Podcasts about so dean

Welcome today to Harness the Web. We're here with Dean Brown today, he's a holistic high-performance coach! He empowers men and dads to face their fears, their suppressed emotions, limited beliefs, and self-denial so they can embrace life without guilt, anger, or hate. Manifesting their highest division of power love profit in life in business, that's pretty long. So it was a bit of a tongue twister too. So Dean, what else would you like to say about yourself? well the the reason that that you were in that spot, where you had to explain with such a long sentence or a paragraph, was because what i do is deep. What i do is fundamental and it's transformational. And i help people that are in a place where they can't even focus on what they're doing now or today or what they hope to do tomorrow because they've got Themselves lost so deeply from the things that they were taught, that aren't working for them and that comes from societal influence propaganda. ..... Find out more about Dean @ https://www.mypersonalreality.ca --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/steve-peck/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-peck/support

For may investors, buying that first property is intimidating to the point that they let deals just pass them by. In this episode Roofstock Academy Coach, Dean West, shares the story of how he moved through that pain point to eventually quit his job to invest in real estate.  --- Transcript   Michael: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co host,   Tom: Tom Schneider.   Michael: And we have with us a very special guest today, Dean West. He's actually a Roofstock, Academy Coach and consultant with us. And he's gonna be talking to us today about his experience and journey getting started in real estate investing all the way up to what he's doing now as a coach. So let's get into it.   Awesome, Dean West. Welcome to the podcast, man. So happy to have you on.   Dean: It's a privilege Michael. Thanks so much for having me on your show.   Michael: Yeah, of course. So we wanted to give our listeners a little bit of insight into your background as an investor, and then ultimately becoming a rootstock Academy coach. So give everybody a little bit of background on who you are, and how you first got started investing in real estate.   Dean: Yeah, happy to do so. So it was the spring of 85 that I was born, and then from there,   Michael: and you've been at it ever since?   Dean: Yeah, exactly!   Tom: Spring of 85. Great time to be born. great time to be born,   Dean: Isn't it? So I was born in South Africa, I made my move over to America in 99. Since I've been in us, I've been all along California. So I've started in San Diego, then I was in Los Angeles for a bit. And then I spent about 14 years in San Francisco.   When I was in San Francisco, I spent the majority of my time so I was in a big four accounting firm working in the digital forensics e discovery space, which I loved. And I loved my colleagues and everything about it that at some point, I kind of got to this point in my career where I'm like, okay, I can either go for partnership, or I can kind of go this other path, which I've been had been slowly building over the past couple of years into real estate and I love Real Estate Guys Radio Podcast. And one of the things that I think Robert Helms always said was build a life that pays you to live it. So I've followed that ethos and quit my job and kind of pursue this full time.     Michael: Amazing. But so if we just rewind the clock back a little bit, not all the way to the spring 85. But when you first got started investing in real estate, what was your first soiree into real estate investing,   Dean: I started actually with my primary residence. So I purchased a home in San Francisco, I, like many other poor souls in San Francisco was hunting around with my wife for a few years or five years trying to buy a property. So I think I started in 2012 trying to buy a property and four years later, we finally found a home we've been making offers on these properties, but like everyone else, we were getting outbid and people were sending pretty pictures of their dog and family. In their little letter, though, we were kept getting outbid, and it was really quite frustrating.   So what I did like any logical person would do is I bet 25% over asking which wasn't enough by the way there was 16 offers on this property I was in the 16 I didn't know where I fell off my offer but I knew I wasn't the best one out there because I'd come back for another best and final offer so I raised it yet again to 30% over asking and I had after sending all my money I had the privilege of sending all my money to the seller and Yeah, got my first primary residence.   Michael: Awesome.   Tom: So in San Francisco big city is this like like a condo or a proper house or a townhouse and I'm curious having you know knowing San Francisco decently well yeah live it out like what area you were buying   Dean: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Bernal heights.   Tom: Oh, very cool.   Dean: To just south of the city that's like a 20 minute drive into the city perfect places really close to the city is kind of one of those places where you know for people who weren't quite ready to grow up and move all the way to the suburbs. It's kind of like Southern lights because that city feels close enough and I you know, I wasn't quite ready to make that leap and fly my minivan and suburban just yet. So there you go.   I went kind of halfway in between, I tend to think of myself as you know, decently by the numbers and you know, this place was you know, a bit out of my league but the reason I kind of made the jump was because I saw the potential it's a beautiful property two bedrooms at the top one bedroom below and that bedroom below had a separate entrance right of the street, it was almost like an in law unit. So that property itself about 1500 square feet, of which the bottom unit is about 400 square feet and there's a perfect space for an Airbnb play. So when I was making that offer I kind of had that in the back of my mind that hey, I can kind of Airbnb this out and you know at least help pay the mortgage a little bit so yeah, that's that was essentially my first I guess real estate deal. Was my primary residence house hacking.   Tom: Awesome. House hacking. Beautiful. Yeah. Did you ended up going at it from an Airbnb like a vacation rental or longer term stay curious of like, what how that kind of played out, you know, and were you immediately thinking Airbnb or were you thinking like kind of longer term rental?   Dean: No, no, I right off the bat. I was thinking Airbnb. My wife was not thinking that but I was. Little does she know I was very much thinking about having a Airbnb at the bottom there. And yeah, short term rental was what I was looking at. And the reason for that it made it made sense for what I was looking for in San Francisco and California in general, that you know, the landlord laws tend to not be as lenient towards landlord and so I didn't want On to any kind of, you know, squatters or anything that may impinge on that. So I was looking for short term play, it actually really worked out quite well. Because even in Bernal heights, which is a bit outside the city, it was still I was getting, you know, 70 85% occupancy in my unit, which was great. And I was able to very much supplement my mortgage. I think I actually kept on to a 4.96 star rating super host threes years in a row.   Michael: Yeah, humblebrag much.   Dean: Probably the achievement of my lifetime is keeping my rating up there. And that's because I went down there, I picked up every bloody hair I could find. And I hooked on the hospitality aspect of it. I loved the feeling of having guests and trying to give them a you know, a good time here from another country or from from some domestic travelers.   Michael: You're like a unicorn. It's like meeting somebody with an Uber five rating. like nobody has a perfect. That's pretty impressive. Nicely done.   Tom: You don't trust the five?   Michael: Yeah, it's true. It's like, well, what are you doing?   Dean: There's something going on there? No, it was actually I know, the two people that kind of dinged my rating one,   Michael: Let's go find them.   Dean: I know. I know. I tried that. I had no like, the one was the lady who was staying for two nights, and I made the egregious error of not refilling the K cup coffee pods.   Michael: How could you?   Dean: I know, I told her, I was like, please forgive me, like I'll do anyway, she, she dinged my reading right there. And then the second person that's good and what I did, but anyway, just just a few people.   Michael: Okay,   Tom: In preparing to house hack with an Airbnb? How did you kind of prepare yourself to be able to do that? Or you just kind of just use your intuition? And then second question on top of that, was it easier or more difficult than you thought it was going to be having a short term rental in your lower house?   Dean: To answer the second question first, It's actually easier. And the reason for that Tom is actually because I enjoyed it. And everything in life is a lot easier if you enjoy it. I mean, not everyone loves going down and dealing with guests, and you know, trying to make sure everything's perfect, I actually quite enjoyed that I really did enjoy that aspect of it. And sure, it was a lot of work. And I was sometimes in there myself kind of cleaning the toilets going down, and just getting everything cleaned. I finally outsource that. But in the beginning, it was all me.   And then your first question in terms of preparation. For the numbers standpoint, I think I was using it was I think the air DNA at the time, or one of those other websites, or even Airbnb itself in order to get a kind of a ballpark figure of what type of rent, short term rent I could potentially get from this unit. And it actually pretty spot on my my pro forma was somewhat accurate for this aspect. So yeah, in preparation, it worked out quite well.   Michael: Nice. And I mean, I'm like, Tom, I know San Francisco very well. It's a very expensive market, I think it was, at least last year, the most expensive market in the country, even more than Manhattan. So as a percentage basis, how much of your housing expense, were you able to offset by renting this out?   Dean: About half? Actually, wow, that's in terms of growth? So I'll use real numbers. Yes, I pulled in every month, about three to three and a half $1,000 a month, my mortgage was six and a half ish. And then my expenses itself, I was paying about $600 a month for the cleaning and the like refreshing everything and like, you know, buying some ad hoc things, repairs, that was roughly my number. So in terms of buying the property just for Airbnb, it made no sense. But if we were living at the top and kind of offsetting the mortgage, it made perfect sense.   Michael: Yeah, that's awesome. And you're the fact that you're a tax guy. And you come from one of the big four, you probably saw immediately the tax benefits that you'd be able to take advantage of as well.   Dean Yes, well, you think that actually, so I'll company that I used to work for the giant accounting firm, my focus was digital forensics e discovery. So I was dealing white collar crime. So I was doing a very niche type of work. But I learned very quickly about the tax benefits. That was one of the things I really loved about Airbnb play was that I was living there. And I got to do the third of my heating a third of my internet, sort of the waters or the sewer because it was split, kind of two bedrooms and one so 3111 so 1/3 of all our deal use or deal purpose items, I was able to pack the dock so there are a lot of tax benefits or you're living in your primary residence and having a short term rental as well.   Michael: Right now I want to move on to your first remote investment because you joined the Roofstock Academy as a member a couple years ago now and have since been off to the races with regard to investing remotely. So talk to us about what that first remote investment looked like.     Dean: Yeah, you happy to walk you through it. So after the Airbnb that was going on, I was like, Okay, this is awesome. I love I love this kind of stuff. And I was kind of hooked. I assumed living in San Francisco and like okay, well I guess real estate investing, you always have to buy you know where you live. So I was like, Okay, I the only place I could Potentially afford was maybe the outskirts of Sacramento that was like the closest I could find where I could somewhat afford another place.   But I actually remember distinctly sitting in the parking lots of Trader Joe's are sitting with my newborn, I think she was two months at a time when my wife was at the grocery store. And I was scrolling through Reddit of Martha time. And I saw a sneaky little advert for this little company called Roofstock. And I was like, what does this mean remotes real estate investing, you can do that remotely. And I was kind of From then on, I was like it kind of the light bulb went off. And from that day, I tried to consume as many podcasts as possible. Real Estate guys, bigger pockets, the remote real estate vest that wasn't around at the time, otherwise, I would have been on that as well as reading books kind of just trying to saturate myself with as much education as possible. So I think after a full year of learning, I finally pulled the trigger on a property in East Atlanta, and the purchase price was 128,000. But got it down to 123 800. Because of some roofing things. Yeah, that was my first remote real estate. And that's   Tom: What a jump, like, psychologically from, you know, being so close to right on top of your, you know, real estate investment with the house hacking to East Atlanta, like way out there. I mean,   Dean: Yeah.   Tom: Would you say that preparation, that kind of like that time that you spent, like made it that much easier? Or was it still kind of tricky or   Dean: No, it made it almost harder. And it's almost like, and I think Michael knows this from our discussions, it's almost like analysis paralysis. And I find this in a lot of our investors, students as well, people spend almost too much time researching. And I was one of those people that I spent so much time analyzing, and really going down to the nitty gritty that I got almost paralyzed with too much information.   And I think there is kind of a fine balance of, you know, learning the fundamentals, and knowing kind of the basics of how to, you know, how to analyze the markets. And you know, how to read a pro forma, how to understand at least the basics of reading a, an inspection report, and at least being able to know who to speak to, because, look, none of us know everything about real estate, but we know, enough, I think, to be able to point them to another person or in the direction that could potentially help them. I went way beyond beyond that. And I was over analyzing, I was really getting frustrated. So I definitely didn't think in a year and preparation to purchase the place. But I did. But anyway, I purchased my first property for 123 800. This is work well.   Michael: And did you use roofstock as a platform to purchase? Or did you connect with an agent out there? And he's in Atlanta? How did that process work?   Dean: My first property purchase was through roof stock actually bid on quite a few other places before but there were quite a few hungry investors out there kept up bidding me on these properties,   Michael: Probably a bunch of local San Franciscans.   Dean: That's right. I know. quicker than I am. But yeah, finally, this one, I was able to get and pull the trigger. And this was, I think, a few years back now. And before that, even that signed up for roofstock Academy, and I started going through the lesson plan. And I even actually made a little trip over to Indianapolis with the roofstock. Team, my wife and I had our three month old baby with us in Indianapolis touring every Friday from a neighbor down to the D neighborhoods. We got a very good, very good tour of old Indianapolis.   Michael: How great.   Tom: so kind of related as soon as the pandemic is completely under control, excited to start those tours again, those are great.   Dean: Yeah, I think they're absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed my time with the team out there. And it's easy enough to analyze property remotely, because even the numbers make sense. But it's also nice to be on the ground. Not that you have to do this, but it's you know, it's nice to see kind of the areas as well.   Tom: Yeah. And talk to your tax professional, oftentimes, that is can be deductible in some form. But this is not tax advice.   Dean: Exactly right.   Michael: As you say, it's funny, Dean, because I have a very similar beginning story in that I spent two years doing research and self education and absorbing as much as I could and bigger pockets wasn't around rusak wasn't around. So I had to piece it together for myself and stumble around in the dark. I always joke. So I'm curious, because I know for me, but curious for you. What was that? You know, one or two things that were able to help you get over that hump of doing this remotely? Because you have that foundation of education, but you know, you did it locally. But what was it for you that allowed you to be able to do it remotely?   Dean; I actually don't have a good answer for that almost that I knew I was stuck. And I knew that I was over consuming education. And you always hear in the podcast as well that you know people have analysis paralysis, and I knew I had reached that point that look I can read another five books. It's not going to ultimate viewpoint. Let's kind of just pull the trigger. Let's do this. Let's see what happens. So that's really what it is. There's no like there wasn't like one epiphany. It was just more like I think I've done As much as I can to prepare myself, kind of let's go for it.   Not everything in real estate works off. And it's not a kind of a surefire thing, just like any investment life. But I'd like to tell the story as well of I think it was my second or third purchase, but the Airbnb thing worked out for me really well, the Roofstock. And then the second third piece was this property I bought in Indianapolis man, this thing, I bought it with a tenant inside. And then day one, I took it over that tenant decided to stop paying.   Michael: Welcome to the neighborhood.   Dean: Yeah, welcome to the neighborhood. Yeah, not gonna pay you anymore. So that was fun. That took a few months to get her out. But eventually I did, then my next tenant came in. And there were two trees that happened to fall in my backyard, off to some big storm and damaged the fence twice, to pay to cut up a tree, remove it, repair the fence, and then a couple months later, another tree fell down, cut up the tree again, remove it and then repair the fence. So I didn't quite take that tree felling and date repair into my pro forma, that that is something I want to keep for the future. And certainly not for my performance. But after that, I said, you know, that worked out. So well. Let's go buy four Plex.   So I spoke to old Michael Albaum. And I was like, Who is this guy, you know, who thinks he knows more than me, I've done all this real estate education. I've read all the books. I've listened to all the podcasts. And then I spoke to old Michael here and not to kind of build your ego here. But it was really very enlightening. What I mean by that is that, you know, these podcasts and these books, they're all like a one way street, right? You're getting information one way, you're not able to convey what you're trying to say and what you want and what you're thinking, and have that kind of advice kind of tailor made or custom made. So the coaching I received through roofstock biomark, Michael was very helpful to really point me in the right direction, and just be able to get some customized coaching advice.   Michael: That's really sweet. For those of you can't see I'm totally blushing right now, by the way,   Dean: I can see it.   Tom: I've been marinating on that question. Michael asked earlier about kind of jumping in and just like a couple of points that I'll make on, you know, kind of Crossing the Chasm and then buying, you know, a way that I like to think about it is, you know, when you do make that initial investment, like you're not putting, you know, next month's food money at risk, you know, you are only, you know, investing with what is available to invest, you know, that isn't, you know, like a hard requirement for living your day to day, and you prepare yourself you understand the risks on both sides. I think when buying any of these properties, kind of understanding what are the different things that can happen? Oftentimes, it can be difficult to know, but you know, you have a very good idea of the range. But when you make that investment, you know, you're not putting in money that you can't live without, if that makes sense.   Dean: Yeah, absolutely. Right. I think this is one of the lessons in podcast, it's kind of like talking about like, you can put money into stocks, but stocks go down to zero, whereas real estate, you've still got the land, you've got probably about this still worth something. Whereas your stocks or other type of investments, you could potentially lose it all. So yeah, that's kind of the differences there,   Michael: In worst case scenario too.   Tom: Every single cycle, like they're going to learn that much more, I'm sure after every single deal. It's like, you know, just kind of upping your level understanding,   Dean: Absolutely. Tree following repairs   Michael: To minor expenses in the pro forma,   Dean: Exactly.   Michael: I think, too is as you were mentioning, the value can go to zero in the stock market, in the housing market, you know, things go really south, you can just go move into that property, it still has inherent value. So there's always something that can be done. And, Tom, to piggyback off your point, I'm just going to throw in my own two cents for how making that leap is so doable. So because I come from the insurance industry, anyone who's talked to me for more than five minutes probably has heard that we always ask ourselves in the insurance of your what's the bet? And when it comes to making a decision, because we could spend hours upon hours and days and weeks making a decision? Yes, know, one way or the other. And so we have to ask ourselves, what's the bet?   And if the bet is a $5 million loss, which in the commercial property insurance world is not a big deal, which is blew my mind. They always told me no one's gonna bat an eye, you know, 5-10 million dollar decision. I was like, oh, okay, so that's a quick decision. We have to scale that back for us as individual investors on what a big decision looks like. But then if it's a $1 billion decision, what if something happened once we are, you know, we're gonna spend a lot more time and evaluation on that decision making process. And so same thing for real estate investing, you'll ask yourself, what's the bet?   And if you take a step back and break things down into a bite size, monthly dollar expense coming out of your pocket and say, Okay, if I don't have a tenant in here for three months, what does that look like making mortgage payments, making taxes, payments, making insurance payments, I'm not going to have property management because it's vacant, I'm probably not going to have much of repairs and maintenance because it's vacant, not gonna have much in terms of capex and vacant. So really breaking down what your dollar amount out of pocket cost is on a monthly basis makes it a much more approachable, I feel like concept. It was, for me, at least anyhow, versus spending 150,200 $300,000 on a property signing up for that much debt. I was like, that's really overwhelming. But when I said, Oh, it's 12 $100 a month or 200, dollars a month, whatever it is, that becomes so much more approachable, and it was easier to digest.   Dean: No, you're absolutely right. And also the just the other things that you can benefit from that other investing doesn't have as these those deductions, deferrals and depreciation that go on top of all the other kind of three wealth builders of appreciation, equity pay down and cash flow. So yeah, real estate investing, if you want to know what the founding fathers wanted you to do you look at the tax laws. They're written for real estate investors and business owners.   Michael: Yeah, that's so true.     Tom: So time commitment. So this is a common question for investors are looking to do this more passively. You have a really interesting portfolio of experience with Airbnb renter that you had with remote single family with remote duplex, how has that changed your time investment that you're spending on your real estate investing? How has that changed over time? And I guess, kind of any general commentary on time commitment?   Dean: Yeah. Right. Now, I've just moved over here. So most of my commitments been to getting my my personal affairs in order,   Tom: Dean is calling us from South Africa, by the way, if you didn't, yeah, the wonderful South African accent.   Dean: That's right, not to be confused with British Australian hours, which is fine, and that he has South Africa, I should back up a bit. So I had when I was working my corporate job. And you know, I was really thinking to myself, I always knew I was going to live somewhere else, or do something a bit different in my life. And it made sense for me to move to South Africa, because my whole family's here. And I just wanted to be able to get that experience during my lifetime living here. So this is actually one of the reasons two years ago, or three years ago, whatever it was, a few years back, I started looking at remote real estate investing. And that sole reason was because I wanted to find something I could do that I could do from South Africa, and bring in American dollars, because the American dollar goes very far here in South Africa. And I would highly recommend everyone come visit Cape Town, beautiful spot to be and y'all have to very far here.   So long story short time that I have, since I've moved to South Africa and quit my job, I've had a lot more time on my hands. And I actually haven't spending that much more time on my portfolio just because my property managers are managing them to a certain degree. But once the dust kind of settles here, and I've kind of found my footing here, I plan to invest a lot more of my time because I want to go back and and buy more properties. I want to, you know, look at making my real estate portfolio bit more efficient and finding ways to do that.   To answer your question. My time spent now has been more on finding efficiencies in my rentals versus trying to understand rental properties and how to how to manage them.   Michael: That makes it makes total sense.   Tom: Make sense. I'm curious, Dean, kind of a two part question. One is what is like a beer and a burger costs in South Africa and US dollars,   Dean: A beer and a burger. So the bureau costs about 40 or 30 grand and the burger costs another 15 or 20 grand? So it's 50 round, which is about $3.80.   Michael: Tom,   Tom: That's a winner   Michael: Team trip to South Africa.   Tom: Let's go. Yeah,   Dean: That's right. It's just the flight that's expensive to get out here. And it's a bit of a trek. So we diverged here, but I like to do that. If you look at the earth, if you look at California, if you were to tunnel down through the earth, you would end up about 400 miles off the coast of South Africa. So it's quite literally you can go east or west. And it's a it's about equidistance. From from San Francisco.   Michael: Wow.   Dean: Fun fact.   Michael: Very fun fact,   Tom: I talked to a good amount of foreign investors like looking in buying it as well. So do you have dual citizenship? Are you buying or did you buy it? Not as a US citizen? I'd love to learn about that kind of process. And yeah, learn about that.   Dean: Yeah, no, that's that's a great question. Because I know we do have investor students who are you aren't US citizens? No, I do. I've actually I've had triple citizenship. South Africa, America and England as well.   Tom: Very cool   Michael: Humble brags don't stop. I'm telling you, man.   Dean: The man the man asked the question. Yeah.   Tom: Michael's getting sole citizenship with his golden visa aid adds some citizenship to my   Michael: Come on Tom step up.   Dean: It's all the rage. all the rage.   Michael: All the cool kids are doing these days by that. Yeah, exactly.   Dean: Where's your Where's your second citizenship, Michael, Portugal trying to sell? That's right. You did spend about a bit of time over there, right.   Michael: Yeah, so I'll have my conditional application was approved. So now I need to go over there and do some paperwork and then it'll start by time clock for a five year permanent resident status non habitational resident so I can be anywhere in the EU for five years and then I can apply for my passport and ultimately citizenship.   Dean: Oh, that's great. Yeah. Well, the EU is a great place to get citizenship. I just lost that privilege because England decided to, to Brexit out of there, right? So I'm back. I was from 22 or 25 countries, whatever it is, I could live there. Now I'm down to one. In the UK, unfortunately, that's a separate discussion.   Michael: Yeah. So I was gonna say we could go on and on about that one. But so I'm curious. Now, again, because you've now left your corporate job, your W two, and also the states, what do your prospects look like for getting loans? Do you know?   Dean: So what I did was when I left California, I quit my job. I also sold my primary residence in San Francisco. So from a near term standpoint, I'm looking to buy cheaper properties with cash. But from a loan standpoint, I have been doing some research and don't quote me on this, I haven't fully wrapped my head around it or or done the research. But I know there are asset based loans, that you can do that a higher percentage that that's one way to get debt coverage is through asset base loans. There's also not that I would want to do this long term, but hard money lending and other other forms of being able to get loans outside of your traditional lending types.   Michael: Yep, I'm gonna say go look at commercial lenders are going to be great for that. And also private capital, we just did record a podcast with Lima One, their private capital lender that I think anyone who's doesn't fit into that standard box of having a W two for a couple of years or has been self employed for a couple years should definitely explore because the road does not stop. Once you leave the traditional world. There are other options out there. But like you said, you just have to be a little bit more creative in sourcing and funding those deals.   Tom: Or crossover the 10 mortgage.   Dean: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the 10 mortgage, you have to go commercial. And that's one of the things about real estate is so fascinating to me and it keeps it so exciting is that creativity aspect of it is not just real estate isn't one just one trick pony. Don't just buy a single family home. And that said you can go with that you can go so many different directions. You can do short term, long term, you can do hard money, then you can do wholesaling fix and flips. You can do brrrr and multifamily commercial, you can buy a Starbucks, there's so much to add. Or you can buy a burger shack in South Africa. There's so much to it, that you can do it. It's never boring. I love it. Michael: Yeah. So Dean, I'm curious to know what's next for you What's on the horizon,   Dean: The near term, I'm looking in Indianapolis, Atlanta, um, I kind of two markets, my go to market. So I'm looking to buy another couple properties there with cash. And then my epic goal to use the Roofstock terminology is to do syndication, eventually, I'm gonna run out of cash soon. And when I do, I plan to use that as my kind of next step.   So what I'm hoping to do is find a small apartment building or even a small portfolio of single family homes and source the deal, get the property managers do the research, do all the backend stuff, and then bring investors on board to to purchase that way. That's kind of my on the horizon, what I'm thinking of working on now.   Michael: That's great, man, I know how diligent you are and how analytical you are and how well versed you are in doing that research. So I think it's well suited for you.   Dean: Yeah, it's something that excites me, I love going into the details and go into the nitty gritty and I probably spend too much time that I should like really digging into the weeds and not really finding out details and kind of trying to cover every single aspect or unknown and trying to make it as known as possible before pulling the trigger on those kind of deals.   Tom: Alright, Dean, we're gonna end this episode with a quick fire. So this is kind of like a they call it a Rorschach test where you like see something and you like say the first thing that comes to your head is going to be the audible version of a Rorschach test. So I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. It's an either or question. You got to pick one or the other. Are you ready for your quickfire?   Dean: I got, I am ready to go for them.   Tom: All right. consolidation or diversification?   Dean: Consolidation.   Tom: High property taxes or high income taxes?   Dean: High income taxes.   Tom: High rent growth, or low vacancy?   Dean: Low Vacancy.   Tom: Love it. Cash Flow or appreciation?   Dean: Ooh.   Michael: Stumped him.   Dean: Right in the middle Tom. That was the hard. Cash flow.   Tom: All right. We're halfway done in debt or equity?   Dean: Debt.   Tom: Single family or multifamily? Somethings might be changing!   Dean: Single family.   Tom: Alright, I like it. I like local or remote investing.   Dean: Remote.   Tom: Turnkey, or massive project.   Dean: Turn key.   Tom: Alright, final three. We're going to get off of real estate, the midnight oil or early bird worm?   Dean: Early bird All the way.   Tom: Nice. Nice. Text message or email?   Dean: Text message.   Tom: And the final question. Olive oil or butter?   Dean: Butter.   Michael: All right. All right, man. Nicely done.   Dean: I like that no one understands, like any of the context behind the reasoning. I chose any of those answers, but I'm going to stick to it.   Michael: Perfect.   Tom: Yeah, yeah, it's they were all right and wrong answers and you got them all right.   Michael: All right. You nailed it. We should have some like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire music player. When we when we asked the other backgrounds That's right. Yeah. Well, the This was awesome, man, thank you so much for hanging out with us really appreciate you coming on.   Tom: Yeah. And you said you had a final pearls of wisdom?   Dean: No, I just wanted to say that one of the things actually that really helped me out get towards pulling the trigger was an accountability partner. So I joined a mastermind group and you don't have to go as far as you know, doing a formal group like that. But having someone in your life to You can tell what you're doing and tell them your goals and what you're working towards. And having them hold you accountable is is life altering, it can really help you push you along the way. Because not only are you responsible to yourself and your internal thoughts, it's that person who is kind of going to push you along the way as well. So I think it's very helpful to have someone like that.   Michael: Accountabilibuddy.   Tom: Alright. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dean for jumping in.   Dean: Look forward to doing it again. It's been a privilege to be here. Thank you all.   Michael: Awesome.     Alrighty, everybody. That was our episode for today. A big thank you to Dean for coming on, and sharing his experience and journey with us looking forward to hearing more about his journey. And we're going to be having him back on talk about the differences and going from single family to multifamily and what that experience looks like. If you enjoyed the episode, please feel free to give us a rating or review. Wherever it is you listen, your podcasts are super helpful for us. And as always, if there's a topic that you want to hear more about, leave us a comment in the comment section, and we'll turn it into an episode. Thanks so much for listening. catch you on the next one on happy investing.   Tom: Happy investing.

Azi Hendi and her husband, Dr. Ali Hendi, now in their fourth year of operations, are the founders of Luminora, a stylish clothing line designed to protect women from the sun’s harmful rays. When they were featured on Monday Morning Radio in August 2018, they were still feeling their way as entrepreneurs, aware of the great potential but also struggling with the realities of being small business owners. Monday Morning Radio host Dean Rotbart forecast they would be a success, and by all outward appearances, he was correct. Luminora’s offerings now include resort wear, fashionable activewear, and even matching facemasks. It’s been bone-chilling cold over the past couple of weeks in most of the country. So Dean thought a reminder that bathing-suit weather and summer are only 119 days away would be in order. Listen in as Azi and Ali shine some light on both their accomplishments and their frustrations as first-time entrepreneurs. Photo: Azi Hendi, LuminoraOriginally Posted: August 13, 2018Best of Monday Morning Radio Update: February 22, 2021Monday Morning Run Time: 44:56

The idea of the “self-made” man or woman is pretty appealing. But it’s also a myth. None of us are born knowing everything there is to know. We learn what we need from experience, and most of that experience revolves around interacting with other people.   Given that it’s the holiday season and a great time to reflect on what you’re grateful for, James and Dean decided to devote this episode of Just The Tips to revealing some of the mentors and coaches who’ve made huge impacts in their businesses and lives. They’ll also reveal the epic pitfalls they fell into as a result of avoiding quality coaching because it was “too expensive.”   Building a successful business takes time no matter what. But there’s still a fast way and a slow way. Check out this episode to discover why the right people at the right time--especially qualified coaches--are the fastest way to grow your business.   The slow way or the fast way If Dean wanted to get from the U.K. to the U.S., which option makes more sense: Buy a plane ticket and fly, or build a 747 from scratch? It sounds obvious, but trying to figure your business out yourself with free information and the odd $27 ebook is like building the plane from scratch. It takes way more time and/or costs way more money than you think it’s going to. Figuring it out yourself is the slow way to build a business. The fast way is to hire a coach who’s gotten the result you want, and let them help you get that result for yourself. You pay with time or you pay with money Early in his entrepreneurial journey, Dean passed on an opportunity to invest in coaching because he thought paying $5,000-$10,000 for it was outlandish. That was money he could spend on ads and $37 training products, after all. But four years and $60,000 worth of training programs later, Dean’s business not only hadn’t grown, it went backwards. So Dean used his last bit of credit to buy coaching, and in 8 months was able to quit his job and go into business full-time. The whole experience taught him a very powerful lesson about the value of spending money on coaching NOW. Make it harder to fail Winning is never guaranteed, but you can stack the odds in your favor. The right coach, the right team, the right people in your corner, can elevate you to levels you’d never reach on your own. As appealing as the “figure it out on your own” fantasy is, the most successful people you know and respect had help getting where they are. They did the work, yes. But without the people they met and worked with along the way, they wouldn’t be where they are.   What you don’t know can hurt you The biggest problem with figuring it out on your own is that there are things you don’t know, and you don’t know you don’t know them. You go after what you THINK you need, not what you actually need. As an entrepreneur, you see this all the time with your customers. You offer them what they think they need, so you can get them in the door and offer them what they actually need to get the result they want. That’s the power of working with someone who knows what you actually need to get where you want to be. They see the blind spots you would never see.   It’s lonely, but you’re not alone One of the hardest parts of being an entrepreneur is how lonely it feels. Even people in your life who care about you don’t always get it, and you often feel like the outsider. Having a network of people who do get it, who push you, who are there for you, makes the journey a lot less lonely and a lot more worthwhile. It’s especially powerful on the days where you feel like quitting, or where you’re facing something you really don’t want to do. The people you connect with can mean the difference between giving up on your dream, or going all the way. Outline of This Episode Why have a mentor? [4:30] You pay with time or you pay with money [9:45] Hire the best help you can currently afford [14:01] $60,000 in training programs and still nothing [17:17] Why “self-made” doesn’t exist [24:01] Meeting the “Rich Dad” [33:23] You don’t know what you don’t know [40:10] Resources & People Mentioned “Who Not How” by Dan Sullivan “Tools of Titans” by Tim Ferriss and Arnold Schwartzenegger Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License Connect With James and Dean James P. Friel: CEO Quickstart: https://jamespfriel.com/ceo-quickstart/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hustledetox/ Facebook Group (BulletProof Business): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1107362546297055/ Site: www.jamespfriel.com Interested in being a guest on the show? Dean Holland: Blog: www.DeanHolland.com FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/DeanHollandHQ Billion Dollar Project: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BillionDollarProject/ JTT Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/justthetipsshow/

Dean Jackson 9-word Email And Referral Marketing Strategies That Work Dean Jackson is one of the brightest marketers I've come across in a long time. In this episode, he explains how he came up with the idea of the landing page, the 9-word email, and his unique approach to referral marketing as a business growth strategy. Our conversation starts off discussing the coronavirus crisis we find ourselves in. We discuss some useful mental approaches to handle this crisis as business owners including (but not limited to): - putting your fixed assets to work - approaching the situation with open-mindedness and a bias towards innovation - the importance of starting with the outcome in mind. Dean then shares his unique mental approach when it comes to requesting referrals. Hint: Sending you a referral serves the referrer as much as it serves you (as the beneficiary) Dean explains the importance of understanding Dunbar's number and how that plays into what he calls 'return on relationship'. He then explains the 3 things that need to happen for a referral to take place We also talk about his 9-word email and how it can be used to reactivate inactive email lists. If you find this episode useful please do share it with someone else who might benefit.   Links Mentioned: www.deanjackson.com www.ilovemarketing.com www.50minutemarketingsprint.com www.gettingreferral.com www.GetMeToDone.com www.Productiveinsights.com www.YouTube.com/ProductiveInsights https://productiveinsights.com/the-eisenhower-matrix/ Related Episodes: 075. Joe Pulizzi — Founder of Content Marketing Institute — Does Your Content Fit Into Your Buyer’s Journey? 140. Andre Chaperon — Email Marketing Genius And Creator of Auto Responder Madness   Ash Roy and Dean Jackson Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription): Dean Jackson (00:00): How are we going to get people to come to our restaurant? Forget that. Don't focus on you. Focus on them. Ash Roy (00:06): The customer, exactly. Ask the right question and one of the best questions you can ask is how can I serve my customer more effectively in this situation? When you were saying that, I put my CPA hat on for a moment and what you described is what an accountant would say. Put your fixed assets to work. Ash Roy (00:27): Welcome to the Productive Insights podcast. It's excellent to have you here. My name is Ash Roy. I'm the founder of productive insights.com I hope you're watching this on the YouTube channel, which you can access at productiveinsights.com/YouTube and if you're listening to this on iTunes, then I recommend checking out the YouTube channel later. Today's guest says his favorite thing in the world is discovering new information and he spends most of his time reading, talking to marketing innovators, discovering new things, and figuring out how to apply them in the real world. His next favorite thing is to share what he learns with the rest of the world and he loves to learn from other people. This is somebody who I've been following for years and who I believe to be one of the brightest minds in digital marketing and entrepreneurship in general. And his name is Dean Jackson and I'm delighted to welcome Dean Jackson from, Ilovemarketing.com welcome Dean. Dean Jackson (01:25): Thank you. What a lovely introduction. Ash Roy (01:27): You're welcome, Dean. You've earned it man. And we were introduced by another one of the brightest minds I've come across in digital marketing and that's James Schramko. We met at one of his meetups in Sydney, so very grateful to James. He has been instrumental in helping me launch this podcast and he really has been amazing. So great to have you here. So Dean, we find ourselves on the 18th of March today at the time of this recording in very unprecedented ...

This week we speak with Dean Stanton from Canada's Triple Crown of Gravel, three great events across British Columbia. Triple Crown of Gravel Instagram Triple Crown of Gravel Website This week's episode is brought to you by Cycle Oregon.  Please mention 'TGR' during any registration for a special item. Automated transcription, please forgive typos. Dean, welcome to the show. Great. Thanks. Good to be here. Yeah. Well I'm really excited to have you on the show. I know you producing three events at least up there this year in the gravel community, but first we always like to get started by learning a little bit more about your background as a cyclist and how ultimately you got into the arduous task of event production. Well it's a weird and twisted past for that. I started off mainly in triathlons in high school and became an elite professional from 87 to 99. And before I sort of quit racing, I got into coaching at about 97 and then about 2004 I thought, you know, Hey, I've done all these races and helped out and done all this. I'll put on a triathlon and I had no idea what I was doing and to be honest, it shouldn't have been putting one on but did it and sorta went through that and did a bunch of bike races or sorry, no triathlons and then some running races. And then I've always really wanted to put on a bike race and some bike races. And then, you know, at that time around 2009, 2010 the gravel and sorry the grand fondos were sort of taking off. And then when I looked at the costs of production and everything, I was just like no, this isn't gonna work. So 2013 I was looking at you know, what was going on down in the States and already, you know, dirty Kanza was on the radar and I was like, that's pretty cool. So I went down and did one in the rate race in the States on a, on a cross bike and started writing more gravel at year anyways and then said, you know what, I'm going to put on the kettle medal. And we did. And like 80 people showed up or something. It wasn't very good. And you know, in terms of numbers, but you know, it was great and everybody really enjoyed it. And I am myself ride gravel a lot cause I really enjoy not having the cars and being more in nature. It's kind of a hybrid between say road riding and mountain biking. Cause I think you need some of the mountain bike skills that helps. But it's just, you know, but it's a little bit more easier than mountain biking in some respects in terms of the descending and the assets aren't nearly as steep usually. But anyways, I really enjoy it. I, it's something I've really do more and more of. Nice. And was that first cuddle metal, was that back in 2014 then? Correct. Yeah. I'm curious, you made mention, and I, I like to have takeaways for other event organizers. You made mention that you thought the cost of production of a grand Fondo on the road was more expensive than a gravel event. Was that from some sort of practical perspective like road closures and things like that? Well I don't, I'm not sure how things work in the States, but in Canada they seem to love, you know, having everything done to the nth degree. So, you know, yeah, it's traffic management plans, police you know, traffic control people. It's, it's, it's prohibitively expensive to degree to shut any roads down and it gets very, very expensive, very fast. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. So that's sort of why I was like, ah, no, not doing it. Yeah. So you're there in the heart bed of mountain biking up in British Columbia. So that first event was the kettle medal. And I know at this point you've expanded to having three gravel events on the calendar, is that right? Correct. I sort of that and that's funny cause that sort of grew organically as well as that. I did kettle metal for a couple of years and then I looked on the Island and I was over there anyways. I'm think of Island, which is pretty big Island. And I just was like, I'm going to go and check out some gravel rides. And I just, I realized that there was a real old railway line there as well. And then just worked into a an event over there as well. And that's, we're going now into our fourth year for, I'm the couch and crusher, which is out of Lake Cowichan, which is, it's phenomenal. Some of the riding on the islands as I think some of the best writing in terms of gravel on NBC. I mean, unfortunately most of it seems to be on private property. But yeah, it's, it's really good writing over there And you, are you able to get permission for the event day to get on that private property? Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's just a few more steps to go through, but yeah, no, it's, it's, it's really good stuff over there. It's really, it's really nice. I mean, one of the challenges in BC, and I'm not sure you have this in California other places, is a lot of the terrain is very steep, so it's very difficult at times to find a sort of circular route on gravel. A lot of them are sort of like a roots of trees in that there's a main road and then it'll go off and branch up a super steep room and it'll be dead end. And then you get to come back down and, and get to go. So the nice thing about Vancouver Island is it's a lot less steep terrain. So there's a lot more sort of rows that all link up. Whereas other places like Squamish, it's a little bit more difficult than again, most of the roads are all built for logging and logging access. So their forest service roads. Yeah. No, I think that's common for any coastal areas. Certainly my neck of the woods. You can't, you can't go 10 miles without going a thousand feet of climbing and you've got to pick your roots wisely. Yeah. So it, you know, and I'm, I'm, I mean I've done some of the rides and I'm just amazed at how these trucks were getting up and down these Hills with logs, bro. You know, like a load of log. I'm just like, no, blows me away cause I'm like, this is so steep. Yeah. And then the third event is called what? Well, the third event we did for two years was the cow. So the golden ears, gravel Fondo, which was a bit challenging in that one of the cool areas about pit Meadows is sort of called near to the Tri-City area of lower mainland of Vancouver, greater Vancouver. And it has all these dikes in a, technically a lot of that area is underwater, like under sea level, but they have all these dikes that you kind of link up. It just, it became very difficult to train, you know, go through the permitting process on that because I had either nine or 10 jurisdictions I had to go through, you know, and then I'm doing Squamish and I have four or three. It's, it's so much easier. So, so I just kind of went, you know it's good writing and good training, but trying to put on an event on there was really challenging. And so over the last year, year and a half, I was going up to Squamish to do some gravel rides and I said, you know what, we're just gonna move it next year. And that's what we're doing right now. And the numbers are pretty strong and we're pretty excited about it, so yeah. Great. And that one's called the sea to sky, is that right? Yeah, the, the, yeah, so in the, I got that name from basically the sea to sky highway, but that's called the sea to sky corridor. It's kind of like, it's pretty steep terrain and I'm not really sure even how they made that road way back in the 50s from Vancouver to school. And we still Whistler and wish there's Whistler's like a world-class resort. It was skiing, but it's also a major mountain biking downhilling in the summer. But that road is just like, I'm trying to remember the name. There's that marathon on the Pacific coast of California that goes through the redwoods and all that stuff. And it's kind of similar to that is very steep terrain. So On the way to Whistler previous times, and actually up on some fire roads in Squamish, but I was up in a van with a full suspension bike and a full face helmet ready to go downhill. Yeah. So very different. Yeah. Yeah. I want to get into some of the details in terms of elevation and the type of terrain for the three different events. But one of the things that jumped out at me on the website was you actually have divisions for two and four person teams, which I haven't seen in a lot of gravel events. Can you talk about, you know, how that works from a practical perspective and you know, what your intention was in, in adding those event categories. Well I, I kind of really liked the team atmosphere and then I also thought it would be interesting for people to bring out other buddies and friends to do their event with them instead of just all doing it singly. So I thought it'd be really cool to sort of do a team of two or team before, you know, mixed or whatever. And then you give them a slight discount so that, you know, you're encouraging more teams and you know, we, we give out, you know, prizes to the top team, to top team of Ford and we also have a triple crown prizing for all three events. The end of the season at the end last event and I, I I just really liked the idea of it. Yeah, I mean it's funny that I sort of did that second or third year and we've been doing it ever since and yeah, I guess now that you mentioned it, I haven't seen this in a lot of other events. Yeah, I think it's, I mean I think it's a very interesting dynamic, both from a, from a race organizer perspective, obviously it encourages people very specifically to bring a buddy with them, but also from a racing perspective, having done team events in the past and myself both single day and multi day, it does add a different dynamic because you're trying to get your teammate across as fast as you can and you're going to have different skillsets. I imagine in a gravel event, you know, you may have someone who's a good roller on the flat terrain really coming to the front and dragging their teammate along, whereas you know, their teammate may have other skillsets. It does, I think, create some interesting mentality during the race, which is probably quite fun to race as a team. Yeah, I mean that's just what we're trying to encourage is just more people to come out, more people to do it as a team, you know, it's combined times. So it's like two people, it'd be the two times together and that that's so thus it, it doesn't make sense for one person to be super fast and the other person it takes longer, you know, because he has, you're adding the times together anyways for the results. So you might as well just try and like you said, both write together and cheer each other on and push each other for, you know, better finish. And you mentioned it casually that you've kind of cast the three events under this [inaudible] of the triple crown of gravel and you're actually tracking results across three events and providing, you know, accolades or awards at the end of all three events, right? Yep, that's correct. Yep. Yeah. Pretty cool. So let's get into some of the, some of the terrain in each of the three events and curious to kind of get your perspective, if you would expect given unlimited resources, if people would change bikes or tires or, or different things about the bikes between the three events or if it's, if it's similar enough that, you know, it's kinda run the same tires in each event. In terms of the terrain, it's quite different. As I said before, I mean Squamish is somewhat flat. It's got some Hills in it, but nothing major over the long course of the full Fondo, which we were in Columbia is up here. It's about a hundred kilometers also because it's an April 25th and I don't think people are hoping to do 150, 200 kilometers fairly early in the season. So I'm trying to make sure it's not too long for people. It's challenging but not over challenging. But there's definitely some climbs as you get closer to the turnaround area. And the gravel is mostly fairly hard pack. Yeah, in similar to the Island, but a kettle metal has a couple of sections where it's a bit Sandy or softer. So I would suggest going with a slightly wider tire with lower pressures for that one. Although I mean it really depends, right? I mean it depends how big you are, how much you weigh, what kind of bike you're riding. You know, it's interesting, we, we, we started tracking with our registration, what people are doing, what their bikes they're riding, what size tires they're writing. These are all questions we ask at registration and sort of attract that last year and have a lot of interesting stats on. When we first started this seven years ago, I didn't have the stats, but you know, through seeing what people were doing, the vast majority were on mountain bikes. And then there was a few on cross bikes and you know, seven years ago there wasn't even gravel bikes. So it was mostly that. And now the vast majority are 700. See bikes split between, you know, gravel and cyclocross, and then there's six 50 B gravel bikes. But they're not, there's not as many. Like I would say on our stats, over 75% are gravel or 700 see in less than 25% or six 50 [inaudible]. And then one of the other interesting things about mountain biking is we thought there'd be a lot more people in 20 Niners and there's hardly any, it's only like four and a half, 5% of the 27% that are mountain bikes, the vast majority are 26 inch or six 50 [inaudible]. And are you tracking the tire width the people are proposing they're going to ride on? Yeah. Yeah, we, we ask them, you know, is it 26 inch, six 50 [inaudible] 29 incher and then hybrid bikes, we just assume that 700 seen road bikes. So we have about 4% rode bikes to try and attempt it on that. Even though on a lot of them you're very limited on what size you can go. And then hybrid bikes, you know, you can usually get a bitF , you know, wider. Most of the people in hydro bikes and mountain bikes are usually doing the 50K or the medio size fondos in is the longer distances. Most of them were on cross bikes and ugravel bikes. And then there is some people, a few on mountain bikes. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if your proportions of 700 C versus six 50 B being 75 25% are pretty common around the country. I find that six 50 it's a little bit out of the norm. It's certainly not the majority, majority of what I see as well. So that's, that's not too surprising over there. And the other thing is, is, you know, I've noticed that it seemed like there's a tendency for people to try to go with one buy instead of to buy. But I've, I've noticed that most of the people in our long course on gravel or on to buy instead of one by, and it seems like more six 50 [inaudible] have of one buy in most of the 700 seat or two by, but I mean it's sort of open on that. Yeah, no, I think you're probably right. I think this six 50 [inaudible] wheel set probably is attractive to someone who has experienced mountain biking. Therefore they probably have experience running one by Sarah. It kind of tracks and correlates together, I would imagine. Yeah. I mean the thing that I've noticed riding my gravel bike as opposed to my mountain bike in which is, is just that if you're on a one by, I feel like you're going to run out of gears a bit in certain places in some of our courses cause you're not going to have those tighter steps, but also the ability to go into a big chain ring and just go a bit faster and some of the downhills if that's what you want to do. But it just seems a bit limiting to me. But Yeah, it's all, it's all a personal choice here in the gravel world for sure. Yeah. So Dean, can you let us know what the dates are for each event and when registration's open. Okay. well registration is all open for all of them. As of right now, they've all been open as of early December kettle met and sorry for start off, the first one, sea to sky gravel. Fondo is on Saturday, April 25th and it's in a Squamish Valley. And the next one is the couch and crusher on June 7th on thanker Island in Lake chin. And the third one of the triple crown is the kettle medal on September 26th Penticton to Colona. You have the logistics on that one is a bit interesting in terms of all my other events that sort of same start, finish that one. To be honest, the first year or two was a bit of a logistical nightmare trying to figure out how to have a start and finish in two different locations that are, you know, 180 kilometers, a hundred kilometers apart and having to bus people in, truck people in a truck, all the bicycles and yeah, that, that, that was a bit challenging, but we've kind of got it pretty small sorted now. But yeah, that was trying to figure out, Nick people have to check in on the Friday to load their bikes into the, you know, semi trailer to, to drive it down Friday night so that we unload Saturday morning so they can start the race. Cause we didn't want to load and unload in the morning. It just is too, too much time consuming. So it's easier to just unload, get people, get on their bikes. And then we shuttle people from Penticton, this start to the people doing the media to shoot Lake. And then from shoot Lake they ride down. And that, that, I don't know if you've ever been to Penticton or Colona the interior, but it's kind of an interesting area and that you think of BC and you think of monster trees and all that kind of stuff. But it's very different. It's kind of like Napa Valley North in a way. It's, but more in different because it's got really big lakes and like huge lakes. It's got you know, very dry, warm terrain. There's orchards, there's wineries, there's this old train. So it's, it's very scenic. Very beautiful. And it's yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Penticton is gorgeous. I have been up there for iron man many years ago and it's certainly a place where, you know, you could bring your family up for a vacation and everybody in the household going to find something to do. It's, it's great. There's, I just as you said that the lakes are amazing and the mountains have a slightly different character than other parts of BC, so I'm not surprised it's a popular event for you. Yeah, and I mean I, that was our inception, you know, first event, but I just, I feel like it's, it's just a really awesome way to tee in this season for us, for our triple crown. And you know, it's just, Oh, we get a lot of people in from Alberta because there's sort of, it gets colder there earlier than Vancouver and BC and they're sort of ending, their season is September eight, late September. So it's kind of a good sort of end to finish for us. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I'll make sure to put a link in the show notes to the registration site and make sure people take a look at that. And I wish you the best of luck this season. I can't wait to hear more about it at the end of the year. Great. Okay. Thank you.  

Fans all the way down from the cheap seats to the front row have been asking Dean and I for a solo episode of Just the Tips for a while now, and finally we’re giving the people what they want. Unfortunately, that does mean that Dean is also here, but we have a great topic we’re diving into this week. Even though both of us have built successful e-commerce businesses, we never actually talk about e-commerce! So today we’re dipping into our personal experience to provide just tips for listeners of Just the Tips. Entrepreneurs should marry Dean Dean told me about the e-commerce business he’s been building with his wife. She was working a job that she hated, and so he wrote her a resignation letter and told her she should turn it in the next day. And she did! Then they started building a business online around makeup tutorials, eventually offering products and informational products. And as Dean says, it has taken a while for it to grow, but in the last four or five months it’s really taken off. His story is a great case study for Just the Tips listeners. Narrow the scope of your market When Dean and his wife started her business, they just thought their clientele would be women. Women who use makeup. And the business did okay, but it never really took off. And then they decided to look at it and say “Who are we truly serving here? Is it every woman, or is there a slice of the market we could target?” And they discovered that if they changed all of their messaging and marketing to women with skin conditions, they could really hone in on a specific target market. And so that’s what they did eight weeks ago, and it’s really taken off since. The mechanics of e-commerce The profit margins on a lot of what you’re going to sell in e-commerce are going to be slim. And so it can be difficult to scale, because you want to do everything yourself in order to not outsource-away those profits. Dean and his wife faced that problem specifically, until fulfillment got to be so much work that it had to be outsourced. And a lot of times when people build e-commerce sites they may build a great front end but not a great back end. And it’s so important to have both in place. You need to be able to get your customer cost down low, so the profit margins are manageable. Go deeper to figure out what you’re selling As Dean says, you’re not selling a product, you’re selling a solution. So Dean and his wife aren’t selling makeup brushes, they’re selling confidence. In Dean’s information products, he’s not selling a way to make money, he’s selling financial freedom. That doesn’t mean you tell your customer that, but you need to know your why, so the person you’re selling to feels why they need what you’re selling. Outline of This Episode [4:50] What has Dean been building? [8:21] How they lost money early on [11:00] Dean segments the market [18:08] What is the reticular activating system? [21:04] E-Commerce mechanics [25:00] How the membership program fits in Dean’s business [29:56] The big tip [39:30] If you haven’t nailed it, it may not be the product Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License Connect With James and Dean James P. Friel: CEO Quickstart Program: https://jamespfriel.clickfunnels.com/about-ceo-quickstart-program?utm_campaign=learnmore&utm_medium=aep&utm_source=homepage Facebook Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/hustledetox/ Site: www.jamespfriel.com Dean Holland: Blog: www.DeanHolland.com FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/DeanHollandHQ Billion Dollar Project: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BillionDollarProject/

A really fun interview we did before the Mastermind.com launch. On today’s special episode Russell interview Tony about a new course coming out with Tony, Russell, and Dean Graziosi. Here are some of the incredible things you will get to hear on this episode: Hear a little bit about Tony’s humble beginnings and his road to becoming who he is today. Find out how Tony got started with mastermind groups. And find out what kind of things will be included in this new course. So listen here to see why Russell, Tony, and Dean Graziosi have created a course, and what it will be. ---Transcript--- Good morning everybody, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I want to share with you guys something that I’m really excited for. And this is an interview that I did with Tony Robbins. A lot of you guys know, depending on when you’re listening to this, we are in the middle of the Mastermind.com product launch. And it’s kind of an interesting back story. I was at a big mastermind group with Dean Graziosi, and on the flight home we happened to be sitting next to each other, and during that flight he told me about this project he was working on. He said, “It’s kind of like masterclass.com except for masterminds.” I was like, “Dude, do you own mastermind.com?” He’s like, “No.” I’m like, “Oh you should buy it.” He’s like, “It’s not for sale.” So I remember when I got off the plane I looked at it, and mastermind.com the person on the home page was holding a Two Comma Club award and I’m like, “This is one of my funnel hackers who owns this.” So we messaged him and negotiated and ended up buying the domain and then giving it to Dean and Tony as a gift for their launch. We spent a lot of, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say how much money, but it was over half a million dollars on the domain name, gave it to those guys as a gift. And then they said, “hey thanks for the gift, in exchange we’d love to have you as a partner in this business.” And I’m definitely the minority partner in this business. Tony and Dean own the majority of it, but it’s been so fun to be able to work with them behind the scenes on this project and the product and the product launch and all these things that have been so cool. And I know that Dean’s been killing himself, really been putting everything together, Tony as well. And what’s cool is I had the chance to actually interview Tony about the concept. So what you’re going to be learning in the course and things like that. And about self education and about masterminds and a whole bunch of other things. So you know, I think I’ve had a chance now, twice in my life, to interview Tony and he’s interviewed me once. It’s just every time it’s the coolest thing ever. So I wanted to share the interview with you guys. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to queue up the theme song here, and when we come back, we’ll have a chance to hear the whole interview here behind the scenes of it. And after you listen to it, what I recommend doing is if you want to get my bonuses, I have no idea if the launch is still open at the time you’re listening to this, but if the launch is still open, I’ve got a whole bunch of bonuses if you buy it through my affiliate link. And if you go to secretsmastermind.com. So secrets (plural) secretsmastermind.com, you’ll have my affiliate link there and you can go and see all the bonuses and stuff through buying from me. So with that said, we’ll intro the theme song and when we come back you’ll have a chance to listen in behind the scenes with the interview with me and Tony Robbins. Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I’m so excited to be here with you guys today. I am here with probably one of the coolest human beings on planet earth, Tony Robbins. How are you doing today Tony? Tony: I don’t know about that introduction, but thanks brother, good to see you. Russell: Great to see you too. I think my audience is obviously super familiar with you because I talk about you so much, you’ve spoken at our events twice, which has been one of the coolest things in the world. And you’ve been someone who’s had such a huge, profound impact on me, so many ways that I don’t even think you know. Both in my personal life, in my marriage, in my business, I could go on and on telling stories. Maybe I’ll do that after the interview because I don’t want to waste those stories now when I have you in front of me. But you’ve had such an impact on me and my life and I’m just grateful to have a chance to first off, be interviewing you, second off, be kind of part of this project you and Dean put together. And I’m just so excited to be here with you. Tony: I just want to say to your audience, the feeling is mutual. I’m sure anybody that’s already dealt with you, they already know who you are. But when I looked at people in this industry who are really, I look at it as the knowledge business really, and you’ve shared so much but you’ve done it with such integrity, brother. You always have such a sincerity to you and a generosity to your spirit, how you deal with people. No bull, not blowing smoke your way. Anybody who doesn’t know who this man is, Russell is the real thing. He really cares and you over deliver, and that’s my signal as well. So I gotta add more value than anybody else does in the business and you always do that. So it’s always a pleasure to be with you, my friend. Russell: Thanks, I appreciate that. Well very cool. Today we’re going to be talking about something which I think is something very true to my heart and your heart as well, is a concept of masterminding but also I think even a step deeper is just self education. And I know for me, growing up, and I think a lot of people who follow me, we’re entrepreneurs who our brains go a million miles an hour and we get into this school system where we’re supposed to be sitting and listening to a teacher talk and we’re twitching. And I’m looking out the window at the playground and there’s things happening and I’m getting in trouble and they’re yelling at me. And I honestly thought I was a dumb kid until I was in college. I always assumed I was dumb. I didn’t know any better. And I think a lot of people that do follow me have been in that same situation. And this whole concept of self education was the first, when I started learning for the first time about something I was passionate about, I remember the first time I read a book there was something that grabbed me and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I see how this is something that’s helpful to me.” Then I became obsessed and I read way too many books, which is interesting. But I want to kind of start, before we go into that, when I came to the very first UPW, which was over probably 11 or 12 years ago now, which was one of the coolest things in the world. I don’t know if I ever told you this, I didn’t know what UPW was. I knew it was a Tony Robbins event, so I showed up with my backpack and my laptop thinking I would be sitting there taking notes. I walk in and people are jumping and dancing and I was like, where am I? I have no idea what’s even happening. That night we were walking on fire, and it was just, you know, it was not what I was expecting. And just something that shifted my life forever. But one of the concepts you talked about that had a profound impact on me. This was before I really got deep into my whole journey of all this stuff. You talked about the concept that you called Decade in a Day. I’d love for you to kind of tell our audience about that, what that is, and how that works. Because I think when they realize that it’s so empowering of like, “Oh my gosh, I can figure out all these different things because of it.” Tony: Well I would just say that it’s all about self education as you said. You know a standard education you get standard results. And if you look at the average American, I mean today, 60% of Americans haven’t saved a thousand dollars for retirement. 40% of Americans living in the best economy in the history of the world say that if an emergency came up, they couldn’t raise $400. So it’s insane, that’s why there’s this conversation about socialism coming up, because so many people own an iPhone, but they’re not an entrepreneur, they don’t even own Apple. They use Google every day, but they own a piece of Google, they don’t think that way. So I grew up in a really poor family, with four different fathers, it was a pretty rough environment. But I had the privilege of going and hearing Jim Rome when I was 17 years old. And I went, I was working as a janitor, I was going to high school, I was working part time also at a TV repair shop. And I just remember sitting in this room and I remember the guy I was working for on the weekend, I was doing moving for him. And the guy had become pretty successfully financially buying and flipping homes in Orange County, California, it was like 1977 to give you an idea. And I remember my parents said, “This guy used to be such a loser.” My dad said. And now he’s really successful. So as a kid, you get by with this stuff, but at the end of the day I worked my ass off and he really liked me. And I said, “Listen, before I go, my dad said you used to be such a loser and now you’re so successful, how did you do that? He goes, “Your dad said that?” I was like, “Yeah.” He goes, “Well…” he told me this story. He went to this seminar and he didn’t know what a seminar was and I said, “What is a seminar?” and he said, “well it’s a man who’s got 20, 30, 40 years of experience, he figures out the best of what he’s learned and he teaches it to you in 3 or 4 hours.” And I said, “I’d like to go to that, could you get me in?” and he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well, will you?” and he said, “No.” I said, “Why?” and he goes, “Well because if you don’t pay for it, you won’t value it.” And I said, “How much is?” he said, “$35.” And I’m making $40 a week as a janitor. I was like, “That’s a week’s pay.” And he’s like, “Okay, learn on your own and take decades.” So I scraped it together, and that was when I started to realize that in one night I learned more about how to improve my life in 3 or 4 hours from this man who had 30 years of experience that I didn’t have, he compressed those decades into days. And that’s what locked in my mind. So I took a speed reading course and I said, “I’m going to read a book a day.” And I didn’t do that. I read 700 books in 7 years all in the area of human development, psychology, physiology. So everything in my life, I have such a passion for the power of self education. It is a power that is available to any human being today, especially because of the internet all over the earth. It never existed before. You could learn from people you’d never be able to learn from. You can find the best experts on earth from wherever you are. Versus you know, the university system we’re in right now where the greatest debt we have in this country, 1.5 trillion, more than consumer debt, is college debt now. And anybody who is one of your listeners that’s a millennial or a z generation coming up, this is what they’re all worrying about. This is what they’re all dealing with. And they think, “How am I ever going to get through this piece?” But what’s really amazing is we’re guaranteeing all that through this lousy education. Very often professors even at the best universities have never done what they’re talking about, they’re just telling you. And the information is gone. Even a medical doctor. The half life of medical education is two years. That means two years after you leave, 50% of what you learned is worthless. Now the pharmaceutical salesman’s gotta do it. So for me, I wanted to know those answers and Rohn used to say, “Success leaves clues.” If someone is truly successful at anything, they’re not lucky. If they do it once, maybe they’re lucky. Get rich, anybody can get rich. Can you stay rich? Can you become wealthy? Can you add enough value to stay there? That requires a different way of thinking and being. If somebody lost weight and kept it off for 30 years and kept it off, they’re not lucky. He said, “find out what rich people do and do that.” He said, “Find out what poor people read and don’t read it.” He said, “I don’t just mean financially poor, emotionally, spiritually poor because whatever they’re feeding their mind, that’s where it goes.” So he embedded this drive in me. I don’t know, the drive was probably there, but the system in me of saying, “I’m going to learn about other people’s experiences.” Every great investor knows, other people’s money, an OPM is a leverage tool that can grow you geometrically financially. Every great wealth has used some of that. But I’ll tell you what’s more valuable than other people’s money, other people’s experience when the other people’s experience is the best in the world. So they may have taken 20 years to figure something out, and with the tools I’ve learned to model to extract it out of them, we can pull out the best that they’ve learned in maybe a few hours, a few days, a few weeks at most. Maybe a few months if it was super complex. So now, what Dean and I have done, we decided to partner together along with you and say, “how do we help a mass audience of people to do that?” Because I have had the privilege of doing something I love. I was a kid from a zoo set, who didn’t have enough money for food. Now I feed a hundred million meals a year in the US, this year we’re going to get half a billion. We’ll be a million meals within five more years.  I mean, I have the privilege of traveling and helping millions of people. I don’t have to work another day in my life. I’ve got all the toys people say they want, but I have something more. I have meaning. I have this sense that my life matters because I have the information and tools that can add more value than anybody else because I’ve never stopped learning and I keep adding it. So Dean and I now, our focus is how do we take the 60 years between us and then your history and then say, how do we take that to as many people as possible and say, “Look, if you want to be a person and you’ve got some knowledge base…” Let’s say you’re, you cut great hair, I know a woman who makes $250,000 cutting hair, and most people make $60. I remember talking to her going, “You’ve got to share this. I mean so many other people are struggling.” And she got excited about it and now she does these workshops and she makes all this money on the side while she still does what she does. She makes almost as much teaching as she did cutting hair, but she has all these people that love her because their business has grown because she shared her knowledge. So my skill is extracting that, showing people how to do it. And then Dean’s great skill, like yours, is also turning that into a technology or into software so that we got the combination. Or if somebody wants to be like, I started out as what I would call a knowledge broker. I didn’t have the skill. I had people I knew were brilliant. I wanted to bring them to other people. But then gradually I also developed another skill, which is extracting that knowledge not only on myself but on other people. So when I did Money Master The Game, I interviewed 50 of the smartest people in the world financially. Warren Buffet Ray Dalio, Carl Icon, Paul Tudor Jones, and I was able to extract things that no one thought I could extract and put it in a book where now, it’s crazy. I don’t say this to blow my horn, I say this because it blows my mind. I’ve now, I was at JP Morgan’s billionaires conference, you have a billion dollar net worth to be there, and I’m the head speaker for this piece. You know, worth magazine just named me for the fourth year in a row as one of the 100 most influential people in global finance. I’m up there with the same guys I interviewed. And it’s not because of me, it’s because I extracted the best of what they’d done, but I’ve also been able to share, and then I built several multi billion dollar businesses in the last 5 years in that industry. Took one business from 16 billion as a partner, not just me, but to 38 billion AUM, another one from zero to 4 billion, another one from zero to a billion in 2 years. It’s because I applied what I learned from the best. So I am so effing passionate learning from the best. That’s why I’m passionate about you, because you do that same thing. You’ve modeled those marketing skills and you systematized them and shown people how they can take advantage of those in Clickfunnels, better than anybody I know of in the business. And you’ve done the same thing, so I honor you. Russell: Thank you. It’s interesting, you know, I look at my path and it’s been fun because what you just did in the financial space, it’s interesting because four years ago you were not in that world at all, right. But you went and did that, extracted all this stuff, built this engine, this book, this everything that’s now blown up. And I didn’t realize how many billions, which is insane, that’s a lot of B’s. But it’s all about that. I think when I got in this business too, the marketing stuff, I didn’t know a whole bunch of it, but I had the initial spark of “oh my gosh, this is cool.” But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t go to school for that. So I was like I gotta find out people who are doing this. And then just like you I went and found the best people. In fact, my first business was me interviewing all these people that I wanted to hire for coaching but I couldn’t afford them. So I was like, what if I just call and see if I can interview them for this thing that I was doing. They didn’t know nobody was listening, but most of them said yes.  And I had a chance to interview these minds in marketing that you know, I remember the late Gary Halbert, one of the greatest marketing minds that’s ever been on this planet, before he passed away I had a chance to interview him for an hour, getting him to tell me all these amazing things. And it’s just like, man I got this man’s wisdom who spent how much of his life learning and mastering and doing these things and spending tens of hundreds of millions of dollars marketing and testing and coming back and be like, this is what I found. And it’s just super powerful. Tony: By the way, just one thing about this. If you go for a standard education, you’ve got a great one. You know, we’ve got 110 universities now that have over a billion dollars set aside. You know, Harvard just raised 9.5 billion the other day. My buddy at Yale University is one of the top financial investors in the world. David Swenson, he took them from 1 billion, they have 24 billion at Yale. But what’s the education? 27% of the people that come out of college actually say they’re applying what they learned in their job. In other words, 73% it’s been worthless. And they spent 50, 100, 200 thousand dollars, 100 thousand dollars a year, maybe 3, 4, 5 hundred thousand dollars, over 4, 5, 6, 7 years and they got nothing to show for it. What we really have out there is a bunch of hedge funds that have universities attached to them. We call them universities now. And we pay for all that. We guarantee all that. So you don’t want to be, I don’t want to say you don’t want to be part of that, that’s education too. But if you want to have domain knowledge, you gotta go to the people that are doing it, that are alive, that are perusing the result today. You want to go to the best. Because someone says, “Well I got ten years of experience.” I often say, “Bullshit. You’ve got one year of experience you’ve done 10 times. You grew the first year, and do the same shit for 10 more years.” You’re looking for people that are absolutely the best in the business, and if you have even a part of that in yourself, you gotta figure out extracting. Because often we’re unconsciously confident, meaning we don’t know how we do it. But if you can figure out you can do it. Then you can teach others and now it doesn’t just become your benefit, it becomes something you can spread to the world. And you can structure that as a part time or full time business and have an extraordinary income, but doing something that feels meaningful, not just selling a widget. Nothing wrong with selling a widget, but it’s a hell of a lot more when you feel like your life is actually making a difference. Russell: So cool. This morning I was preparing for this, and this concept of mastermind and I was like, where did this initially come from? And I know it came initially from the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I went and found my copy and I’m reading it and trying to find the section on masterminds to refresh my mind. And I remember I found the section and Andrew Carnegie is the one who had Napoleon Dyn..Napoleon Dynamite! Napoleon Hill go write this book. And what’s interesting, Andrew Carnegie, I wrote this down so I could have it. He said that, “Any time there are two minds that come together, it creates a third mind, which is an invisible mind, or a mastermind.” And later in this quote, another thing I was reading, your initial mentor was Jim Rohn, he said, Jim Rohn said, “You’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” I think it’s interesting, you look at that. The mastermind is all about bringing groups of people together, when you do that the synergy between them, everything grows bigger. I know that I’ve been running mastermind groups for the last 6 or 7 years now inside the marketing industry, which has been really fun. But the first time I really heard about any kind of groups like this was at the original UPW that I was at and you started telling this story about the scorpions group, I think was the unofficial title. But I would love if you told that story because I think there’s so many cool things that came from that, that I would love people to understand some of the background of how it happened for you in your business. Tony: Well thanks. It actually changed my life radically. It started as getting a letter and a beautiful leather jacket that was for batman from Peter Guber who was at the time the chairman for Sony and Columbia pictures. He created the first big movies like that, that ever created. He had 52 academy award nominations. I mean, just a genius. And at the time, I knew of his name obviously because he was famous, but I get this letter saying, “You’ve changed my life and I want to have lunch or dinner with you, please come to the studio.” And long story short, we became, we hit it off from the very beginning. You know there’s some people you can pitch to, but again, one of the things I love about you brother, is we can pitch and catch to each other. I don’t just pitch, you can throw the ball back. And Peter is that way. And we had this, just ignited relationship. So he calls me a couple months later and says, “Tony, I’ve been thinking so much about how you changed my life, and I told all my friends about you.” And he says, “Listen, I have this group of people, it’s the most valuable thing in my life. That’s saying a lot, out of all of the beautiful things in my life. I’m not saying it’s more valuable than my family, but for my growth the most valuable thing.” He said, “I got this group of about 11 guys, 9 to 11 guys and we meet three times a year. We go on these incredible trips. It’s not the trips, the trips are gorgeous. We do these amazing things. But what happens in the conversations on that trip between us, it sparks something. All it takes is one idea and the whole trip is worth it.” And he goes, “We haven’t, all these guys are probably you know, 18 or 20 years your senior just like I am. But l told them about you and how special you are, and we never let anybody else in the group, but they want to have you come on one trip and if they like you Tony, you can do this ongoing. It will change your life more than anything you can imagine.” And I said, “Well, who’s on the group?” and he said, “Well, the greatest NBA coach.” Which was Pat Riley at the time, and he’s a dear friend obviously, to this day.  And he says, “There’s another gentleman but I’ll keep his name private, but he’s the richest man in Canada.” And he goes through this list, like wow. And he goes, I said, “What do you thinking of?” and he goes, “Well, we’re going to do this trip. We’re going to fly to China. We’re going to do this thing on the great wall and then we’re going to go to Cambodia, then we’re going to Vietnam.” And he does this whole thing, and in my mind he knows that I was a business operator. I wasn’t an owner. So if I wasn’t there, nothing is going on. If I wasn’t there I’m stressing out. And I’m thinking, how long is this thing. And I said, “I’m curious, how long is this.” He said, “I don’t know, it’ll be 14, 15, 16 days. You know, 12 days. Something like that.” And I’m like, “Oh.” And in the back of my head I like, “Holy shit, I can’t take that many days off.” And the next thing, I said, he goes, “Yeah, we fly on private jets the whole way. It’s exquisite.” And he goes, “Yeah, we just all divide it up.” And I’m in my head going, you know, we’re going to fly a couple of Goldstreams to china and Vietnam and Cambodia, like 40 hours of flying and 3, 4 thousand dollars an hour, whatever it was back then. I’m like, holy shit, that be like 3 quarters of a million dollars. I said, “Well how many of, what do you think my part…” He goes, “Oh don’t worry about. It’ll only be 30, 40, 50 thousand something like that. Probably 30-40 thousand.” I’m thinking, 30 thousand in 12 days. 30 thousand in 12 days, holy shit. And he goes, “So the dates on, everything else.” And I said, “Well, let me check my calendar.” And there’s this long pause and he goes, “Check your calendar?” Excuse my French, but that’s what he said. He said, “Did I hear you correctly? I’m inviting you to be with 11 of the most brilliant people on the face of the earth for 12 days that you can learn from and you….” And I said, “No, no, I’m putting it on my calendar.” I said, “I’m putting it on my calendar.” So I hang up the phone and I’m like, holy shit. I gotta commit to this. So I blocked out the days, and the economics. And I get on the plane with these guys and those days, I wouldn’t even take an aspirin, and these guys all take an Ambian and they’re going to be sleeping for 14 hours. And there weren’t enough beds so the owner of the plane is a good friend to this day, he says, “We’ll alternate beds.” I go, “No, no. I’m going to stay up. I have to work.” He goes, “Tony you’re not going to stay up for 14 hours.” I said, “No, I’m busy.” So they all go to bed. I’m sitting there rocking in my head for 14 hours going, oh my God, 30-40 thousand dollars, 12 days, what the hell am I doing here? I was miserable. So we finally get there and we go through Cambodia and Shangri La and all these places, and I don’t know, we’re probably three days in and we just did a bike ride through Vietnam and we get on a plane, we’re about 3 or 4 days into it. I’m still miserable. And the guy who is the richest man in Canada sits next me, it’s his plane, and he’s reading the paper. I’m reading the paper, and he’s reading the paper and all the sudden I get this smack on my paper and I pull it down and he smacks it again. He goes, “I want to talk to you.” I’m like, “Okay.” He says, “I’m pissed.” I said, “You’re pissed?” I think, shit. I pissed off the richest man on the trip, it’s his plane. He goes, “Everywhere we go, everywhere we go, people we don’t know, people don’t speak English, ‘Tony ah! Love Tony! Love Tony!’ We’re in China, we’re in Cambodia,” he goes, “you know how much I’m worth? I’m the richest man in Canada. You know how many businesses I have? I’ve never had somebody look me in the face and say, ‘I love you’ I’ve provided income for their kids, everything else.” He went on and on and he seemed so intense and then he smiled. And I realized he’s messing with me. He said, “I have the impression you don’t think you deserve to be here. That you’re not one of us.” And then he said, “Tony, you know what I’d give (I was 30 years old) to be 30 years old? When I was 30 I had made my first million and lost it. I was broke. You got this you got that.” I said, “Yeah, it’s not the things for me.” And he asked me my goals and at the time I thought someday I’d serve in the political environment, I’d run for president on my own, my own money, my own standards. Not my goal now. I’ve served more presidents and I have a very different view of the political system today. And I want to be independent in what I’m doing. And he said, “Well if you want to do that, Tony, you need to understand one of the most important principles of wealth.” And this is what I got out of the whole trip, it was worth the whole trip, it was just one phrase. “proximity is power. Right now, if you wanted to make a movie…” and I hadn’t done Shallow Hal, but I was in 25 movies. He goes, “You know so many people in the movie business, producers, directors, writers, they’re all your fans. You don’t do anything and they put you in all these movies. If you want a script you like and they said it was decent, you’d have everybody in it. You’re in proximity to them. They want to put you in the movies. They’re doing it all the time. You could make your own film.” He said, “But if you want to do a deal with IBM, do a deal with them, no disrespect, you’d have a hard time because you don’t know anybody at IBM. If you want that kind of wealth, how many investment bankers do you know?” and I said, “I don’t know, a couple dozen.” And he goes, “how many do you spend time with?” I said, “Not many.” And he said, “you need to go spend time with them.” I said, “Yeah, but I want to give them something and I don’t have a plan.” And he goes, “Just get in proximity. If you’re around them they’re going to want to know you, want to do a deal with you.” So I did because of this, and I became part of this group and I’m still part of it, to this day. We do two or three trips a year. But what was great was, you know, the first 3 or 4 months I did this, I went probably to New York, and probably met with, I don’t remember, 5 or 6 different of these top financial guys, investment bankers and I came back the next trip and he’s like, ‘Hey dude, how’d you do.’ I said, “Well, I’m around these 7.” “7? You call that massive action?” He just gave me shit, so I kept doing it for 3 years, 2 ½ years. And the woman in my life at the time was like, “Why are you going to New York again, it’s such a waste of time.” I said, “No, I’m just going to keep doing this.” And one day I got a deal that made me $30 million in a month. And I’d not made $30 million in my life at that point. And then I got a deal that made me 400 million dollars, I took the company public in 3 months. And then I also lost most of that when the stock market crashed in 1999, but it taught me the power of proximity and that became my fundamental mastermind. Now today, my mastermind is larger than that. I’m constantly working with people, sometimes it’s one or two but it’s the best in the world at what they do. I coach them, and I’m not dumb enough to think I should only be learning, I should be teaching them. I gotta learn from them too. So putting masterminds together, that’s what I do now. I took my original group, you know, we call ourselves the scorpions, our little song, our Aerosmith song, dude looks like a lady, we tease each other mercilessly. We got our little scorpion symbol and stuff, and its’ a really unique group of people. But I created my platinum partners and my lions and I bring them together and I compress decades in a day. I share the best of what I learned, but I get them to teach each other. This last weekend I got a group of 44 of them, that are my highest donors to my foundation, so I honored them by doing a place at my home in Palm Beach here, and I had here, like last year I brought in Tom Brady. I brought in Michael Phelps, you know I brought in the greatest of all time. Michael Phelps has got more gold medals than anybody in history. Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback in history. This year I brought them Kevin Hart, I think the greatest entertainer, hardest working man in the business, he’s made 45 movies in 15 years. How the eff do you do that? We found out how he did it. How has he built his brand from nothing? How has he done this? And saved all that time, the guys’ a genius. He’s smarter than almost anybody you know in the business. You know I brought in Mike Tyson because I wanted to show them, you can be the best in the world, and success is not a vaccination against suffering. He was in such pain before. And then how he changed. Then I brought in Conor McGregor, who says he’s retired, but I’ll be coaching him on his next fight. You know, he’s just a genius. He’s ready, he’s ready to do this thing, but he’s got to get his right price. He’ll retire until they pay him the right amount. He’s a guy that willed himself from nothing. You know, he’s got no money, he’s got his car, working as an apprentice plumber, 12 hours a day, and he learned how to take control of his mind. He taught us all the things he did, where he literally created himself being the best, and you’ve seen of course, did it in two different belt levels. Two weight classes simultaneously. No one’s done that in history. So learning about other people’s experience is the ticket. There is nothing that you can do that comes even close. I don’t give a damn how great your education has been, you need an education that’s current from the people that have done it, and you gotta learn how to extract it, that’s what we do. That’s what Dean’s done for 20 years, what I’ve done for 42 years, so between us 60 years. How many years for you now? Russell: Well I’ve been doing the business for 15, so I’ll give you guys a little bit in there. Tony: 75 years between the three of us, I think we got a few things we can share with you, if you really want to go to the next level. Russell: So cool. Well, one last thing and then we’ll kind of wrap this. Because I think people understand the power of self education about masterminds and groups. But I think probably the biggest thing I think people are going to be thinking is, “Of course you can do it, Tony. You are Tony.” Or “Russell, you’re Russell.” Or “Dean…” or whatever. But I know we’ve been working on this project, you guys have found a lot of people that are doing this that aren’t, it’s not just like you want to be a Tony Robbins or Russell Brunson or whatever to go and create something like this. This is happening at all sorts of levels, to all sorts of people, in all sorts of industries. And I know, I can share a couple of, but I’d love to see if you’ve got some as well that are just people that are… Tony: I want to tell you how simple it is. It’s like I was talking to a woman a few years ago, she makes, the average person who cuts hair makes 60 grand a year, this woman makes 350 thousand dollars a year. I remember saying to her, first of all, I was blown away, and you know, you feel her presence. She’s just an extraordinary human being anyway. But I just said, “What is it that has really given you this gift?” and I started interviewing her and pulling things out of her and I said “You’ve gotta teach this. There’s so many people who love what they do but they make so little income.” So we started talking with her and Dean started talking with her, and sure enough she started to create these little classes for herself. Little workshop mastermind, she shares and they do the mastermind together and she not only still makes all the money she does there, but she makes as much money in her little classes as she did in anything else. But she feels this meaning, another level of meaning that’s like, “Out of all these people that love me,” she said, “Because I’ve helped them grow their income by 10 fold, 5 fold, 6 fold from where they were.” She goes, “It’s made my life feel even more joyous.” So she has the meaning and she has the money. I think that’s the difference. But literally you can do this in any industry. You can be in sales, and you have some expertise. You’re a good negotiator, you’ve got some expertise. You know how to write software, you’ve got some expertise. Anything where there’s expertise can be modeled, but again, a lot of times you don’t realize all you do. I’m really good and Dean’s really good at extracting it to. Like what is it that really works, and systematizing it. And then putting in software that does it for you. And then also, it’s like what we’ve done for these people, I realized, they can even extract it, but they need to know how to structure a course. Whether it’s a workshop or just going to be a mastermind, or whether it’s going to be a membership group that’s ongoing. There’s many different ways of doing it. And they could be big, I do 10, 15, or even my biggest ones this year are 50,000 person events, football stadiums. But you know, you could do it with 5 people, 25 people. It could be the mastermind, it could be the workshop. You might want to be somebody that extracts it from other people. That’s how I started. I was kind of a knowledge broker promoting other people and then like Money, Master of the Game, I went and pulled all that knowledge out. Once I learned it I became an expert in that field. So really what we’re talking about is it doesn’t matter what you do for a living, whether you have an expertise or you want to go get it from other people, we could try to do it and then systematize it, and then most importantly, like you, market it. Because between Dean, myself, and you we’ve got 75 years of marketing and we know one headline can change your income or your return by 2 thousand, 5 thousand, 10 thousand percent without spending one more penny. And we’ve systematized that. So this is both the software that we’re putting together and the course and then that’s when people get the opportunity to learn about it. It can be done with anything. Russell: yeah, I’m so excited for this. Tony: Give some examples of what you’ve seen, because I know you’ve worked with so many. Russell: We’ve got so many fun ones. We have one lady who’s a boudoir photographer and was doing that as a thing for a while and then eventually people got, her other photographer friends were like, “How are you charging…” because I don’t know exactly the fees, like $100 a session for a regular photographer, versus like a thousand for a boudoir photographer. So she started doing these little groups and bringing people together. “This is how I do what I do.” And later that became courses and books and stuff like that for her. But a lot of times people think if they’re going to get into the education business, it’s like I have to write a book, which I’m writing my third book right now and it’s the most painful process I’ve ever….I think it’s, my wife gets mad when I say this, but I think it’s worse than giving birth. There’s more pain I think than that. Tony: Don’t say that. Russell: I shouldn’t say it out loud. But it’s so painful and I think a lot of people think that’s what they have to do if they want to share their information. And it’s like, maybe eventually, maybe eventually you’ll do a course, but the fastest way is to get people in the room, put them together and share it like that. And it’s like the fastest way to do it. Tony: Every time you do it too. Because I want to address something you just said a minute ago, if I may, because I don’t want to let this go by. The “I’m not a Russell. I’m not a Tony. I’m not a Dean.” Bullshit. I created this guy Tony Robbins. He’s me, don’t get me wrong, but the tempo which I speak, the way I live, it’s a result of all that I’ve learned. The reason I speak like this, with this intensity, is because I have so much passion because I have so much knowledge. I didn’t have any of this to start with. I wasn’t this guy. I trained myself to be this guy. Part of what I do in the course is I give all the knowledge and we could give you all the skill and you still won’t follow through, it’s still dealing with the fear that stops people. It’s the fear of rejection, it’s the fear of failure. So part of our course is doing what I did to myself to literally condition myself, and I know you’ve done the same Russell, to get yourself to follow through. I mean you use some of your athletic ability because you used to train yourself as a wrestler, I remember.  I trained, I was an athlete too, but the training I did with my mind in this area, and my emotion in this area was more important than anything else I learned. And if you don’t get that training, then you’ll just be another person taking another damn course. So I told Dean from the very beginning. I said, “We’re going to give them the best tools, we’re going to give them the best technology, we’re going to give them the best follow-up coaching, give them the best blue print. We’re going to give them the best tools, literally online tools and computer tools, software, but we gotta make sure we give them the best emotional tools.” Because 80% of success is psychology and learning how to change that.  You’ve done that to yourself, you’ve sculpted yourself. You weren’t always this guy, I wasn’t always this guy, and Dean wasn’t. So I don’t want people to negate that. Plus you don’t need to go out and do something that can hold 10 or 15 thousand people at a time. All you need to do is be somewhere that can hold 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or not even hold anybody. Develop a mastermind where the mastermind itself brings that energy into the group. So don’t undersell yourself, please, because so many people do that. All you gotta do is do what’s next. Do what’s next, do what’s next. And before you know it, I always tell people, most people they overestimate what they’re going to do in a year, and they underestimate what they’re going to do in a decade. And a decade goes that fast. 10 years from now, Jim Rohn used to say, “10 years from now you’ll surely arrive. The question is where.” And if you get started now, you won’t believe where you are. For me, this is my fourth decade, 42 years doing this. I started when I was 3 of course, but you get the idea. Russell: So cool. Well, I appreciate you Tony, jumping on and doing the interview with me today. I just think this will be super huge for people. And when we jump offline I’ll tell everybody a little bit more about exactly what’s included in the program and the software and the training and all that kind of stuff, so they can get deeper and jump into it. But I just wanted to thank you so much for your time and spending time doing this. And also, this project. I know this is the first big course you’ve put out like this for how long? It’s been quite a few years, hasn’t it? Tony: This course is completely different, and I’m excited about it because, also I’m excited about working with you and working with Dean, it’s fun to do something synergistically. Usually I carry the whole thing on my own back. It’s nice to all do it together and bringing the different flavors and insights for people. I think people will be deeply touched. It’s just, it’s meaningful. It’s meaningful for me to have the privilege today to do, to know where I’ve come from, to know where I get to be today and it’s all this path. And we’re showing people the exact path of how they can do it, self starting from wherever they are. Blessings to all of you, thanks for having me on. Russell, I’ll hope to see you soon, brother. Russell: Awesome, thanks Tony. Appreciate you man. Tony: God Bless.

Monday Morning Radio Host Dean Rotbart confesses that he doesn’t know who his guest is on this week’s podcast.  It’s not that Dean doesn’t have a fascinating guest, or that the guest’s book – “Undistrupted: How Highly-Effective People Deal with Disruptions” – isn’t a valuable business read; it’s just that Dean literally does not know who wrote the book. The author, who lives in The Netherlands [Dean phoned him there], uses the pseudonym John Vespasian and has written ten books. What Dean also knows is that this week’s mystery guest is a well-read student of global history [think Russian industrialist Savva Mamontov (1841-1918), and 12th-century French statesman, Abbot Suger], and draws excellent insights from bygone eras that we all can apply to our lives today. So Dean assures us that his guest has plenty of good advice to dispense; he just doesn’t know who he’s talking to.   Illustration: The author known as John Vespasian Posted: May 6, 2019Monday Morning Run Time: 32:45

Episode IV Economic Order - Crisis - and The Wheel of Opportunity. Dagne: Welcome to Episode IV of the Infinite Potentials Series. Also, this is our first video web cast. So, Adam, experts say that the current economic collapse is the worst since the 1930's. Experts say nothing of this size has ever before happened in the US and world financial markets. Many of those who have money are terrified by their losses and the rest are worrying about how they are going to survive. Can we discuss how the ordinary person can meet the challenge of this mind blowing crisis? A: You and I have also been hit incredibly hard. Maybe we should first find out if we are going to survive economically before we give advice. D: We've done the arithmetic. We think we are probably going to make it. Although, we have had to go from plan A to plan B. We have even discussed a back up plan C. A. I hope we won't need to implement it. D: Before we get into some ideas about what to do now. Can you say something about what you think is actually happening? I don't think most people understand this crash yet. In fact, I think an awful lot of people are in denial about it and don't realize how big it actually is. A: I'm thinking about it as an evolutionary economical liminal moment. Something old is dying and something new is being born. Of course, at times like this everyone wants to find out who is responsible and punish them. But I think we are all to some degree responsible. Some more, some less. Reminds me of the old Pogo cartoon. "We have found the enemy and he is us". But looking at the bigger picture it seems to me that globalization is inevitable and there is no turning back. But globalization grew so fast in recent decades that it has outrun our international and national financial institutions. A rapidly emerging tsunami is sweeping the earth and it is a new world order. This collapse and rebirth of the world wide economic system is a necessary step. Kind of like discovering that wagon wheels are torn to pieces if you attach them to a powerful car and try to drive it 120 MPH. Historians will look on this economic evolution as necessary to create much better economic institutions. But right now, I think you really have to want to survive economically and be ready to work hard at it or chances are you are toast. D: So we need a transformation of financial institutions - an evolution. But what can folks do now to survive and make lemonade out of these lemons? A: Downturns and periods of instability are times of enormous opportunities for those who can think in new ways. D: Where do we start? With the basics? A: When in trouble always get back to the basics. For 15 years or more we have been discussing a concept called Economic Order. Those who were living according to the principles underlying economic order are generally in better shape now than those who were not. Economic Order is one of the areas we focus on in the MindFitness Training. Economic order of some kind is critical to mindfitness and quality of life including happiness. D: We have mentioned The MindFitness Training several times but haven't said much about what it is. Could you explain a bit? A: I assert that a substantial percentage of ordinary people are living extraordinary lives. We discovered some strategies which have worked well so far for us. So we made a study to see if it is possible for others to benefit from what has worked for us. Furthermore, the more individuals unfold their own potential the greater the consciousness of the electorate and a more conscious electorate is the best, fastest way to meet the current crisis, evolve our country and contribute to the evolution of the world. So like many others we set out with the intention of understanding how to bring oxygen and fuel to what we see as a flame of awakening spreading throughout America and the world. Being physically fit is fashionable and easier to do than ever before. It occurred to me that just like physical fitness there are particular, relatively easily learned strategies and principles which can build mind fitness just like physical fitness. So, we registered the term MindFitness® and set out to make those strategies and principles available to as many as I can as inexpensively as possible. That means doing research to discover better ways to learn to enhance mindfulness - quality of consciousness including creativity, sub consciousness, unconsciousness and supra consciousness. We founded the International MindFitness Foundation and the Infinite Potentials Series is one way to share these treasures (these notions, principles) with others. D: Our intention is to bring encouragement - good news to those who can use it. A: Yes. It is fun and besides it helps us unfold our own potentials. D: Could you describe the MindFitness Training a little more and then we can go back to Economic Order? A: I have been thinking about what people can do to reduce the negative effects of the economic crisis and maximize their ability to seize the opportunities. And, you know the basic mindfitness training itself seems to address the challenges amazingly well even though it was developed during a time of unprecedented prosperity. A: One way to describe The Process or Mindfitness Training is to use what I call The Wheel of Opportunity. (Show full wheel) The challenge is not so much availability of information but motivation - the energy, the passion, the vision to take the next usually simple and basic steps. So I envisioned a Wheel of Opportunity which might clarify some of the primary categories of concern and opportunity applicable to most of us. These can be thought of as areas or strategies or principles that can be used to get started. Note they all lead to the same place - the center which represents Infinite Potentials. When coaching an individual I can start with the area that (s)he is most interested in at the moment. Success in the first area can lead to the next step and so forth. Of course, everyone has to start with Mind. (go to blank wheel of opportunity and add mind) Because only mind can generate the energy and focus necessary to begin work on the first area of primary interest (challenge) whatever it is. Of course, if we are working with a group we all work on the same area at once. Logically the next focus is on Stress Science. Reducing unhealthy stress conserves energy and allows mind to quiet itself which can bring economic order. It takes energy and mental quietness to go to the next step Exercise. Exercise further builds energy required to improve economic order and take on the incredibly important principle of enhancing Attention. Even small increases in attention can produce outsized results. Some of the best teachers have said that increasing the ability to attend is probably the highest priority self actualization strategy we can apply. Attention goes way beyond concentration. The Breath Work - learning for oneself how to maximize breathing efficiency through all of the stages of life is common to all of the other episodes. However breathing requires careful (special} attention in order for most to gain the enormous benefits hidden there. Sleep Science is another misunderstood and enormously under utilized opportunity for bringing about extraordinary improvement in day to day quality of life. D: Next, we come to Economic Order. Please define it. A: I like the term because it gets away from the notion of being rich or poor. Economic order is different for everyone. Perfect Economic order as I see it is having the resources that allow an individual to do what (s)he loves to do 100% of the time. D: 100% of the time? What about things like chores and housework and people who are trapped in a job they don't like but are afraid to leave? A: Well, in that sense economic order is relative. I think if people can do what they love 10 or 15% of the time they are usually happy campers. The key is to make a beginning. D: If one love's something (s)he gets better at it and probably improves so much that after a while he can do what he loves 20 or 30% of the time and so on. And so becoming stronger, happier and more grateful. A: Right! One builds from there towards the 100% mark. Of course, there are chores and stuff that may not be easy or fun like working out, paying bills, doing the dishes etc. D: Changing diapers isn't necessarily pleasant but it is part of doing what one loves. The Process of all this changes one's consciousness so that even the chores and tough stuff can become fun. Sort of back to the physical fitness model. The work out might hurt but somehow it hurts good. And you feel so good and energized afterwards...the shower can be delicious. A: Dean Martin was driving into the Beverly Hills Country club and he ran into Jack Benny coming out. So Dean said , "Jack, how was golf today?" Jack answered in his classic dead pan way, "Well, the golf was so-so but the towels were wonderful". D: So, how does one achieve economic order? Lower one's economic goals? A: I'd rather say, one must set wise economic goals and learn to practice voluntary simplicity. (create a slide for this). D: Voluntary Simplicity is definitely the place to start in this economic crisis. Don't you think? How would you define voluntary simplicity? A: OK, but first I'd like to look into a hidden challenge that most of us have when we think about economics. Our culture conditions us to an economic, mental double bind. On the one hand we are conditioned to want to compete and make money and live lavishly. The commercial forces hammering on our brain to buy, buy, buy and conditioning us to judge ourselves based on our economic success and physical attractiveness and popularity are overwhelming. D: It takes awareness, wisdom to free oneself from this kind of conditioning. Mindfulness? A: Right. On the other hand we are often taught that the meek will inherit the earth and that there is great virtue in not wanting a lot for yourself, giving to others, living simply. See the double bind? D: When I was growing up after the New Deal era many people believed that if you got rich you must be stepping on someone and the true salt of the earth is the working class. A: So first thing is to break through that kind of polarizing cultural mythology and eliminate inner conflict because it drains energy. So thinking in terms of economic order rather than rich or poor seems to help many of us rise above the double bind...the cultural trance. D: You were explaining voluntary simplicity. (Growth of volumtary simplicity over time slide?) A: John Naisbit, and other futurists report that voluntary simplicity is one of the ten top trends worldwide..at least in the developed countries. One of the interesting things about voluntary simplicity is that it seems to have begun or at least gained momentum among those who are what the Value Added Survey calls Actualizers. Actualizers are the more educated segment of the population - people with more discretionary income and time. From a psychological perspective they tend to be people who are less conditioned, less disassociative, more mindful. D: Can you give an example? A: Well, typically a person decides to begin practicing voluntary simplicity because he has come to a realization that he or she is working too hard, commuting too far, the kids are becoming latch key kids and relationship with the spouse is deteriorating. So, a decision to change is made which often means quitting a good job or at least making major changes in the way work gets done. Actualizers tend to have marketable skills so they can continue working from home or close to home. They are willing to earn somewhat less money but have a more satisfying life. Interestingly, those beginning to practice voluntary simplicity often do earn less in the start up period but in time they often wind up earning more. D: Because happier people are more creative and productive? Happier people tend to spend less because they are already satisfied with life. Over consumption is a sign of discontent. An attempt to fill a void. A: Exactly. People discover that buying only what is really needed is a more efficient, healthier, a more fun, much freer way to live. So, they begin to generate savings and learn how to invest, manage their portfolios, and earn and spend in tax efficient ways. D: Some wealthy people probably disagree. A: Sure, but we are focusing on people who need to improve the economic order in their lives. Rich people are more likely to focus on other areas of the Wheel of Opportunity. But many wealthy people are increasing their consciousness and quality of life by simplifying as well. In fact the Voluntary Simplicity Movement is often led by people who already earn a decent living. D: Now the ecological movement, inflation, higher fuel and food prices are adding even more momentum to the notion of buying only what we really need. A: Exactly. So one must begin with simplifying one's economic life. Paradoxically it takes a lot of creative thinking and energy to actually make this happen. It can feel like a campaign, a crusade...taking heaven by storm. D: We've been doing this for nearly 50 years and find it a lot of fun and even addictive in a healthy way. How does one get started? A: Practically, this usually means that one must do a careful evaluation of what one's actual resources are. Everyone that I know of who understands how to do a (carefully) meticulous listing and evaluation of personal resources has realized that they have more resources and much more freedom to make changes than they realized before they did the math. That's the first step. The next step is to find out what one truly loves to do. Then start doing that in one's spare time. So far as I can see this pattern almost always leads to increased economic well being. D: What if what you love to do is drink or gamble? A: Plenty of people who love to drink and gamble have reasonably good economic order. If any of us goes too far, lives unhealthily, lose balance then hell emerges. D: But the more you do what you love the better you get at it which leads to more time and resources to follow your dream - do more of what you love. A: That's the principle and strategy. It's a very old idea which has to be rediscovered within the context of each individual's present circumstances. Many people do not yet realize that thinking in these ways is critically important. D: Friends, time is up. We will continue with Economic Order and how to get it in Episode V. Thanks for being with us.