to improve their situation. And I think that's how you have long lifelines. I'm sure you see that all day long in the real estate industry.

Stefan: Yeah. Well one thing I say to my, and my sales guys, I say, "Look, do what's right for the customer.: And that gets in the ethics. I think ethics is the base, then it goes the product, then it goes sales, marketing, brand. And if you do what's right for the customer, whatever that is. If you go to chick fil a and you forget your credit card, the guy comes running out to get your credit card and hands you your food. If you do what's right for the customer, if you take care of the customer, you're always going to have food to eat. Right?

Paul: Absolutely. I think in dealing with business integrity is the most. I mean that's the one thing that you cannot succeed without. You cannot succeed without integrity.

Stefan: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Paul, I've got some questions I'd like to ask everybody. Here's one that I love just floating by you. Now, you see all sorts of people, man, you're in the hardcore people business. You got employees, you're recruiting, you're matching with customers. You're just like, your business is nothing but people. What do you think is the biggest cause of failure in people?

Paul: They lose reasons on why they're doing it. It's always going back to the why, the problems, the challenges, the obstacles, whatever they have become bigger than the reasons why they're doing it. And once you start doing that, and a lot of it is perspective, if you start looking at, okay, I didn't get this promotion, I didn't to get this client, I didn't get this. And they start looking at all those challenges and obstacles and setbacks, that starts to vary your why. And I think that's one of the biggest reasons of failure. If you don't hold onto the reasons why you're doing things, you're going to fail nine times out of 10. So you've got to want to embrace that. But if you can't hold onto the reason why the heck you're doing something like a fitness goal, right?

Paul: Like, okay, I want to lose 20 pounds. I lost 92 pounds. I was really heavy at one time and I wanted to do that because I wanted to be there for my daughter, right? And it got hard. I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the morning. I mean, it's not, the first thing that I want to do is wake up and be like, "Whoa, holy crap, I'm going to run like five miles." It's like I want to go to bed, but why am I doing that? Why am I doing this? And the reason why we fail is because we forget why we're doing things. Why was it important to begin with? So that's what I feel the biggest reason of failure is.

Stefan: So it's really coming back to meaning, you know, when working out to be alive for your daughter or being healthy for your daughter's there, that's way bigger than you want to look sexy at the club and that mesh shirt you bought, right?

Paul: Yeah. I mean that can be motivating to people too-

Stefan: Oh yeah. Right. There's, there's some sex there, right?

Paul: Yeah. There's always a why. If you don't know your why, then you're never going to be able to hold on to anything. You'll feel at everything if you don't know why you're doing it.

Stefan: Right. I love that, man. I think we've had a really deep conversation here about the meaning and the why and it just translates everything. Now, Paul, if you go back in time, to let's say 15 year old Paul. And you would give yourself a piece of advice time machine here, what would you say to a 15 year old Paul?

Paul: Do you. Don't think about anybody else and their opinions. Whatever's you feel is going to make you succeed, you do it. That would be my advice.

Stefan: Yeah. Well everybody else is taken. You might as well do you, right.

Paul: Exactly.

Stefan: Awesome. Top three books that changed your life.

Paul: Principles by Ray Dalio.

Stefan: Damn. I'm giving that a gong. Great book.

Paul: Awesome book. The Bible is one I mean just from a learning aspect and then Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell.

Stefan: Those are three tasty books. Let me ask you this, the Bible and organized religions have lost a lot of ground in the last 70, 80 years in the United States, why do you think the Bible is so important? Personally, I think it's like I was born into a church and then I went to university, became an atheist communist as they manufacturer over there. And then now I'm back hardcore with the book of 5,000 years of human civilization and all the things that worked and didn't. But why do you think the Bible is so important?

Paul: I think because there's a lot of great fundamentals in there. I think success books have, I mean they've originated somewhere, right? Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich is to think is great right? But then if you look back at Proverbs, it says "As a man thinketh so he is. So if it's like if you kind of go back to it, I'm not saying that I'm religious or anything, but I just actually like the content of the book. The story of Job where he was really depressed and he went through this whole entire depression and then what he did to come out of that. I mean those are all very applicable things for me in my life now. I'm not a big organized religion guy, but I mean if the Bible is the most read book in the entire world, there must be something coming out of it. So I wanted to try and get my bits and pieces out of it and I've just noticed after reading it, it's very similar to a lot of the new things that we talk about. So that's why I'm like it.

Stefan: Yeah, well it's so interesting. It's incredible. I did a bit of a study on it and my book Hard Times and what it is is it's the base values of our civilization. Our laws come from those value. Our entire framework comes from there. So whether you're religious or not, it's super important. And you know what else I think is really cool about the Bible. I was lecturing my secretary the other day about how to live her life as old men like me do. And I said, "Look, the Bible, you got to study it because they've already tried everything. They tried it all for 5,000 years. 'Cause there's the Old Testament, there's the New Testament. They tried it. They tried all the bullshit we're doing now. If you look at Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, they already did this shit. They already did it, and they move on exactly how it happened or how things went down and they wrote down all the problems. So you know in advance, if you just read that thing, you can see the future because it's 5,000 years.

Stefan: And I think it's so interesting how every 70 or 80 years, we always think we're smarter than the past. You know, oh, let's try out communism this time, or let's try out something that clearly does. Try socialism out I know. Yeah. Let's try out socialism. And when you read back on that text, whether it's history or not history, it's amazing because all the answers are in there.

Paul: It is.

Stefan: And the Bible means the book. It's the original book so.

Paul: It is, I mean, I think if we don't learn from history, we're destined to repeat it right? That's the quote, right?

Stefan: Right. Yeah it's money. All right, awesome. Well next question here, Paul. Talking about the young people again. This is one of my favorite questions I ask this absolutely everybody. 100% of the people on this show get this question. Come back to the young people, the millennials. What do think is the number one thing that the young people today need to succeed in this world?

Paul: We just talked about him. Grit. I mean you just need to, I mean there's always going to be challenges. You need to be able to have heart and critic and desire and quite frankly you need balls man. This world is tough. So regardless if you want them to be successful, you've got to have balls.

Stefan: Big massive bowling ball balls.

Paul: I mean, yeah, absolutely. If you want to be anything you got to have balls 'cause the opposition to be successful is so, so stiff. I mean you just have to have the biggest pair of balls ever so.

Stefan: I'm giving you a gong for that one, boom. Yeah, some big balls, big ovaries, whatever you're running with there. Awesome. Paul, how can people get in touch with you man, if they want to know more about you?

Paul: Sure. I have a personal website, paulmichaeldavid.com and my Instagram handle is Paul Michael David. Those are the two best ways you can reach out to me. Our company website is identifiedtalent.com.

Stefan: Awesome. Really appreciate having you in the show Paul. Respect the Grind, man. Yeah, we'll have to have you on again. I thought we had a really great chat today and I really appreciate you and your story, man. Bless you.

Paul: Yeah, bless you too, man. Happy holidays brother.

Stefan: You too. Bye, bye.

He's a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist. He hosts the biggest conference, Anarchapulco, for anarcho-capitalism. He's The Dollar Vigilante. Originally from Canada, hailing from Mexico.

Jeff Berwick

Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show, Respect The Grind, with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show where we interview people who achieve mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who has achieved mastery and examined what it took to get there. Today on the show, I have a very special guest out of the norm, Jeff Berwick. He's a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist. He hosts the biggest conference, Anarchapulco, for anarcho-capitalism. He's The Dollar Vigilante. Originally from Canada, hailing from Mexico. Jeff, good to have you on the show today. Respect The Grind, my friend.

Jeff: It's a pleasure. Thank you.

Stefan: Yeah. I really appreciate having a guest like you on the show, because we normally talk about like business and making money, and real estate. A lot of people listening to this show, they want financial freedom for themselves, and they're trying to make money. They're trying to invest, whatever that means. It's cool to have a guy like you on the show. We had a mutual friend of ours, John Sneisen, on the show a little while ago, and I love talking to guys like you, because we end up talking about the money system. We talk about freedom in the free world, free speech, all this kind of stuff. For the people at home who don't know you, Jeff, can you introduce yourself in your own words? Who are you, and why is this a relevant conversation for us to be speaking?

Jeff: Sure. Yeah. Actually, it's a totally relevant conversation that's everything that I talk about. I've been doing that for about nine years now, since 2010, with The Dollar Vigilante, which is a anarcho-capitalist financial newsletter talking about how to free yourself. Not just financially, but in every way possible. Of course, for people that don't understand the word, "anarcho" means anarchy, of course, and that's a Greek word which means "an," without, "archy," ruler. I just believe that no one should have a ruler and no one should be a slave. I don't know why that's controversial at all, but that's the government indoctrination camps that people have had for about 12 years that most people have been forced into.

Jeff: Then the capitalist part, a lot of people actually misunderstand that word, too. They think that what you have in the U.S. today is capitalism. There is a small part of capitalism still remaining, and that's why the U.S. is still standing, but it's mostly fascism, and crony capitalism, and what I call crapitalism. Really, when I say "capitalism," I just mean free market. I've been, and completely free market, so no government involvement whatsoever, no taxation, no regulation, no central banks, and no fiat currencies and things like that. I've been doing that for about nine years.

Jeff: I also do a podcast called Anarchast. I've been doing that for about seven years, and it's grown quite a bit. It's nothing too huge, but it's actually spawned an entire conference now called Anarchapulco, as you mentioned. It's now the world's premier liberty and freedom event held in Acapulco, Mexico, every year. It's coming up in February 14th to 17th. We're expecting about 3,000 people, because the freedom, the idea of it is actually growing, believe it or not. I've been doing all that stuff for about, as I said, about eight or nine years now.

Stefan: That's tremendous, Jeff. People like you, I really got to salute a guy like you, because it's not easy. It's not easy going against the grain. It's not easy speaking out about this stuff. It's not a popular table topic at the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas table. I remember when I was telling my family years ago about the money system at like at Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody got up and left. The average person doesn't want to hear about how they are enslaved. They don't want to hear about the money system. I remember years ago when I was 21, 22, I read a book called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and that's the capitalist bible. The communists have Karl Marx, Das Kapital, and then the capitalists have Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It's number two most influential book in the United States.

Stefan: Can you explain to the people at home, that's where I've first heard the word "libertarian." What's a libertarian? Because people, we're from Canada, or I'm from Canada, in Winnipeg, today, and people hear "libertarian," and they think libertarian is liberal, because it's L-I-B. They don't know the difference between the two words. What's a libertarian?

Jeff: That's interesting you're up there in Winterpeg. I'm originally from what I call Deadmonton, so up in Canada.

Stefan: Dude, that's the other Winnipeg. I'm giving that a gong. Bang. Just gonged it up. Deadmonton and Winterpeg.

Jeff: Yeah, so the word "libertarian," I actually didn't even really know the word until about 15 years ago. It's become quite popular. It's become fairly popular since Ron Paul ran for president in 2008. Really, what the word means is, well, it's pretty simple word, "libertarianism." What it means is that if you're a libertarian, then you hold as one of your highest principles liberty or freedom. If you truly hold that as one of your highest principles, then you should actually be a anarchist, because an anarchist believes in complete freedom. It believes in the freedom of the individual that no one has the right to enslave and say they own another person. Of course, whenever you have a government, you're just born somewhere, and they go, "Well, you're ours now," especially in the U.S., where every baby born today in the U.S. has a quarter of a million U.S. dollars worth of debt and liabilities overhanging it from the government that it's supposed to pay off.

Stefan: My God.

Jeff: That's absolutely criminal and absolute tyranny and slavery. That's what we have in every country today, as well as Canada and every other country. A true libertarian truly believes that no one should be ruled or owned by anyone without their permission. Of course, there's a lot of people who don't mind being owned or being slaves. They're called statists, and if they want to do that, that's fine. I have no problem. As a libertarian or as an anarchist, do whatever you want. Just don't aggress against me. The only problem is, when they get these governments going, they always seem to include us and seem to think that, "Well, you are now owned by whichever government in whatever area you're in." I just completely disagree with that.

Stefan: Yeah. I saw Jordan Peterson. You're probably familiar with Jordan Peterson, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Stefan: I saw Jordan Peterson speak in the summer. He was speaking here in Winnipeg, Winterpeg, at the Burton Cummings Theatre, and he said something interesting that I thought something that I think people need to hear more often. He said, "The human race for most of history has lived under tyranny. We used to have monarchies. We used to have feudalism. For most, most of the human race, we've had tyranny, and for very brief times, we've had democracies or republics, but democracy lasts for about 250 years. Then it turns into a tyranny, usually, and then after that, turns back into a monarchy." Why do you think monarchies and tyrannies have existed throughout history, and why does it always seem to consolidate power like that? Why can't we just stay as a democracy or republic all the time?

Jeff: Well, first of all, I'm not so sure about human history. I think most things we're told about history are lies, and so really, anything beyond a couple of hundred years ago, I really have doubts about what really happened. I really don't know what happened, but I don't trust anything that we're told by the media, or the governments, or the schools, which are all sort of the same sort of people running those sort of things, but what I understand happened is, a few hundred years ago, there was things like kings and queens, and they were doing that quite a bit. They were going around doing similar things that governments do today and say, "Hey, you were born here, so now you have to pay us a certain percentage of whatever you make," and that sort of a thing.

Jeff: Really, a few hundred years ago, and it sort of seems to have happened in France, which is kind of interesting, because there's a bit of an uprising happening there again right now, is a lot of people said, "This is crazy. Just because you're born, this whole idea of kings and queens is so insane." I love the Monty Python, I think it was in the Holy Grail one, where the king's walking around, and he's like, "I'm your king." They're like, "You're who?" He's like, "I was born of this mother," and everyone's like, "What?" He's like, "I found a sword in the lake, and therefore I'm your king." They're like, "You're crazy," but for whatever reason, people kind of fell in line with that.

Jeff: Of course, a lot of these monarchies were really tyrannical, and they would really, if you didn't pay them, they would kill you, that sort of a thing. That's very similar to governments. A few hundred years ago, people kind of woke up from it, and they said, "Well, this is stupid." The people who were in control at the time really realized they're going to lose a lot of power, and so they came up with an absolutely ingenious idea. That ingenious idea was democracy, which is a totally heinous, evil system of mob rule. If you have 51% of people decide that legally they can kill the other 49%, then everything's fine.

Jeff: It's absolutely insane and just keeps people battling each other, but it's absolutely ingenious, because they've managed, through the government indoctrination camps, and through the media, the mainstream media, television, propaganda programming, to tell people that, "Oh, when you have a democracy, then you are the one who rules yourself, and you get to rule yourself by voting once every four or five years. You get to tick a box," and then some guy goes somewhere, and he makes decisions about what you're going to have to give up and how much they're going to extort you and things like that, but it's absolutely an ingenious idea. It's worked now for a few hundred years, and people have really fallen for it, but they're starting to wake up to it. That's what we're starting to see across the world, really.

Jeff: We're starting to see that in France right now. Again, they're starting to realize, "This is absolutely insane that we have people ruling us without our permission, and taking our money, and things like that." Even Donald Trump, in the U.S., was to an extent an awakening of people going, "This system is horrible. We've got this total political class that is totally ruling us and just totally enslaving us."

Jeff: What they thought was, "Well, we have democracy, thank God. We have democracy, so we can elect someone else," so they elected a kind of a bit of an outsider, Donald Trump, who's best friends with the Clintons and has been involved with central banks and with the Bush family for decades. His family's been very involved with the Bush family, so he's been very involved in the political class, but he came in as sort of an outsider, and you kind of see a lot of people saying, "Oh, he's an outsider, so he can fix things." He's not an outsider whatsoever. It's another sort of ruse in the whole democracy game, but really, that's what we've got today.

Jeff: Now, what we've got at The Dollar Vigilante, I cover how bankrupt all these nation states are, how the central banks are printing money until we're going to be, hit hyperinflation very soon, so we're very near the end of this sort of system of these big nation states, of these big welfare states, warfare states, Big Brother nanny states, where everything is controlled, and regulated, and extorted, and taxed, and that sort of a thing. It's all going bankrupt right now, so even if people didn't wake up to what I'm talking about, we're still going to go through a massive amount of change in the next few years as all these systems all go down because they're all bankrupt.

Stefan: Yeah. Well, there's a ... Man, Jeff, you said a mouthful there, man. I don't even know where to start, but I'm going to try to weigh in on what you said there at the end. Now, I wrote a book here called Hard Times Create Strong Men. I'm holding it up here for the camera for the people at home, and the cycles of history, as I understand it, goes like this. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. That whole cycle takes about 80 years, and every 80 years, there's a major war, a major crisis, a major reset. 80 years ago was World War II. 80 years before that was American Civil War, and you can trace this back in history. 80 to 100 years, every 80 to 100 years, is a major reset. Now, if you trace that out to the future right now from World War II to now, 2020 is the next "hard times create strong men."

Stefan: That's what the book's about is, the men are becoming weak. When men become weak, the backbone of society falls apart. The family falls apart. The churches and the freedom of that falls apart, and what we end up with is some sort of major crisis. Would you say something like that's coming up?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely, and I think those cycles are very true. If you just look at anyone who's like a rich kid, so his father most likely worked really hard his entire life and amassed a fairly large fortune, and then the kid comes along, and he's just pampered, and he never does anything. He never learns how to do anything. He never has to learn anything about life, and they usually become idiots, and they actually end up usually wasting or losing most of their money. This is a very natural sort of a cycle that can happen if you're not smart, if, as a father, if you make a lot of money, you don't just give it to your kids. That's absolutely ridiculous. Talk about a really great way to destroy your children, but the big problem with that cycle that you just mentioned that's been going on now for centuries is the government.

Jeff: When you get the government involved, it's not just people who are destroying themselves through the cycle of people having to have hard times to get better and actually learn skills and work hard, and then they get soft afterwards, and then their kids get really soft and that sort of thing. That happens all normally, but when you add the government into it, it gets way worse, because then what, that's exactly what we're seeing today in a place like the U.S., which used to be quite capitalist. It has been fully capitalist, really, since its inception. It hasn't been, definitely has not been capitalist since 1913 when they first put in the Federal Reserve and the income tax acts in the same year, which is no coincidence whatsoever. It's been kind of a mix of the socialism, and communism, and fascism since then.

Jeff: About what you've seen because of the capitalism, because of the free markets, there was quite a bit of free markets in the U.S. There isn't any more, but there used to be quite a bit. You build up all this wealth, and when you have a government, it always seems to skew to these people going, "Well, now that we have quite a wealthy place, we should be quite giving." Yeah, that's great. Give, but what they're talking about is, the government should steal money from everyone, extort everybody, and then give some of it to some people, which is absolutely heinous, and evil, and destroys everything.

Jeff: Even the welfare system destroys the people on welfare, but as I was mentioning, like that whole cycle would happen probably quite normally unless people start to wake up and realize what they're doing, but the fact that we have governments today makes it so much worse, because that's what we're seeing in the U.S. You even see communism is really catching on in the U.S., because you've got all these pampered little kids. They sit there on their MacBook Pro at Starbucks ranting about how evil capitalism is and saying they want communism, and they don't even look up the last 100 years of what communism has brought a lot of places, like the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or Venezuela, and places like that.

Jeff: They just, because they're so soft, and they've never really done anything, that's why they call them little snowflakes and things like that, and they become social justice warriors. Really, they're just non-player characters, NPCs, but yeah, the big problem with that whole cycle is government. If we can get government out of the way, then you'd have families destroying themselves over time over and over and not realizing the problems that they keep creating for themselves, but they wouldn't force it all on the rest of us through government.

Stefan: Yeah. Wow. I mean, this is some really good stuff, and the snowflake thing, the snowflakism's a reason why I wrote Hard Times, because I had some of these snowflakes in my company. I have a company. I got 13 employees, and these little snowflakes were crying, "Oh, you're mean, and I don't love this. This isn't my dream job, and you make me feel like a piece of shit," and I had people showing up late. Just snowflakism all day, and I said, "Where does this come from? Where does the snowflakism come from?" I started writing this book Hard Times, and it's interesting, because what you said is absolutely true.

Stefan: We've had some communist subversion come in from the Cold War into our schools, into our churches, into our militaries, everything, and we got this virus in our brain that thinks that communism is going to save inequality, but in history, communism has never worked. It has never worked once. It ends in massive, massive killing and massive death. There's something like 100 million people slaughtered in the last 100 years with communism. It's something brutal. It's the biggest cause of unnatural death, and every 80 years, we think it's going to work somehow. Somebody somewhere's trying communism.

Stefan: As an extension, I've been studying communism, I was watching a show with Stefan Molyneux on Freedomain Radio, and he was talking about how feminism actually spawned out of communism when they started talking about equality, and men and women are equal, and next thing you know, in communist Russia, in 1917, when they switched over to communism, you had all sorts of major problems, where there was one crazy stat was, more babies were aborted than were born. You think about that, it's just a big, crazy, evil system. Why do we get this idea that we think that communism's going to save us from our own poverty? Like why does that idea keep coming in every 80 years into different societies around the world?

Jeff: Yeah. That's a good question. I wish I knew the real answer, because it makes no sense. Obviously, these people don't look at actual history. As you pointed out, there's never been one ... It's not like there's been one that really worked out well, and they're like, "Oh, we screwed it up a few times." It's like every single one turns into disaster. It actually makes total sense why, because of human nature. For someone like yourself who's read books by Ayn Rand, you kind of understand the individualist sort of a thing, and that people will always do what's in their best interest. That just makes total and normal sense as human being. When you have this system that comes in and you say, "Okay, the guy at the top decides everything that we're all going to do," you don't keep anything from your work, so that makes it so a lot of people don't really want to work anymore, because why would you work if all the incentives go away to ...

Jeff: I don't know about you, but when I do work, it's because I know I'm going to get something from it. I'm not just doing it because for no reason whatsoever. A lot of these people, especially ... Well, what's really happened in the West is that they've really pumped it up in the government indoctrination camps. That's why I say to people, "Get your kids out of the government schools. There's nothing that can be worse than that than having government actually teaching you ... " Not teaching, actually indoctrinating your child for like 12 of its most important years of its building of its sense of self, of its intelligence, of everything. Even Vladimir Lenin, of all people, said, "Give me your child for four years and the seed I plant will never be uprooted."

Jeff: It starts a lot there, and then you go home in places like the U.S., or Canada, or a lot of places, and you turn on the television programming, and it's called programming for a reason. You get pro-cops, and pro-presidents, and, "The government saved us today," and turn on the news, which is total fake news. It's just government propaganda, and they're like, "Well, we saved this today," and all that sort of stuff. With the cycles that you're talking about, and we're in the snowflake cycle now of sort of this millennials that have never seen anything hard their whole life. To them, the hard thing they've seen is like when there's a long line at Starbucks or something like that.

Stefan: No Wi-Fi on the plane. There's no Wi-Fi on the plane today. Darn.

Jeff: Yeah, like that's the hardest times they've seen. Because they've gone through this indoctrination and that they're really, I actually stay away from colleges and universities, because it freaks me out to hang around, like they're all zombies, and they're the stupidest people I've ever met in my life. They're all indoctrinated and programmed. You go there, and half the classes are talking about communism and socialism, so they've got them in this sort of thing, and they're all going out there now. We've seen that ... What's that, there's that U.S. politician, some young girl, is just complete and total moron who's just got selected or elected into Congress. It's called Congress because it's a con game, and it's called the Constitution because that's also a con, and all that sort of stuff.

Jeff: You've got those people out there pushing this stuff, and these kids just go out, and they think, they don't know anything better. It's very unfortunate, but that's why it's really important that we continue to push out what we push out, which is more free market stuff. A lot of people do catch on to it. It's not as bad as it seems. The worst place that it really is in the world today is the U.S. They've got everyone ... Not everyone, but most people, they're so indoctrinated, and so brainwashed, and so propagandized, but you go to a lot of other places like Mexico here, and a lot of people are pretty free market. They don't like government and things like that. That's why they make Mexico look so bad on the news. That's on purpose, because it's a lot more free market down here.

Stefan: It's amazing. I mean, you moved to Mexico. I have this prediction that Russia right now is a freedom-growing country. They're getting more freedom over there. It's like the 1950s U.S. over there, and then over here, it's like we're a freedom-losing country in Canada and the U.S. It's interesting with, you're talking about the universities being scary. When I get a stack of résumés, and I'm hiring, I throw the ones with degrees in the trash. Yeah, they don't-

Jeff: Yeah, me too.

Stefan: The people can't think for themselves. I remember I went out with this 18-year-old girl, and she wanted a job, so we went out for lunch, and I said, "Okay, look. What do you want to do?" She goes, "I want to start a social media company." I'm like, "Great. Start it." We're eating lunch. I said, "Great. Start it." She says, "Well, I'm in the business school, and I'm going to get my MBA, and I don't think I can start, because I don't know how," and I said, "Well, go google that. Just start." "Oh, I don't think I know how. I'm not qualified." The school system literally disabled her mind from figuring out how she could just start a social media company.

Stefan: I mean, I got some guys running my social media. They're 18, 19 years old, and I just met them at a restaurant. Boom, they're banging out my social media like crazy, doing a great job, but this same girl in the government indoctrination camp, as you say, the universities and the schools, can't think for herself. I also think it's interesting in the colleges and universities right now, the number one read book on economics is Karl Marx. That's just like, that just doesn't make sense. Why don't you tell me a bit, Jeff, why does Karl Marx as the number one economics book not make sense?

Jeff: Oh, my God. First of all, he knows nothing about economics. He was a homeless guy who had no money, and he wrote a ... If I was around when he wrote the book, I would have given it a few minutes, or even maybe a few days, maybe even a month or two, of thought, because it sounds really good. Right? Like what is the communist sort of slogan? It is, "Give to-"

Stefan: Seize the means of production?

Jeff: No, but they have this slogan like, "Someone's needs ... "

Stefan: Oh, "To every man's need," or, "To the best of his ability and every man's need," or something like that.

Jeff: Something, but basically what it's saying is ... See, that's how stupid it is. I don't even memorize the stupid quote, but basically, it sounds nice. It sounds like, "Yeah, if people can't do things, then you help them." It's like, "Yeah, sounds great," but the way they're talking about is, you have this giant government. They come around. They steal things from people, and they decide who gets your money, essentially, and things like that. Yeah, and it's shocking that ... It's really mostly caught on in the U.S. Like obviously, if you go to the ... You brought up Russia. If you go to Russia, no one wants to read Karl Marx. They'd probably burn that book if they saw it, just because they'd be so angry at it.

Jeff: Anyone who's actually lived through communism, a lot of the old Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, Poland, and a lot of those places, even Germany to an extent, they still remember a lot of that. That's all you need to know about communism is live through it, and you realize it. That's one thing that I always thought that's funny is, you have all these people like Bernie Sanders and all these people, and they're so pro-communism and socialism and all these sort of things. It's like, have you ever even just gone to Venezuela even for a weekend? Because I was there like a year and a half ago, and it was pretty bad.

Jeff: I remember being there about 15 years ago, and it was really nice. In fact, you can look up Venezuela back in the '60s and '70s. It looked just as nice as what you see in the videos of the U.S. People got around in nice cars, looking all nice. Everyone's looking good and happy, and they have lots of food and all that sort of stuff, and now it's just a complete and total disaster, so ... Yeah, you have some people still ... It's mostly in the U.S., though, I have to say [inaudible 00:23:04].

Jeff: I meet a lot of people from the U.S., and they say, "Man, this whole world's going to hell." It's like, actually, it's not too bad. Most of the world is pretty good. It's really the U.S. is like, and Canada is almost just as bad now, and when you go to the universities, as you pointed out, and I do the same thing, I have only hired one university graduate ever, and it turned into the biggest disaster I've ever had. He was actually a producer at CNBC, I hired him in 1999 to head up a video department of a internet company I had, and he was a total disaster. He was an MBA, and I had all the, all that stuff, and I ended up having to pay him out like two years' salary to get him to leave, that sort of-

Stefan: Oh, my God.

Jeff: But yeah, so I just stay away from the universities. As you pointed out, if I ... I've got a number of businesses myself, so if someone's interested in working with us, I'll ask them what they do, and if they go, "Well, I just spent the last eight years in university," I'm like, "Well, you don't make very good decisions, do you? You [inaudible 00:24:00]-"

Stefan: Bro, I'm going to give you a gong for that. Boom. I want you to instant replay that for the kids at home. "If you're hanging out in university the last eight years, you don't make very good decisions, do you?" Tell me why that's a bad decision in 2019.

Jeff: Well, I'm sure there's probably a couple courses you could take in college that make some sense somehow. I've never seen them, though, but I ... There must be a couple, but the reason that it makes no sense in 2018, 2019, is because we have the internet now, and all information is on the internet. You don't have to pay $100,000 a year to go sit in a room with probably a unionized teacher who's never done anything his whole life, that's why he's a teacher, he doesn't know anything, and sit there with a bunch of other idiots like you, because you don't know anything, they don't know anything, and learn about socialism-type stuff pumped into you. It's a complete and total waste of time. Really, the best-

Stefan: You mean it's a virgin sex therapy class, so the guy teaching, it's a virgin, but he's teaching sex therapy to everybody?

Jeff: Yeah, that's one good way to put it, but yeah. It's just a waste of time. I think trade schools or something, where if you're going to become a mechanic, so you have to work on cars, so you can't really do that over the internet, I think that makes some sense, but 90-percent-plus of what you go to college for is just a complete and total waste of time that you could just totally learn much better stuff on the internet. It actually just came out, I don't know if you heard this, but Google and Facebook just said that they've removed university education as one of the requirements to work there. I think they're really slow and late to do that, but I think they're starting to realize, it's like, "Man, the people we're getting from the schools are just brainwashed idiots, whereas the young guy who's sitting at home just hacking away, and going on the internet all day, and figuring everything out, those are the kind of guys you want."

Stefan: Yeah. I got a policy in my office, and when people come to me and ask for stuff, I say, "Google it, or handle it." Those are the two things, handle it, google it. Google and ... I think it was Google, Apple, Facebook, they don't need degrees anymore. I think that's been going on for some time, but it's an official statement now. Right? That's like super, super official. Jeff, let's go back to collapse of society and things like that. One thing that's common in history, and I've studied it over and over again when these collapses happen, it's usually, the people can't buy bread. The nonsense can keep going on. The ...

Stefan: I've got the numbers in my book here, Hard Times, about minimum wage, and minimum wage in 1968, indexed to gold, is 103,000 dollars U.S., so you work at McDonald's, you made one cheeseburger, one hamburger, French fries, Coke, and a milkshake, you made 103 grand in purchasing power back then, indexed to gold. Same guy today making a cheeseburger, hamburger, French fries, well, he has to make 150 items down at McDonald's. They got a crazy menu.

Stefan: Same guy at McDonald's makes 13,000 a year, so he's lost 90% of his purchasing power indexed to gold, and this shenanigan with the money system where the banks and the government rob people through inflation every year, and then suddenly, at some point, it keeps going, going, going, going until the average man can't buy bread. That's when the Russian Revolution happens. That's when the French Revolution happens. Why does that pattern keep happening over and over again?

Jeff: Well, first, let me just mention that the reason that these jobs have gone so far down in value is because of the central bank. It's because of money printing and inflation, and that's why you pointed out those numbers in inflation terms. You have a lot of people out there today who are like, "We need to raise the minimum wage," which is, what you're saying is, "We need these people who extort us, called the government, to go out with guns and force businesses to pay us more because we can't afford to live." Well, the reason you can't afford to live is because you've had most of your stuff stolen from you by the central bank, and the central bank, by the way, is a tenet of communism, and that's why I say the U.S. is nothing even close to capitalism today.

Jeff: Actual communism has already destroyed most of these people. You ask about revolutions, and yeah, it seems that people, this is one thing you can say about anarchy, a lot of people think about anarchy, "Well, if there was not government, it'd just be chaos, and horrible, and everyone would just kill each other." It's actually not true. Your average person, and this relates to your question, your average person just really doesn't want to do too much. They want to have a nice little life. They want to have a family or whatever, or they don't, but they want something nice, and that's about it. They don't want to go out and rock the boat too much. Your average person just does not want to rock the boat, and that's what ...

Jeff: That's one of the problems we have today is, we have the statist system, and most people are just too scared to change it, but it appears, at some point, when you finally run out of even just food, and you can't even eat anymore, that's when finally people start to wake up, and stand up, and demand some sort of change. When I say demand, the problem is, they're demanding from the government change. What they should really realize is, the government caused it, the central bank caused it, and just break away from this system and stand up and become their own person and not be a slave to the systems, but yeah, it's unfortunate that your average person, for whatever reason, will wait until they're basically starving before they actually face the real problems in the world.

Stefan: It's interesting in history, I think Putin kicked out the central banks. Is that right?

Jeff: I'm not sure if Putin did, but the ruble basically collapsed. I don't think they had a central bank, definitely, at the start there.

Stefan: Well, I've heard Putin's kicked out the central banks. I think it's interesting is, Hitler did that back in the day. I guess Germany was so poor, and they were so messed up, and they couldn't make their war reparation payments. They just couldn't pay, and that's how World War II started is, a bunch of people, super poor, couldn't pay their payments, boom, world war starts. It's interesting, because somehow, in the system, the political system, they go right versus left, and the right versus the left, and the left versus the right. Really, it's the same kind of thing. Nobody points the finger at the central banks.

Stefan: One thing I love about America that still stands is, there's 300 million guns in the States and 300 million people, and they keep that gun amendment in there because they know that tyranny's going to come at some point. They left that in there, and if people can't buy bread, or they're really hungry, that's where those 300 million people with guns are going to rise up. Do you think we're going to see something like that in our lifetimes?

Jeff: Yeah, definitely, because the U.S. is going to collapse in the next few years. It's not going to be decades, because it's so bankrupt. We have 22 trillion dollars' worth of debt now, so we're basically ... I said when I started The Dollar Vigilante that the U.S. dollar will collapse by the end of this decade, so we've got about a year left. I think we're pretty close to on track. That's how close we are to the end of this system. Yeah, we're definitely going to see collapses anyway. As far as people in the U.S. having guns, I think all people should have the right to defend themselves, obviously. I don't think anyone should be able to say, "You can't have this," if you're not hurting anyone else, and that's what government does, of course. It's very good. That's the only thing left in the U.S. that is keeping it from being complete and total carnage is that the people still can protect themselves, so the government has to be very careful about how they enslave everyone, but they've done an incredibly good job of enslaving people.

Jeff: When you think about how the U.S. started, it started over the Tea Party, where it was a tax from England on tea, and that was it. It wasn't a tax on everything else, income tax, and capital gains tax, and smoking tax, and hotel tax, and food tax, and all this sort of stuff. It was just a little tax on tea, and that started the so-called American Revolution. Now you have people in the U.S. today where you have taxes that are over 50%. It's probably closer to 60 or 70% when you add up all the taxes, because literally every single thing in the U.S. is taxed today, including death. Death has a tax, and so when you die you get taxed. You still don't have people wanting to revolt. It's because, again, people are fairly, if they have a decent life, they don't tend to want to change things too much. You look at the U.S. and your average person, even poor people have a television. They probably even have a car. Even poor people have cars in the U.S.

Jeff: That's how much free markets, even the poorest people are still ahead of a lot of other people in the world, and so because of that, they don't really want to have a revolt or anything like that. Plus, they don't even ... Because of all the years of government indoctrination and all the war propaganda about how they're trying to save the world by spreading freedom by bombing the entire world in the War on Terror, war of terror. It's absolutely insane, but your average person just doesn't seem to want to even break out of this system.

Jeff: What's going to probably happen is, that system's going to collapse on its own because of all the debt and go into hyperinflation. Then hopefully, and you brought up about how Russia's become much more free market now. That's what happens. The same cycles that you mentioned before when you have countries, they usually start off quite small and poor. Even the U.S. was like that when it first started. Because it had a lot of freedom, it becomes quite rich. Then they get soft because of that and because of government and statism, they start doing socialism and all these sort of things which start to destroy everything. They start putting kids into the government schools and all that, and they get worse and worse until they eventually totally collapse, like the Soviet Union. Once it has a total collapse, then you can actually have free markets again. The U.S. actually, once this collapse happens, and after a few weeks or months, and that's sort of what happened in the Soviet Union as well, it takes a little bit of time, like weeks or months, definitely not years, then you can start to rebuild immediately again with free markets.

Jeff: We've seen how the free markets, if you just allow people to be free, you just have to look at places like Hong Kong. That was a fishing village like 200 years ago. Look at it now. I don't know if you've ever been there. It's amazing to even go there. Singapore, even 100 years ago, was a fishing village. It's now one of the most luxurious, wealthy places in the world. Dubai was just desert. They just started doing like low-tax, no-tax sort of stuff, and all of a sudden, there you got like indoor ski parks in the hot, 150-degree desert. Once you have like all this tyranny, it will eventually collapse. Then once it collapses, you have freedom again, and then things take off again.

Jeff: Really, that's the whole point of what I do at The Dollar Vigilante is, that's our actual tagline, which is, "Helping you to survive and prosper during and after the dollar collapse," because if you can hold on to some of your assets, and if you can get through this collapse that's coming, we're going to go on to amazing, prosperous times again, but if you have no assets, you'll have to work a lot harder to get back up, but if you have kept some of your assets and things like precious metals or cryptocurrencies, once everyone else gets wiped out, and all the banks close, and the currency becomes worthless, you'll be one of the richest guys around, and then you can start rebuilding the new free market.

Stefan: Yeah. There's two cycles that are coming to an end. I wrote about this in my book, Hard Times. One is the 2020, which is that 80-year cycle of war. That's an important one to watch. Hard Times Create Strong Men. Then the other one is the 250-year cycle of democracy. Democracies only last about 250 years, so if the U.S. was born in 1776, it's going to be dead by 2026, so somewhere between 2020 and 2026, we know there's probably going to be an end of democracy, probably usually goes democracy into tyranny, and then tyranny back into monarchy usually is what happens. We'll see something happen. Do you think it's going to go back to tyranny and monarchy, or do you think it's going to go just to open freedom?

Jeff: Yeah. A really good question. I don't know how it's going to play out. I could definitely see the tyranny part coming after this. What will likely happen, and probably be Trump will be in, his regime will be in as this collapse happens. As everyone's gets wiped out, as the banks close, as it's complete, way worse than 1929, Great Depression, someone like Trump will become sort of like Hitler-like in that sense, in that he will be the strongman who will lead the country out of this. Because of that, we're going to need more laws, and of course, Trump has been pro-asset, civil forfeitures, having the police just take whatever they want. He even came out recently and said that he's okay if the cops go and just take everyone's guns and then figure out if they did the right thing afterwards and go to court in that afterwards, so no due process and things like that. Yeah, I could totally see that we have this collapse in the next couple years.

Jeff: It leads into a very sort of like Nazi Germany like sort of like tyranny type thing, and perhaps war, because the U.S. does have a massive amount of military just sitting there, and of course, if you're desperate, and if you're broke, and if your people are all crying out for something to be done, and of course, what do they always say on the news, the television programming? "Well, it's always Russia. Russia's always messing with us." Russia's not doing anything to the U.S. whatsoever, but they've been putting this into place, and they also mention China a lot. Yeah, they'll probably go into some sort of major war at some point. The key for people like us will be to stay outside of it and let them all go through this, again, if they want to go through this again, which is unbelievable.

Jeff: There's lots of stories of people surviving through all of these, World War II, World War I, the Great Depression, and coming out way ahead afterwards, and even surviving quite well through it. A lot of them would go to places like Argentina or whatever for a few years, wait till all the craziness dies down with their assets and things like that. That's really the key, and to me, it's, we can't change everyone else. I wish we could, but we can't.

Jeff: Actually, I don't wish I could. That'd be a huge responsibility, to change everyone else, but I wish that they would be a bit more able to see what's going on, but if they can't, really all that's left for us to do is to take care of ourselves and to keep spreading this information the ways that we can do it, but if they're going to go ahead and destroy the whole world with their statism, and their craziness, and their communism, and socialism, and fascism again, then it's really just up to us to survive and prosper through it and then try to be there to help rebuild once they get through doing it all again.

Stefan: There's two interesting things that come to mind when you say that. There's the Hitler-Trump connection, which I think is super interesting. There's two things I want to allude to. There's the Hitler-Trump connection, and then there's another one, an Abraham Lincoln and Trump connection. When you look back in history, so if we go back 80 years to World War II, Germany was one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet, probably actually was the most advanced in science and medicine. They were so broke, they were so poor, they were so hungry, they were so messed up that the Nazis became popular, because Hitler was offering them a better life. He said, "Look, here's a better life. We can have a better way." People got behind that, the most sophisticated, probably, society on the planet went into absolute terror at that time.

Stefan: I think there's a similar thing going on in the U.S. You've got a huge amount of people on food stamps. People are poor. People are pissed off, so they elect a strong leader. It's not ... It's interesting, like if it wasn't Hitler back in World War II, it probably would have been somebody else leading them, because the people were so poor and so messed up ... I like what Jordan Peterson said in the summary. He said, "You don't have an idea. An idea has you." That idea had Nazi Germany. I think there's a similar idea in the Brexit right now. There's a similar idea in the United States, and then that's the 80-year cycle.

Stefan: If you go back 80 years before, you got the Civil War, the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln got shot. It's interesting, because Lincoln was a guy that wasn't totally popular with half the country. He got assassinated, and those things are all kind of floating around. You got a Trump, Trump-Hitler-like ruler there. I mean, I actually like Trump, personally, but at the end of the day, there's a sentiment in the country and a feeling around that that's Hitler-like, and then there's also an Abraham Lincoln kind of feeling where do you think he could get assassinated?

Jeff: Look, I think it's possible. I think most of those sort of things, they're all actually orchestrated. JFK, for example, I believe that was Lyndon B. Johnson and the CIA who took him out. Ronald Reagan, that was the first Bush, the one who just died, George W. Bush, or sorry, George Bush, who was behind the assassination attempt, so-called assassination attempt, on Ronald Reagan. It's usually like an inside sort of a thing. It's really controlled. It's really theater. They actually keep all these things, including Putin, including little Kim in North Korea. They're all controlled by the same people, and it's just this big theater to keep people just mesmerized and watching their CNN and, "Oh, what did Trump say today," and all that. It's just no different than people in North Korea like, "What did little Kim say today? What are we supposed to do today?"

Jeff: That sort of a thing, but anything is possible, but it is pretty tough to assassinate the president, as an outsider, but as an insider, it's not that hard, but they also seem to have some sort of weird like almost like protection around them. Like even George W. Bush, when he was in Iraq and the guy stood up at the media thing, and he was very mad, because Bush had been destroying his country and killing his family and all that sort of stuff, and he threw one shoe, and Bush just did the little dodge and just missed him, and then threw another shoe, and he just ... It's like, I don't know what it is with these people. They're kind of like, I don't know what it is, but it seems like he can't really get to them that way, not physically violent sort of thing. I think the only way we get rid of all of this is for people to wake up and realize that these people don't own you, and start to move away from these systems, and these people just go away and have to get real jobs.

Stefan: I think one of the problems with human nature and people, I mean, you were talking about human nature and communism, where human nature doesn't work inside of communism, and then there's also another side of human nature, which is, I think humans have a hero worship, innate hero worship ability where we see someone, we see a leader, and we just want to worship them, and we want them to handle our problems. We want to have a personal Jesus. We want to have somebody we can just give it all to. Somehow, that's going to be the easy button. It'll all be solved, and then we don't have to think or deal with anything. Would you say that's true?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. That's exactly what government, it really is. That's what government always does. You look at every election. They come up there, and they give all these promises. "I'm going to solve this for you. I'm going to solve that." They never solve anything. They're just extorting you and destroying everything in the process, and making everything worse in the process, but yeah. That's absolutely the case is, your average person just won't take responsibility for themselves and just say, "I don't need this person to run this entire country for me. I can run myself," and that sort of a thing. Of course, it gets a little interesting how that would all, we've been in statism now for hundreds of years, so to actually break away from it's going to be difficult.

Jeff: That's actually why we're starting up numerous sort of countries across the world now, so we've started Liberland in Europe, which is near Croatia and Serbia, which is a new sort of anarcho-capitalist country that's just being started, and there's some few others working on buying some islands, and we're going to start some totally anarcho-capitalist free sort of places there. We're also seasteading, so we're trying to start up in the ocean, start up our own little, what you call countries. None of them are really like countries, because there's no real government, but it's a place that we're going to start up that it's going to be completely free. Then through that, hopefully we could show the world, because they've never really seen it, what life would be like in a true free market.

Jeff: If, all evidence seems to point to when you have a totally free market that it's incredibly good for most people. It just increases the wealth dramatically, as we've seen, as I pointed out, in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai. Whenever you have a lot of freedom, everything gets a lot more prosperous. The only sort of question a lot of people have is, "What if you have total freedom? What would happen?" We don't really have any good examples for that yet, so we're hoping to start do that in the next couple of years and try to show the world the light that, really, this governmental sort of statism system with central banks, and all these sort of things, are just absolutely terrible. The best thing for all humanity is to get rid of those sort of things and not have a belief in their authority.

Stefan: Sounds like a page out of Atlas Shrugged right now. You got all the productive smart people wanting to go start their own country or start their own island. This is, it's just human nature. It's all written down in the book. It's all happened before, and here's a thought, Jeff. I don't know if you thought about this. At some point, there probably was some nice, true freedom in the Wild West, maybe, Wild West America or some place, and then at some point, the people organized themselves. At some point, there's a government. At some point, there's a king. At some point, there's a good king. He dies, and then you got his son, the bad king.

Stefan: Do you think we've had freedom in history at some point, like true freedom, and then it just got consolidated into power? Because it seems to me that whether you look at a market like a real estate market, or you look at a Monopoly board, or you look at anything in life with humans, it seems that there's like always a consolidation going on. There's a consolidation at some point where somebody just ends up taking over, and we just end up in that over and over again, and the dominoes fall down at some point. We reset. Do you think we can actually exist as free people, like truly, or do you think someone's going to seize power at some point?

Jeff: Well, the thing is, if you have enough people who actually believe that freedom is the way to go, and they want to do that, then no one can seize power, because there's nothing there to seize. You pointed out rightly that over history, it appears that people have always been okay with giving away their power to someone else and hoping this guy takes care of them all, and that never works out for the best, just like communism, it just never works out well.

Jeff: Yeah, that's actually been the case over time is that people seem to have always sort of gravitated into these sort of things, but at the same time, when you think about life even today, we actually live in a state of complete anarchy right now. It just so happens that there's a lot of governments on earth which you can just consider to be criminal organizations who are stealing and extorting people, and kidnapping people, and forcing them to do things they don't want to do, but we actually live in a state of anarchy.

Jeff: Your average person, actually, every single day of their life, pretty much lives in anarchy. When you're in your home, or you're talking to your friends, or you go to work, that's just anarchy. That's just day-to-day life, and there's no one there telling you what to do, except for a street cop or whatever, a road pirate who might try to extort you if he thinks you're going a little too fast over a arbitrary speed limit or things like that, but generally kind of already live in anarchy. Really, the important thing to understand is that the word "government," what it really means, "govern" is, the word "govern" comes from the Latin [Latin 00:46:24] which means to control, which makes a lot of sense, and the word "ment."

Jeff: There's a lot of different sort of where that came from, but I lived here in Mexico, Spanish, [Spanish 00:46:34] is mind, so really, government is mind control. It's controlling people's minds to make them believe that this thing has authority over them and that it's sort of taking care of them as well. This is where we get into Stockholm syndrome and things like that, where people actually begin to really adore their kidnapper, the person who has basically kept them enslaved. I see [inaudible 00:46:56]-

Stefan: I wanted to give a gong. At some point, you got to stop for me to give you a gong. I didn't know that "government" meant mind control. It's really interesting, because if you control the information, you control the thoughts, and if you control the thoughts, you control the stories. You control the stories, you control the beliefs. If you control the beliefs, you control reality. It's almost like ... In Hard Times, I talk about we almost live in a 1984 future from George Orwell, and some of it's like Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, which was Orwell's mentor. We got half of our stuff is the American Aldous Huxley Brave New World future with orgies, and synthetic music, and all these women with narrow hips that don't bear children anymore, and we have alphas, and betas, and gammas, and deltas and all that stuff, and epsilons.

Stefan: Then the other part of our world is like the 1984 future where there's three gigantic powers that are always at war with each other, and it's like a Stalinist future. What do you think about those two books right now, Jeff, like 1984, Brave New World, and what we got going on right now?

Jeff: Yeah. Both those guys, both, I think they went, both went to Oxford or one of those major schools. They hung out with the same people like the Bush crime family and all those, so they hung out with what you could call the elites, or some people call them the Illuminati or whatever words you want to put to these sort of secret societies that mostly sort of are in these schools like Oxford and stuff like that. They were actually good friends, as you pointed out, and it's really amazing that that long ago, what is it, like 60, 70, 80 years ago, they wrote-

Stefan: It was 1945-

Jeff: ... these books.

Stefan: ... I think. It was like right after World War II the books came out.

Jeff: Yeah, so I can't do the math. I went to government schools, but 70 years ago, whatever it was, and they've really just roadmapped the exact both ways that we're going. Actually, they're both happening at the same time. The Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, that was a lot of bread and circuses. The people would be too dumbed down, which we're seeing, through fluoridization in the water, through all the government indoctrination camps, through the television programming, all that sort of stuff. People are just watching the Kardashians and all that.

Jeff: The sports, so the sports ball games, and that sort of thing, so people, that's what Aldous Huxley was saying is, people would be too dumbed down and too into these things like sports and entertainment to even notice that they're enslaved. That's what we have today, especially in the U.S. Then on the other side, there was Orwell went the other way with a bit more it's like a hard, top-down dictatorship. You can't say anything. Everything's the opposite of what it means in political speak, which is what we have today. You brought up about how there's these certain sectors of the world that always at war. East Oceania's always at war with whatever the other one was. That's what we have today. It's like, who's at war with who? This War on Terror, it's a war on a feeling. It's a war on, it's like terror is a feeling. It's like, "I was terrified when I saw that. We need a war against that." It's like-

Stefan: Well, we got the-

Jeff: ... "Who are you [inaudible 00:49:47]"

Stefan: ... War on Drugs which doesn't work. We got the War on Terror that doesn't work. You got the War on Cancer that doesn't work. You got all these wars. They keep just funneling money into a couple dudes' pockets, and the War on Drugs makes drugs worse. The War on Cancer makes cancer worse. The War on Terror makes terrorism worse. It's pretty scary how those things just simply don't work.

Jeff: Yeah, and it's all by design, like the people who really do these things know this is what's going to happen. It's just sad that people keep falling for it, but people are slowly waking up thanks to the internet. Yeah, I even saw like, who's that blonde, fairly not attractive, woman on U.S. TV who's like a really mean, nasty sort of ... Anyway. She just came out, and she just said all these wars are just stupid. They're just like, like we shouldn't be doing them. She was like a total war sort of a person. This just came out.

Jeff: People are starting to wake up, but the biggest issue is, they don't know what the answer is, and so that's why they keep going back to what you pointed out, which is this false left-right paradigm, which they tell everyone that's all there is. There's left or right or somewhere in the middle and there's nothing else, but that's a very narrow range of political spectrum. That's basically statism right there, and you can have left or right in statism, but there's a whole other spectrum of just not having governments whatsoever that could really free a lot of people. It's really growing, actually, like when we first started Anarchast, Anarchapulco, Anarchapulco started five years ago. It was 150 people. We're now expecting about 3,000 people. It's doubled every year.

Stefan: Wow.

Jeff: My show, Anarchast, a lot of people said no one had ever watched the show, but anarchy, that's crazy. They think anarchy is throwing bombs and all this sort of stuff, but it's catching on. People are catching on to a lot of this stuff now, so we're going to see what happens. We're at an amazing time in human history, because all these things are coming to a head all at the same time. All these governments are bankrupt. The central banks are about to go into hyperinflation. Then we have people waking up and starting to realize what's going on, and then you still have all these people in the universities who think that communism's the way out, so they'll probably try to push for that.

Jeff: It's just amazing, incredible time, and there's going to be so much change in the next 10 years. I don't think anyone will believe what happens over the next 10 years. I couldn't even imagine what will happen, but I know it's going to be mind-blowing what happens. It's going to be that much change.

Stefan: Yeah. It's unbelievable. Now, Jeff, I got to wrap up the show, but I want to ask you a couple questions I ask every guest, because I think they're cool. If you can go back in time to, let's say, 15-year-old Jeff and give yourself a piece of advice, what's a piece of advice you'd give yourself?

Jeff: Oh, man. That's a good question. I would say work on yourself. I really just started working on myself over the last couple of years. I'm like 48 years old now, and it's changed my life dramatically. I didn't deal with a lot of my past issues, childhood issues, a lot of the programming that we get from our cult, our culture they call it, but our cult, through our younger years. That still stays in your head. I think if I would have, if I could go back, I'd say, "Buy Bitcoin as soon as you hear about it," and I'd-

Stefan: [inaudible 00:52:55].

Jeff: ... say, "Work on yourself," like-

Stefan: [inaudible 00:52:57] man.

Jeff: I'd probably also say, "Don't go to the bars that much. Don't be having a lot of drunken sex. It's a total waste of time. Try to find a good girlfriend. Try to fix yourself and work on yourself more than anything." That's what I'd tell him.

Stefan: Wow. Great answer. Top three books that changed your life.

Jeff: A good question again. We talked about G. Edward Griffin earlier. The Creature from Jekyll Island was one of the first books that got me looking into all this stuff that I talk about today. That was a really important to my life. I'd say The Lord of the Rings is, I read it when I was very young. I used to love to read. I was probably like 12 or something. This giant book, it's even bigger than your book there. What I didn't realize about The Lord of the Rings that is interesting, I love the book, and I loved everything about it, and it wasn't until a couple years ago I realized that that ring of power was actually a metaphor for government power. I actually looked-

Stefan: Wow.

Jeff: ... into it a couple years ago, and J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote the book, called himself an anarchist, so that entire book was an allegory about the problems caused by government. Those two books are pretty good. I guess the third book that I thought was really interesting, and it's like a pamphlet. You can read it in about two hours. It's called The Market for Liberty. You can actually find it online for free in PDF format, and it shows what the world could be like without government. When I read that book, it just blew my mind, because I'm sure if you even read it, you'd go, you'd be like me, you'd be like, "Wow, I never thought things could work that way or that ... "

Jeff: They actually thought about how things would work without government, so there'd be like private security companies. Well, how would that work? Well, there'd be insurance as well, so the insurance companies ... For example, like people go, "Well, how would you put out fires without the government?" Which is kind of funny, because the government rarely puts out fires [inaudible 00:54:34].

Stefan: Fire insurance.

Jeff: Yeah. Fire insurance, and then the insurance companies have all this insurance money, and they'll have to pay out a ton if there's a giant fire, so they actually put out fire stuff, and fire stations, and all that kind of stuff so it can all work in the free market. I think that book really, in just such a small amount of time, can really just show how the free market can handle everything.

Stefan: Yeah. Well, that's great. I always, people say, "Well, who's going to pay for the roads?" Well, you just tax cars and gasoline. If you got a car and gas-

Jeff: Not even tax, right, but like the businesses would own the roads. You would never put up ... Let's say you're Walmart, and you want to put up a Walmart somewhere and there's no road there. You're going to build the road, because you want people to get to your thing. Plus, not to mention there's already all roads. All roads that already exist. I don't know why people think they'll just disappear, but obviously like gas stations would have a giant interest to making sure there was roads, so they would probably do something. The gas stations would all work together and say, "Okay, let's take 10% of all of our money that we make every month and put it into maintaining the roads." Right? It's fairly basic sort of stuff.

Stefan: Right. All right. Second last question today, Jeff. What's the one thing that young people need to succeed these days? Let's talk to the snowflakes. Let's talk to the millennials, the guy with the MacBook Pro at Starbucks. What's something you want to say to him?

Jeff: One thing to succeed. Actually, I was going to mention this earlier when we were talking about this is, forget about school, and I mean even government school, like high school, junior high school. Forget it. Don't even go. Complete waste of time. You have all the information there on the internet. Always do your best to learn, and follow what your passion is. That's the biggest problem with these schools is, they're forcing you to do stuff that I didn't want to learn. I didn't care much about math when I was 12 years old, but they forced me to do it, and wasted a lot of my time, and I didn't really learn it, because I didn't really want to, but I really cared about computers, and I just went home, and I worked on computers all day by myself. That was actually my best education.

Jeff: One would be, follow your passion, get out of school, and the third thing would be travel. That's absolutely one of the best educations out there. Once you travel around the world, you start to see how different cultures do different things, and you start to see the good things, and the bad things, and you start to see, actually, tons of opportunities, because that's one of the best educations you can get is to actually see the world, because what you see on your television programming and the news is not even close to the truth about what's actually going on in the world. When you get out there and you see the world, you get a massive education, and you see massive amounts of opportunities.

Stefan: Fantastic. Jeff, if people want to know more, how can they get in touch with you?

Jeff: I write The Dollar Vigilante. Just check it out at dollarvigilante.com. If you're interested in freedom stuff, check out my podcast, Anarchast, on YouTube, and we have our annual conference coming up in February, February 14th to 17th, called Anarchapulco. You can just go to anarchapulco.com. It's kind of hard to spell, but you can probably just type it into Google, and you'll find it. Those are the three main things I'm doing right now.

Stefan: Incredible. Jeff, thank you so much for being on the show. Respect The Grind.

Jeff: Thank you.

Tyler Harris has sold over 8,000 life insurance policies face-to-face in about three and a half years. He runs two agencies, over 140 agents, he runs two podcasts, and he says he's just an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things.

Tyler Harris

Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show Respect The Grind with Stefan Aarnio. This is show where we interview people who have achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who has achieved mastery and examine what it took to get there.

Stefan: Today on the show, we have a superstar, Tyler Harris. He's sold over 8,000 life insurance policies face-to-face in about three and a half years. He runs two agencies, over 140 agents, he runs two podcasts, and he says he's just an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things. Tyler, welcome to the show, Respect The Grind.

Tyler: Thanks for having me, Stefan. It's a pleasure to be here.

Stefan: Yeah, man. It's really great to connect with someone like yourself. You know, we got a lot of real estate people on the show, I'm an investor myself, so I've got into house flipping, and that's been my thing. But super cool to have a life insurance person on the show.

Stefan: Now people who are out there wanting to make money, one of the biggest things I find with my audience is a lot of people want to make 100 grand, they want to get into sales, they want to hustle, they want to grind. They're younger, they don't know what to do. Why did you choose to get in the insurance space of all things?

Tyler: That's what I love about the whole story, and it's what I preach about when you have the average person that says, "Well I don't really do something that interesting. Why should I put myself out there on social media." I'm like, "Aye, I sell life insurance. There's nothing interesting about that whatsoever."

Tyler: But man, mine was purely out of circumstance. Some mentors came into my life when I was at a really bad place. I was broke, I was in debt, depressed, had gone through a business failure, a marriage failure. These mentors came into my life and really breathed life back into me. I joke around today and say that if they were selling rubber bands at the time, that I'd be sitting here with you guys as the greatest rubber band salesman of all time.

Stefan: One gong right out of the gate for comedy, man. Good for you.

Tyler: They happen to be in the insurance business, and gave me an opportunity. Quite frankly, it was exactly what I needed because it was transactional, fast-paced, and it gave me the ability to build my confidence back very quickly. I put in effort, I got a reward, I put in effort, got a reward. That became an addicting process to see how much reward I could get out by the effort put in, and it just so happened that insurance was the product that we were selling.

Stefan: Eight thousand life insurance policies. That's a big number, man. How many people do you have to meet with a day to make that kind of sale?

Tyler: It's an insane amount. We have developed a very, very narrow niche and built a system around going all in on that niche. That's the biggest thing that I preach to people, is developing a system around working with the people that you want to work with, but developing a system in a way to where every word that comes out of your mouth, it's like if you're speaking to someone that speaks Spanish but you're speaking German, it's gonna be difficult to sell that person. But if you speak Spanish to them, then they're gonna be able to make a buying decision a whole lot quicker.

Tyler: We know exactly what to say, how to say it, what to wear, what to have in our hands, the motions that we go through, the certain clothes that we use to be able to extremely efficiently sell and do a whole lot of volume. That's been the precursor to that volume. But at the end of the day, a system is all good and well, but it's the hard work that goes into that system. We've had plenty of people that have come in, and we've given them the magical system, and they've done nothing with it. The rest is left up to the individual, and the amount of hard work that they're willing to put into it.

Stefan: You know, I love what you said there. There's two things I love. You say, "Rich in the niche, rich in the niche," we're Canadian, so we like to throw some French in there, rich in the niche, rich in the niche.

Stefan: I got a question for you, Tyler. I've been training people for six years. I'm a real estate investor, I was buying, fixing, selling houses. I came from the private equity world. I was good at raising money, eye for design. I'd flip up to 30 houses a year, and people would see that and they'd go, "Man, I want to flip houses like Stefan," so I start coaching people.

Stefan: Now I learned a dark thing when I started training and coaching people, and the dark truth that I discovered, maybe you can confirm or deny this dark truth, is that 50% of the people just do nothing. You sign up 10 guys, and half of them just literally do nothing. They buy the cake mix, but they never make the cake. They buy the IKEA furniture, they never build the bed, or whatever. Do you find that number to be ... Is it 50%, no matter what they just don't do anything?

Tyler: I think it depends on what your process is. With our recruiting process, yeah, 100% in the beginning we found that. We have gotten laser focused and have gotten our recruiting process down to a science to where we know when we bring someone on, that they've got a 90 plus percent probability of succeeding, and it's through about eight different layers of a recruiting process to weed out those people. But that's only being done through trial and error of the beginning of running through a million of those 50%-ers.

Stefan: Right, right, right. Yes. Tell me about the recruiting process. Eight layers of weeding out the guys. Let's hear about that. This sounds like you're joining the Navy Seals when you're joining Tyler Harris for insurance. Let's hear it.

Tyler: It's almost that tough. But number one, all of our recruiting efforts, it's all done through Facebook. That's the only place we recruit from. When they come in, they got to submit an application, and then they've got to upload their resume. They've got to answer a bunch of essay questions. Then they go to their first interview, which is face-to-face with our head recruiter here in house.

Tyler: From there, they're given a script that they have to go memorize in 24 hours, and then they have to come back 24 hours later and interview via Zoom, and perform that script. That script is similar to one of our sales processes. They've got to be able to perform that, then from that we give them some feedback that our head recruiter gives them some feed back on what they could have done better, and then they have to go perform that script again the next day on video to see if they can actually follow some instruction and follow some feedback.

Tyler: From there, we go through and in-depth personality profile assessment. It's the one that we found that works by far the best. It takes all of them and throws them together, and puts them on steroids.

Stefan: Which one's that?

Tyler: It's through TTI, through a group called The Rainmaker Group, and it's incredible. It's the only one that actually has a patent tying the results to actual brain research. Myers-Briggs can't say that, strength finders can't say that, none of the other DISC can even say that.

Tyler: But this one is pretty remarkable, and we have created basically a money ball style system of grading the recruits, and knowing what the probability is of them being able to succeed. They're gonna do that. They also have to do a two-minute phone call pitch on why they're the best fit, and we make them at the end do a video pitch as to why they are the best fit for that particular territory. We take all of that, we bring it to our meeting that we do, just got out of it on Friday mornings. There's six of us that watch the video of the person, hear all the information, hear that money ball grading score, and we make a decision. From there, they go to one last interview with our Director of Training, and from there we make a final decision on somebody.

Stefan: Wow. I'm gonna give that a gong. That is probably the best recruiting process I ever heard. I got a very tough one myself. We make people do four book reports. They have to read all of the books, so I guess it's five books. I've written five books. They got to read five books and do book reports, and they got to pretty much be ready on day one to come in and sell. But yours is damn good, man.

Stefan: Now let me ask you this, Tyler. What's the failure rate if 100 guys sign up for your recruiting process, how many make it to the end? Like two?

Tyler: Maybe three, but it's low. It's two or three, and we like it that way. It's much more cost effective that way 'cause we invest heavily. The insurance industry, it's notorious for just churn and burn, bring a bunch of people on, see if they can stick for a few months and then invest in them when [inaudible 00:07:53] bring them onboard, our training and onboarding process is intensive, and it's expensive on our side. We want to make sure that the people that we bring on and we invest heavily in have the greatest possibility of giving us a return on that investment.

Stefan: That's awesome. I love it. It's almost the opposite of what you'd see in the industry. I've been running a sales team now, so we do high-ticket coaching and consulting in the real estate space. I've gone through, I've collapsed five phone teams, I've failed five times. The sixth time I got a good team.

Stefan: What's the key to running a good sales team? Is it having a great manager? Is it great training? Is it great recruiting? Is it all of the above? What do you think is the linchpin there to make it work?

Tyler: It's certainly all of the above, but I think the most important is having the leadership, having them lead by example, and having them have been in the field. The CEO, myself, and my other two partners, there's four partners in this business, we all have been in the field, and we all excelled at an insanely high level. We know what it's like. We're not afraid to go out today and go sell with the agents.

Tyler: To me, there's a big issue in the sales industry as a whole, and its current credibility versus past credibility. The way I like to talk about it in sports terms is you've got a guy that makes it into the NBA. He plays for X number of years, he's a all-star, a couple championships, retires, makes it to the Hall of Fame, then becomes a coach. He's able to coach that team because he has these insane accolades to be able to use past credibility.

Tyler: What the reality is, in most organizations, they haven't been around long enough to have that level of past credibility, so it has to all be about what are you're doing right now, versus what have you done. I just want to be the hardest worker in the room at all times so that the people that I'm telling to do something, I can never tell them to do something that I am not doing myself or haven't done.

Stefan: I'm gonna give you a gong for that. It's all about the integrity, man. You wouldn't ask someone to do something you haven't done yourself.

Stefan: Now let me ask you this, Tyler, how important ... It sounds like you guys [inaudible 00:10:06] some technology in your training and technology in your recruiting. How important is technology to what you're doing right now?

Tyler: Technology is huge. It gives us the ability to onboard our agents all over the country at one time. We use a bunch of different ... We're huge with role play. Role play, role play, role play, role play. It's the biggest asset as far as training sales people, and we have some software that we use for that. We're constantly having people certify or re-certify using that role play software.

Tyler: But even down to the agents that are in the field writing the policies. Everything's done through e-app now. They're able to right at that application, have that thing submitted and have a commission check in their bank account 48 hours later. Whereas that process used to take a lot longer when you have paper applications having to be sent through the mail, and processed, and all that. It makes everything a lot more efficient.

Tyler: To me, the biggest thing, especially when a salesperson is first coming onboard, you got to get a check in that person's hand as quickly, as humanly possible. Technology enables us, from a training perspective, to get them completely certified and ready to sell faster, but also that e-application process gets those commission checks into their bank faster, which builds that belief, and that's when they'll really go all in.

Stefan: I love the word you use there is belief. I find that the biggest thing with no matter what you're training on is we train people to flip houses, and a lot of them have the dream of flipping a house, a lot of them watch the videos with flipping the house, they read the book about flipping a house, they come to the seminar. But until they go into the field with their coach, and see it, and touch it, and taste it, and smell it, and feel it, then they believe in Disneyland. Do you find that's the same thing with training insurance guys or sales guys, is that they got to watch someone do it so they believe it and they see it?

Tyler: Yeah. I agree. They've got to watch someone do it, but they've also got to go out and do it themselves before they get to certain aspects of the training as well.

Tyler: We have a boot camp training that we bring them into our home office, and it's like drinking from a fire hose for two and a half days. But we strategically put that in the process once they have been out in the field, and they've had a few weeks of success and failure. We want someone that's gotten their teeth knocked in a couple of times, a bloody nose here and there, so that now when we bring them back to training, and we can really refine those skills, now they're being able to learn things based on experience, "Oh yeah, when I was in that situation, when I did get that objection, that's how I should have handled that."

Tyler: In the past, we were doing all of this training upfront, then sending them out. But some of the training you have to be in that environment first to really understand the importance as you're going through that part of the training to understand that, "Hey. Man, I've experience this a couple of times. Now I know how to handle it. When I experience this again I've got it."

Stefan: Yeah, I love that. It's all about building up that bank of stories, and the stories make the beliefs, and the beliefs make the reality. I think that's really powerful.

Stefan: Now Tyler, let me ask you this. Sounds like you're in almost a blue ocean strategy. You're doing something that I've never even seen or heard of anybody doing what you're doing, which is super cool. Do you think that for mastery, let's just say you're a master right now, do you think it's more important to be a master right now on the creative side or the discipline side? 'Cause I think the creativity and discipline blended creates mastery, but what do you think is more important? The creativity or the discipline?

Tyler: It's a great question. I think at the end of the day discipline is what takes you there. People ask me all the time, they're like, "Man, how do you stay so motivated? You always seem so motivated." With the amount of content that we put out, I understand that could come across that way, but I always answer them, I'm like, "I'm not all that motivated. There's plenty of days where I wake up and I don't feel motivated. But it's the discipline, it's doing the stuff that you know you're supposed to do even when you don't feel like it."

Tyler: To me, you can build a team that can provide the creativity that you need, you can build an environment that can provide aspects of creativity for you, but discipline is something that you've either got it or you don't. To me, I would take a person with discipline over creativity any day.

Stefan: Yeah, the creativity is the starving artist. If you're delivering the daily bread, as you say, that's one of your podcasts, The Daily Bread, you got to go out there and do those daily bread actions.

Stefan: One thing that I notice when I'm training people all the time, Tyler, is that I got a bunch of sales agents right now, and I'm training real estate investors. I notice that everybody has a fear of the phone. The key to success, I believe, if you're in sales, is making X number of phone calls a day, whether that's 50 or 100, or whatever that number is for that industry. Why are people afraid of the phone? Why are they afraid of picking it up, and making offers and proposals?

Tyler: We see it all the time. I think it's because people don't understand the numbers in the beginning. If you haven't had the longevity of a few years of running those numbers, and knowing that, "Hey, I just know if I make this many calls, I'm gonna set this many appointments, which is gonna lead to this many sales. It doesn't matter if the last three were no, I know that if I make X number of more calls, then there will be this many yeses. It just always turns out that way." But when you don't have that, that experience on the backend, and when you're first getting started, then it just seems like this monumental task to go do, and that phone freaking weighs a million pounds.

Tyler: To me, I think you have to build some level of competition. They got to be driven by something other than just self-driven. They got to be driven by, "Hey, what's this guy doing, and how am I gonna make more calls than him or her so that I can win this daily competition, weekly competition, monthly competition?" Organization is always fostering healthy competition where I love every person on our team, but I want to destroy them on a daily basis. That's how all of our agents feel.

Stefan: Yeah. That's really important. We expanded our team. We went from three agents to six agents. We got a small little sales team here. It was interesting 'cause we put them in two different rooms, and as soon as we split the rooms for whatever reason, people stopped working. Then we crammed them all back into one room, and a room that's made for four guys, put six guys in a room for four, and suddenly the pressure ... I don't know what it is. They got a feel of the sweat, they got to hear the bell ringing, they got to feel it, they got to see it. I don't know what it is with people.

Stefan: I'm a self-motivated person myself, so I go and I work. I'd say maybe there's one other guy in company, the manager, he's a self-motivated guy. But everybody else for whatever reason needs constant whipping. Why is that?

Tyler: I think it's human nature. A lot of that ...

Stefan: Gong for human nature.

Tyler: A lot of that has to go back to the recruiting process, making sure that you got the right person. You're not gonna get the wrong person to do the right thing. It's just not gonna happen. I think a lot of that is based on these personality profile assessments that we do, and figuring out what their motivators are. If they're not money motivated, then what is their motivation?

Tyler: We've learned so much through this process of really understanding our agents, and what their behaviors, their motivators, to understand how to get them to do the things that they maybe don't feel like doing, but we know that are gonna lead them towards success. We know that, "Hey, what's that extra 10 grand this month? What are you gonna do with that money?" Then we get them to start visualizing these things. I'm gonna give to this organization, I'm gonna be able to buy this, I'm gonna be able to go on this trip.

Tyler: As we're going into 2019, an extra 50 grand, an extra 100 grand, what does that look like? What are you gonna do with that money? Let's go ahead and plan that trip, let's go ahead and plan out, let's go look at some properties 'cause you said you want to do some real estate investing this year, let's go look at a few properties, let's get some pictures of those properties. You make it a much more real than just, "Hey, Johnny. Pick up the phone because you've got to meet your quota."

Stefan: I love that, the visual indicators so that they can see it, and they can believe it, and they can tell themself a story about how they're gonna have it. I think that's super powerful.

Stefan: Now, what are some of those personality indicators? Tyler, you mentioned that money motivated is one. If you're gonna be in sales, you better be money motivated 'cause otherwise you're just gonna do human nature, and stay at home and do nothing. I've got a theory actually that the natural state of humanity is poverty. You can't really fix poverty 'cause it's natural, it naturally occurs in nature, and unnatural forces like training, and pain, and all other things drive people to succeed. What do you think of that theory?

Tyler: I've never heard that before. That's interesting. I think the majority of behaviors are gonna be learned behaviors, but there are things that are just born in somebody that you're not gonna be able to change. A lot of that is resiliency. That's a huge one that we look for, is this person gonna get knocked down and be able to get back up?

Tyler: Mojo loss is a big one with resiliency. When someone lose ....

Stefan: What's mojo loss? What does that mean?

Tyler: When someone gets a few nos and they get their dick in the dirt, they just can't overcome it, they can't pick up that phone again, or they can't go on that sales call the next day, and it takes massive coaching. Quite frankly, it's not cost efficient to deal with an agent that has the propensity for a lack of resiliency or for that mojo loss.

Tyler: To us, it's so important. When we start to even sense that someone's losing their mojo, when they're starting down that downward spiral, we do, it's like all hands on deck to make sure that we can do everything that we possibly can on the front-end to make sure that they get right back in the game, because if they start down that process, they're gone. It's just the beginning of the end.

Stefan: That's interesting. You know what, I heard a really scientific term there, dick in the dirt. I've never head that one before. When the guy gets his dick in the dirt, he's got a dirty dick.

Tyler: That's it.

Stefan: It's almost like it sounds like you're having an intervention with the guy when he gets into the downward spiral, into the pit of despair. What are some of the things you do to pull him out? 'Cause I think this is one of the biggest things, man. I think that what you're talking about right now is why people fail. I always ask on the show, why do people fail? It seems to me like there's an isolation, there's a pain, they get into pain, then they start numbing the pain.

Stefan: I had one guy who was a hardcore drug addict. I don't know what he was. It was gambling, prostitution, or something. He was wasting all his money. [inaudible 00:20:24] gave him 10 grand. The next day he needed a $100,000 advance, always. The guy had some sort of addiction. It seems that when people get pain and they're isolated, that's when this downward spiral really happens. How do you keep them from being isolated. Tell me some of these intervention techniques that you're using to get these people back on the bus.

Tyler: Isolation is the beginning of the end. When communication starts to go away, then we just know that person's on their way out. There's a couple of things that we do.

Tyler: One thing that I personally do with our agents is I do coaching with them. We call it LIFE goals. LIFE stands for L is love, which is relationships; I is influence, which is the mind; F is finance, which is the business; E is energy, which is the body. We've constantly got three goals in each of those four areas for every 90 days. I take them through this process where I hold them accountable. Every 30 days, we're on a Zoom call, and I'm just literally going through each goal, and I'm saying, "Hey, Stefan. It says here we're gonna do date nights every Saturday night with your wife. How was your date nigh Saturday?"

Tyler: Well, we couldn't do it this Saturday. Well, okay, what happened? Because this says mandatory date night every Saturday, so what happened? Well, we couldn't get a baby sitter last minute, yada, yada, yada. Okay.

Stefan: I hate the babysitter, I hate the babysitter objections. Dude, it's 50 bucks or 30 bucks. Come on, man.

Tyler: Yeah, and we take it a step further and we'll say, "Okay, great. Let's get on care.com," or whatever website, "and let's find you a second or third babysitter than you can have in your arsenal so that doesn't happen again. Hey, while we're here, let's go ahead and plan out your date for this coming Saturday?" We got on here that you're not doing carbs and sugar. How's that been going for you? Well, you know, it's Christmas season. They had this party the other night.

Stefan: Dang.

Tyler: I just hold them accountable to teach these areas.

Tyler: It's funny, the business portion of that conversation is the least. But what we know is that a byproduct of winning in the other three areas is always gonna be an increase in production.

Stefan: You know what, I feel like I'm meeting my brother here from another mother. I mean, I'm up here in Winnipeg, you're down in South Carolina. I've got my team on a thing called the High Performance Journal. It's three goals, 90 days. It's a 90-day journal, daily, weekly monthly. I said, "Look, here's the deal. You got your health goal, you got your wealth goal, you've got your relationships/happiness goal." I used to be like, "Oh, do whatever you want for your three goals, like two money, or one health." I was like, "No, man. The holistic thing, it's health, it's wealth, it's relationships."

Stefan: Now influence. You said love, influence, finance, and energy. What was influence again?

Tyler: That's the mind. We got a lot of people that for the very first time in their entire lives, they're meditating, they're reading books, they're listening to the podcast, they're doing all these things to feed their mind.

Stefan: Yeah. I love that, man. I just got into mediation two weeks ago. I'm 32, I feel like it's too late, but it's never too late. I use this headband. I put the headband on, it measures my brain. You ever tried that?

Tyler: I have. I have, yeah. It's awesome. I use Headspace. It's worked pretty well for me. I think I've logged in 4,000+ minutes this year on that thing. I just got started this year. This year is the first time I had ever meditated. I made fun of it for the longest time. I'm like, "There's no way I'm gonna sit. I've got ADD." I'm just thinking, "Sitting down for 10 minutes sounds like a nightmare," but it's been life changing for me. I absolutely love it.

Tyler: When you're doing the first thing in the morning, if you can start your day on your terms ...

Stefan: Oh. Bro, [crosstalk 00:24:01] I'm getting shivers over here, man.

Tyler: Start ...

Stefan: Stop seducing me, man. I'm getting shivers.

Tyler: Well I mean, for so long I just literally from the second that I opened my eyes, it was chaos. It was self-induced chaos. It was I felt rushed, late, behind. I started thinking about it, I'm like, "Late for what? Rush to what? I control my schedule. Why do I feel like it's instant chaos 'cause I'm reaching for my phone, and I'm looking at notifications, and I'm responding to text messages and emails." Taking that first 10 minutes of the day, on purpose, with a purpose, for me, it changes everything. It changes the outlook of the entire day, and honestly, it's been life changing.

Stefan: Something I made my team do with the journals, I said, "Look team, so everybody's on a journal, everybody, even including the secretary, bookkeeper, everybody's on the journal." Then I said, "Okay, team," this is what I said last week. I said, "I want you to book your sleep in your calendar. Minium six hours, just book it in your calendar, so 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., or whatever. Just book that in. Sleeps on there."

Stefan: Then I said, "We're gonna have three hours booked as your core 10 items." There's 10 I wanted them to do every day. I said, "Book three hours before you come to work, that's your time." You've got your six hours of sleep, you've got your three hours for your core 10 items, and I prescribe them 10 items which include a lot of these, love, influence, finance, energy, they got to discover something, they got to declare it, they got to meditate, they got to revelate, they got to fitness and fuel their body. I even got down to sex and [inaudible 00:25:30], manager your sex energy 'cause you start wasting that, you're gonna be totally messed at some point.

Stefan: I said, "Look, you got your sleep, you got your core 10, then you got eight hours of work, you got then, and then you got another five to seven hours for you." I said, "I don't care what you do with the day, but you got your core 10, you hit your core, hit your sleep, everything else is just out there."

Stefan: Now what's some of the things ... Let me ask you this, Tyler, since I'm a new student of meditation, I think it's gonna be a life thing for me. I actually am going to the jungle here for 40 days. I'm gonna meditate like crazy, I'm gonna grow a beard like you bro, I see you on camera. It's a great beard. What are some of the epiphany, or some of the divine wisdom you've got from the source from meditating? 'Cause to me, it's been huge. What are some of your biggest things you've found?

Tyler: Gratitude.

Stefan: Bro, you're just hitting gongs everywhere, man. Gratitude, tell me about it.

Tyler: That's it. Yeah, as a part of the meditation, I do a gratitude journal afterwards. I just jot down three, four, five things. I try to make them different things every day that I'm grateful for, and spending that time just by myself, and just gratitude. Completely grateful for all the opportunities, all the things that I have. Some day I'm writing down, "I'm glad that I woke up in a warm house with a roof over my head and food in my stomach," some of the basic necessities. Then some days I'll take it, what I look at as level 2.0, and I'll be grateful for the things that I don't have yet, as though I already have them. That visualization has been huge for me.

Tyler: But it's gratitude, man. Every single person that is listening or watching this has so much to be grateful for. There's someone else on the other side of the planet that's praying for the things that we complain about every single day. It just drives me crazy. We have so blessed, but it's all about perspective. I think that meditation gives me that 10 minutes of perspective to just focus on what's really important, focus on what I already have, and focus on where I'm headed. That's really it, man.

Tyler: There's a lot of power just in that process of doing something that I said I was gonna do, first thing, and starting my day that way, that anything that actually comes from the meditation is just icing on the cake.

Stefan: Wow. Wow. Now when you're meditating, Tyler, are you a mantra guy or do you just focus on your breath? What's something that you do?

Tyler: I've tried a bunch of different things. Again, I'm ADD. For me to sit in silence is a little difficult. I like a lot of the guided stuff. I do use Headspace just because again, competition-wise, I love being able to show people how many streaks, how many days in a row I've done it, how many minutes, like keeping track of that kind of stuff. But I like the guided stuff because I'm certainly no expert in meditation. If you can tell me how to breath, tell me what to think about, tell me how to sit, I'd do a lot better with that than just sitting in silence and staring at the wall.

Tyler: But I feel like that'll progress over time. I've tried some of ... I did a podcast with David Meltzer, who's just freaking incredible. He talks a lot about the particular meditations that he's doing, and there's a bunch of different things that I want to get into in 2019, but for me it's just starting the day intentionally.

Stefan: Yeah, man. It's huge. You either come at the day with your agenda, or the day comes at you with its agenda. One of the two is gonna take over.

Stefan: One thing that's been new to me that has been a revelation in the last two weeks for me is do versus be. We're here on the Respect The Grind show, and you've got hustler in the background, or hustle or something, and I think we live in a world where it's do, do, do, do, do. Respect the grind is do, do, do. Hustle is do, do, do, do, do. We're masculine so we want to do, do, do things, and what are you doing, and how can I do that?

Stefan: I think the other opposite side of that is the feminine, which is be. Who do you have to be? That's more about essence rather than doing. How important is it to have that essence and the being to go with the doing?

Tyler: Do a lot of that with the visualization. I just have a deep understanding that the person that's gonna accomplish the goals that I have for 2019 is a different person than the person that's talking to you right now.

Stefan: Gonging that up.

Tyler: In order for me to do those things, I'm gonna have to be someone else. Then it's just a journey in becoming that person. I know the person that I have to be to accomplish those things, and that person's gonna have to level up, that person's gonna have to go through some challenges, that person's gonna have to expand in a number of different ways, but I am constantly chasing after that next version of myself.

Tyler: I think that's a big encouragement for those that are going through tough times, is that when you're in the middle of a struggle, if you can understand that there's purpose in this, like I'm going through this for a reason, and there is a blessing on the other side of it, but until I become the person that can receive that blessing, it's not gonna happen. I actually have to change who I am in order to get out of this, and step out of this obstacle, step out of this pain, step out of this struggle, and step into the blessing that's on the other side.

Tyler: It's easy to say in hindsight when you've been through it a number of times. You know when you tell somebody that and they're in the middle of it, they're like, "Screw you. That doesn't take the gun out of my mouth. You don't understand what I'm going through." I would just tell that person, "Yes I do." It's always the same. It's always the same no matter how hard, no matter how difficult, there's always a blessing on the other side of it, and I am of the mind that the harder it is, the bigger that blessing is.

Stefan: Man, you just dropped a lot of wisdom there. I love what you said, the harder it is, the bigger the blessing. I noticed on the show from interviewing so many successful people the lower the low, the higher the high.

Tyler: Absolutely.

Stefan: You know the lady who was living in her car, or the guy who's totally, totally bankrupt, or whatever is usually where that guy rebounds equally high. I think that's from Think and Grow Rich. Inside of every failure is the seed of a greater success. It's interesting.

Stefan: There's a lot of people out there that don't really want to fail, they don't want to try, they don't want to see how dark the darkness is, they just want the light. What do you think of that attitude?

Tyler: I take it to a weird place where I'm almost envious of other peoples' low, low, low, lows. When I hear somebody's story now, like the other day, I had lunch with a guy. We sat down, and we didn't know each other, we had connected through Instagram. We sat down for lunch, and he just unloaded just what was going on in his life lately. It was heavy. He's going through some stuff. At the end of just unloading this information, he says, "So what do you think about that?" My response was, "Dude, I'm so freaking excited." He's like, "Okay." Completely caught him off guard. I was like, "Man, I can tell by your tone that you've made that switch."

Tyler: That's the big, it's the if you've made that switch. But no matter how low, the lower it gets the better. If you can make that switch it's directly proportionate to how high you can fly. To me, it's so exciting to watch that in someone. Someone that has right when you know they've made that transition, and they're starting that upward trajectory, they're almost on the other side of it, those are the best stories. Those are the stories that we pay to watch, and that's what life's about, is overcoming obstacles. Everybody loves an underdog story. Man, I get envious sometimes. I'm like, "Man, I wish my lows were that low. I wish I had that story."

Tyler: I wish there was some college course or some mastery program we could create where we just absolutely destroy your life at a young age, like at 20 to 25, just destroy every aspect of your life, and then help you rebuild it so that you can go on. I'd much rather experience it at 25 than 55, and go on and live a great life.

Stefan: Wow. You know what, dude we're getting deep. We're getting deep now, man. Talking about it, it reminds me of the movie Fight Club. You ever seen Fight Club?

Tyler: Oh yeah.

Stefan: Yeah, so that one part in the movie, and actually I wrote a book called Hard Times Create Strong Men, it just came out. The last of it, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. It's the cycle of history.

Stefan: That one part in Fight Club, where Tyler Durden goes to the convenient store, and he pulls that little Asian guy out from the desk, and he throws him in the back alley, and he points a gun at him, and he says, "What do you want to be in your life? What do you want to do?" The guy's like, "I want to be a vet. I want to be a vet." He says, "All right Raymond K. Hessle," and he pulls out his wallet, and he takes his ID. He like, "I got your ID, and tomorrow if you're not on your way to becoming a vet, I'm gonna show up at your house and I'm gonna kill you."

Stefan: The narrator is like, "Oh my God, what are you doing? You're ruining this guys life." He's like, "No, tomorrow Raymond's breakfast is gonna taste better than ever, and the colors will be brighter, and the birds will be singing because he's gonna be on the exact path of what he wants to do with his life, and he can say goodbye to this job at 7/11," or whatever. What do you think of that story?

Tyler: Dude, it's incredible. I could not agree more. People don't need more information, they don't need more motivation, they don't need more inspiration, they need clarity. They need clarity in what they really want, like what they actually want. I love taking people through that process. You say like, "Hey man, what's your goal? What do you want?" I want to be financially free. What in the world does that mean?

Stefan: Yeah, what the fuck?

Tyler: They're like, "Well, you know." I'm like, "So tell me, what does that look like when you're financially free?" Well it's when I'm no longer a slave to debt. Okay, that's still ambiguous. We're getting closer. What does that look like when you're no longer a slave to debt?

Stefan: Yeah, what does it mean?

Tyler: We take through this process, where you just keep asking why, and what does that look like, but why? But really, but why do you want that? But why, why, why? When you dig down deep, all of a sudden you realize that the person really just wants to ride horses again because they had a horse when they were ...

Stefan: Multi gong for that.

Tyler: They had a horse when they were growing up, and they found so much joy riding freaking horses, and now they're in this corporate environment, and they're killing themselves with work every day, and their relationships are terrible, and they really just have no outlet to find peace again. It's like, "Oh, got it. Because you said you wanted to be financially free, but now we know, you just want to buy a freaking horse. Let's figure out how much does a horse cost, and where are you gonna keep it?"

Stefan: Three thousand bucks.

Tyler: Yeah. Let's do that.

Tyler: Or you find out that it's, I want to be able to pick my kids up from school, and I want to be able to take this many weeks of vacation, and I want to live in this house. But until you get clear with what you actually want, it's a absolute joke to try to put together a plan to get somewhere, you don't know where you're going.

Stefan: Dude, we're hitting bed rock here. We're getting so deep, we're hitting the bottom. I think what you're saying is so relevant. I can tell you Tyler, you're the real deal, man. I got to praise you, I got to appreciate you, I love having guys like you on the show. Sometimes you get a dud, you're a stud, man. Sometimes you get duds, but no, this is stud day today.

Stefan: One thing that I think is super crazy, I'm really going through a lot of changes right now myself. I notice that our reality goes through the lens of our beliefs. Then our beliefs are controlled by our stories. There's a lens, on a lens, on a lens. You got reality, which is this is a cup. I got a cup here sitting on my table. That's reality. But then there's a belief about that, that comes from a story, and then inside the story when you're stuck, there's a lie. To fix somebody or make them move forward, or make them unstuck, or make them do whatever they got to do, you got to find that story, change the story, which changes the belief, which changes the reality, and edit out that lie. What do you think of that piece of wisdom that I've downloaded in the last two weeks.

Tyler: It's extremely deep, but it's extremely important. Something that I'm certainly no expert on, but it's something that I'm extremely interested in, and it's given me a lot of compassion learning, is this whole law of first truths. The reason I say it gives me compassion because let's just take an extreme example.

Tyler: Let's say you've got a guy that's racist. He's racist. Okay. The whole world would just say, "That guy is racist, and let's get in an argument." Okay, great. But why is that guy racist? Well it probably goes back to a moment when that guys was four years old, riding down the road in a car with his dad, and his dad looked over and saw someone on the side of the road and said, "That person," whatever that person was, color, ethnicity, "we hate those people."

Stefan: Right. It was like Lion King, everything the light touches is our kingdom. He goes, "That's the dark space. We don't go there."

Tyler: Exactly. In that moment, that four year old learned that we hate those people, not why, but just that we hate those people.

Stefan: That's the story.

Tyler: It's been developed over time, and through their culture, and that's the way they are.

Tyler: It's given me a lot of compassion. That's an easy example to use. It's given me a lot of compassion for that person that normally society would say, "Well I hate that person, 'cause that person thinks this way." No, I don't hate that person. I hate that that person went through that situation to bring them up in a way that would make them think that, but until you take that person all the way back, like you said, until you unfold that story and figure out where the lie was, which in that moment, that was the lie in that person's story, is when that was told to them, and they just believed it because it was their dad and that's just what they said. They understood it and they believed it, and it became true. Figuring out where that lie is in their story and being able to rebuild from there.

Tyler: But until you go all the way back, you're never gonna solve the root problem. That's probably one of the biggest problems we have in society today, is you got a lot of people that have never gone through that process, and they just think that the louder they yell, the somehow more truer the words become, which is absurd.

Stefan: Yeah, we got a world now where everybody's got their own media channel, right? You hear the people who scream the loudest.

Stefan: I remember Howard Stern was saying that in the old days, Howard is one of the biggest radio people in the world. He used to be offensive in the '90s. Nowadays he said he's tame 'cause everybody's got their own channel, and he just blends in now, which is crazy.

Stefan: Now I was out with a girl last week, and it was a really interesting conversation, 'cause we talked about the stories and lies, I said, "You know, you're a beautiful girl. Why don't you marry? Why don't you have a relationship." She goes, "Oh, I don't want to be my parents." I go, "Okay, so what about that? Why?" We go deeper, "Oh, I don't think my dad should have had kids." I go, "Okay, so you shouldn't have been born. Okay. I get that. Your dad shouldn't have had kids."

Stefan: I say, "Okay, why?" She said, "Well he didn't know how to raise us, and he was a dad, and didn't do all this stuff." I said, "Well, from your dad's perspective, do you think that he loves you but doesn't know how to love, and everything he does, ever day is his best choice?" Everything he does, even the dumb stuff, he thinks that's the best thing at the time. He's running around on this earth doing what he thinks is best, even though he's totally messing it up. Maybe he's got an 80% or 90% mess up rate, but he still loves you."

Stefan: It was interesting 'cause that whole perspective flipped in that second. When you think of it from the other person's perspective, my own parents, they love me, they love each other, they couldn't figure it out. There's things they didn't know how to do, there's things that they still don't know how to do, they're just people, they aren't perfect. What do you think of that technique of looking at the story from the other person's perspective in some of your traumas to maybe reverse that or change the story?

Tyler: It's huge man. It's empathy. It's being able to hold space for someone and be able to not judge, and not necessarily even try to fix. I think there's a huge problem now, especially with men. There's a problem where men don't have these conversations, men don't have real conversations. They walk around and, how are you? Great. Hey what's up man, how are you? Awesome. Hey man, how are you? Can't complain.

Tyler: Meanwhile, they hate their wife, their kids despise them, their business is barely staying afloat. They're on thin ice in all areas, but they keep this alpha male, keep charging like I'm good. Everything's good. Everything's good. The reality is they need those vulnerable conversations with people that they could trust, that don't judge, that will just listen. It's an epidemic with men.

Tyler: It's one thing that I'm super passionate about is creating environments for those conversations to occur because I think it's so important. We can't do life alone. I think so many of us are trying to, especially men. It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. I think it's an extremely important thing that you just said. You've got to have other eyes on your situation because there's things that other people will see that you don't.

Tyler: But that being said, there's something that I learned from a guy, he has this thing called The Art of Conversation that he discusses. He travels all over and speaks. He gave me this line to use in situations when I'm talking to people. It's been pretty transformational in the conversations that I've had.

Tyler: When someone's explaining to you something they're going through, a struggle a problem, when they're done speaking, just to be able to ask them one question. It is, "Hey, do you mind if I give you some feedback on that?" That one question just opens everything up, because quite frankly, they may not want your feedback, they might want you to try to fix it, they're just trying to vent, and they just need to get this off their chest, and they're just trying to work through it themselves. That's fine.

Tyler: But if they say, "Yeah. I'd love to hear your feedback," then they're giving you permission to try to give your viewpoint on what they're going through. That's been a really valuable lesson that I've learned in conversation lately.

Stefan: Dude, this is a deep show. I really got to give you some props, Tyler. This is a great conversation, man. I wish we were going for two hours today, but we both got actual businesses to do. We can't just play around on the podcast.

Stefan: I got a couple questions I ask everybody on the show.

Tyler: Sure.

Stefan: One of them is, if you can go back to the beginning, let's say 15 year old Tyler, what's a piece of advice you would give yourself?

Tyler: Be patient.

Stefan: Oh man, I'm giving that a gong. That's gong Friday here. Tell me more about being patient, 'cause I think that's a lost art form in today's world.

Tyler: As I alluded to in the beginning of the show, it was just four and a half years ago I found myself in a really, really bad place. I was completely broke, had a bunch of debt, I had been through a failed marriage, a wife that had had an affair. I was led through about a year of just turmoil to me landing in divorce, business failure. I was just in a bad place, all around. I was out of shape, I was depressed. At that time, I was 28, 29 years old.

Tyler: You had these pictures in your head of what you're gonna look like when you're 30. What's life gonna be like at 30? I see so many people. Whether it's 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, what's life gonna look like then? When you do that to yourself, you start feeling like you're behind, you start feeling like you need to play catch up, you start feeling like the odds are stacked against you, and it creates bad decisions, it creates riskier decisions than you should, and it just can really, really take someone into a bad place.

Tyler: But what I would tell people is to be patient. It doesn't matter if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. If you're still breathing, you've got time. There's so much more time than people realize. I'm 33, and I feel like I'm 23. I know people that are 43 that feel like they're 23, 53 they feel like they're 23. You've got so much freaking time.

Tyler: The last part I'll say to that is, everything can change so quickly if you're just patient. It's almost like the more patient you are, the fast it comes, which really doesn't make any sense. But I've just found it to be true in my own life. The times where I felt the most patience, things progressed quicker. The times where I felt rushed, things took longer. If you can just believe that, if you can just hear my voice and just say, "Okay, I'm just gonna believe that, because this guy says it's true, he's experienced it," if you could just believe it, then just try it. Get yourself ...

Tyler: Unfortunately it's one of those things where if you pray for patience, God doesn't give you patience, he gives you the opportunity to be patient. That could be frustrating at times. But it's in those opportunities to become patient that you really prove yourself, that you really are able to develop, like we were talking about in the beginning, the disciplines that will ultimately carry you toward your success.

Tyler: Patience is huge because when you're in that feeling of being behind, or feeling like you've got so much to do to catch up, man, that's a hopeless feeling. I've been there. Man, I'd hate for somebody to feel like that when they don't have to. You don't have to feel that way because you have plenty of time. There's plenty of reasons and things that are gonna happen to make you feel pain. That's not one of them. Yeah, it's just patience. To say patience is virtue is obviously cliché, but man, this is so freaking true.

Stefan: I think it's a book, The Richest Man in Babylon, where Arkad is teaching he's the richest man in Babylon. He's teaching these kids about money and he said, "One of the ways to lose your money is to expect too high of a return from it." That's the same thing. If you're expecting too high of a return, you're rushing, as you're saying, rushing through life, you're gonna lose your life. I think that it's so interesting. Time, money, all that stuff is the same, and be patient. I can hear the meditation coming out your voice, man. Live in the moment.

Stefan: Tyler, top three books that changed your life, man. What are they?

Tyler: Top three books. I love The Four Agreements. I love ...

Stefan: Bro, I've got to stop you. You're the third person in the last 24 hours that has said that book.

Tyler: Oh, really?

Stefan: Yeah. I don't what, is the universe is bringing that book into my world? I just [inaudible 00:48:59] last night, so you're the third person, 24 hours that said The Four Agreements, The Four Agreements. My secretary last night at midnight was saying Four Agreements. I was like, "Oh man. I got to get the book, dude." Tell me about it.

Tyler: It's meant to be. Qbq! Qbq! is a big one for me, the Question Behind the Question. I truly believe that your life, the success of your life will be determined by the level and value of questions that you ask yourself and others. That's a freaking incredible book.

Tyler: I'm reading one right now though that I'm getting obsessed with, which Atomic Habits by James Clear. I am really enjoying that one, so that ones gonna be a big one for me for next year.

Stefan: What's an atomic habit? Is that microing down your habits, or what?

Tyler: It really is. It tells a story about a guy that lost 100 pounds, and the first six weeks, all he did was get ready to go to the gym, go to the gym, and then five minutes later go home. We're like, "Well how in the world did he lose all this weight?" Well you can't develop a habit that doesn't exist. You can't increase or enhance a habit that doesn't exist. For six weeks, he developed a habit of going to the gym.

Stefan: Just going.

Tyler: Then he built upon that habit, and now he's lost 100 pounds, and he'll keep it off because now that habit is ingrained in him.

Tyler: So many of us, especially as we head into this new year, so many of us, we get these new goals, and let's just use the exam of working out. You haven't worked out in a year, but January 1, I'm gonna go workout for two hours, and then January 2, I'm gonna go workout for two hours. I'm gonna be so sour on January 3 and 4 that I don't go back for three months. It's just always what happens.

Tyler: There's a system that he details out about these habits, and about different hacks really, like combining habits with things that you're already doing, which is very interesting. Making habits enjoyable, and just all these different aspects of habits, but what has been a little bit of theme in this show is it's those habits that create the disciplines. It goes hands in hand.

Stefan: You know what, you're coming back to patience. It's coming back to patience, it's coming back to those small wins compound. You know what's something I've always said to people who are training is, "We can multiply you, we can't add." Whatever you're doing, we can multiply by two or three or four, but if you're a zero, you multiply zero by two, it's still zero. Right?

Tyler: Yup. Absolutely.

Stefan: Last question today for the people at home, Tyler. What is the one thing that young people need to succeed these days?

Tyler: What is the one thing people need to succeed these days?

Stefan: Yeah, we're talking 18 year olds, 19 year olds. People who are just coming into the game now, and maybe they're obsessed with Instagram, or maybe they're obsessed with Facebook. They're young kids, they got all sorts of ideas. What's the one thing you'd say to those young kids starting out?

Tyler: Man, they just got to be willing to do the work. You got to be willing to do the work. The idea that you're somehow gonna stumble into success is a joke. If you have the audacity to want to live an extraordinary life, or have extraordinary things, have extraordinary success, then it's gonna take an extraordinary amount of work. That's the only way you get there. One of my favorite sayings of all time is that, "If you seek discomfort, the world will deliver you pleasure. If you seek comfort, the world will deliver you pain."

Stefan: Wow. That's deep.

Tyler: I've gotten to a place in my life where I'm just constantly searching for ways to make myself uncomfortable, and getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, if that's possible. But putting the work in when you don't feel like it, when it doesn't make sense, all those things, they're uncomfortable. But that's what ultimately will get you to whatever success is to that person. Get clear on that, and then just be willing to absolutely put the amount of effort in that's required.

Stefan: Wow. Tyler, you know it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you, man. You are a evolved spirit. I really appreciate this.

Stefan: How could people get in touch with Tyler if they want to know more?

Tyler: Yeah, so Instagram, Facebook are the main spots. It's @tylerharrispage. You can go to tylerharrispage.com. It's got all my links there. Would love to connect with everybody, I respond to every single message that I get. I would love to talk to people.

Stefan: Tremendous. Tyler, thanks so much for being on the show. Respect the grind, brother.

Tyler: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

He is a coach. He's a real estate broker. He's a real estate agent. Ex-professional basketball player, and he's grown a pretty big YouTube channel. 110,000 subscribers, which is super, super impressive.

Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show, Respect The Grind, with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show we interview people who've achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who's achieved mastery and examine what it took to get there.

Stefan: Today on the show we have a friend of mine, a new friend of mine, Bryan Casella. He is a coach. He's a real estate broker. He's a real estate agent. Ex professional basketball player, and he's grown a pretty big YouTube channel. 110,000 subscribers, which is super, super impressive. So, Bryan, welcome to the show, Respect The Grind. Thanks so much for joining me, man.

Bryan: Stefan, thanks for having me bro. I'm excited to be here and ready to drop some knowledge.

Stefan: You're a young guy, 32 years old. I'm 32 as well. You've done a lot of things in your short life. Tell me Bryan, looks like it's pretty good today. Was it always like this or where did you get started?

Bryan: No, man. Growing up, my family is actually from South America. I'm the first one from my family. Born in LA in the states and growing up, I wouldn't say that we were terribly poor but I didn't have a lot either. So we were very just meager, but okay. Barely above poor, we can say. I remember growing up and seeing a lot of scarcity around me from being told that Lamborghinis and nice things just weren't going to be a part of my life. I still remember to this day being three, four or five years old and just telling myself, "It can't be like this. I have to break out of this. I wasn't meant to live this way."

Bryan: So, growing up around age 10 or 11 is when I got into basketball like we were talking a little bit off the air, and I just really dedicated myself to that and I had dreams and aspirations of getting to the NBA. By age 14, 15, I really just started grinding every day. People would be on vacation, people would go party, I would be in the gym working out and getting some shots up. I went into college, I got a scholarship, I played in college. You fast forward after that, I played professionally in Europe and South America for three years. My last year I injured my left ankle the second time and had a second surgery on it, at which point it took a toll on me mentally and it really affected my ability to play. So, at that point I said, "Okay, that's it, I'm done. No more basketball." At that point, I'm age 24, 25.

Bryan: Getting out of that I fell into a year of just being completely lost, didn't know what I wanted to do, felt almost borderline depressed and sorry for myself until one day I decided, you know what, I have to change something. From that moment on, I just kind of, you can say, put the switch on to look for something outside of basketball because I did basketball from age 10 or 11 until 25, and I came across one of those cliche signs we see in front of the real estate buildings that says, make 100,000 your first year as a real estate agent. And in my mind, I said, okay, everybody's not doing that for sure, but there's probably one guy who's done it and he's cracked that code, let me go talk to him.

Bryan: So, I walked in, long story short, I talked to the broker for two hours, I signed up, got my real estate license and I just never stopped, man. I just grinded my first couple years, then I've built my team and I got to where I'm at today. But that decision to do it changed my life to get into real estate for sure.

Stefan: I love the stories about the athletes turn business people. It's always like the most rewarding for me. I used to be a captain of volleyball team in high school, I played basketball. I'm not a very good basketball player, most not a very good singer, but I love seeing the transfer of athletics to business. Why do you think it transfers so easily, Bryan?

Bryan: Well, I think a lot of the core fundamentals if you apply them, you'll do great because I would say most athletes, especially if we get to a high level, we have a very high level of discipline and commitment to the sports. All we need to do is transfer what we're doing on the field or on the court into the business world. And more than anything, I think we're all super competitive. We want to be number one, we want to beat everybody else and that's ultimately the drive that keeps us going and I think allows most athletes to transition into sales jobs or the business world, it gives them a much better headstart or opportunity than everybody else.

Stefan: Yeah, it's really all about discipline. Now, Bryan, we talk to all different people on this show, and we sometimes have actors, artists, authors, real estate people, why is real estate so attractive? Like, it seems to me that everybody on this show has either made it in real estate, they're holding in real estate and all millionaires in the world are either made or held in real estate, why is real estate so attractive?

Bryan: Well, at the time, man, when I looked at it, especially, I would say, anybody under the age of 35, it seems from the outside like a very low barrier to entry type career with a huge upside. Meaning, you can get licensed especially here in California, you can do your three courses and state test and be licensed within, I believe, three, four months. So, it's really quick, you spend maybe $1,500 max and now you can sell a home which out here in Southern California the average price point now is around 600,000 or 700,000, and you can make 15,000, 20,000 depending on what commission you get. That alert to people, just the dollar is I think really what attracts them.

Bryan: Now, they get slapped in the face right when they start in the reality of how difficult it is to put these deals together and actually build a business with it, but I think that's really what attracts people is the fact that you can create this business where you're kind of like an entrepreneur and by yourself and you can make a lot of money right away. I think that's really the ultimate attraction for most people at least below the age of 35.

Stefan: I've heard a lot of times, "I don't love real estate, but I love the benefits." Would you say that's true?

Bryan: Absolutely. Yeah. 100%.

Stefan: Yeah, lots of benefits. Now, something you said there is like really, I think, important that people need to hear is, people get excited about the money and they get excited about the 100 Grand or whatever the thing is, and then you said, it's a lot harder to put a deal together than you think. Tell me, why isn't it just magic and why can't everybody just make 100 Grand in real estate? I'm a real estate investor. So, my background is I came from raising capital and flipping homes. That's what I do. I'd flip homes, sell more money. Never been an agent, bought the course three times, but always been pure investor. I teach people now how to be investors and go full-time if they want to raise capital, build their brand. It's funny because I think a lot of people get in and they go, "Shit, it's harder than it looks." Why isn't it just so easy to put deals together on the agent side or the investor side?

Bryan: Well, especially from the agent side, man, we watch shows like Million Dollar Listing where these guys just show up in suits to the office and they get a call, "Hey, I want to buy a $20 million house, come show it." And then they negotiate it over the phone in five minutes and the deal is closed, supposedly. When I got in and what most people fail to realize is when you get in, most brokerages and companies don't hold your hand and help you. They're just like, "There's your desk, there's your phone, get to work. Good luck." Again, most people getting into real estate don't have a sales background and it's a direct sales job. Unless you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on marketing to bring people in, you're going to have to get out there and talk to people. Whether it's-

Stefan: You still going to close it, bro. You marketing, you got to close it, man. You're paying for the leads. It's like jacked up version of that now.

Bryan: ... Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because you're right. Even if I pay for the leads and they come in, I still have to make a phone call and go meet with them and still speak with them. So, I'm going door to door and making phone calls like Wolf of Wall Street on steroids and those deals don't come easy. I mean, you have to go through a lot of rejection. You have to face your own insecurities that a lot of people are not willing to do. And there's really no guarantee per se that you're going to get it because even my first couple of deals, when I sat down with those people, they were interviewing two or three other agents and I had to win them over.

Bryan: So, it's not this glitz and glamour. "Oh, yeah. Hi, Bryan. I'm going to sell my house. Come on in, we're going to pay you 10%." It', "Okay, I'm interviewing you and three other guys. Why should I pick you?" And you're sitting there brand new, sweating with your cheap suit on trying to make ends meet and you're now trying to convince somebody to hire you to sell their $500,000 home or a million dollar home and that reality slaps people on the face very quickly as soon as they start.

Stefan: Right. It's not cheap. It's not easy. I think it's interesting. I've sort of creating a course curriculum here over the last six years and we teach sales, negotiation, marketing, wealth, and raising capital. And it's funny because four out of those five things really is sales, and the ability to negotiate and sit there and sweat it out when you're going to get the contract. How important is it to be able to sell and negotiate in this world?

Bryan: It's 100% vital, man. You said something earlier, most people say they're not passionate about real estate or love it, they just love the money. One other kind of angle that I took on it is I said, "Well, I may not per se be passionate about real estate, but if I get into this game of real estate," what you just said about sales, "that's something I'm going to dive into and learn." And that to me was an essential life tool. I still believe that people look at sales, maybe it's because of Instagram, man, and all this stuff we're seeing on social media, they still look at it as like some gimmicky thing, when it's like one of the most vital skills you can have in life because everything we do, we're negotiating all the time. Everything is sales, but people fail to look at it that way, so, I think it's 100% vital.

Bryan: Like if I had a son right now, the first thing I would teach them is about sales and I'd have his head in books, and I would be like, probably doing mock negotiations with them and I'd be teaching them so by the time he's 10, he'd be like a master negotiator.

Stefan: Yeah. One thing I want to do in our kids is I want to say like, "Okay, look, here's the deal. Rent starts at age three, it's one penny a month, you got to pay your rent. And then there's chores in the kitchen on a big board and the kids can do the chores, invoice mom. Invoices get paid on first and the 15th." And then if they're like, "Dad, I want money." I'm like, "Okay, you got to write me a business plan and then I'm going to give you a loan at 7% and you get some chocolate almonds, you bag them up, you go selling them door to door." You got to get the hustle on early. You got to be selling early because otherwise people will do ... One thing I see too a lot, Bryan, with coaching people is, negative view on sales is usually a negative view on money. If someone is negative on selling or being sold, they're just not going to have any money. Would you say that's true?

Bryan: Absolutely, man. A lot of that programming comes into us at a young age. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I was brought up to fear the salesman, to be afraid of contracts, to look at rich people as if they were evil. I remember when I started this process of kind of reprogramming my brain, that was what I had burned into my mind was money is the root of all evil, and now let's say I get into your coaching program and you're teaching me and giving me these tools to now start making money and have sales skills, well, my own mind doesn't conflict with that because it tells me money is the root of all evil. So, I mean, I'm not going to ever get it or if I do get it, it's going to be gone very quickly. Just like I always tell people the classic example of somebody winning the lottery and hitting 50 million or 100 million, and a year later, they're broke or in a worse position than they were before they got the $50 million payout or whatever it was.

Stefan: Well, it's interesting, and a lot of it comes down to changing that broke programming. I remember when I started being interested in money, I was a guitar teacher making 10 Grand a year, and teaching guitar at my mom's house in university. That's what I did. I would save 70% of my money because I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, a little book called Rich Dad Poor Dad. It says, start saving your money and take a real estate investment course. I thought, shit, that's great. So, I started saving 70% of my money, the rest went to my rent for my mom. So, I paid rent to my mom, and then I had this like sliver of money. It was like $20 a week for entertainment and bus pass. I was like, bus pass, bagels for 99 cents, and like rent to mom and the rest went into savings.

Stefan: It took a long time for me to shake that broke mentality. I tried to save my way to freedom. Usually in the modern world today, you can't just save your way to freedom. The currency is always inflating, the money is always devaluing. What I've found is I had to go ... Actually, what got me out of that mentality, the poverty mentality was throwing down on some big coaches and mentors. I spent 300 Grand on coaches and mentors in the last eight years. And that really got me, it forced me into the abundance mentality and out of the scarcity mentality. What are some ways that someone can get out of scarcity and into abundance?

Bryan: That's a great question. What you mentioned about investing yourself, man, I mean, I think I've spent probably 300 Grand in the last three or four years alone.

Stefan: Damn, dude.

Bryan: Yeah, and it's one of those things where I've just doubled down on it because it's so important. Part of that is not just, I think, most of the times the coaches and the mentors, but the people that we meet with and within those programs that has really helped evolve me because when I've put together these masterminds or I've met with coaches and gone to their events and I've been able to make new relationships and new friendships, I've been fortunate enough to get around people who don't exhibit that mindset who are way ahead of me or closer to where I want to be in the future that getting a taste of that in real time is what started shifting me mentally a bit. And I sort of, "Well, my relationship with money is so different than them. Like, let me pick their brain. Let me just even observe them for an hour and see how they sit down at this restaurant, how they look at the menu, how they interact with people, even how they tip."

Bryan: I really just started making mental notes and just witnessing it. That's when I first started making the connection. Another thing I started doing that I can't remember who taught me this, otherwise, I'd give him credit. I started doing little things to get me out of that broke mindset. Like, for example, I'd go to a hotel and I pull up and I'd asked myself, "What would a millionaire do here? Would he do the self parking or would he balle and pay an extra five Bucks?" And I'm like, "Well, obviously, he's going to pay an extra five bucks and balle because time is money."

Bryan: So, I would do little stuff like that. I'd spend the extra five bucks to balle just to get the experience. And the more I did that and really immerse myself not only in the coaching but with these other people who already were farther ahead than I was, it really started changing me. A lot of times I didn't even realize that change was happening until I was presented with a new situation and then I responded to it differently. Like when a bill came and I went to tip, it became automatic for me to tip 20%, instead of pulling pennies together and tipping a couple of bucks.

Stefan: Right. That's interesting. When I was broke, I remember I flew down to Palm Springs. I had five grand in the bank I'd saved up. So, I'm a guitar teacher, saved up five grand in the bank was like all the money in the world and I was going to buy myself a good duplex, like a rental property. That was my goal, of 50 grand at the time in my town. I remember I flew down to Palm Springs ... Well, I went to a seminar and there was a guy there named Bill Barton. He was a self made billionaire. It was 2008 and I guess the banks were crashing in the states and he said, "Look, last time I got rich the banks are crashing and I bought up all this credit card debt for a penny, two pennies, three pennies, four pennies, five pennies on the dollar. Come down with me."

Stefan: I remember watching and I was like, "I'm not signing up for that. I'm going to stick to my rental property." My friend said to me, he's like, "Stefan, if anybody was going to do this, I thought it would be you." So, I threw down all my five grand on this course with this guy and I went down to Palm Springs, I had no money to my name, but I went and booked a super nice hotel. And it was like the Omni Rancho Las Palmas or whatever in Palm Springs, gorgeous hotel. Four and a half stars. I remember being there and I'm like, wow, beautiful marble. Beautiful girls at the pool, beautiful view, nice wood on the walls, or whatever they're doing there. And I was like, "Oh, man, I want to get back here. I want to do this. I want to live this life." And I remember eating like a lobster club at the restaurants like a $30 lobster club sandwich and I see bill that's eaten a $5 foot long from subway behind the stage. The actual billionaire he's eating a $5 foot long ... I mean, the $30 lobster club being broke.

Stefan: And I went 10 Grand into debt, further debt at that seminar. So, of course, they can't teach you everything in industry in three days. We all know that. So, do you want to really learn at this time? It's $10,000, 10 Grands. Not 10 Grand in the whole going in on this thing? And I'm like, "Oh my god." But I'll never forget spending a week with a billionaire when I was 21 and that classroom was totally worth it. Learning to make them a loan proposal, learning to make a business plan, learning how to pitch, learning how to ask for money, learning what it's like to live in a nice hotel for a little bit. All those images stayed in my mind and Bill, he died I think two years ago. But he went and he jacked up a new company. First time it was called CFS, Commercial Financing Services. And His Second CFS two. When he went out to raise money, Bryan, for his second company, he raised 400 million in the first round.

Bryan: Wow.

Stefan: So, watching him for a week, invaluable, living in that space for a week, invaluable. Just tasting it because in your mind you just want to get back to that. Would you say that that's a powerful thing?

Bryan: Yeah, man, because then you have that reference. We dream all the time. For example, before I bought my Lamborghini, I can't tell you how many times in my mind I had driven in it, seen it in the garage, could practically taste the leather in there and the suede, but when I really sat in one, and I started going to the dealerships and then talking to the sales people, and then meeting some of the other owners, that's really when everything started accelerating, and it really just fired me up even more. So, having that real life reference point, like you just described, I think, is invaluable for sure.

Stefan: Yeah, absolutely. It's just like, I find with people, and I'm in the house flipping business teaching people how to flip houses, until they fly to the city where their coach lives and they watch their coach flip a house, they watch their coach make the calls, they just don't do it. And I don't know what it is. It's just like, you need the evidence in your brain, and it's like you need someone to do it right in front of you. It's almost like sex. Like you have to do sex to know sex. You can't just read a book about it. You got to like get in there and see someone do it, right?

Bryan: Absolutely, man. Yep. Experience.

Stefan: So, Bryan, one thing that I think is super impressive are your 110,000 YouTube subscribers, bro. That's amazing. Good for you. How did you build such a big channel? What got you that kind of following?

Bryan: Thank you, man. I appreciate it. It's really been consistent effort over time, but more than anything, I believe it came down to a few key points. Number one is, this is the first thing I did, even when I got into real estate, and it was right before I started doing video and social media. I started going around just asking people, what does a realtor look like? The average realtor in your mind? What do they look like? What do they sound like? What do they do? And pretty much everybody unanimously was giving me the same description. Older person with a briefcase, black suit, white shirt, very boring, no energy, life

Bryan: And I was like, man, I have an opportunity here because the way I am, if I can transcend this boredom and the stereotypical image of what a realtor is, that already is going to get me a step ahead and get me attention. That's kind of what I did, man. I went to a lot of seminars too, real estate seminars, everybody was kind of walking on eggshells. Everyone's afraid to curse and everyone is so wound up and just so tight. I said, I'm the opposite. You know what, I'm just going to bring my personality into this and not be afraid to break these barriers. That was the first thing that I did that initially was kind of like a shock to everybody, but very quickly started attracting and garnering a lot of attention.

Bryan: The second thing was I wasn't afraid to show my personal life. When I even go on my Facebook and see people who follow me, especially the ones who are in real estate, or any type of brick and mortar, "real life business" outside of online, all they really show is their business. Oh, I closed this deal. Oh, I flipped this house. Oh, I just listed this home. Oh, I sold this home to this buyer. But we don't really know anything about the individual and I knew, "Hey, I'm watching these people." Just like we used to watch people on TV back in the day, we're just genuinely curious about finding out, what stores do they shop that?

Bryan: What clothes do they wear? Do they wear the same shoes as I do? What kind of toothpaste do they use" I started getting more intimate details about my life, how I think, what I did on a day to day basis, what my hobbies were, and that alongside what I just told you about kind of breaking barriers, really just opened up the floodgates, man. Because then I started collaborating with other people, people from different walks of life started following me, and what I wanted to establish in everybody's brain that I was in real estate and the businessman who was always there, it was just communicated in a different way. And that really is what got a lot of attention because at the end of the day, if we do stuff on social media, there has to be an element of entertainment, and most people forget that. You can be super educational, super informative, but if you're boring and you don't entertain people, they're not going to stick around, and I think that-

Stefan: You just got yourself a gong bro. Entertainment, man. So, what's some of the things that make your content entertaining that makes people want to come back?

Bryan: Let's see. Well, one thing I started doing about a year ago that really helped me out was collaborating with people outside of my space and bringing that element into my social media. Because, you know, I do what most people do in my space. I travel and speak, I talk about real estate and that kind of stuff, but I really started interviewing and collaborating and doing things like people outside of my industry. For example, I'm a huge car nut. I love cars. Because I own like six, but I'm going to buy like 10 more the next couple years. I'm just a car nut. I'm very good friends with a lot of people not just locally but internationally who are in the cars, and because of that I now have connections with the people who have been the, we can say like the forefathers to the Fast and Furious franchise. I know Paul Walker's family like very intimately now, and I've gone opportunities outside of that, whether it's in the real estate business to sell homes, let people invest or whatever it is, or other business opportunities because of that.

Bryan: That alone brings an element of entertainment to my channel and what I do because they know, hey, if I go to Bryan, I'm not just going to be hearing about real estate and how to sell a home and negotiate, dude, he's over here hanging out with the guys on the beach, cruising down PCH with six Lamborghinis and Ferraris. That's cool. He's doing this, he's doing that. Today, man, I just sat down with a guy who I actually just recently found him but I thought the story was incredible. He spent 10 years in the penitentiary here in the United States and he's turned around and he's a multi millionaire within four to four and a half years of being fresh out of prison. And now he's a multi millionaire. So I interviewed him.

Bryan: Being able to put him now on my channel, which I'll be posting that video on Instagram and YouTube tomorrow. No one else in the real estate industry that's doing social media would ever even think about doing that because they would say, "Oh, I can't associate with somebody who has tattoos and who's been to prison, that's going to ruin my image." That part, that uniqueness, that mystery like, "Oh, what's Bryan going to do next?" That's one of the biggest pillars that I have for sure as far as entertainment on my channel because they can come into my channel and not show up for a week, and when they show up the next week, someone's going to slap them in the face because I'm doing something new.

Stefan: So, you're pretty much a rapper. You're like a rapper of real estate. It's interesting. I used to have a rock band and I wanted to be a rock star, and I think rock had one of the fatal flaws that the bands wouldn't collaborate. Like a rock band was just a rock band and they had their album and that was it. But rappers would always get like, M&M would get 50 cent on his album. And Jay Z would get, you know someone else on his album. So, there's all these collabs going on. Would you say collabs is the key to growing that audience?

Bryan: Absolutely. What I think and it totally is, I think some people are afraid because they think, well, if I collaborate, people are going to forget that I'm a realtor or a real estate investor, whatever it is, they're not. Anywhere I go, I'm known as a real estate agent, the leader of my team. That's going to transcend whatever space that you're in, and it just opens up you to a new audience. I can't tell you how many people now have turned into clients or students that I've taken from the car community.

Bryan: For example, I have another group of friends that are dating coaches, and I do stuff with them. So that opens up another audience for me. So, just between that and the car community, I would say that's contributed to an additional 20%, 30% of my growth and just brand awareness because I've been able to open those doors which I know other people would want to do, but there's this fear saying, "Well, I'm the real estate guy, I can't talk to the car guy." Because it doesn't make any sense when I think that's one of the key is to really grow your brand.

Stefan: Okay, we're growing the brand. Now, let's come back to it. So, growing a brand is expensive, dude. I've been doing that for like, almost 10 years now. Growing a brand costs money. There's a reason why there's not a million brands out there because it's expensive to grow a brand. You got to monetize it somehow. So, I guess you're monetizing through real estate skills. And then you're also doing a coaching program. Right?

Bryan: Yeah.

Stefan: Cool. So talk about the coaching program, Bryan, what's some of the things that are in there? Like, you said, you got all different types of people joining your coaching. Who joins Bryan's coaching and what types of things are you teaching them?

Bryan: Yeah, man. Modern Success, which is the name of the program. I started it like I told you seven, eight months ago. And it started because I was getting so many requests. "Hey, man, do you have any products on this or new coach and this and that?" And it became such a regular thing to get text messages and emails and DMs on Instagram. And I said, why not start something? So, what I do now is I created a private group on Facebook. We do one weekly live call on zoom just like this for about an hour, an hour and a half depending on how many questions people have. We're all pick a topic and lecture on it for 30, 45 minutes and then I'll open it up to Q&A. And then throughout the week, I also put four to five videos in the group teaching something, whether it's a skill or a little mindset thing to help people make a mental shift, but the focus is really, I would say mainly on three pillars.

Bryan: One would be the business aspect, learning sales, some sales skills. Number two, being able to handle your finances and then eventually build wealth, and three getting your mind right. I think so many people, especially younger people now who grew up with social media will look at you, me and some other people who maybe have been putting in work for a long time, but they'll think that there's such a big gap between us and them that they can't do it. All these limitations coming. "I'm too young. I'm not from the right place. I don't live in LA. I can't do it." I feel like people have literally mentally crippled themselves into the point of what we were just talking about, where they'll see you doing it, they'll be on your program and they still won't take any action as I said. So, my whole basis of building that program was to get people off their ass and into action, and the kind of testimonials I'm getting and the results that I'm seeing are just out of this world.

Stefan: That's amazing, man. I got the same problem now in my Instagram. I think I got to 60,000 followers and I got all these like, kids. 12 years old, 13, 14. I've this one girl, this girl from India she's like, "Hey, I have a crush on this boy. What should I do?" She's like, "Should I tell him how I feel?" I'm like, "Yeah, why not?" I said, "Ask him out to lunch or something and if he says, no, he wasn't yours to begin with." And then today, she texted me. She goes, "He said, no, he rejected me." I'm like, "Big deal. Fuck up. Move on girl." So, it's crazy. You got all these people, and monetizing that traffic can be cumbersome. Especially I got 12 year old kids in India checking out my stuff now. Well, they can't even afford $199 audio books. So, what is your coaching cost if someone wants to join that kind of thing? What's the price point?

Bryan: It's $97 a month. I wanted to keep it affordable because I know, especially with my audience being people between 18 and 35, most of them being aspiring to become an entrepreneur or a business person that money is tight for them, and I wanted to keep it simple that way if somebody is getting in. 97 Bucks a month for most people is something they can scrape together if they really take a look at their expenses and get some basic finances in order, they can do it. I wanted to find that sweet spot. I will be raising it later on, but I thought 97 a month was the perfect introductory price for somebody.

Stefan: Yeah. No, that's wicked man. I mean, that's 1,200 Bucks a year. I think it's a magical thing and you know, some people would say like the negative people like, "Oh, man, you're ripping those people off." But there's probably guys out there you're totally changing their life, you're totally changing their mindset, and you got to pay for curated content. If they want good curated, branded stuff, it costs money to put that on. I really appreciate that. Yeah, go ahead, Bryan.

Bryan: Yeah, man. And think about all the money you've spent too, and I, and that I've spent and anybody above us. They've spent that money. They paid their dues to get that information and a lot of times I feel like if I was to take this precious piece of knowledge, that maybe I've saved for my paid group and I just give it out for free, people aren't going to appreciate it. If we hold an event. Let's say me and you hold an event and we make it free. How many excuses that are going to come up the day [inaudible 00:28:30] for people not to show up. "Oh, sorry, guys. It's snowing a little bit today, I'm going to sleep in I'll catch the next one." You best believe if we charge them 500 Bucks or 1,000 Bucks to show up, I don't care if the world is ending, they're going to show up to that event because they forked out their money and they've put some skin in the game. And that's-

Stefan: The gong. The Gong came on for that, bro. Give me an instant replay on that, Bryan.

Bryan: You got to put your money where your mouth is, man. If you want to learn from the best and get the best knowledge, you got to be able to put either your credit card down, the cash down, the check down, whatever it is, or we'll go back to the dumb and dumber days, an IOU, whatever it takes, you got to put something down. I mean, a lot of times, like I even mentioned earlier, maybe at the event I got, yeah, one or two pieces of information, but I met that one person who then later on gave me a connection or introduced me to somebody else, who then gave me that next breakthrough. So, you never know how it's going to happen. But you got to pay to play. You got to pay to play.

Stefan: You got to pay to play. You know I love that, man. I think you're bang on. You go to what you pay for. It's funny. I do an event called Blueprint to Cash, and it used to be called Self Made Live and Self Made was like I would sell my book, and people get the book and they get two tickets for like 50 Bucks. That's how it works. So, they're overpriced book but underpriced tickets. So, you get the $50 book and the two tickets to the event and that's cool. I remember we do these events and [inaudible 00:29:47] 100 people and then like the afternoon comments that people leave, it's people leave the next day. They weren't committed. But as soon as we turned that event and is like a Blueprint to Cash, we sold for 2,000 Bucks now, same event, and we include their flight, we include their hotel.

Stefan: So it's like a great experience. We got a limousine driving thing to like a dinner at either, like a flip, or my house, or whatever. And it's amazing man because people show up, they don't quit, they stick through it, they have a great experience. It's just, you can be in the free line, but it's kind of like going to Costco and eating those free winners. It's not really a meal, dude. You can go there and eat those little baby winners, but you might as well spend the $85 and get the hot dog and the drink. Get the real thing.

Bryan: Exactly, man. Yeah, I agree.

Stefan: Now, Bryan, let me ask you this. You're successful in a lot of things. Did it in sports, doing it on YouTube, you got a coaching mastermind group successful, real estate salesperson. Now, what's your obsession?

Bryan: My obsession, man, and this sounds weird to a lot of people is just simply me pushing, we can say, barriers on my own potential. That's really what it boils down to because I've thought about that a lot myself. Like, well, what's this drive in me? What's this spark in me? It's really, part of it maybe it's because I grew up being told I couldn't do anything, and that I would be average. So now maybe because of that my quest is just, what else can I do? Like I'm already talking to one of my clients right now who we're about four months we're about to close this new development over here by the beach for like 5 million. It's going to be a sick, sick house, man.

Bryan: And we're talking about going in together to open up a sports bar because I've always wanted to open up a bar. That thought wasn't really in my mind until a year or two ago, but I'm like, "Fuck it. Let's do it." So I'm all about pushing the envelope and just seeing, maybe it's not worth it, but what I can get away with [inaudible 00:31:39]. Like somebody said, let's try this. I'm going to do it. Another idea pops up in my mind you know what, let's go for it.

Bryan: Thrill seeker, we can say. I really don't know what it is, man. But I think that is the best way to sum it up because I've gone in so many different directions that that seems to be the most concrete definition I can give as far as what keeps me going because that fire is always there. I wake up every day like, let's make it happen. I don't like sitting idly. I don't take vacations. I'm just like, let's keep going. Let's keep hunting like a lion waking up every day and just looking for the deer and the gazelle and saying, "Okay, I'm getting this one." Just being relentless.

Stefan: I love that. Being obsessed with being relentless and being obsessed with what I can get away with. I got a similar feeling in me, man. I think we're similar dudes. What motivates you to be great at what you do? You could show up, Bryan, and you could be like average, you could be like a seven out of 10, you could be like an okay kind of guy. What motivates you to take it over the top and be great?

Bryan: Great question. Even when I was a kid, like if we played video games and you were beating me I'd throw the control at you. I was like, "Okay, we're playing again." I never was okay being second place. One thing I hear now is that kids are getting like participation trophies, just like, I'm a dude. That completely belittles the guy who worked hard to get first place.

Stefan: That's we're all fair, man. That's it. That's we're fair.

Bryan: That's what I was thinking. I was like, when I got the trophies in basketball or whatever it is, I put in the work. If we were to look at my life and the other kids life preparing for that game, let's say was like a one on one tournament, you would see that I put in the work to get first. So, with me it was about being the King of the Hill, not so much for the recognition but to myself to say, "Yes, I could be first." It's more like a personal achievement thing, and just having a high standard for myself because when somebody says average, in my mind I'm looking down to average and it's like why would I be down there when first place is, okay, this is where I'm at. Like, why would I look down and be like, "Let me step down to average." That just doesn't line up with me mentally, you know.

Stefan: I love what Napoleon said. He said, men will die for little pieces of medal. Guys like me and you we want the trophy, we want the medal, we want the first place, and I love what you said about, when they give up the participation trophy, it ruins the whole thing. It's interesting I was watching a psychologist and he was talking about how men when they're with other men will compete, but then when you introduce women into the competition, the men stop competing. Like when women are competing alongside men, the men don't try as hard, and then what ends up happening in like the case of school right now, like the school system, is like men are competing as women and then the men actually, the boys in university and in high school, they don't even try anymore. So the girls get the high marks, the boy is like, "Whatever, I don't want to compete with a girl." And next thing you know, they're out being entrepreneurs or something like that.

Stefan: Now, let me ask you this, Bryan. What's one moment where you thought you'd fail and this whole thing would come crashing down and it'd be over for Bryan?

Bryan: Oh, man. Early on, dude. I mean, I dealt with those demons a lot in my first year in real estate especially, dude. I think my first year in real estate alone as an agent, I was probably in tears at least on three separate occasions. This is coming from somebody who until that point, bro, I can't remember the last time I cried besides, maybe when my grandma passed away when I was like 11. So, this tough guy who hadn't shed a tear in, I don't know how many years, 20 years almost, breaks down three times in one years.

Bryan: I remember when I got my license, a buddy of mine bought a house so I got a deal right away. Like literally the day that I got my license, boom, I ended up helping him buy a house. I got another deal a week after that. I got a listing that ended up selling, but after that there was probably this three and a half four month period where I was just grinding man. Just nose to the grindstone like six and a half, seven days a week just nonstop in just the business with that coming, and dude, I went through every emotional up and down in those three or four months and every thought, every negative opinion that somebody had expressed when I said I was getting into real estate and going down that route, that image was vivid and clear in my mind and I could hear their voice nagging in my ears, "I told you, I knew you weren't going to make it." Man, it was tough.

Bryan: But I'm so glad that I went through it, but I would say that was probably one of the darkest times because now that's when your own mind starts becoming your worst enemy. And that's a very pivotal point where you hit the fork in the road for most people, and they say, I think 87% of real estate people fail the first two years. I think it's because when they hit that fork in the road, they just succumb to the negative imagery and the negative voices in their mind instead of just pushing through because in those dark moments, what saved me was, every single person I had looked up to, studied, conversed with, and sat down with in that beginning process told me, you will go through that.

Bryan: Like you will be in moments where you're going to cry, you're going to feel like quitting, you're going to feel like the world is against you, what are you going to do? How are you going to respond? And if you respond like everybody else, your results are going to be like everybody else. But if you keep going and you understand that, hey, this is going to work. People have done it before you, then you'll make it to the other side. But so few people can make it through that. Those voices, man, for my mentors and people I looked up to is really what saved me.

Stefan: You know I've noticed during this show, Bryan, is that every single person comes on this show who's successful, we usually have only successful people. Sometimes we get a dud, but everybody who comes on this show and is successful usually has a really dark moment. And what's cool about the dark moment is usually the worst that moment is, the higher they jump after. Like, I had one lady, young lady. She's 29 years old. She was living in her car when she was like 18. I remember she was working at Cheesecake Factory and she made no tip. She made like $2. Couldn't pay her rent. That same young lady who is in $100 million development right now at age 29 because she was able to go in there and face the demons and face the darkness. Whoever's on this show, the darker it is and the worse it goes, the higher they jump. Why do you think that is?

Bryan: I tell people you have to go through that. You have to experience that to really get to the other side. I believe in polarity too, to the degree that you swing this way you're going to swing the other way. For me, another way I looked at it mentally too was, everything that I'm encountering right now is a test. So, if I'm willing to experience the lowest of the lows, I'm now deserving of the highest of the high because I was willing to be in the black hole and swim in it with a smile on my face and not succumb or be afraid of it like everybody else. Because all those moments really are, if we break it down it's just unknown because we're not sure what's going to happen. We're not sure if that deal is going to go through. I tell people, you have to be willing to dance and have fun in the unknown like you're dancing in the rain. Because to the degree that you can go into that black hole and into that unknown and darkness, you're going to get that much more light on the other side. And I just think there's a direct correlation with being able to withstand.

Bryan: Like, we've heard some really crazy inspirational stories like Oprah, for example, and to see where they're at now. It's like, well, look what they went through and look what they overcame. So to me, it's just basically like a video game, and if I'm willing to go through this, I'm unlocking that next level that other people aren't willing to unlock.

Stefan: Right. I love what you're saying there, man. You are really unlocking the next level all the time. There's a great book I read was called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Have you read that book?

Bryan: Haven't read that one yet, no.

Stefan: You got to check it out. It's about a guy and he's like a business coach. He's coaching executives. What he noticed was that the skills that got a guy into an executive suite like a C suite, CEO, CFO, COO, or whatever, would inhibit him from going to the next level of leadership. They'd be salty, they'd be mean, they would be harsh, all these things, and his job in his program was what got you here won't get you there. His job is to undo all those things and then teach you the next level of leadership, which is being a statesman instead of being a warrior and being somebody who has compassion and things like that, but still is strong. Would you agree? That's like a really big thing, is unlearning your last level to go to your next level?

Bryan: Yeah, man, absolutely. I could even think of a lot of people in the real estate space who wants to start as a solo agent and then eventually build a team and ship more into a leadership role and position. Two completely different things. You could be, I know so many people who are superstar agents who are doing millions in commissions, but when it comes to running a team of being a leader, they can't do it. Because that next level for them to get to that level, it's a different skill set and know how. A different blueprint. I think a lot of people can't navigate that and I think athletes fall into this category too. We're so stubborn sometimes and hard headed where it's like, oh, no, we have to do it this way. We want to be a perfectionist, and we're not willing to listen to that next person or pick up that new book to teach us that stuff.

Bryan: I think one of the main reasons that I was able to make this transition so seamless as it seem to people was because I embraced what you just said. I didn't read that book, but what you're talking about, I think I've gotten from somewhere else, maybe that story or the kind of like that teaching because that popped into my head immediately as I started growing my team was, I need to understand that I need to unlearn some of that old stuff to really break through to the next level.

Stefan: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things too with an entrepreneur or somebody who's like hustling on their own dime is to go to that next level, you have to take a massive pay cut. Like you pretty much, you probably got to hire a coach because you probably can't figure it on your own. If you could, you would have done it on your own. So, you probably have to hire somebody so you take a pay cut on that. And then when you go into management, you're not making the commissions now. You're trying to get other guys to make commissions and they're not making money right away. So now they're not making money and you're not making money and you're living off your savings, you're living off your credit cards and it's all really scary. Then what people do is they go back to just being a hustler because it's what they know and building stuff is tough.

Stefan: Now, let me ask this, Bryan, what do you think is the biggest cause of failure in people?

Bryan: Biggest cause of failure. It would be this. A lot of people, let's say they want to be an investor or they want to be a real estate agent, whatever it is. I ask this to people, how long are you willing to fail? It's like a test. And if they give me a date, like, "Well, I'm going to give this a shot for 30 days or 60 days." If anybody gives me a finite date to how long they're going to try something I know they're going to fail. I think that's one of the biggest reasons, is when I got into real estate I remember people asking me, what's your plan B? How long you going to give it a shot? I'm like, "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to make this shit happen no matter what."

Bryan: Hearing people who give that date, I've asked in the last couple of years, six people that have given me dates and all of them have quit or they're not doing what they're doing. So, I really think that's number one thing is, if you go in with the mindset that, "Oh, I'm just going to give this a shot for 30 days," and you have that date, it's not going to work.

Stefan: Right. Yeah, it's like the, I'm ready to jump out of the boat kind of thing. I think it's interesting when I coach people and we do real estate. So, buy, fix, sell houses, and we teach them to raise money and stuff, whenever we get somebody's like, "Oh, I'm wondering payment plan can I pay." I'm like, "Bro, you're not going to make it. You got to be in, you got to be committed." Because when you try to call it, when you try to go to something on a payment plan, that's just the license to quit. Halfway through, you think you're going to save money by quitting while you're actually just losing all your money at this point.

Stefan: So, Bryan, if you can go back to the beginning and talk to let's say 15 year old Bryan, let's go back half your life about 15 year old Bryan, what's a piece of advice you give yourself?

Bryan: I would say you have to learn very quickly to stop living your life based on what other people want you to be like and what their opinion is of what it should be like. The last couple of years for me especially have been the most revolutionary because of that. The moment I was able to really detach from other people's opinions, what they had to say about me, how they saw my life and how they wanted me to live my life, it's like I could see the light and everything changed from that moment. So, I would say stop worrying about what other people say, live your life not someone else's.

Stefan: That's getting a gong man. That's like a big thing for young people. Young people are always trying to please people and I've read a quote somewhere I was like, by the time you get to 40 you don't care anymore. You're just like, "Whatever man." When you when you get a little older.

Stefan: Now, Bryan, top three books to change your life, what are they man?

Bryan: Top three books. Thinking and Grow Rich [inaudible 00:44:03]. One book by Anthony Robbins, Unlimited Power was fantastic, and the book by Oren Klaff, Pitch Anything a little bit better.

Stefan: Oh, Oren Klaff, yeah bro. He's from Cali too.

Bryan: Yeah.

Stefan: Yeah, Pitch Anything. Why do you say Pitch Anything? I think that's one of my favorites for teaching people to raise money for sure.

Bryan: It just offers a very ... It's kind of like we were discussing earlier right. Unlearning some other stuff and really unlocking that next level and what he teaches in that book I believe, after you have a basic understanding of sales will take me to the next level for sure.

Stefan: Yeah, there's some powerful stuff in their. Power framing, time framing, analyst frame, he's got some stuff. Oren is one of the best.

Stefan: Now, Bryan, I got to ask everyone this question on the show. This is like my number one. Everybody gets this question and it happens to be one of the last questions. What's the one thing that young people need to succeed these days?

Bryan: More commitment. I think people, no matter what space they're going into, especially now with social media as much as it's a blessing it's a curse, there are too many fucking options, they need to pick one thing and just stick with it. So, if they go to , they need to go all in and just stick with it and commit to the process. Everyone's one foot in and one foot out. "Oh, I'm going to try this then I'm going to try that." What do they call it? Jack of all trades, master of none more commitment. You need to double down and commit and say, "I'm doing this and that's it. Regardless what mommy says daddy says what he says or she says, I don't care if I'm not going to get any likes on Facebook or Instagram, I'm going to do this." If people would commit like that, just that sheer commitment like a lot of athletes give where they commit their lives to the sport, they're going to make it to the other side for sure.

Stefan: I love what you're saying, man. You're preaching the gospel here in the church of The Grind. Now, Bryan, if people want to get in touch with you, how can they get ahold of you to interact, be a part of your brand, maybe get into coaching.

Bryan: I'm all over the place, man. Bryancasella.com, B-R-Y-A-N C-A-S-E-L-L-A. That's my website. It has everything. My handles for Instagram and Twitter and everything else is just @bryancasella. It's really simple. Same thing with YouTube. Bryan Casella.

Stefan: Awesome, man. Thank you so much for being on the show, Bryan, Respect the Grind, and we will see you in the future, man.

Bryan: I really appreciate it.

Chris Kwon

Today, the Arcadia, California native applies that lesson to his real estate dealings. And it's paying off: now in his 5th year as a real estate professional, Kwon has increased his volume every year since he started, and had his best year in 2016, helping 28 families buy and sell and nearly 20 million in sales.

"I believe that I need to always be sharpening my skills on a daily basis so I'm ahead of the curb and daily trends."

Jonathan Hawkins is the epitome of hard work and recognized early in his career that nothing comes easy.

He began his career in real estate with an intention to put Service, Integrity and Success at the forefront and quickly transformed himself into the top 1% of real estate brokers in the world.

His company Amavi Group is comprised of Amavi Properties and his media and marketing company, Amavi Media.

Jonathan specializes in connecting with his clients at the highest levels, he accomplishes this by making it his mission is to create an unforgettable experience that leads to a lifelong relationship.

He has been quoted in Inman, Wall Street Journal, Realtor.com, The Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, Real Estate Agent Magazine, Who's Who in Real Estate and Tom Ferry International.

Henry Kaminski Jr. is the founder of Unique Designz by the HMK Group, a full-service graphic design, branding, and marketing company.

He is the author of the Amazon best seller "Refuse To Give Up." He's also the host of the popular "Brand Doctor's Podcast" where he talks about strategies that help entrepreneurs design reputable and profitable personal brands.

Paul Getter is an internet marketing expert, consultant, motivational speaker, and founder of The Internet Marketing Nerd.

Just 9 short years ago, Paul Getter was broke, struggling, and trying to make ends meet delivering phone books out of the back of his 1996 Dodge Caravan…

Paul started learning about the power of internet marketing, and within just a few short years become one of the most sought after marketing experts in the world, spending MILLIONS per month online for his clients.

Colton Lindsay is an Internationally recognized Real Estate Sales Trainer, Online Marketing Specialist, Passive Income Creator, and Inner Game Master.

He has been in the industry for 13+ years and is founder of The WGR Academy.

Ricky Carruth lives on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, where he started selling real estate in 2002.

By 2014, he was named the #1 RE/MAX agent in his State, selling over 100 properties each year since recovering from real estate disasters in his coastal region (two major hurricanes and the related insurance crisis, and the BP oil spill).

Having grown up with parents who taught him the value of hard physical labor and strong ethics, he never takes his success for granted and lives each day to do his personal best with the ultimate goal of helping others.

Ricky is a perfect example of someone who respects the grind!