Jim Rohn: BRAINWASH Yourself For Success - Motivational Speech

cuz one of the things that helped me really revolutionize my life age 25 was learning how to set goals decide what you want write it down start checking them off where do you want to go make that list go for the discipline because it weighs ounces uh the regret weighs tons because it can accumulate work harder on yourself than you do on your job if you work hard on your job you can make a living if you work hard on yourself you can make a fortune there's a principle I learned I say that all of

success is combinations and recipes and formulas a combination is like a combination loot if you have the three numbers and you turn to the numbers in sequence the lock opens I say success is just like a combination lock but with more numbers so just find out the numbers turn to the numbers in the proper sequence and it opens for you so within a year I've gone from living in a boarding house to having apartments in three cities to flying on Jets I mean it was just unbelievable and G literally from 24 to 25 why just

because I learned get ready for a Powerhouse of wisdom as we bring you a compilation of exclusive interviews with some of the most influential Minds in personal development and success in this special video made possible at Chris Weidner you'll gain access to the collective wisdom of remarkable individuals who have shape the landscape of personal and professional growth with a wealth of experience and accomplishments each interview unveils unique perspective and - tested strategies for achieving success in your life and career enjoy my guest today is Jim ran Jim has been hailed over the years as one

of the most influential thinkers of our time and considered to be America's foremost business philosopher he has been sharing his success philosophies for over 40 years to over 4 million people worldwide Jim ran has helped motivate and train an entire generation of personal development trainers as well as hundreds of Executives from America's Top corporations he is a master motivator author and a living legend welcome Jim wow Chris thank you very much I good to have you here I'll take you with me around the world just introduce me yeah so I want to ask you you

know we we were talking as we did the Run through for the promo there uh about being a living legend and you really are I mean you have had an incredible life an exceptional life where you've been able to influence so many people how do you go from the kid that you started out to you know where you're at now speaking all over the world how do you get started in that well part of it is living long enough to have a chance to be a legend right there you go and I just celebrated birthday

number 75 but uh 25 years old I'm living in uh uh Idaho where I was born and raised and um you know I'm married I've got a little family started and struggling to pay my bills but you know working hard doing the best I can and um then you've heard the story this I get this knock on the door and um there's a little girl scout selling Girl Scout cookies and she gives me this incredible presentation uh Girl Scouts best organization in the world everybody wants to support the Girl Scouts we've got these cookies only

$2 and she very politely asked me to buy no problem I wanted to buy big problem I didn't have $2 in my pocket you know and I'm not destitute but my pockets are empty I'm a grown man I'm 25 years old I've been to one year of college I got a little family going I live in America and I don't have the $2 in my pocket and I didn't want to tell her that so I did what I thought was next best I lied to her and I said hey look I've already bought lots of

Girl Scout cookies we've still got plenty in the house we haven't eaten yet she said oh that's wonderful thank you very much and she leaves when she leaves I say to myself I don't want to live like this anymore I mean how low can you get lying to a Girl Scout right exactly so that was one of those days I call the day that turns your life around yeah when I really made the commitment I must start a search for finding ways to to do better I always wanted to but I just hadn't found the

person or the ways shortly after that I found someone who became my mentor over a fiveyear period after that between ages 25 and uh and 30 31 um what he taught me made me a millionaire um entrepreneur change my life refine My Philosophy help me develop skills and disciplines that I didn't have before totally revolutionized my life over that 5year period and uh that was the beginning of uh my change of uh mind and and circumstances and then that led to where I am today I wonder how many people have that dramatic moment like you

did you shut that door and you went I just lied to a Girl Scout person some people could have just said well I had to do what I had to do other people like yourself Say Never Again yeah you don't know I call it the mystery and the magic why one experience affects a person one way and another person passes it off and doesn't let it doesn't let it change their life for the better or they might not do it now and maybe later something else will happen and that that'll be the moment you just

don't know uh you know lecturing giving seminars teaching training you know why some people pick it up do something with it change their lives and others don't I remember at the 2004 weekend leadership event we had someone come back who had been to the 2001 and they were in real estate and they had bought some outrageous amount of real estate you know $50 million in the LA because they walked out of the last one and said and then another guy was there and he said I was at the same one but he went out and

did it and I didn't well he was back for 2004 he said 2007 seven he said I'm coming back and I will have built my fortune that's that's part of the mystery you know I've written how many books now five or six and uh um I should have written 26 so what happened to those other 20 books that's the mystery you know the magic is the six and the Mystery is the 20 that are missing so we're a bit of a mystery to ourselves right yeah sure I should have but I didn't you know I

had the skills but I didn't put them to work uh so we all have a bit of that but then the things we do that sort of dramatically change our life that's the magic that's the that's the power yeah part of it is the law of averages you know I tell this little Bible story about the SE went out to seow the seed and he was highly ambitious and he had good seed but the first part of the seed that he sewed the birds got then the next uh he keeps going and the next seed

falls on Thorn uh Stony ground where the soil is shallow and the little plant starts to grow in the first hot day it it Withers and dies so he keeps on going the next seed that he sewed uh fell on thorny ground yeah little plant starts to grow and then the Thorns choke it to death and it called the Thorns little cares little things that keep people from doing the bigger things and then finally he keeps on sewing and the seed Falls finally on good ground but then the good ground was a bit of a

an interesting idea that some of it produced 30% some of it produced 60 and some of it produced 100 so it's the full range from the birds getting some and the hot weather and the Thorns to the good ground even though good ground has a variety of 30 60 100 so when I started out lecturing I wondered why I couldn't get everybody to do the 100% then I found out you know this this is not to be right you know so that when I say to John you should have been at the meeting last night

and he said well hey the screen screen door came off the hinges I had to fix and do some repairs and so I say now I understand yeah that some people are going to let little things cheat them out of doing better things but maybe that'll change yeah you know a week from now somebody wakes up and has an experience like I did with the with the Girl Scout and uh and everything changes so the door usually is always open unless somebody totally resists the idea of self-improvement but I think there's enough experiences along the

way to prod us and push us a little bit or we hear a testimonial or we read a book right or somebody buys us a ticket and we go to a seminar and we're never the same again you share an idea with someone two people one of them says I see it and the other one says it isn't clear to me say why not it's perfectly clear when you shared it yeah why can't you see what I see yeah true we all how come you don't feel like I feel so you have to allow for

that that and then we have to allow for it happening Even in our own experience like me with the missing books um I should have and I didn't I let it go and I should have picked it up um so I guess the key is to do the best we can and the key is to keep learning from every experience possible our own personal experiences or from someone else's experiences by sermon y the lyrics of a song personal testimonial someone gives you sitting at Denny's for a Tuesday morning breakfast and something clicks and something happens

you never know yeah those moments are kind of a mixture of everything coming together right timing and your own personal circumstances so you end up going to work for Earl shelf and you had lots of lessons to learn what were over that six year sevene period I was he was with me about five years then he died but at the early age of 49 but uh those were such dramatic days of incredible change and the stuff he taught he only went to the ninth grade in school so he put things very simply for the excuses

I gave he said no those are not the reasons I said things cost too much he said no you can't afford him you know a little philosophies like that that open my eyes to see what was the story where you brought him a paycheck you said this is all they pay yeah this is all they pay no this is all they pay you I thought oh you're right I guess said don't sum at the company make three four five times this much and I said well yes and he said well this is not all they

pay this is all they pay you yeah if you qualified for the 10 times this wouldn't they pay you that amount and I said I guess they would of course he said well let's go to work on that yeah we don't have to go to work on the company for more pay we got to go to work on you to become more qualified yeah they they have pay structure already set up for some people you got to fit into that then when I in my lectures I show the this little economic case you know ladder

to climb starts at $5 an hour and goes all the way up to 32 million for one year right one year's annual income and uh somewhere along the way uh by what we hear and what we experience we try to make ourselves better qualified for the next to move up yeah and that's the key is to keep moving up keep growing keep developing see what all you can do with your life what uh he he was really the first person to to give you the idea of personal development right what kinds of things was he

telling you about the importance of developing yourself what were some of those lessons that he taught you one of used which got really got my attention he said why don't you set a goal to become a millionaire I'm 25 years old he said this is America land of opportunity why don't you set a goal to become a millionaire and then he said for what it will make of you to achieve it and I thought wow that's a whole different philosophy set a goal to become a millionaire for what for the person you have to become

in order to be worth uh a million dollars then he said once you've become a millionaire you give the money away because what's important is not what you got but the person you became and I got the message and that's where I started hearing those Praises from him work harder on yourself than you do on your job um bringing value to the marketplace is how you get paid the more value you bring to the marketplace the better your pay and also you get paid for what you become a leader an entrepreneur a manager somebody who

has the ability to inspire other people so somebody's watching and they're saying okay work harder on yourself than you do on your job and they they're they're they agree with it in principle they say yeah that sounds right I know I need to work on myself what what would you recommend people do I started out with developing a list of skills I didn't have you know I'm raised in farm country Southwest Idaho right I know how to mil cows but the pay is not good that's right so the first thing and I started part-time um

a little uh sales Adventure on how to get customers it was in health and nutrition and uh I believed in the product and I was taught here's how you get a customer and then here's how you ask them who do they know that wants to be healthier um then um expand your business from there so that was the first extra skill I learned from just the regular Farm skills that started to change my life so this is part of the personal development learning that extra skill in my seminars I now teach in the 21st century

you need more than one skill one is for economic safety right here's the guys that that's worked for General Motors they just what closed a couple of plants and laid off what I don't know 25,000 people this guy has been there let's say for 15 years now he's laid off and he tells us he's already having economic difficulty and the reason is Chris he only had one skill you know over the last three or four years if he would have taken ACC counting two nights a week or something yeah so that when this crisis occurred

he would have something to fall back on so in my seminars I teach a whole list of skills I learned uh by the time I was uh 3031 that not only made me Rich but uh really broadened the whole scope of my ability to be an entrepreneur affect other people's lives and then I got into of course teaching and training but uh that's part of it I learned sales I learned to find good people I learned uh to get people to work together interesting phrase in the Bible says if two or three agree on a

common purpose nothing's impossible I thought wow two or three not all alone but two or three so if you can get inspired and inspire a couple of people to go with you you could do some pretty extraordinary things I learned how to do that then I learned uh recognition and reward rewarding people for steps of progress you may work for a company and they reward people for the big steps I've learned to reward people for little small steps of progress anything you can think of to give them a a reward for making some progress it

doesn't have to be a big reward doesn't have to be big something small kind word then it uh comes to a philosophy that says be so busy giving other people recognition you really don't need it for yourself now you've arrived at a very good place your greatest happiness is other people getting rewards not necessarily yourself but then zigg comes back with the old philosophy that's so true if you help enough people get what they want from either money to recognition or success you can have everything you want yeah I heard Zig say that I think

almost 50 years ago 45 plus and uh when he said you can have everything you want I underlined the word everything CU you could want a lot right and I said hey I think Zig is right if you help enough people get what they want yeah but that's another skill then I think the ultimate skill is the skill of communication and I divided that one into three parts one is training right showing somebody how to do the job next is teaching and I simply use the two words for uh a purpose teaching life skills because

one of the things that helped me really revolutionize my life age 25 was learning how to set goals decide what you want write it down start checking them off where do you want to go make that list what do you want for your family make that list I started doing all that that's called teaching teaching life skills so if you combine job skills with life skills your chances now really start to multiply then the ultimate in communication is learning to inspire helping somebody to see themselves better than they are um transporting them into the future

say Mary here's who you could become with just a few changes I promise you you'll never be the same again here's the kind of person you could become confident strong able to cope with circumstances and changes you could be that person so do you think that that that is something that anybody can do I mean when typically when people think of leaders they think of the heads of you know captains of industry and presidents and you know leaders of social movements is that something something do middle management in their own career parents parents should even

learn to do it at home yeah here's the person you could become um we try every means possible right especially for our children yeah to expose them ideas that we know we translate best we can or from church or hopefully from school um from the neighborhood from uh the business Community where they might get a job and go to work we just hope and pray that they will be constantly exposed to things that'll cause them to think change refine habits uh develop skills uh have personal satisfaction of the success they want we hope that happens

but it's going to come from a variety of sources not just one it's like mentoring uh I happen to find somebody who you know was the business employer a business partner that I worked with um as well as being a mentor but sometimes you know somebody mentors you in good health somebody else mentors you in spiritual matters someone else mentors you in family relations and someone else mentors you in business and uh developing skills did you go looking actively looking for mentors throughout your life uh no after that girl scout experience um I said to

myself I must find something and sure enough a friend of mine said I've gone to work with this man you've got to meet him that was shortly after that I met Mr scha who knows the mystery of that right yeah um when you when student is ready the teach appears yeah when you have that determination seems like things start you know happening and coming your way at least the odds are better yeah everything is a matter of odds but if you do certain things I think you can increase your odds the better things will happen

for youh so after you became successful in your business then uh there was a phone call you got a phone call right and somebody said hey come and talk to us yeah I moved to Beverly Hills cuz that's what you should do when you become successful right kid from the farm country of Idaho moved to if you got rich Beverly Hills so when I get there a friend of mine said you've got to come and tell your story to my service Club you belong to the rotary and he said if I arrange this uh breakfast

meeting I think or lunch in meeting he said uh would you come you know just do a little 30 minute talk and tell your story and he said we'll call it Idaho Farm Boy makes it to Beverly Hills I said okay suits me so I did this little talk and uh evidently they enjoyed it before the day was over I got a couple more invitations you got to come talk to our service Club tell that same story share those same ideas that started me thinking about um you know really becoming involved in teaching and training

i' done a lot of training yeah and inspiring in my own entrepreneurial organizations but um not not for the public so I started doing these little talks for service clubs and once in a while a high school class college class enjoying it very much then one day a man said to me uh I've heard you're talk now two or three times and I've got this little company going and he said if you would come make a presentation I'd be happy to pay you and I thought incredible there's a job yeah could I really share my

story and get paid he said I'll be happy to do it so I did that that led to another one and another one then later on the idea occurred why not have uh some Representatives out uh selling tickets to come and hear a public seminar yeah and uh we finally put that together and that was you know all those many many years ago tell us a little bit about that this is a kind of a peak behind the scenes of because you're really one of the Pioneers you and Zig and some of the other folks

cavitt Roberts and and some of those what was the what was the culture back then when when you guys were out barnstorming America and really developing the whole personal development culture that now is so prominent in America what was that like it was exciting um of course mine I gave it all away you know all the speeches I did in colleges high schools and for service clubs and so on that was all free then when somebody offered to pay me that put a whole new look on it and then began this process mhm of uh

creating something valuable enough to where someone would buy a ticket and go and listen and uh those were exciting days the first one I did for pay I think I had about 45 or 50 participants that bought tickets a lot of them were friends of mine that I'm sure bought because they were friends of mine but there were some others that you know legitimately bought at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills and that first public seminar for people buying tickets I think was 1961 or 62 1962 wow and then that started it started growing

from there yeah and uh developed to where I am now traveling the world and telling my story and still sharing ideas yeah but uh it was it was fantastic time Earl Nightingale right some those way back in the beginning Napoleon Hill with his elctric series way back before was probably one of the first they started calling it self-help movement yeah and uh then came along the phrase uh personal development cha talked about personal development work harder on yourself than you do on your job he said yeah if you work hard on your job you can

make a living which is fine if you work hard on yourself you can make a fortune which is super fine I thought this is good philosophy yeah so did you you guys uh ever get together and do uh big events with you know you and Zig and uh Norman Vincent Peele finally over the years American Sales Masters some of those all of that way back that goes way back yeah I remember the first time I did a multi-speaker I think it was in St Louis it was about uh I don't know 9 10,000 people there

in one of the big auditoriums zigg was there and I was there Norman Vincent Peele was there couple of others and uh this is the time when Zig said to me said Jim Ron said you got to pay attention and you got to really be good today in your presentation because he said if 10,000 people turn on you it is going to be a difficult day words of wisdom intimidated me so I get up to speak and I'm looking up in the balconies you know and I'm uh saying I got to do my best Zig

may be right if I don't do well you know I will incur the wrath of these 10,000 people but that was uh that was good advice I learned along the way to pay more attention to the audience way back in the early days I was more absorbed in my lecture and what I was having to say you know people could have left and I probably wouldn't have really known it but then I got to where I could look up and you know find out what's going on out in the audience and are they getting it

and is it coming across and I teach that now in some of my seminars yeah when you think back to those speakers who really stands out in your mind as as being somebody that you really admired and respected yeah Zig Ziggler was you know we've traveled gone to other countries to lecture uh on the same venue um Earl Nightingale was a was unique you know a unique person in his own his own right the stuff that he wrote as well as his uh speeches and lectures uh were captivating uh interesting made you listen thought-provoking and

that's all we're really trying to do right yeah the minister on Sunday morning right just wants to share ideas get people thinking pondering about their life how to refine things spiritually as well as how to refine things economically and personally yeah um and we can all use a little coaching whether it's one-on-one person or whether it's in a seminar setting or whether it's church or Sunday school class wherever it is or ideas are being shared there's always a chance to pick up something that you hadn't quite thought about before hey there it's Chris Weidner and

I hope that you're enjoying this interview that I did with one of the legends of personal development and if you'd like even more information and great resources from the legends of personal development all you have to do is click on the link below in the description and I've got a plenty more for you so with that let's get back to the interview in 2004 summer of 2004 um you got the masters of influence award at the National Speakers Association and I was there to be able to to be there and see that and one of

the things that really amazed me was they asked the crowd and there was maybe 2,000 people there two 3,000 people there um how many of you would say that Jim ran has significantly influenced your life or your speaking career and nearly two-thirds of the hands went up how do you feel about that it's you know it's it's so extraordinary from where I came from yeah Southwest Idaho Farm country I still have the old Family Farm overlooking the Snake River where I make a little wine and uh you know grow a few crops and live The

Good Life there but it is extraordinary um one of the greatest experiences and you've heard me say before is when someone puts your name in in their testimonial here's the person that found me here's the person that got me started here's the person that wouldn't let me quit gave me more reasons for staying than for leaving here's the person who believed in me until I could believe in myself and then they mention your name yeah that's Big Time stuff yeah you can't buy it with money yeah you have to earn it what's extraordinary for me

now is to go to Russia and lecture uh I started lecturing in Russia 12 years ago to go back now again and have someone say 12 years ago here's what's happened to me my family I want to introduce you to some people I help change their life since you changed my life that's so extraordinary I guess that's why at age 75 I am still off to uh Chile and Santiago and a few days after that Australia then uh three cities I think in India and uh South Korea one little trip yeah I want to talk

to you about your travels and it's one of the fun things about having speakers like yourself who come in who do World Travel and to really just ask them what what's the world like you know there's a lot of people who are watching the show who they don't get a chance to travel that much you know and we hear things in the American Media or whatever but what are some of the countries that you've loved to spend time in and what do you think the average person should know about some of these countries and cultures

uh speaking of the travel you know I used to travel to Concord oh before they shut it all down 3 hours from London to New York it's so extraordinary now Singapore's got this new flight Los Angeles to Singapore Direct uh 17 and 1 half hours so that's quite an experience yeah you know it's like nine meals and four movies and uh finally you get there yeah but uh first class is you know exciting and caviar and champagne and you know all the amenities but um traveling to other countries that you know people are basically the

same you know they've got families and they want to do well and they want the Next Generation to be better off than than they are um people have hopes and dreams want to know how they can achieve uh success what could I do it seems like I've been stuck for four or five years what could I do to make a difference everybody wants to know and then they want to be fulfilled people want to you know have satisfaction whether it's a spiritually socially personally satisfaction of uh personal development I'm better than I used to be

MH and I think if I keep working hard I stand an excellent chance of being better in the future than I've been in the past uh those kind of aspirations no matter where I go from South Africa to Scandinavia from Korea to India to um vladas Russia um doesn't matter people are basically the same have the same desires uh some of the forms of government are a bit different yeah but U not the aspirations of the people do you take particular Joy going to countries where there's burgeoning capitalistic societies yeah yeah what what's been fun

for me is uh is U the opportunity to teach capitalism in Russia over the last 12 years I've been there like five times in all the major cities because they didn't have any concept of capitalism all those years under communism because communism taught Capital belongs to the state not the the people and of course we believe Capital belongs to the people not the state a total different economic philosophy but now since the walls came tumbling down in Germany what 14 15 years ago now they have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs capitalism personal responsibility instead of

uh we're always relying on the state uh so it's all changing and they're hungry aren't they just you know they're ready for it yeah and uh of course the the same mystery and Magic occurs in Russia like it does everywhere else you tell you here's how you can dramatically change your life from pennies to Fortune and uh some say yes that's great I will and some say I'm not sure that's for me and I have to learn to accept that right yeah I want to talk a little bit about kids because you have a lot

of uh a lot of thoughts and theories about things that kids should learn lessons they should learn uh tell us about some of those one of the easiest is capitalism because I use it even in Russia teaching capitalism that even kids can you know become capitalists yeah because all it involves is um here's a 12-year-old couldn't he search the neighborhood doesn't have to be 12 seven or eight eight years old let's say this little kid and he searches the neighborhood finds a little broken wagon and pays a dollar for it and brings it home home

fixes it up paints it until it shines straighten out the wheels until they're true takes it back to the neighborhood and sells it for $5 makes a $4 profit could that be possible and everybody says well yes it could be possible and all he would do have to have is the idea so I'm teaching kids how to have two bicycles one to ride and one to rent yeah right you don't have to be General Motors to make a profit yeah so just a bit of ingenuity you know from the lemonade stand or whatever those are

just all examples of of capitalism at work where you make something and sell it or you buy something and sell it um then teaching kids a little bit about money management yeah I think is important what are the things that they ought to learn don't spend more than 70 cents out of every dollar and then 10 cents for charity or church another 10 cents for active capital like find a broken wagon pay a dollar for it fix it sell it for five uh that's active capital and then last 10% is passive Capital let someone else

use your money invest it and let them pay you interest or whatever so a good good program for kids to learn 70 10 10 and 10 yeah and if you do that over a reasonable period of time you'll become financially independent isn't it funny how human nature even at that little kid level is to spend it all yeah and then some more yeah then borrow and spend some more so the way you teach it is could a child buy a bottle of soap for $2 and sell it for three the answer is yes he goes

Johnny goes next door and says Mrs Brown Mama uses this soap it's really good it's only $3 and Mrs Brown says Johnny I've really got plenty of soap and he says you better let me come in and check kids don't have to go to classes right they don't take no for an answer yeah so they don't need sales training so she says well okay I probably I do here's $3 and so she buys this bottle of soap that Johnny bought for $2 she pays him $3 now we say to John here's what you must learn

to do with the $3 and we just ask obvious questions what if you took this $3 now that you just collected from Mrs Brown and went and spent it all he says well no you can't do that cuz then you'd be out of business that's right I mean some adults don't know that the money they got in their hand you know if something comes up you know and why not spend it say no you'd be out of business yeah you got to save at least $2 back so you can go and buy another bottle of

soap yeah and uh sell it for three and make another dollar then kids learning to employ other kids yeah Johnny mows Mrs Brown's lawn she pays $5 the idea occurs to him why couldn't I get Pete to mow Mrs Brown's lawn collect the $5 and uh give him a dollar or two for Mo and the lawn and I keep the three forgetting the business he says good idea Mrs Brown gets her lawn mode Pete gets a couple of dollars johnny makes three for getting the job and he said if you do a good job Pete

I'll have another person I'll have another place to mow on and first thing you know it doesn't have to be huge amounts just so you understand what capital is all about capital is any value you set aside to be invested in an Enterprise that brings value to the marketplace hoping to make a profit that's capitalism in one sentence and it can be uh Capital money or Capital time time you set aside to be invested then I teach in Russia that the time and the money you set aside to be invested is like Seed corn if

a farmer has Seed corn that he's going to plant hoping for a harvest come Harvest Time would he eat it this Seed corn the answer is no would he feed it to his family and the answer is no of course not right would he give it away and be generous and say well no you can't be generous with your seed Corin BN he would protect it by all means because it's the only way it can multiply and grow into more than what it is and that's what capitalism is all about a chance for something to

grow and multiply into more than what it is but you've got to protect it the same is true with your time let's say you set aside a certain amount of time every week to invest in this Enterprise that's going to bring value to the marketplace hoping to make a profit you can't let anybody have that time yeah what if you asked a farmer to go bowling in the spring he would say that's insane do it you can't go bowling in the spring call me in the win it's just a little short season we got the

lights on the tractors now where we go you know around the clock Springtime short season got to get the crops in so that that's capital time yeah and you have to learn the value of capital time it's so easy to let somebody steal your time that should be invested why do we let people steal our time cuz it seems to be Universal I don't know we just don't set it up and you know stick to it yeah want wasting time on a lot of things years and years ago I asked a young man one time

because I knew he watched television a lot I said how much did your television cost and he said uh $400 and I said well you really miscalculated he said no it cost $400 I said that's to buy it how much do you think it cost to watch it well cuz I knew he had some skills that he really wasn't employing and was letting it all slide I said in my personal opinion because the average American now watches television six seven hours a day I said in my personal opinion this television is costing you about $440,000

a year not to own it but to watch it and I said that's too much to pay right maybe 4,000 but not 4 right come on pay the 4,000 and throw it away and don't use it you still be ahead of the game so it sometimes all it takes is a revolutionary idea like that some say I think Jim Ron's right this television is costing me too much money to watch it because if I would use that same time employing myself finding ways to make a profit whatever no telling what would happen yeah what about

but unless somebody comes along and sort of you know shakes up the basket and talks about things like that uh on our own we could think about it eventually but uh sometimes it's you know it's a bit late yeah because that's why when cha I said things cost too much and he said no you can't afford them I hadn't thought about that before you know when I said this is all the company pays he says no that's all they pay you and without that kind of sort of counsel or guidance or reminder it's easy to

drift along a few more years without making the necessary changes to make your life better and he was pointing the responsibility back to you always always about you yeah he said you've been working now six years I I quit school when I was 19 I'm now I'm now 25 that's six years he said you've been working now 6 years how are you doing and I said not very well he said I suggest you not do that anymore he said would you like to repeat the next six years like the last six and I says not

really he said would you like to revolutionize the next six years versus the last six and I said yes and over the next sixe period I became a millionaire you say is that amazing it is I mean from the first six to the second six same period of Time same period of time with a whole totally different philosophy yeah multiple skills learning to be an entrepreneur uh you know ex old philosophy if you help enough people get what they want you can have everything you want understanding all of that John Kennedy said don't ask what

the country can do for you that's not how you get rich ask what could I do for my country starting with my neighbors starting with my family is there some service I could render some product I could represent what could I do for the people of the country and if you start thinking about that entrepreneurially now you can have some extraordinary life change and it happened to me over that next six years versus the last six what a difference and the difference was not the country you don't have to leave the country and the difference

was not the economy the economy that second six years of my working life was about the same as it was the first six years so the difference was not and the difference was not circumstances you know some Winters are long and some are short you know that's going to happen in any six-year period but uh the difference now is your own mind philosophy and how you think about things that's why you've got to welcome every chance to listen to the lyrics of a song um or uh the sermon on Sunday morning the teacher the professor

someone who like you recommends good ideas to someone who will take the time to listen that is all so valuable and uh collected over a period of time compounded into activity and disciplines U fortunes can come your way yeah you and your friend Charlie Jones talk an awful lot about books that we become the product of the books we read and the people we meet audio programs we listen to what books have shaped your life the most you know it started with the Bible my parents made sure I was a pretty good scholar by the

time I was 19 that's 66 books now that's not very politically correct to say that the Bible right so but that's but it's a collection of 66 books you know whatever you might think about it yeah uh it it's had such excellent recommendation over such a long period of time that it's not a bad idea to at least have a look yeah yeah you don't have to agree but it would be I think not wise not it would be unwise not to look at least check it out what are your what are your favorite thoughts

from the Bible one I'm using currently which I think is so valid is the paraphrasing it the Storyteller says there were two nice people the story of two nice people not an evil person and a good person but two nice people and the Storyteller goes on to say however and this is where the drama of Life Begins however one built his house on the rock and the other built his house on the sand and in just one sentence we we understand we comprehend well yes no matter how nice you are if you build your house

on the sand come on then it says the storms came as they always do and everybody says well yes we got to recognize that and the one that built his house on the rock was saved and the one that built his house on the sand was lost both nice people people which means nice people can make errors in judgment nice people can make careless decisions nice people can make foolish decisions sometimes even fatal here's a nice guy he's married got a wonderful family he lives in Los Angeles he's a good citizen of the community this

is a nice guy he's ambitious he does well he's in Los Angeles driving his car and he's late for an appointment and he's pushing it pushing it pushing it and he comes to the intersection and the light turns red and a little voice in his head says go ahead you're late you can make it and now he's dead nice guy but he's dead when in a split second of time he made a foolish decision so you don't have to go off to some foreign country and die in some foreign war uh to be dead all

you have to do is make a careless decision or a foolish decision at the wrong time and we're all tempted what was that voice I heard this morning that said you don't have to do your exercises this morning you hear that voice too you're running late that voice too you can make up for it you know when you get back from near seminar trip and I said no I've got to do at least a modified version even though I'm late and you just you know that's every day Chris the waitress irritate you and now you've

got a choice Let It Go or make a big deal out of it and embarrass everybody everybody's got the choice M here's a good one I'm walking into nals in Beverly Hills where by the way uh two mornings ago there was Kareem Abdul Jabar I had a nice chat with him um I walk before I walk into the restaurant I I've got two quarters to put into the machine to get my paper a man walks up just ahead of me puts in two quarters opens it up takes out his paper and he holds the door

of the dispenser open and says to me go ahead and take you a copy said you know the newspaper can certainly afford it and he offered for me to take my right new newspaper for free what do you do yeah here's a nice person I got a judgment call to make fortunately maybe because I mama was watching I don't know now my upbringing I said no thank you and he looked very shocked said okay close CL the door and I put in my two quarters and got my paper because the key is if you take

the free paper it could affect you for the rest of the day something will sort of nag at you and say why would you want to feel like this to save two quarter right and sometimes when you do it now that's a good lesson then you won't do it anymore because you just don't want to feel that way anymore that that means maybe part of that's how you've been raised right those little moral questions that you you go through and guilt can be a good teacher yeah it is yeah you you say well yeah I

don't want to feel like this maybe it nags at you for a whole week and you say wow for two lousy quarters I took me the free newspaper never again and uh but sure enough um you know the next time we're tempted again it doesn't mean that the Temptation goes away we get a little bit stronger about you know saying yes to the positive side yeah I because that's the way I really want to live my life after the Bible what uh what other books would you recommend for people to pick up that shaped and

influenced your life you know I'm big on Shakespeare and um Think and Grow Rich changed my life um the richest man in Babylon helped me become a millionaire by the time I was 31 um then all of the I'm a big student student of History Durant will and Ariel Durant wrote all these books on history I go through some of those one book I've got that helped uh lay the foundation for my own library was a book called how to read a book by Mortimer Adler morer Adler yeah and in this book he's got a

list of what he considers you know the best books ever written yeah and I use that as sort of a centerpiece for my for my library yeah did you ever meet David Schwarz uh magic of thinking big no never met that's a good book yeah yeah terrific book yeah then there's a book that years ago and I was in my late 20s um as a man thinketh by James Allen yeah where each sentence is almost like a whole seminar short little book yeah but a dynamic yeah and its effect become a good reader I say

now in my seminars right the books you don't read won't help uh two books a week in a 10year period and you read read a thousand books wow and if over the next 10 years you read a thousand books it will dramatically affect every phase and part of your life yeah you talk about uh the two pains everybody has to experience one of two pains and I think that it it it's one of my favorites that you talk about because it's so profound and it's so true and it's so final it is it is universal

you will experience one of the two pains can you talk a little bit about yeah the little illustration about the newspaper is a good illustration um the pain of discipline or the pain of regret uh go for the discipline because it weighs ounces uh the regret weighs tons because it can accumulate MH discipline versus regret uh um the discipline could be painful but the regret is usually an accumulation that could eventually become overwhelming so better the discipline now but it's true and you know real life if you discipline yourself to plant the crop in the

spring you now have a chance for a multiplied harvest in the in the fall um what you don't plant won't multiply what you neglect I neglected to buy from my friend 8 years ago he offered me this little tiny condo one bedroom little small place in Carmel California yeah Ron said I want $80,000 for this condo I said Ron that's insane uh nobody's going to pay $80,000 for this condo he said okay if you change your mind let me know I'm ready to sell and uh he put it on the market last year toward the

end of last year for $650,000 you know that was one of those times I should have uh listened to the positive side of the voice that said why not buy and he kept it for another eight years right so he in his prayers every night before he goes to sleep he you know thanks the good Lord I didn't buy this cond 880,000 to 650,000 wow um everything's lessons learn right I could have I should have I'll do a better job in the future of making wiser decisions that that's the best counsel we can possibly have

yeah um whether it's you know a bit of waste of time that we could tighten up on or whatever it is uh why not do it then I think one of the greatest joys for me and of course I've made it now has become a business is passing along and and sharing ideas with others that have profoundly affected your own personal life it's a great joy whether I do it in Nova Siberia or whether I do it in South Africa or India or anywhere in the world um the opportunity that if you say something uniquely

enough that it could affect somebody's life or begin the process of affecting somebody's life it's an awesome experience yeah you have a a list of things that people should do everybody should what is it have a Manhattan in Manhattan and oh yeah those life experience those are fun what are some of those experiences you think everybody should do drink of Manhattan in Manhattan yeah you should have Australian Lobster tailes in Australia yeah you should eat uh Boston baked beans in Boston Boston Maui onions are delicious but you have to eat Maui onions in Maui it's

a lot better than the wala wala onions yeah right I'd rather eat onions if you have to eat onions Maui better than wala wala it's a fun list to make yeah yeah yeah you got to drink Canada Dry in Canada yeah yeah yeah if you think long enough you can come up with a pretty good list and say hey that sounds like experiences that I'd like to have how are you spending your time got to have a Singapore Sling in Singapore Singapore yeah I just I I was there just uh 3 or four months ago

Singapore yeah it's a fun list and it's just Teck them off y but then I talked about you know you got to drink in an Arizona Sunset and you know walk the white beaches of Carmel and you know just start making this list let it inspire you yeah um I started teaching this a long time ago and it's surprising how many people come up to me and say you know I've added to my list I'm working on the list you know 20 years ago and I heard you say this here are some of the places

I've gone I probably never would have gone if I hadn't have heard your seminar that's that's exciting yeah yeah how oh you got to have an Idaho baked potato in Idaho yeah you're spending a little bit Beverly Hills and it's okay but you know make the trip yeah just to say you know I had an Idaho baked potato in Idaho yeah so how are you spending your time now when you're not traveling you uh well I used to ride the Jeep trails on my dirt bike but my daughter finally persuaded me daddy she said you

know age 75 I'm not so sure so uh that's sort of passing away but I used to love to do that yeah it was one of my getaway times you know up on top of the mountains riding the Jeep trails and uh either alone or with somebody and and uh good good way to get away yeah no traffic no traffic lights um time alone I think is is really essential sure um to get away contemplate think Wonder something I'm doing now is working on the multi-purpose 7th day huh it says you know work six rest

the seventh but I'm calling the seventh day now multi-purpose uh spirituality and friendship and get away and so on but I'm also saying Chris that seventh day should be a little bit of time spent reviewing the last six days who did I not meet what didn't I do what did I miss what should I tighten up and then make better plans for the next six days I'm going to catch up the next six days some of this that I've missed the last six so that's part of the multi-purpose of the seventh day review six get

better ready for the next six yeah well this has been fascinating 57 minutes and uh we could have been here all day and sometimes we do we go to the the all day or the two-day gyron seminar and so I just want to say thanks for coming in and and spend a little bit of time and giving us some of your stories that you tell all around the world and and truly have impacted so many lives including my own and I appreciate that thanks Chris I appreciate it it's fun to be here my guest today

is Brian Tracy one of America's leading Authorities on the development of human potential and personal Effectiveness he's a dynamic and inspiring speaker addressing subjects of personal professional development to companies such as IBM McDonald Douglas and the million-dollar Roundtable he teaches seminars on leadership self-esteem goals and strategies creativity and practical ideas to get results fast he's authored many books including turbo coach million dooll habits and the 100 absolutely unbreakable laws of business success welcome Brian thank you Chris good to have you here thank you it's a pleasure yeah you have been a mentor to me through

your books and your tapes and millions of other people and so one of the things that I'm really excited about to have you here we're going to talk about some of the books and the audio programs and all those principles um but as I mentioned in the opening one of the things that I really like to help people do is see the person behind the personality because at your level most people see you on a stage in front of a th 2,000 5,000 10,000 people and they don't get to have this chance you know to

just sit down with the man the woman uh who they get to see in these big Arenas and the the big seminars and just just sit there and find out about their life and so I thought it would be interesting for our viewers to find out the person behind the personality so tell me a little bit about yourself your your family where you live uh some of those things to help people get to know you a little bit better well I was born in Canada I was born in Prince Edward Island which is as close

as you can get to uh England without being on a ship and during the war and I grew up in Toronto and then my family moved to California so I grew up in California and my uh whole uh experience is American uh I I love America I'm a passionate American Patriot and then my family moved back to Vancouver British Columbia and I was 16 I finished high school there um I didn't finish but I finished high school yeah uh worked at laboring jobs for several years and then went traveling spent eight years traveling around the

world I've now traveled in 90 countries I've spoken in 42 countries since I became a speaker and uh I began asking the question why is it that some people are more successful than others and coming from a poor background with no money and high school dropout and digging ditches and washing dishes and all of that stuff I was really frustrated I could tell you within a dollar how much money I had in my pocket for several years cuz I had no money I slept on the ground I slept in my car an old car um

I uh went on unemployment once I went on welfare once just once in those days they didn't encourage you to go on welfare uh they said if we ever see you in here again going to be in big trouble I'll tell you they were mean about it so went back to work uh we should try that a little bit more yeah but uh I finally got into sales I couldn't get a job in laboring so I got into sales straight commission sales knocking on doors getting up in the morning I used to get up in

the morning at at 6:00 in the morning I'd be in the parking lot 7:00 waiting for people to come to work and i' knock on doors all day long I say I used to run from place to place so I could be rejected more often uh and I remember one month I made 54 calls and no sales and I just went from place to place I was just so frustrated and just barely hanging on by my fingernails living in a little boarding house a little room um and one day I went to the top salesman

of my company and I said um what are you doing differently from me he was making 10 times as much as anybody else and he said well show me your presentation I'll critique it for you I said well you show me yours and I'll show you mine because I didn't know what a presentation was I was using what I call the blah blah sell I'd find somebody go blah blah blah blah blah and so on and and he said well no no selling is a logical and orderly process that you follow if you want to

make sales and he showed me the process he showed me instead instead of talking all the time to ask questions find out if the person is a real Prospect find out establish Rapport find out their needs present show our product ask it answer their questions close the sale get more sale I had no idea it was a process I was just the light went on I still remember this day I can remember when when when I the light went on you know there's an old saying the more you do of what you're doing the more

you get of what you've got and uh Abraham Mel used to say if if the only tool you have is a hammer then the whole world looks like a nail well the only tool I had was blah blah it's going from place to place and going blah blah about my product he said no no no this a process it's like a recipe if you follow the recipe you can prepare the dish now the Breakthrough for me was very simple is that there's a cause and effect relationship with everything there's a reason everything happens all business

skills are learnable all sales skills are learnable all money-making skills are learnable they are learnable skills everybody who has them didn't have them now they have them well they had to learn them just like typing with a typewriter or using a cell phone or or reading or writing or anything they're all learnable skills and anybody can learn the skills and anybody right 95% of the population can learn virtually any business or any sales or any money-making skills once you've learned the skill you can use it over and over again so if you learned a way

to make money then you can use that over and over again and each time you use it you get better at it and each time you get better at it takes you less time to get the same result and that's why some people are more successful than others that's why people go from ragster riches that's why some people are rich and other people are poor people who are rich found a usually they specialized they found a learned a success skill success sales business management you perfect example uh the the high road to financial success in

our society is entrepreneurship starting and building a business uh 70% of adults want to start and build a business um 80% of all self-made billionaires come from self-owned businesses well what they find is that most people go broke when they start a business and the research is exhaustive and all the answers have been found the reason is because they don't know what they're doing they're flying by the seat of their pants so they're making things up as they go along and they're running it against the clock until they run out of money and then they

go back and work for weight but then you have on the other hand you have serial entrepreneurs Richard Branson is most famous but you have serial entrepreneurs to start business after business after business everyone is successful start it build it sell it start it build it sell it how how can this be it's because they're following a recipe and if you learn the recipe you can start one business after another because as Richard Branson said if you can be successful in one business you can be successful in any business because the principles remain the same

wow and varied businesses from telephones to Airlines to all the businesses he started basic princip go Remain the what I learned is that you can learn any skill you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself and for for me coming from so far behind I thought I was first um I was overwhelmed by the thought and so I went out when I got into Sales Management I did I learned how to sell and I just sold and sold I couldn't couldn't believe how much I could sell within a year I'd

gone from living in a boarding house to having apartments in three cities to flying on Jets to dining in the best restaurants to never having less than a and $20 bills in my pocket I have a Swiss bank account I mean it was just unbelievable I couldn't and it gone literally from 24 to 25 why it's because I learned the ways to sell and I practiced it over and over again I got better and better at it made more and more sales not mysterious then I got into Sales Management failed completely and I realized who

who who sales management is very different from sales so I went back and I spoke to sales managers and I read the books and the Articles and I learned how to do I learned the recipes the formulas there's a there's a the principle I learned I say that all of success is is combinations and recipes and formulas a combination is like a combination lock if you have the three numbers and you turn the numbers in sequence the lock opens and the lock doesn't care you know if you if you do what other successful people do

then the lock opens for you if if you don't the lock doesn't care I say success is just like a combination lock but with more numbers I just find out the numbers turn to the numbers in the proper sequence and it opens for you and that's why people can come to America from 194 different countries now and become successful because what the Smart Ones do and I've spoken to thousands of them they get here and they ask around they look at members of their Community who are successful they say how does it work in this

country they say this is this is the combination this is the formula so they follow the formula till they Master it 10 years later still not speaking English half the time they've got large businesses they're millionaires their kids are in Harvard and everything else Jesus sure lucky they were lucky they they never knew these things before anyway so the second thing is is is recipes and what I say is is a recipe is a combination of ingredients in a certain way and if anybody has ever developed a favorite recipe then they they got the recipe

they took it home they got the ingredients and I made it up and sometimes I'll ask my audience I say how how did it taste the first time and they said not very good now here's an an important thing nothing works the first time nothing works the first five or 10 times sometimes you'll have to work at something for years before it works some of the biggest breakthroughs in history took six seven years yeah perfect example the fax machine the fax machine was developed by the way at the same time that Federal Express was trying

to develop an electronic message center they spent $185 million at it somebody invented a fax machine and Federal Express wrote off their investment because the fax machine could do it almost at no cost but it took almost six or seven years before the fax machine hit critical mass and almost all of us remember uh oh have you got a fax machine no but the people down the hallway do we can go down and use their fax machine remember that now kids have fax machines well once it took off it's sold by the tens of millions

literally transformed the world cell phon stragg along you might used to have a suitcase for a cell phone it took five or six or seven years and suddenly they got the technology right and the price right boom personal computers each one of these things at a certain point the the IBM best research at IBM said the World Market for personal computers has no more than 3 to 400 units mhm that's what they said in what 1975 76 so they just walked away from it then Apple came along and built their computer in a garage and

the World Market became 100 billion units yeah uh so when you start off with a new recipe it's not going to work now what happens when people get a new idea and they put it all together and try it out and it doesn't work they give up but the person who has tasted a dish let's say you and I go to a friend's house or a restaurant and they have a really great can I have this recipe and say yeah take the recipe home and we and we try it and it Tes tastes terrible we

say wait a minute we have an advantage we know this can taste good because we have tasted it we're not positive thinkers we're not wishing and hoping and dream we know it's just a matter of going back and looking at the way we mixed it and they usually call the person who cooked it for him and say I cooked it but didn't taste that way and then they get some help yeah do a little bit of this that did you remember to do this or wait let us sit and so I have a good friend

one of my clients and he he started off in sales and uh his for six months he spun his wheels and sold nothing and then he got a hold of my psychology of selling and he told me go over lunch because he he had hired me to address his organization which was 2,000 people live and 85,000 people by satellite and so we're talking over Lun he said you know you changed my life took me from Rax to riches now a very wealthy person and multiple businesses and so on and he said it was that cause

and effect thing in your program here I was I've been selling for 6 months I couldn't sell anything I was really desperate and I was in my 20s had a family de feat and then I got that program I listened to it and I said if you put in the right causes you get the right effects well the effect I wanted was sell was sales I wanted to make money but I must I really I must be I must not be putting in the right causes so like a a recipe went back and he looked

at each ingredient and he said oh I have to do more of this and less of that I have to say and he began to change his for sales recipe if you like within six more months he was top in his company within three more years he was top in the country today he's worth about $21 million he's very successful he said is that cause and effect he said if you just find out what other people have done to achieve the same result you'll achieve it yourself yeah yeah so the the third thing I talk

about was formulas and and there's a when you say this is a scientific formula or this has been this is scientific the what does that mean mean well I came across this great concept recently and the word that the scientists use is replicability it's replicable if it is a truly scientific formula I say it may have been developed over many years by Geniuses but now it can be used successfully by morons and when you understand that that's why you see people I say there's nothing will make you matter than to see somebody dumber than you

making more money than you yeah how could that person be making more money they're so dumb they can't find their behind with both hands well the answer is they found a scientific formula a success we call it a success formula for their particular field whether it's running a business or recipe or or selling or making money or anything else I have a good friend we were here at Dallas talking I have a good friend here in Dallas who heard that you could buy houses and you could accumulate houses by buying them at the proper prices

and then financing them and so on well he had just gone broke in a business and he heard about this and he looked at people who were doing it who did not look like they were Road Scholars and so he said I'm going to buy 100 houses and he went out and over the next three years he bought and accumulated a 100 houses now here's what happens the first house was very hard he had to look at a lot of houses he had to do a lot of inspections he had to the the first one

is always hard first sale is the hardest you know the first person you hire as a entrepreneur is the hardest but then he realized there was a system to this so he attended a couple of courses and he read the books and learned the system and then he bought a second half house and he was able to finance in and finance out of that and then a third house he start off with no money he say go with 100 houses in 3 years he had a 100 houses and about $3 million in equity wow he

said well it works and now he can probably drive down a street see a house for sale decide instantaneously whether he's pick up the phone and get a deal done in a day yeah because he learned it it's easy to do for but it was hard at the beginning it was hard at the beginning he made a lot of mistakes and and what happens with most people when they make mistakes at the beginning they think that they may be must be deficient in some way or the systems deficient or the products deficient no this is

the price that nature demands for success is you must fail so all great successes have been great failures successful people fail over and over again whereas unsuccessful people fail once and quick mhh reminds me GK Chester in speaking he said it's not that it's been tried and found wanting it's been found difficult and left untried do you think I mean do you think that that's really why most people never achieve that kind of thing is because they gets hard and they just stop I mean is it is it as simple as that well almost all

of us all of us have deep deep down fears of failure yeah and it's the greatest single obstacle to success and it's very easily triggered it's very easily triggered by any kind of frustration like we're on our our way to work and we got an appointment and a traffic jam coming over here today there was a traffic jam on the other side car was on fire they blocked off the entire freeway for 25 miles everything was sto well that person gets on there in the traffic jam and and I'm going to miss the appointment I'm

going to miss the deal I'm going to miss everything else oh damn and and they and they they develop what's called learned helplessness is they feel helpless I can't do anything then next time they think well what's the use so don't even bother at all and eventually I say they they talk themselves in and they talk themselves right out of doing what is necessary for Success where successful people they say Okay sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't what's the next thing I I was stuck in a traffic jam recently I was driving along the freeway

and I was out in the countryside and and you could see you're driving along about 70 80 M an hour and suddenly every all the cars are stopping stopping stopping do you realize there there's a jam up there and you can't see but you can see way ahead car is jammed the other side's whipping along so I'm sitting there and just almost at an off-ramp and uh you're thinking well should I sit in draff and away and then I saw a couple of guys in pickups four-wheel drives SUVs going right up the side of the

ramp back on the road they I mean they driving off the road D driving down the the uh the uh the Boulevard and right up the ramp and on the road and getting out and finding another route and I thought that's for me so I so I turned off and I drove and drove and drove and I finally drove all the way around this traffic J which was about 15 20 mil long wow got back onto the freeway and was empty freeway is like was like an empty parking lot and got I drove home well

I learned later that a semi had turned over and the traffic was backed up for 3 hours the entire afternoon this about 2:00 for the entire afternoon those people who did not move quickly we're stop now there's a metaphor there I mean that's that's what successful people can do in life if things don't work they try something else they move quickly I don't say oh well maybe things will get better you know the masses just sit there and go I wonder why we're not moving that's right so you find that entrepreneurs are very fast on

their feet yeah you know the the here in Dallas they made that movie it was in Houston Apollo 13 and Eugene CR was famous for that line um where he stands up and he tells everybody he said ladies and gentlemen he said there's people talking about what we will do and how we will explain it if it doesn't work out and they all die and people are thinking of covering themselves so I want to tell you something failure is not an option yeah failure is not an option and uh that has to be your philosophy

as far as I'm concerned failure is not an option the the possibility of failure is is not even considered m there will be temporary setbacks and defeats and disappointments uh most self-made millionaires have been been broke 2.3 times broke or nearly broke 2.3 times before they made it some of the most successful people in America at one time Henry Ford was the richest man in America he was bankrupt the age of 40 third time most most amazing story just never stopped and that's the most wonderful thing if you would ask what's the key to the

key to success is to become Unstoppable well that's one of the amazing things about sitting here with successful people like yourself is I hear it over and over and over I was born in poverty you know Albert men I was born in Ghana in a hut you know and and I like for the viewers to see everybody saying I've had obstacles I had you know cancer I had I was born into poverty and it it helps people say wow if they can do it I can do it yeah because there's nothing that stops me from

that now here's here's a couple of quick points and I I said tell this to my my audiences I say remember this nobody is better than you and nobody is smarter than you get that out of your head because that is a killer that's a self- sabotaging idea you see somebody doing better than you the natural conclusion is if he or she is doing better then he must be better no they're not better than you they're not smarter than you they just learn the cause and effect relationships before you did some of them are idiots

but what they thought and but but an idiot who's got the right formula will be successful whereas a genius who doesn't driving a taxi cap at the age of 50 so nobody's smarter than you nobody's better than you you have more intelligence and potential than you could ever use in 100 lifetimes if the the question is if it doesn't work try something else and the it's very much like like working out with weights if you want to build muscle I used to be a a bodybuilder what you do is you pump iron and pumping iron

what you do is you pump blood into your muscles and it breaks all the capillaries it actually is an act of Destruction and then your body repairs itself and builds new capillaries around which is how you build muscles and it's the same thing with your mind is when you have experiences and you have setbacks that are distressing and you learn from them your mind pumps iron you get smarter you become quicker you become more alert you become more aware there's a price that you pay you can't go from innocence to success in a highly competitive

Society without getting bruised a bit it's like someone wants to be a championship boxer just doesn't want to get punched you know what they say everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die well everybody wants to be rich but nobody wants to take the pounding that is necessary to be financially independent just keep remembering failure is not an option I'm unstoppable nobody's smarter than me nobody's better than me if they're doing better it's because they figured out the formula before me but if hundreds of thousands of millions of people America today has

8.2 million millionaires almost all of whom are self-made uh my daughter was was married in August and uh my first daughter and four children daughter two boys and a daughter and married to a wonderful uh young man comes from a uh good family just and and so we they she decided uh she wanted to have the wedding at our home and so we sat down and you never want to talk about how much it costs they they won't even tell me afterwards because it's too heartbreaking I have three daughters so don't tell me that the

costs are unbelievable whatever whatever whatever number they give you at the as the maximum maximum number multiply it by two um anyway so so so in order to combate 160 people they had this beautiful tent like something out of the Arabian nights and bands and music and sushi bars and and and karaoke and flowers that you cannot believe everything and so we're at this um at at the wedding reception after the wedding and my my son-in-law Christina's uh husband uh his family they brought the whole family down and they're all in our house from from

Los Angeles in 90 90 minute to to our drive and they're all standing around and of course there's a lot of you know face here we want to be able to put on a wonderful wedding for your daughter and these people are wealthy they own large businesses and law firms and everything else so they brought them all down none of them have ever been there before looking around it's not a bad house and the wedding is beautiful and everything is so I'm sitting there talking to two of them the most successful of them all and

uh they said this is a beautiful house um Brian and done a wonderful job here I said well I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to do this for my daughter especially since I started with nothing and I've made it everything I've done by myself and and the other person who's in charge of 102 lawyer law firm with 250 staff supporting the lawyers multi multimillion he said well I started with nothing too he said when you know when I got out of school I had nothing my family had nothing the guy

next to him is a senior part well I have nothing then they were referring to my my I call my father-in-law the father of my my son-in-law Larry started with nothing too we're talking around everybody started with nothing everywhere I go I talk to my best friend one of my best friends who who's got now a real estate Fortune about $25 million he a immigrant came over it started with nothing I find that this a story of America everybody starts with nothing people well I don't have anything to start off with well join the crowd

well even the people on the Forbes 400 the people who inherited it they got it from somebody who started with nothing it always is traced back to somebody started with nothing yeah it's and it's the most amazing joh it's amazing how many self-made billionaires there are the richest people in America if you start to look at the richest people in America I follow this and you follow it number one Bill Gates started with nothing you know good education good family but nothing self-made and number two Warren Buffett started with nothing self made number three um

probably Larry Ellison Oracle started with nothing Michael Dell started with nothing Paul Allen started with nothing and the next five are the descendants of Sam Walton who started with nothing and at the end he basically was still driving that old blue pickup truck you know CU he didn't need anything yeah yeah I mean just I mean the richest people in our country and most respected now here's here 's a difference between America and most of the world I speak all over the world I speak French German Spanish I speak do all kinds of seminars multiple

languages and cultures but one of the differences in America is that if you started a business and you failed in the business and I meet you um for for dinner or socially I say how's your business going you say well I went busted I to shut the doors went bankrupt my reaction would be geez that's amazing what happened no I did this I didn't do that well what would you do next time well I do little bit this what are your plans want we start another business other words in America going bankrupt is not a

mark of Shame it's it's a it's a mark of maturity it's a means it means that you took a chance you gave a shot and it didn't work and whenever you speak to a person went bankrupt they're talking about their next business their next project in America you can start a business within 24 hours if you go onto the internet you do it even faster than that we have the fastest rate of do business formation of any country in the world we have the we have the most entrepreneurial country in the world according to the

oecd in Paris we have more people starting more businesses in more areas because you can start a business by just saying I think I will have a business you and I could say Chris why why don't we start a business okay and we're in business we can start we we can start buying and selling before we get any paper signed you said let's buy some stuff from these guys and sell it okay great I'll put in some money you put in some money we're in business before we walk out of the building yeah we can

do that that's not possible in 95% of the world's countries so so so America is wonderful and if and if we fail what are you to try something else yeah that's the attitude that all successful people have I always find it interesting you know we talk about his America great and all these and and the fact is if you if you open the borders up the Earth would tilt off its axis because everybody would rotate over to America because everybody wants to pursue it's the American dream nobody talks about the Chinese dream or the European

Dream It's the American dream of being able to build your own wealth and and set your own destiny and and that type of thing one of the um things I wanted to ask you about knowing you were going to be on the show I I got a whole list of things I wanted to talk to you about secrets of self-made Millionaires and I know that that's one of your major courses of research what are some of the the secrets of self-made millionaires the people who start with nothing like we've been talking about and they end

up at the end with a big stash yeah millionaires what what are what are the secrets of that my book The Secrets the 21 success secrets of self-made millionaires has just 21 qualities and I won't give you all of them but but they're very simple and and and lacking the absence of any one of them can be fatal I say first of all um Dream Big Dreams I found that the number one reason that people do not become wealthy is because it never occurs to them that they can become wealthy it never occurs to them

and so uh they never say hey I can become wealthy too because if you've been brought up in a poor background if you associate with people who don't have much money if you've been broke or you know have too much month at the end of the money uh for too long it'll never Dawn on you that it's possible to do it any other way you get you fall into it and negative comfort so the number two reason that people don't become Su successful is they never make a decision to oh I'd like to and I

want to and I hope to and I wish to and so on but they don't make a decision because if you make a decision that by gum I'm going to do it and you'll find that every successful person is a decisive person at a certain point they said all right I'm going to do it I'm going to get in here in Texas they have this great card game Texas holdom or or yeah Texas hold now in Texas holdom which is one of the most popular games of all there's there's that point in Texas Holdem where

you go all in yeah all the chips in the middle now it can be be because you're you're down to your last few chips and you have no choice because you can't match to anybody else or it can be because you got a great hand but you go all in they don't play Texas whole of any other country in the world because in America we go all in if we we make a decision and we go all in and if we lose it then we pick ourselves up and try it again so uh the first

one is they is they um never never curs and they don't decide to uh and then if they do decide to they procrastinate and they say well I'm going to but not yet they they they say first of all I'm going to take a brief vacation to a wonderful uh fantasy place called Sunday aisle and so they go to someday aisle Sunday I'll give that a chance and someday I'll read that book and someday I'll set some goals someday I'll live within my means and save some money and so on as they live on someday

aisle for the rest of their lives and so it goes on like that so I say Dream Big Dreams and just remember and I finished and talk to 800 people last week and I was talking to them about the strategies of successful entrepreneurs and at the end I said remember this 5% of adults in our society are going to become millionaires but we don't know who they are we know that of any hundred adults walking around today at the end of their or halfway through their career five will be millionaires but because of the uncertainty

principle we don't know just exactly which ones they are I say so let's take this room and let's say not 5% of the people in this room let's say 100% % of the people in this room are going to be in the 5% so I want you to just say these words I am a millionaire everybody said it I am a millionaire and good now from this moment on make that come true make it come true decide to and take action on it and everybody's really happy with that concept because it never occurred to the

thing I'm a millionaire and they probably felt uncomfortable the first time or the first five times that you had them say it yeah and then I said remember everybody who's Rich today was once poor everybody's at the top was once at bottom and nobody's better than you and nobody's smarter than you so there's 100,000 ways that you can become millionaires I said before we have 8.2 million millionaires that means we have hundreds of thousands and millions of men and women who started with nothing and become millionaires so if all of those people can do it

hundreds of thousands and millions of them can do it then so can you just make a decision and if you took it all away from them and redistributed the wealth to everybody which some people would love to do you and I wouldn't agree with that but just out give it 20 years 30 years what's going to happen give it one or two give it one or two years yeah exactly it's all going to gravitate right back to those people who learn how to do it yeah it's like in in Russia they gave away you know

State companies and some companies countries they will um what what they what's the word I'm looking for they will nationalize that or denationalize they'll take a state bank or a state Railroad and give out shares to everybody within a year or two most of the shares are in the hands of a few people they've bought them all up um you know you're talking about tilting the world on its access uh my friend Bill Bennett who used to be the Secretary of Education was once asked by high school student what is the um how can you

tell a good country um From a Bad Country he said because we read all these negative things in the paper about America right now America is the most prosperous country in the history of the world there is more Economic Opportunity more possibilities greater longevity faster levels of growth lower levels of unemployment higher levels of home ownership and more possibilities than any other country at any other time in human history this is the best country this is this is the dream this is the golden age that man has dreamed about for years and years and years

and yet four out of five stories in the Press condemn the American economy the majority of Americans today believe that America is in a recession they say oh I'm doing really well but just read the papers America is in a recession it has never been better anyway so they asked Bill Bennett the student asked Bill Bennett how can you tell what if a country is a good country or not with everything we read he said well it's very simple he said you use the gate test and what is the gate test he said you just

raise the gate and watch which way the people go exactly is that great that's what you were saying about tilting the ex you know we don't even have to raise the gate I mean we have to have thousands of people basically almost arm to arm on on the borders to keep people out because everybody wants to come here from every country in the world there's no country in the world people trying to get into no other country they're not trying to jam into Germany or France or Russia or China or Japan or anywhere else yeah

nobody else has immigration problems that's right do you know do you know that that that America um is is the most generous country in the world is that we give more in charity nationally and internationally than all the other countries in the world put together and they say oh we only give 1. 6.16% of our gross national product but they don't realize that America most giving is private giving sure it's by the tens of billions you know the charity alone was last year was $186 billion and it goes up every single year no matter how

much they change the taxes people give more and more and more tens of millions look at the gates have given what $ 46 billion do to to Charities we take in more immigrant legally about illegally each year that all the rest of the countries in the world put together people always saying America is this America is that yes we're the most generous we're the most open we're the most giving the most prosperous Society in history so you can never underestimate the power of Envy The Power of Envy explains almost everything that's happening in our world

today well and and uh I was talking to Albert at the same table and he said that's what drove him he was in Ghana they put a they put a movie an American movie up on a side of a building and he said everybody has shoes in that movie everybody they're all wearing shoes he had never seen a fork before and and or a spoon he he didn't they always ate with SP o n and and and that's what drives them they see yeah they see and they want to they want to move here because

of the American dream yeah well you know there's there's a a a MIG pilot the man who flew the Russian Mig out of uh Russia into hikido in Japan many years ago was a big big story big controversy and everything else well they asked him why he defected he said well he was a colonel in the so in Soviet Air Force he said well the they taken the movie The Grapes of rra starring Henry Fonda and they were playing it all over the country it was a 30 1935 movie okay they were playing it all

over the country as though this was an actual depiction of America today Dust Bowl everything else and people kept going back to see the movie and the Russians thought this was a great propaganda coup people going back and then they asked them why they said the poorest people in America have got cars and they had to pull the movie from every screen in Russia because it made every he said I want to go to a place where the poor people have cars I have a good friend from India who who was talking to to a

friend of his he's immigrant here very successful he talking to a friend of his in India he said all I do want to do in my life is is go to America he said why he said I want to go to a land where the poor people are [Music] [Applause] fat because you know which is which is the case most amazing darn thing Bill Gates uh has been very generous in speaking to University students and he was once asked a question which came up several times he asked answered it the same way he said if

a person was standing behind a screen and you could only ask him one question you Bill Gates richest man in the world ask him one question uh um uh and the and the and the question uh was to determine his economic prospects okay what question would you ask and he said the question is very simple I said what country do you live in because if you live in the United States your economic prospects are better than if you live anywhere else in the world your chances you're you're in the ball game yeah and and then

he then later on he was piggyback they said well if you could ask him a second question what would it be and he would say what is your level of Education what country do you live in what is your level of Education those will more predict your success than anything else now when I was in my U teens I fail out of high school when I was in my 30s I went back and took an entire NBA program at leading University and I didn't learn a damn thing and and I and I share this with

my audiences because a lot of people have this this uncomfortable feeling that they really can't be successful because they didn't get a great degree so one of the things I emphasize is forget about it what I discovered and when I'm taking the MBI I do a lot of resech sech is that 2 years after you leave school whatever School you leave whether it's Harvard or huab buck University 2 years after you leave school and start work nobody cares about what school you went to for the rest of your life all they care about is your

performance on the job now and you can get the best education by reading practical stuff by listening to practical programs by listening to practical audios and seeing practical DVDs you can learn more in a few hours with someone like you or I who's been out there in the front trenches share in really practical stuff than you could in hours and hours and hours of the university the very best education is self-directed education and there's a reason for this if you go to the university 95% of what they teach you is unusable and you'll forget it

by the time you get home after graduation but if you are learning self-directed everything you learn you have selected because it will help you now to do your job better so you're a self-directed education if you have the discipline to do it it's worth 10 20 times University education so never let yourself be held back because you feel you lacked of formal education because most of those people with formal educations are working for people who dropped out of high school yeah yeah yeah speaking of practical stuff one of the my favorite titles of anything you've

ever done ultimately very practical because it has to do with what we do every day eat the frog or eat that frog that frog eat that frog okay tell us about that cuz I I think it's just a brilliant title for one thing it's engaging and and intrigu what is that well it it's based on a little story it says if the first thing you do when you get up in the morning is you eat a live frog then you'll have the pleasure of knowing throughout the day that's probably the worst thing that's going to

happen to you all day long right now your live frog is your biggest and ugliest task it's the one that will make the biggest difference in your life the one that counts the most the one has the greatest impact and it's also the one you're most likely to procrastinate on so then there's two corollaries to eating the frog one is if uh you have I have to eat two frogs eat the ugliest one first and the second corollary is if you have to eat the Frog at all it doesn't pay to sit and look at

it for too long just get on with it so so so here's the key to success uh here's one of the great keys to success is make a list of everything you have to do each day and go over the list and say if I could only do one thing on this list which one thing would have the greatest positive impact on my life and career put a one next to that and then say ask the question again if I could only do two things too and write it down to seven and then start on

number one and if you can start on number one and discipline yourself to stay at number one until it's finished you will double your productivity that day if you do this repeatedly you will soon develop a habit of starting on number one you will double your productivity and double it again and double it again and become a great success in life and if you can't do that you'll always have to work for someone else who will supervise you and hold your own hold your feet to the fire and make you do it and so that's

the choice is the only 2% of the American population 2 to 3% have the ability to discipline themselves to do their most important task and do only that until it's done and those people make all the money the top 1% of Americans pay 34. 47% of the income taxes because the top 1% make that much money the top 5% pay you know 45% the top 10% pay 55% the the bottom three point the bottom 50% of American an pay 3.4% of all the taxes in other words they pay nothing they're off the rules that's why

they always vote for more taxes on the rid right so I want to talk about another one of your uh programs which is I'm I'm guessing it's probably your best selling of all time psychology of selling is that well the psychology of selling is the best selling audio program on sales in the history of the world right it's not my best selling because I my my psychology of achievement is sold even more oh it is okay but psychology of selling has uh been a top seller in 16 languages in 24 countries and it's the best

seller in the English language outsold all other programs ever produced put together more people have become millionaires listen to psychology of selling in sales than any other single influence so it's it's it's really good so tell me the principles that are behind that obviously it's a multic CD uh program but what are the basic principles of the psychology of selling well the the the the starting off principle is this is that top salespeople have high self-esteem which means they like themselves and respect themselves and value themselves the word they feel comfortable in their own skin

and when you genuinely like yourself you you you're not continually preoccupied with what other people might think of you you just like yourself so therefore you like other people and the more you like other people the more they like you back and the more they want to buy from you and recommend you to their friends so that's the starting point of the psychology of selling is that 80 90% of your success is going to be determined by how well you get along with others by how much they like you because because there's a there's a

factor that says that people people will not buy from you unless they like you and trust you and starts with liking yourself yes it starts with liking yourself what if you don't I mean there are people out there who who they don't and maybe it's self-confidence they don't feel confident about themselves they they they're unsure of themselves how do you get that I mean it's it's not something you go well today I'm going to like myself okay one of the things we teach people to just say continually throughout the day like lifting weights it's keep

saying I like myself I like myself I like myself I like myself and then we say make other people like themselves now the way that you make other people like themselves you make other people feel important which is what Dale Carnegie wrote 75 years ago is just make people feel important make them feel appreciated thank them uh congratulate them appraise them admire them be a nice person don't argue with them just be a nice just be a genuinely nice person the number one word to describe the highest paid salespeople in every field in America is

he or she is a nice person why do you buy from that company why do you buy from that person well he she they they're nice people but what about with the product you get a cheaper somewhere else get better yeah I I might prefer to go there they're nice people they're really nice people they Tre they treat me well when I phone up they always treat me well when when I have a problem they treat me well so you find that your your most successful people are nice people but that niess is is a

genuine expression of their self-esteem so let's say a person starts off with low self-esteem as I did as you did everybody does all right well self-esteem is like physical fitness it's a form of mental Fitness how do you become mentally fit well what we found find is that that self-esteem comes from feeling that you're valuable feeling that you're a winner so how do you feel like a winner well you win and how do you win is you set goals and you make plans to achieve the goals and you work on your major goals each day

and each time you take a step toward achieving a goal that you set for yourself you like yourself you respect yourself your self-confidence and self-esteem goes up and when you accomplish a goal you get a surge of self-esteem your brain releases endorphins you feel happy and elated you like other people you know when I'm in love I feel 10t tall you know everybody loves a lover remember that song well that's when when you're successful you feel wonderful about yourself and that's why they say the very best time to make a sale is right after having

made a sale because when you make a sale you get this this Rush of endorphin you feel happy and when you go in to see another person the person has not changed but you've changed you're more positive you're warmer you're more you have more energy you're more enthusiastic people just love to be around you and and sometimes you can get into a role where you make several sales in a day at the end of the day you're just just racing because you're having so much success so do you think it's incremental that that you everybody

starts here and you might you would never feel comfortable in a room full of billionaires but then you make $100,000 and now you're saying hey I feel comfortable around these people that make $100,000 then pretty soon I'm a millionaire and now I is it is it just a matter of getting ourselves to the next level and and feeling yeah a sense of belonging there you know there there's there's one of the laws I have a whole lot of laws in one of my programs I something like a 100 Laws of Success what is called the

law of incremental Improvement the law of incremental Improvement says nobody leaps from from average to Superior it's one step at a time and everybody who is successful is impatient so they say I like to be wealthy well they went now now well yesterday okay you've made the decision but be prepared to put in the time yeah I I say to to be get to the top of your field you must become very good at what you do is one of the secrets of self-made millionaires first of all they have Big Dreams second of all they

accept responsibility they third them all they third of all they commit themselves to becoming excellent at what they do uh fourth of all they set clear goals have a clear sense of direction they constantly upgrade their skills they're teachable they learn so so we say to be in the top 10% in your field you're going to have to be in the top 10% in your field which means you're going to have to become very good at what you do there's no average there's no high pay for average performance and so how long does it take

to get into the top 10% this there's 50 years of studies on the subject of Mastery how long does it take for a person to achieve Mastery average 7 years 7 years and 10,000 hours of hard work and you and I are our speakers and one of the things when I started off speaking I would see other speakers who spoke so fluently and fluidly and beautifully you have some of them on this show like Zig Ziggler Dennis weighty wow these people are so competent they're so smooth their timing is beautiful and of course I when

you start off you're rough and good ideas and enthusiasm but you're you know you're you're unpolished as I say well then I learned something very valuable is that success in speaking comes from the number of hours you speak if you speak a few hours a year it'll take you a lifetime you'll never be good if you speak like the professionals do uh 100 talks a year average of 3 hours of talk 300 to 500 hours a year after 10 years uh you've done uh 3,000 hours after 20 years you've done 6,000 hours and nothing replaces

the hours on your feet in front of a critical public audience well it's the same thing in speaking it takes about seven years before you have spoken enough so that you're really good selling diesel mechanics neurosurgery Dentistry takes seven years law accounting takes seven years and when you when I first heard that someone said take will take you seven years to master your craft I was on been it for about 3 years I said no darn way not seven years not me I want took seven years yeah so people say if you want to if

you want to be one of the highest paid salespeople in your industry it will take seven years that's not just seven years of doing the job you've got to be reading studying practicing starting earlier working harder staying later I mean you have to put it in if you want to achieve Mastery because there's a lot of competition out there people say oh gee you know seven years I mean s years from now I'll be I'll be I'll be seven years older in seven years years I'll be 38 years so I asked this question I say

really I said now tell me how much older will you be in seven years in any case yeah and it stops them I say the only difference is are you going to be earning an average wage or you going to be at the top of your field are you going to be average like most people are you going to be one of the highest paid people in America the time is going to pass anyway it's one of the great success principles the time is going to pass anyway so get on with it because one of

the biggest regrets we have in life is I put off getting on with it too if had just put my head down when I was 25 I would be at the top of my field today well you can't change the past you could change the future so start now some people just decide at the age of 50 by gum I'm going to be one of the top people now fortunately they don't have to spend seven years because they've got a lot of investment and two to three years of hard work and suddenly they're earning 10

times what they were earning before because some people don't realize how close they are to breaking through so one of the things I love about you Brian is you always have something new you you're always reading something you're always bringing some new statistic what is exciting to you right now what what are the things that are fascinating you that that you want to do more research on that you're learning about that you see as our immediate future uh what are you learning and growing with right now well I I study in a variety of areas

I study uh politics I study economics I study business I study uh spiritual uh things uh history and so on my my big thing right now is the centrality of Entrepreneurship to uh every society and what I've concluded and I've started to write extensively on this is that the the rate of new business formation in any society determines the health and prosperity and growth and opportunities and future of that Society so prosperous societies have high rates of competent new business formation and poor societies have very low rates corrupt societies have TR rates our friend from

Ghana will tell you take six to 18 months to start a business in Ghana cost thousands of dollars of corruption and bribes and once you start in a business you put a red flag for the corrupt officials who come around and Shake You Down every few days and make unable to do your business so the so the Gan are some of the most entrepreneurial people in Africa and they're just totally frustrated in their ability to break out well in America you can start a business overnight and my job my goal my the things I'm most

enthusiastic about is teaching people how to start and build successful businesses because these are skills and every business that goes broke goes broke because it's like a ship that Founders on a rock is they don't understand the importance of marketing or costing or pricing or advertising or budgeting or planning or organize or or hiring or delegating or supervising or or selling or collecting or working with their Banks and all of these are skills that entrepreneurs you can either take a whole life to get them or you can take them faster so what I'm most excited

about is helping America to become even more entrepreneurial by not just having two million people a year start businesses but having more and more of them start businesses knowing what they're doing and then roll it out worldwide because I think the key to prosperity for Russia for China obviously for Latin America for every country is vibrant rate of new business development and that's what offers more possibilities for more individuals to achieve more of their goals to be independent to be self-reliant to be financially well off to to achieve all their goals and abilities so that's

what I'm kind of excited about so somebody's watching right now and they're working somewhere working for somebody else at the j o and they and they say I really want I I'm listening to Brian I listen to the other people on TST and I want to be a millionaire I want to achieve a greater life for myself and I know that I'm stuck where I'm at yes and I know that the key is entrepreneu entrepreneurism What do I do well the starting point is to remember this is that the key to entrepreneurial success is you

have to sell something to somebody you have to find something at One Price or create it or build it or buy it or import it or distribute it and sell it at a higher price in America you can start there's a thousand businesses you can start for less than $25 or less $50 um multi-level marketing is a high road most people go into multi-level marketing don't make a lot of money in multi-level marketing but they learn the business skills that enable them to succeed at a greater level in other areas um you can start a

small business on the side sometimes for example give you an example there a very there's a thriving business in garage sales is people have garage sales and they're professional garage sale buyers who are waiting literally you start your garage sale at 8:00 Saturday morning they're there with their trucks they are developed the ability to pick and choose and get the best stuff and they accumulate and then what they do is they sell it in swap meets they sell it an antiqu or they hold their own garage sales um and then there's the ultimate garage sale

eBay exactly people sell anything to anybody anywhere absolutely so what they what there's so many different ways of doing it but just please understand key is you have to buy and sell something people say well I'm not very good at sales get over it for heaven's sakes selling you everybody could sell I mean if if if we sell to our kids to go to bed on time to clean up their rooms it's selling and persuasion are skills that you can learn and once you've learned the skill of being able to buy something and then sell

it to somebody else by explaining to them why it's a good idea that they buy it the more you do it the better you get at it the better you get at it the more of it you can do and so just remember that the starting point of becoming a self-made millionaire is to buy and sell a good or service and to get better and better at doing this and read the books on entrepreneurship study your craft learn what you need to learn and there's really no limits to what you could accomplish what top three

books would you recommend to people to read well in what field you have to tell me the field General personal development General personal development in personal development I would recommend my book maximum achievement okay many people say it's um as good or maybe the best ever written it's different from any of the other success authors uh and builds on top um in terms of selling I would recommend um Advanced selling uh strategies my book on selling uh in terms of U business in in general I would recommend the practice of management by Peter Ducker in

terms of um in terms of Spiritual Development I would recommend the book The Sermon on the Mount by by Amit Fox uh in terms of economics I'd recommend lud misus um uh so in history probably ajp tayor if you know there there's every single field sure uh I love the idea of of reading books because you get to sit down with people who you'd never be able to sit down now granted we're not sitting down across the table from them but we're able to hear their ideas and hear their thoughts and and I don't think

people get that no you know what what is the importance of of books here's a couple of points is is first of all you have you have maintenance reading and you have growth reading maintenance reading is magazines newspapers newsletters uh emails uh internet uh all that stuff is uh maintenance reading that keeps you current with your field does not help you advance but it keeps you current you have to do that just like eating the right Foods growth reading comes only comes from books is when you read books that you actually deepen yourself you actually

expand your wisdom and knowledge you get things out of books that are almost impossible to get out of any other shorter Source but the second thing is is audio listening is I uh my whole life changed when I discovered audio listening and the average person who drives drives 500 to 1,000 hours a year that's enough to get the equivalent of a university education every year just listen listening to really good audios on your business on sales on relationships on Health on time management on goals and so on you can become one of the smartest and

highest paid people in the world just listening to audios and then of course watching this program and watching DVDs that uh have experiences that you couldn't get without paying large amounts of money and traveling great distances so if I were to give the big three for me for success is number one take responsibility number two is write goals make plans work find them every day and number three is dedicate yourself to lifelong learning because you can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for yourself that's good uh I wanted

to get the million dollar habits so let's just get the $1 million doll habit give me give me the million doll habit because I know that's another thing I will give you just a double just decide what you really really really really want in life Financial Independence and then make a decision that you will persist until you succeed you will never give up until you achieve it make the decision shut the door behind you as far as you're concerned is you will never give up failure is not an option well just like uh your books

and your audio programs sitting across the table from you has been fascinating and I appreciate you being here with us thank you Chris thanks welcome Mark thanks for having me yeah good to have you here I'm elated yeah so let's let's Dive Right into um into your book Chicken Soup for the Soul 110 million copies right at at at uh previous uh count is is 110 million probably going to be a little bit more than that if you have anything to do about it right yep oh yeah we're our goal is because I teach people

to think bigger than they ever thought they could think Chris so our goal is to sell a billion books by 2020 ad that's our perfect 2020 vision and uh all my critics which I have a fair amount of say that can't be done I say well look I'm 10% of gold and and you know all those Publishers at the front end said you couldn't do it and then our agent fired us and then you know so we've gone through a lot of fiery Hoops to get here and and we got some new cool stuff happening

and and there's a World Market with 7 billion people and you know we've taken Market places that no one else has ever tried to touch like chicken soup of the expectant mother Soul where you know there's 90 million newborns year and we just want that Niche and we want it through every OBGYN in the world yeah now um one of the things that I find that people think when they look at a person like yourself highly successful famous wealthy and they'd look and oh man if I could just well you're wealthier than I am Mark

and probably more than a lot of people I would imagine imagine you got a little nickel or two off that 110 million books but I mean but people will look at that and they say oh they must have just skated to it they must have life must have been good you know whatever but there's a story behind the the Chicken Soup for the Soul and how long it took you and how hard it was to get to get it out the door right yeah Jack and I were friends for like 25 years he came to

one of my seminars a long long time ago down we were both on a big program for uh the mandala which is 6,000 people at Health conference and uh he came I was doing a seminar called triple your income double your time off and Jack was sitting in the front row and took a lot of notes and here's a guy smarter than heck out of Harvard and and he said can I take you to lunch I said sure and and we befriended each other and then years later on at a talk he's doing up in

uh Hollywood at you know you get up at 4:00 for the six o'clock breakfast meeting we were on the board of this company called inner Inside Edge and um I said what's happening he said I want to write this little book you know because we I taught him how to do the dramatic heart-touching story that you know gets people to cry and then they want to buy our books and like I talked to 10,000 Marines and they said we don't cry but you made our eyeball sweaty and uh but you have that story in a

book so I could do it my family and so he said why don't we do a book and and so we decided to do it we spent three years doing it our wives said you know you guys have lived this because we were doing 247 mock three with our hair on fire and um then we went to New York and and 33 Publishers said Hit the Road Jack and I said if you don't like him it's okay but I'm the nice guy here I'm teasing he's a great guy and then our agent fired us and

we got that hang out a well and that's cost him probably $ 7 or $8 million so far and in our um a little publisher we went to the Book Expo 134 more people turned us down a little publisher health communication how 134 more okay so before you finish the story I got to ask you 33 in New York 104 more this is really a lesson for Life what kept you going look we knew the book got standing of a we handed out little coupons that said when what book comes out these stories are going

to be in it you know will you take one now you can't take a credit card cuz that's called mail fraud you know because if I take the if if you give me your check and or credit card or cash and I don't deliver in six weeks that's mail fraud in America so we couldn't take any money but we had 20,000 slips that said these people want to buy this book nobody in New York wanted it 20,000 in you know when I 12 years ago when I started this thing with Jack that you do cartwheels

for 20,000 because the average book sells about 5,000 165,000 new books a year um you know nowadays um there's some major Publishers like Hay House that don't want to touch any anyone that sells less than 50,000 maybe later on we can talk about how to do that but I don't want to do a book personally now cuz we've gotten chicken soup cuz because I teach a whole seminar called uh me book Mega book marketing um magic and and what happens is I teach that you know chicken soup we don't want to touch a market that's

less than three and a half million we won't do a book for medical doctors because there's only uh 570,000 docks and you know only 10% of them Buy sell 50,000 books would be great for somebody else but nothing for us sure whereas we do a Chicken Soup for the golfer Soul we partner with Golf Digest you know the first month they send it are you a golfer by the way yeah yeah not much of one but I golf but if you get Golf Digest the order didn't your wife's first name is Lisa so we did

direct marketing to Lisa and said Dear Lisa you've gotten everything you got the stupid pants he's already got the spike shoes he's got the clubs but he doesn't have this book and so he sold three and a half million the first month when we came out in November two years ago and it just we we want to do I teach Grow Rich in your Niche I want to take over markets that nobody's messing with when we started chicken soup You Know Jack and I worked out a system and system is something of acronymed and own

the trademark on save yourself time energy and money and you know it's got to do in in chicken soup it's got to do seven things it's got to cause you to have Goosebumps chili bumps or God bumps it's got to you a lump in the Thro it's got to cause you have a change in perception it's got to cause you to weaken in knees like a change in perception we got a letter from a prisoner said dear Mark and Jack I've been in The Slammer 5 years contemplating the ideal crime killing the guy who put

me here then my sister sent me your book and I read it again and again and when I get out of here in five more years I no longer want to kill the guy that put me here well that is a major change in perception I Define a miracle as a change in perception so you know what we do with chicken soup is that we want instantaneous behavioral change in other words we want you to read it get it own it viscerally and then go out and act on on that idea sort of like what

you did in your book 12 pillars where you know this guy comes and and meets um Charlie and and every day talk well it comes 12 times or 11 times I guess and you know learn it and then goes out and does the exact action for the next couple weeks yeah so you knew in your heart people like this book and that's what kept you going and you're saying we've just got to find the right publisher and because it seems to me like so many people quit especially if 137 people tell them never going to

happen yeah buzz off it's not going to work what not only that we you know bookstores didn't like us necessarily any more than anybody else because you're just another you know books come in so fast and move on books now have a one- month shelf if they don't blow and go in a month they're done for like Harry Potter I got to say that well I've never met her you know RK Rawlings I mean she sells more books a she's now world's bestselling fiction author I'm world's bestselling non-fiction author but our and I look I've

got her on my list of people to meet but I mean she is the most strategic brilliant lady I mean she had people line up in front of all the biggest bookstores and brought the media out brought the camera because nothing happens until the cameras are rolling in America so you know she's been more strategic and more uh intelligent a lot of levels than I have and I'm I'm and my partners and I'm very very thankful for that and and you know so I'm at a bookstore I'm at the world's biggest bookstore in Canada it's

at the West Edmonton Mall it's like our Mall of America same guys own both those and there's nobody there so I went and got balloons popped them started getting people attention say did you read page 25 you read page 65 it's a one minute story that they go oh man that's really touching I you know like it's the same thing when we went to vindabona to do our TV show the guy who does America's Funniest Home Videos does our TV and and for two hours he said look reality TV is in Mark and Jack you

guys are too late and uh so his partner uh Lloyd wiin trob said hey you know last night my wife's a school teacher and uh books are fun which is one of our big Distributors you know came in with this book and she read me a story and he told it perfect he said little old man is on a bus on a country road and he's carrying two dozen red roses and a girl across the aisle is Drop Dead Gorgeous pler tress just emanates out of every poror of her being and she's you know glancing

at the flowers and the old man's ready to shuffle foot off the bus walks up to her laser Flowers in her lap said I was going to give them to my wife but I think she'd like you to have them she starts crying the old man Shuffle foots off the bus as the bus takes off she watches as he walks into the cemetery V de bonus says we could do this as a TV show and we got everybody we had Rod stiger while he was alive we got Charlie Sheen We Got You Know Jack Lemon

and and it's all because of the quality of the story because a good actor knows he or she is as only good as the writing and Jack and I have you know we read a thousand stories to find one that fits a little curb called chicken soup so here's the road and here's the curb you know we got to you know people say well you didn't use my story I said well it didn't fit our model I mean even you know our partner here who had dinner last night Kyle Wilson I mean it's taking him

a long time to finish chicken soup at the entrepreneurial Soul because the story could be a great entrepreneurial story but it was not a great entrepreneurial chicken soup story an entrepreneur some of you take something from a low value and makes it a high value which is the most important thing in the world as far as I'm we need more entrepreneurship not less America right now is in such deep Financial dire after such great tragedies of of Katrina wil Marita and you know 26 major disasters in last year and more coming and fires and all

kinds of stuff is it so we spent $375 billion doar in hot checks I'm not saying it was wrong but the only way to pay for that is somebody becomes massively productive and I'm so glad that we get to do a show like this that says hey look as good as you are you can be better as good as you are you're you're over andou of 18 billion brain cells let's make a decision put it in subconscious that you're going to make massive amounts of money serve others greatly create a a lasting Legacy and and

come from abundance so um and and that's primarily the way that you're getting all of this information out to people is through Chicken Soup for the Soul but now you're doing it also through some book seminars and tell us about the play that you're doing now okay the truth is my purpose statement is that uh I want to make the I want to make total Humanity a total economic and physical success and and to do that I'll use media which include books and ebooks and tapes and videos and TV and movies and films and uh

and documentaries because documentaries in the last couple years you know last year we had four documentaries it all blew through 100 million who would think that you'd have you know little documentaries that are invisible like um McDonald's doesn't like this but super siiz me which sort of Beats them the one that cuz you got all the kids at home I hope you've watched uh spell Bond did you watch spell Bond no I haven't seen that yet spell bond is about the 10 million kids that get in the spelling be every year and then number one

and right down here in Texas we have a a totally illiterate Hispanic family that has a girl go to a swap meet and buy a $5 one of the big fat uh dictionaries memorize every word in the dictionary and she beats out everybody she beats they they follow 10 people and they show all these people that beat the crap out of their kids to learn this stuff and she her parents are illiterate she's on a farm that's illiterate she's at the borderline between Mexico and and Texas and and she ends up winning it and it

just you cry all the way through because you go there's no way this chick can win and I don't mean to blow it for anyone watching but so you got documentaries like that and we're just finishing our own documentary right now and and uh so in a play we're doing with um our dear friend Paul Williams now Paul Williams is one of the three greatest lyricists of all times he wrote most of Barbara strian songs a Carpenter songs and he had a drug issue which he talks about so I'm not talking behind a friend's back

then he came back and he's just finished a play that uh is on both Broadway and starting right now in in New York and and becoming number one after producers in Las Vegas uh you know called happy days which he did with Gary Marshall and he did all the music and just you know if you watch Happy Days with the fonds in the old days now you're going to go see this play and it's going to you know it's going to be Nostalgia for those of us looking back and we're just finishing the chicken soup

play and it we think it'll be the biggest play in the world because I'm I teach in marketing Grow Rich in a niche pick a niche that nobody's marketing so I'm going into all towns under 100,000 like you know go and Moose Jaw and and you know atas tons you don't think about or Boise Idaho that have you know there's no media like it's no bleed over media from Denver or no bleed over media from La so you can do the media inexpensively you can take and we'll just about a seminar that you did in

Boise and there was Zig Ziggler who I guess you've interviewed already and and you know zigg is the senior superstar in our business he's already flatlined and come back so he come back from the dead you come back from the dead J you're great man um anyhow and and zigg is great and and what happened Zig and I went in there and there's a roughly 100,000 I think 96,000 exactly we had 10,000 people you know show up just for the two of us and I went whoa this is like way cool and so I said

you know if if you go into a big city like La there's so much competition because you got 18 million people or New York 18 million but if you go into a little city with 100,000 there nothing happening so they go look this is the event we'll go to that or you know yeah going to Dakotas or something so and and so I can very quickly pick that off and what what is astounding to me at at you know cuz I've been doing this business for over 30 years is it like last week I got

two telephone calls in one day one from the osman's Donnie and Marie they want to do something with me and then I just hung up that phone I go and and a week earlier it was down here Willie Nelson and he had me uh you know come down and help out with Farm Aid and teach the farmers how to raise money and it because it was after all those terrible disasters he owns a place called Carl's Corners that he's making the next Brans and he's got Reba and all of them and when I got down

there I was helping out I was glad to help out cuz I I believe that you're only as good as a charity that you do in the contribution you make and I wrote a whole book called The Miracle of tithing which businessmen say what's a miracle of tithing and I said you haven't been T enough lately anyhow but I got down with with Willie and and Willie I don't know if you've been to Carl's Corners here because you don't really live in Texas but um there a play at Carl's Corners he has willly biodiesel and

he spent all of his fortune at 82 years old to figure out how to crack legumes and take the energy out of soybeans and mustard seeds and peanuts like George Washington Carver and I's running these giant 18-wheeler trucks saving the trucker $30,000 minimum a year giving them better fuel that burns smell it smells like I hate diesel smell almost as much I hate Airline kerosene smell but uh you know and you shouldn't hate anything I suppose but just it's noxious to a human being but the now you got 18 wheeel trucks taking off and it

smells like french fries Chris you just you go you know you want to go eat the truck or something and and what happens is in instead of being noxious to the environment it's proactive to the environment so what Willie has done is he's hired all 50,000 Farmers that lost $2 billion like if two cars hit at 160 m hour everybody dies right the wind hits at 160 miles an hour the cows are gone the Sheep are gone the crops are gone the houses are gone and so Willie said hey wait a second I'll hire all

you guys and if we really grow this uh we'll we'll reverse the greenhouse effect the greenhouse effect is that the the Earth some people don't believe this but the basic temperatures of the Earth are rising that's why we're having all these storms because they start I can go into the Ecology of it but the bottom line is is that we can reverse it and and who's going to reverse it is you know if you had gave me 10 pictures and said here's the people that could change the whole oil and gas business Willie Nelson wouldn't

be on the top he wouldn't be he wouldn't be on the radar you know and now now I'm working with Willie and and I put them together with some people like I call the head of Walmart who I'm doing a lot of stuff with and I said hey look you know you guys need good press right now and this would be the right way to do good press when we put it together and I put it together with some of my other clients and and the truth is the oil industry is not anti- anything but

no one's ever offered no one ever spay spent the $38 million until he did because he figured you know I got it nobody can go after me I've already made it in life and you know who'd think that he'd attack it well you know so the good news is is gr gas price goes up higher which it's going to it's $5 a gallon in the world the re everybody in America says well gas went up KN came down well it GES down a few cents and they go ah the hell it's going to $5 a

gallon because the Chinese have got two% of people driving which they now have as many cars as we do in America India's Got 2% of their their 1.4 billion people driving that's as many cars we got and they they're paying $5 a GM if you got know nothing about economics except supply and demand and you know that that what's going to happen is that the demand is high so the supply is is finite so you got to change it and what I'm saying is hey look let's change it and so we're at the most exciting

time in history so all the people that that are are talented are suddenly doing great stuff so the big picture and I hope I am not I have over anwered this question but you got two things in the universe you got entropy which is chaos and breakdown and that's what media talks about by and large the good news about success media like you're doing now is it talks about centropy Sin Sy YN not Sin Sin copy means coming together at a new higher element and that's what this show is doing and that's what's happening with

all the media I went through the splash today media and I just I was astounded at what we can do and and the New Media of Tomorrow is is the number one screen we still watch this TV the number two screen is going to be your cell phone number three screen curiously enough you know what a memory stick is sure you know some called the thumb stick it's about as big as your thumb and and today you can buy a thumb stick with 20 gigs you can take the whole Library of Congress and I remember

when I got a 30 30 Meg hard drive this big paid $300 for it and I was happy yeah but now I just I just bought a four gig for $99 and I thought God what is this falling out of Heaven first of all how do they hold all that and and uh and then you know this morning's paper showed that the biggest thing at the electronic show is the new radio that's going into every car has it so you can put your memory stick in so it has all your music now I don't know

what that does to all the you know the stuff with all the different automobiles like General Motors has their own star system and all Etc but now suddenly you're going to take care of your music you're going to car of your video and that that one stick will carry it so the kids in the back seat are watching you know stuff and being entertained while you're on that country long ride you know one of the things I found fascinating about you just talking to you is and I've interviewed lots of speakers and and you have

speakers who are speakers and they they they aren't necessarily business people but one of the things I find Most Fascinating about you is it seems to me this my perception you're first and foremost a business person who speaks you you're very engaged in it you're very learn it in it you're you're pursuing different information you've actually are doing businesses in lots of different areas nonprofit charitable work but then also highly profitable uh for-profit work um where does your fascination for business and finance and and all of that come where where's it curiously enough it's out

of spirituality I mean in other words Moses was trained as a 33rd degree Mason and he was a heck of a businessman down in Ethiopia before he came back now the opposite is true for Solomon Solomon first of all he didn't wasn't ever claimed wise until he put all these business people together and he must have been a master of good human relations and what he did is he had all the Phoenicians come and start doing trading well once you start to trade what are you going to trade well he has this little lady down

in Ethiopia called the Queen of Sheba who's got frankincense back then they didn't take bass like remember I was a student ambassador in India for a year and the number one reason you marry a woman is how does she smell because she's not going to get a bath on a regular basis you don't go to the Ganges River on a regular basis so how does she smell well frankincense was two or three things it was a deodorant it was and all that and all of a sudden you know you have Solomon as the world's greatest

traitor which no one ever talks about he was the richest man the first trillionaire and all that but he was the traitor of traitors because he got all the ships together to ship through all of Europe through all the all the outline of Africa and all of Asia he figured out how to do it but now suddenly he's getting all this frankincense and and the story goes back to Queen of Sheba now she's a young woman right now I just went through the whole Queen of Sheba exhibit with with uh my Minister and we I

paid a private doet to take me because I I got so many questions that you know I believe that you're alive at the level of your curiosity you're alive at the level of your imagination because my cliche is your imagination creates reality so the bigger your imagination the better reality you have and that's why I'm here to be the gadfly the turn on people's engine to great experience and great awareness anyhow so Queen of Sheba now is taking a trip like from LA to New York but we're coming from Ethiopia as frankincense on C on

elephants which now Solomon had never seen an elephant never seen a lion because it didn't exist in Jerusalem right and she's coming with an Entourage of 3,000 which remember most towns back then were 30 or 50 we go to this exhibit and we're looking at a wall map as big as the wall we've got in here and and I'm talking with a some you know a rabbi is with us it's a salic Solomon scholar and my Minister Dr trell and we're going over this thing and we're arguing policeman standing there and he says you guys

got it wrong now we had it right the distance which is equivalently America is going to take her six months by lumbering elephant and lumbering camels and uh but he said what happened is you missed it she was in a matal lineal a female run society and and he had been in a patrol lineal a male run male dominant our society is male run basically now when you get to the Hispanic part of America which is 48 million you got a female dominated Society Mama runs the joint right but suddenly you got this woman who's

as bright as he is and the first question he asks her riddles to see if she's smart and says how do you look through sand and she said everyone knows that glass and you go well you know so this so what they did is test and and now he already had 700 wives 300 concubines and now he falls in love with this woman obviously they create a baby and and a lot of things are wrong in the Jewish Family she's what's called a shika she's a non-jew and and uh you know so ultimately gets evicted

and has to go back and run her own kingdom and you know lots of stuff but he still is running the biggest empire in the world and I said you got to run a big Empire before you are considered wise so I said I can do that and obviously I've got seven Empires that I'm running that U making fortunes and then and answer your question about uh I'm spokesperson for two three major organizations right now that uh you know Habitat for Humanity which I totally believe in because I think everybody should have a house and

I I we're trying to do that as an entrepreneurial thing and otherwise um spokesperson for the American Red Cross were we need 38,000 pints of blood a day and the people watching don't want to give blood I don't like to give blood but here's the deal if you don't give it now when you need it it won't be there and only 5% of us give it so at all my mega events I always have a blood mobile lineup to I've gotten three honorary doctorates in Chiropractic one right here in Dallas at U at Parker chiropract

college and and uh you know the guy who runs that is the genius of our time a lovely guy who you ought to interview Dr Fab manini's from Colombia his family is the second richest in all of Latin America and olive oil and weed and and U he came was going to Harvard and then had an accident Chiropractic solved it and now he's running this whole school he's young kid he's built the biggest seminar system we have 25,000 people in Vegas in a couple days just it's amazing what you know a young guy with good

mentorship can do and then um so what I did with the chiropractor we got 62,000 doctors all to give blood they all brought in 100 patients and adjust them free one day and we had blood mobiles everywhere and we went from dehydrated to rehydrated which is what I'm teaching is that entrepreneurship and charity are pretty close and what it takes is one idea times a right contact equals an unlimited result say that one idea one idea all you need is the idea and then you borrow all the resources so one idea plus the right contact

equals unlimited result the one idea here is that we got the right media the right then you got the right contact where you get unlimited results one idea the idea for chicken sup for the soul times the right media exposure equals 110 million sales and then in 1998 I read Steven Spielberg's book and it said that he made 800 million on ET but a billion and half licensing so I said hey Jack we're going on licensing he said what do you know I said nothing but back to my system it's a system and when I

was in graduate school getting my doctor with Bucky Fuller you're either in the system or you're out of the system if you're out of the system you can't figure out the system if you decide to step into the system you say look every system is finite it has a beginning and end you can put a circle around it and you master the system well the system on licensing is $135 billion in the US you know all the biggest names and and so we decided to partner with them and we partnered with Campbell soups and I

was I was on 400 million Campbell soup can where you know the when you take the label off you open it up and it had three chicken soup stories and and we took that book to number one and then I was on uh with Coca-Cola we were with Diet Coke because people who drink diet coke are better readers than people drink Coca-Cola so we're on 50 million Diet Coke cases a month for six months and it sold two books uh our book and nor Robert's book and all the money it was our book was a

couple sold nor robbert did hidden riches and she's a bril she's the world's fastest writer she writes in a yellow pad she writes a book of week under a couple different pseudonyms like JD Rob sold 280 million books I you know totally hand it to her anyhow so but all that money went to the charity Boys and Girls Clubs and we got 15,000 kids off the street and into Boys and Girls Clubs because we got them scholarships now you say well why can you afford to do that well you the reason you get rich is

so you can afford to do the stuff that nobody else can afford to do you don't get rich at at a low level at an ego level you know you get rich for yourself but once you Evol in wisdom and evolve in awareness and life is about awareness life is about how much awareness you can accumulate and that's why self-help is so critical is it because if if if awareness is a circle that you can make 30,000 you can't make anymore until you make it a bigger Circle 50,000 100,000 then it then what I teach

now it's easier to make a million than it is to work on minimum wage and a person on minimum wage can make the million and I I taught a lot of people how to do that if you stay contributing because the minute you contribute back tithe whether it's to a charity or a church Temple City G asham mosque suddenly then you know God pours in infinite abundance people watching us and they're going man I love this Mark Victor hands and read his books I'm stuck here's where I am and wherever you are it's great it's

fine but they want to go somewhere else they got to start where they're at what do they do to to increase that awareness what what did where would they start what are the real tangible effects if if you could say here's what you do well the littlest book I got out is Miracle of tithing and if they call my office or write I'm online everywhere but 800 sup book you know they they'll give it to you for two bucks it's a $10 book we just want them everybody to have it but first story I tell

is exactly about my mentor who's chip Collins when I'm bankrupt 31 years AG going upside down and I say there's got to be somebody young speaking at the time everybody had gray hair they're a senior they're a lawyer they're a doctor or a celebrity like a Jane Fonda or something and so I I had four roommates and I said somebody got to know somebody my age doing it and they said oh there's this one young kid who's a superstar at Kodak and now he's teaching all of us in real estate his name's chip Collins and

I heard it at 8:30 at 9:00 for the next 3 hours I sit in this guy mesmerized this office he he dances like on a head of a pen he was so brilliant funny light insightful I'm taking copious notes I said chip let me take out to lunch I think he paid for lunch cuz I didn't have any money I just went bankrupt the day before I was so broke I had to check a book out how to go bankrupt by yourself you know and some lawyer was hustling me I said man if I had

$300 to pay you I wouldn't be going bankrupt right now anyhow it was my best wor experience cuz if I didn't do that I couldn't got out of hard Goods into soft goods which is intellectual property which is where I've made my demand my my dominion and I try to teach everybody to get in intellectual property we'll talk about that next so Chip the first story told me is that that uh he heard a speaker at Kodak and while he's taking notes on the left he writes what he could do that he could do this

he could see himself through that guy which is why it's important to have a show like this because if they can see themselves through you and I then they can raise their station anyhow chip comes out he's got a wife Donna and two kids all of whom are great friends of course and um he's not making it originally and uh he's knocking on doors in in the real estate offices and he isn't getting any traction so he's Catholic he goes into the Catholic Church he's got 38 cents left and he hasn't got enough money to

feed his kids can't buy milk for the babies nothing I get goosebumps telling the story he goes up to the Altar and says God here I've L the candle here's my 38 cents that's all I got I got nothing else I'm a total failure I'm going to have to go back to Kodak nothing wrong with Kodak but I want to be my own man I want to be an entrepreneur and go from a little value to a high value I want to sculpt my personal value my company value my future value and my life value

as he's walking out of the church the guy goes excuse me aren't you chipcon guy just goes you know he's shaken out of this thing because he's been crying and he's feeling said yeah he says you were in my office the other day so many seminars and I want to take him and here's a check for $400 wow chip kissed the guy and the guy they had no idea that he was saving his butt and Chip went and bought milk and food for the kids that's a thousand return right there from four 40 40 cents

to $400 yeah by the way I never thought about it but you're you're correct I never I didn't do the numerics but you're right is it and chips and I talk about almost every day on the phone because he's still my conser I'm his so the first thing is you got to have a dream the next thing is you got to have a team you know so they got to put together a team and that if if if I see any withhold and self- sabotages that most Americans don't understand stand one and one come together

if you look at it it is 11 right can you see 11 in that Christ didn't do a miracle water in a wine at can until he had 12 disciples Jack and Mark are a team and and we stood back to back and shoulder Tosh shoulder because you're under attack I mean all those people said no our wives said look you're spend more time with Jack than me why don't you marry Jack I go I don't like Jack that way I mean not my interest right and and you know Jack's wife was asking him about

it you know cuz our finances were going down and we knew this thing would be the penultimate and up but we didn't you know we didn't know how many fiery Hoops all we knew is that we had to do it it was our there's a there's a commission in your mission and so you got to have a a you got to have a big dream you got to have a great team and then the third principle I teach is you got to have multiple streams you got to have a dream Martin Luther King said I

have a dream number two you got to have a team King had a team everybody that succeeds has a team now guys like Thomas Edison had a team Mr barns was a 5050 partner but totally invisible yeah Edison was a front guy Barnes was a back Barnes really did the work Edison got all the credit and all the media right behind Bill Gates you got Steve bomber and you you and I talked about bomber now bomber and I you know met at a hotel and spent an hour CU they didn't have a room for bomber

which he was fried it was like midnight I got to last the hotel yeah and same Hotel we're in right now anyhow even a good hotel screws up you know they immediately found a broom closet or something to put them in I'm sure anyhow but we had an hour together so but bomber's invisible bomber can walk anywhere but and Gates is the front guy and bomber's doing and also a billionaire but is doing this great strategic thinking and then you got to have multiple streams of income the so the number two problem is that most

people don't build together a team a team means together everyone accomplishes Miracles which is we've also trademarked because no one's ever tried to do Miracles you can't do Miracles is as a one-off you got to have a team two or more gathered together with a spirit of definite Harmony going through one or more goals and our goal was sell a million and a half and a year and a half we did a million three and then you our goal for 5 years was 50 million and we've blown past 100 million and I said a billion

no one's done that including RK Rawlings you know she's done about 500 million right now so I want to go way way back and ask you about earning that bicycle you you talked about uh one of the lessons you learned as a kid was you had to earn the money for your own bicycle and uh tell us some of your childhood cuz you know we see you now and you're successful and a speaker and you've obviously learned so much but you didn't start out with all this knowledge it's a process of accumulating experiences and knowledge

and wisdom tell us some of those stories from your your childhood when I was 9 years old my dad was a baker and my parents are both Danish and we lived at the Danish Brotherhood on Saturday night I thought everybody was Danish I mean you know you hung out with torille and Yuna and Hans and names you don't even know but um and ate food like medisa Pils that You' never heard of and I thought I thought hell everybody does this and knows how to poke and stuff so um we go to Denmark cuz my

dad you know knew that the two ways you learn a space repetition which is why a show like this is good because they keep getting the same stuff over and over in different ways and then number two is that you get immersed in a culture and and so I learned Danish as did my brothers I've only got five brothers and there's four of us left anyhow but I got addicted to the lwh hand of our racing bicycles this is 1957 so this is like way before they came to the United States something that you know

I desperately I had to have my heart of hearts and I beat in my dad who is was a free enterpriser but um you know he said you can have it you're 21 I got him down to 16 he said stop asking I said well you teach free Enterprises more enterprising you are dad the Freer you are I said can I have it if I earn it myself now in today's dollars I just bought one of these kind of bicycles that I don't know if you're into big racing bicycles but I own the thir Rite

I bought a $4,000 bike which the equivalent what I bought back then which was $175 wow right so Dad thinking like you got kids you got nine-year-old at home right now uh my youngest is 10 now yeah 10 could your 10-year-old turn around $44,000 in 6 months by him or herself she probably could but but but probably wouldn't probably would well Dad was convinced I wouldn't so this was a no-brainer and I'm reading I'm a Boy Scout and I'm in route to being an eagle and all that but I I you know I raise a

lot of money for the Boy Scouts too because I love them and I created a whole new thing to raise them five million last year anyhow but I'm reading Boy Scout Life Magazine it says you can sell greeting cards on consignment I said what a cool idea I looked up the word in the dictionary and it said you don't have to pay for it you just sell it Thena that's a better idea man I cost me zip I can afford this consignment stuff I don't know how it works but I got me some of it

so I go out and uh my mother said just smile at everybody cuz she was a great saleswoman she ran to front of the bakery for my daddy and um I always offer alter I didn't know alternative Choice like today I'd teach you in a sales seminar but and remember I'm selling to women which is my market then my market today 87% all books are sold to women that's why you guys got to make sure you're selling you and and Mr Roland are only selling to women anyhow so the snow is deep back in Wan

Illinois and I got a big free mint and I i' ring doorbell they come to the door and I go like this and they'd say young man come in here blow the nose which you know and once you're physically face Toof face you got a prospect that suddenly became a suspect looks like she's going to become a customer and and if I knew then what I know now would become a C client and a raving fan and and how old were you nine nine I didn't know all this then but it worked so well I

said I'm earning my own bicycle by merchandising these Christmas cards would you like to invest I knew the word then invest cuz Dad said you ask them to do invest so I said invest in one or two and most of them took two and they were you know a dollar each and I got 50% of it so you know I sold I had to sell over 700 almost 800 box of Christmas cards to have the money to buy it and then next spring I bought a bike and then every year after that I bought a

new bicycle and that got me going because I started in my own little neighborhood where we knew everybody there was only Jews and danish people living there and you know then I I said God this is working so well if Christmas doesn't come too fast I can make a lot of money you because almost everybody bought and especially like on Saturday and Sunday afternoons it just I went and it just it it was just clicking and then my dad did the financial whm he says you want to go to college I said I think so

I don't know what now he'd never gone to college he only had limited education was technically illiterate as was my mom you know if you don't read past third grade in your first language in literate you're illiterate in your second language and I'm picking on them I just you know and they wanted us to go to college but they want they he said get clear you're going to get to pay for this so he took half my money and put it in now he didn't know then that that was going to pay for me to

become a rock star because when the Beatles came out in 1962 I call my best little scanda Hui and Buddy and I said Gary we're starting a rock group he said what do you play I said nothing I said what do you play nothing I said we're qualified because we just saw I don't know if you saw the Ed Sullivan Show when the Beatles came out and went from Zero to Hero well I didn't see it in real time but you saw seen it rerun reran whatever the right grammar is that is anyhow um well

I saw it in real time and within two weeks we're making $17 an hour as a musician but back to I didn't know that I was going to be one of my many missions is to teach everybody why they got to contribute and how much benefaction you get and how it 100 folds which I can teach 100 folding here in a second if you want um but the amazing thing was that we start this band and then YMCAs are basically dark they play basketball for a little while on Friday and Saturday night and then they're

black they're empty yeah so I went to the head of the YMCA as a kid and I said hey look uh you got nothing happening here how would you like 50% of something rather than nothing he said well what are you going to do and I said well um I'll take out a full page ad which cost like 50 bucks which was big stuff if you're 16y old and it said The Messengers my group is coming and we'll play and and we'll charge $5 a person I have my older brothers being taking all the money

and they said don't we deserve part of this I said no you you asked for a salary and you get a salary if you asked to participate and want to invest then you get to you know so I I started 16 years old knowing that and like we'd have a thousand people well that's five grand and I got 2,500 some nights we'd have 2,000 people showing up so I'd walk away with five grand you got five grand at a 16-year-old you are in giant giant money and I wasted all of it cuz I didn't have

the awareness that I teach today I write all the money books like cracking the millionaire codeing one millionaire and you know how to achieve total Prosperity cuz I teach how to you know I I teach it's a Trilogy you got to learn it then you got to earn it then you got to return it you don't get to keep it you know and everything you're talking about I see just a streak of salesmen and some people don't like that term salesman I'm not a Salesman but isn't sales fundamental to life I I think it's the

key thing you guys wrote it into your book 12 pillars it's the key skill that everybody's got to have because one of the lines you had is that all life is sales and sales is a a Danish word in case you didn't know it and it means to serve and and then what you say well what does a master teacher say well the greatest amongst you is servant of all so if if you if you don't learn the skill then of sell then you can't sell now a teacher sells the students un learning a lawyer

sells the judge in the court and and decline on paying ultimately you know or whoever's got to pay the doctor sells the patient and it's sort of a subservient role that I'm the doctor and and like right now I'm having a little problem with my cervical six and I go into the doctor and he gave me two Alternatives he says we can either medicate you for the rest of your life to get you out of pain or I can you know make you two inches shorter and I said that one ain't going to work I

said I said I love allopathic MD medicine but I believe there are 28 forms of medicine so you know I got 27 other modalities that I'm testing right now and I've I've gone to seven different healers to regen I had my spine regenerated once before when somebody offered to cut out a ruptured disc and I rebuilt it so you know I'm going to all these healers all over the country cuz they exist we're in a we're in a greatest time ever and and alternative medicine is bigger than than standardized medicine in America today whether it's

homeopathic or herbal or Chiropractic or NDS or whatever right and you know we have a hospital where I I have own a second home in Kona Hawaii and uh the guy who created the pacemaker is a dear friend of mine Dr Earl bachan and he just put up $100 million for a hospital that offers all 28 modalities well when I leave and fly back tomorrow to Hawaii you know I'm going through there to find out there's got to be one modality that can regenerate this without surgery I I am very pro surgery if you need

it but if you can avoid it uh you know let's avoid it we get the best medical doctors in the world but they know three things and I want to know somebody that knows 100 things M does that make sense yeah yeah totally in other words let's go back to my dad a second with that story is that when my dad came from Denmark during the height of the depression he thought America had hope written on it and it did for him hope at the front end increases your options so if you got one option

that's not enough options remember I say you got to have multiple options so the third point of been teaching multiple streams of income because you got one stream income and that stream gets shut off for whatever reason you can just turn up the volume on the other streams like I got 28 major streams of income and I just I keep turning them up and then I put I teach you put an impressario you put a champion you put a a COO a chief operating officer in front of each one just like Bill Gates does or

you know and then you know just turn up the volume and then you go on and do the rest of the stuff cuz if you have a team and you need four kinds of people I'm a creative I create brand new stuff then you have you have an advancer which turns out my partner Jack is an advancer my wife is an advancer uh Bob Allen's an advancer art link letter turns out to be both a creative who's an advancer I just finished a book called how to make the rest of your life the best of

your life with him then you need a refiner which is your legal mind or engineering mind or medical mind then last but not least in my business you need an Executor publisher that sells it or a a seminar seat filler that fills the seminar or you need a TV Outreach like this so Mak sense yeah it does it totally makes sense how how then a person again you're you're you've created such an Empire uh that plural Empires yeah but the whole thing wrapped up is your Empire the whole story of the parable of the talents

is that when Jesus is leaving he says a Master is leaving he said here's your talents and two guys multiplied and doubled them and one guy buried him but the first line he says you have several abilities meaning you got several talents you got ability to make multiple sources no one's supposed to have one source of income that's a job so there there's a man or a woman who's sitting here watching and they're mid-level manager at a corporation they're making $35,000 a year and they're saying I've got a big dream in my heart where do

I start I want to have an Empire they know you knew I'm sure before before chicken soup went big time that that the empire was inside of you right that it was there it was a sense of Destiny Acorn ready to BEC over right yeah a sense of of Destiny there's people that are watching right now but they don't see the reality of it but they know it's there what do they do so do your main job your mid-level management job better than you've ever done it and that's one Circle but now you start your

MSI just like Jack and I did chicken soup part-time until we could do it full-time and then chicken soup got so big that our main business which was speaking became small by comparison financially and people said why do you do it I mean some of our mutual friends have said why don't you just quit and retire cuz there's no payoff in that right your life it is creative I mean you know in the first line in the Bible says in the beginning God created well if you and I are made the image and likeness of

God then your job is to create and if I really am creating I'm going to touch all 7 billion people around the planet in a multitudinous a lot of different ways source and serve them and and be become even more massively charitable I mean one of the things I wrote down because I saw one of my peers write it down in Horatio that you know you want to give a billion dollars away your life I'd like to do that and I'm busy creating it yeah and it's fun to create I mean being on the show

there's no mandate that I got to be in your show but I'm glad to do it and we're creating some new stuff here yeah and hopefully they catch the contagion of that they get the contact high from us to go out and do it because I've gotten a contact high from a lot of people I've had 44 great mentors yeah I want to talk to you about some of those mentors and people that have influenced and shaped your life let's talk uh about mentors and let's talk about books um what are the books and the

people that have shaped your life you know Charlie Jones always says in 5 years you'll be the books you read and the people you you meet what and the tapes you listen to and the tapes you listen to right the the the input you're bringing in right so what have been the books and tapes that have really profoundly impacted your life particularly before you had all of this what were the ones that you listened to that created that or helped you create and then who are the people that have really profoundly influenced your life three

questions okay so number one is the books I'd say everybody's got to read think Grow Rich and you got to read it a multitud two to times like I probably read it 200 times and you'd take ownership because it's a book that says there's secret on every page but it's a secret of the spirit and turns out that I am part of a Major Video coming out called the secret and it it is really a wonderful documentary made by an Australian lady Ronda burn and um I I am honored that I'm on it I'm featured

with some of the greatest minds of our time Steve cvia is on it I mean I could go through the list of the who's who it's literally The Who's Who of the worlds I got Nelson mandal they got a lot of very very famous people I'm glad that I got into that August here so thing gr Rich had a profound effect on me had um a lot of books that you won't know like Resurrection by Neville you know which says you know you got to go in the secret place of the most high and you

got to close your eyes before you go to sleep and you got to be doing the right breathing and that and and then you get a a fixity of thought and we had fixity of thought of seeing ourselves as number one New York Times number one Publishers Weekly number one USA Today and we're the only book ever that's been all three and you get that picture in in You Know Jack and I locked in on that kind of picture because of Neville's book he says your mind thinks in pictures so you got to put it

in a holding pattern Bill Gates saw in his mind's eye and he says it that I see a computer in every house well I see one of my books in every house I see one of my tapes in every house and right now you know we're we're taking the market down to the lowest price level and you're going to even help me get distributed at Costco price club we talked about last night which is so wonderful I just can't even believe it so so there's you know what we want to do is I want to

make education available palpable you know and anybody watching if they go to my website Mark victor.com the most listen to tape of all times which affected me greatly was Earl nals do you know the title of it The Strangest Secret Strangest Secret now Earl had a hundred million listeners and I was with him last week before he died we toured Australia together and uh did you listen to it on the C on the yeah the old days I I actually just listened to it on a CD but it sounded like it was on an old

LP which they had the crack sound yeah we got rid of all that yeah that was done 50 years ago what what happened is Vic Conan who went to Harvard with my partner Dr camfield you know uh called me up and he said look uh we did a test of all of our 300,000 subscribers they want your voice on with Earls and they want you to bring this up to date 50 well I I I asked Vic I said look we want to give this to the planet this is this is a planetory resource and

it's the front end so people get listen because I want everyone to get hooked on this so if you go to my website you can just download it free you put it in your iPod you list it strange secret Strangest Secret there's Earl and then there's me in an echo chamber explaining how that applies 50 years later and it you know I did an hour and ear did an hour so it's two hours Consolidated one you really need it on your iPod or your PDA or your computer or your laptop and Mark Victor hanson.com yeah

Mark Victor hanson.com and then the other thing I want you to watch is I'm defending our industry we have a uh an adversary who had a number one book called sham how the self-help industry is making America helpless so a couple weeks ago um Anderson Cooper life who's the next Larry King they're making him Larry as big as Larry and and he calls up his office calls up and said it's 2:00 in the afternoon and said can you be here to film at 8:30 to debate this guy I said that's I got a lot of

other plans but I will switch all of them because this is critical that somebody defends this industry sure I am successful because it's I'm successful because of books like th Grow Rich successful because of tapes like stranger seeker and the thing that I'd be honored to bring it up to date 50 years after Earl made so many people so wealthy with it and so CU he did it for his own insurance company did you know that no he did it for his own insurance company the insurance company when he was away on vacation for two

weeks just skyrocketed and they had it to the wife and the kids save marriages I get goosebumps because it did so much good the publisher um of his stuff was a guy named Lloyd conet right that's how the company became uh night Andale conet and now Vic conet is the son of Carson's coming along behind that Carson is is the young 20 something you know who's the brilliant and uh he just young kid that understands how to computerize all this stuff and you know I I want to pay them a great compliment here if I

could real quick when we were doing our first book tour my own publisher didn't celebrate us and you know we' rock through we went to number one the first day with Amazon and all that and sold more books and over and we melted down Amazon because we did three million emails and said if you do this we'll give you $250 worth of stuff called an ethical bribe and we went wow and it started at 87,000 by 10:00 it was 705 we melt on by 3:00 when they figured out how to put it back on we're

number one and number one continuously for a long time with the one minute millionaire we go to n g con in Chicago and we're burned I mean we've been doing media at 6:00 in the morning which means you got about 4: and then you know media media Med now it's 4:00 and we got to go do our taping at n for this series we arrive there and we're just you know coats over our shoulder ties down and we're don't know if we're going to have enough energy to do it and Vic conut comes out with

168 employees with balloons and our our corporate symbol as as you know is is a butterfly cuz it's the universal symbol of spiritual illumination and we just we are so wound tight I mean they're all cheering us giving us sustaining Ovation saying you know playing Rocky in the back and going wow this is like way cool so so I I am addicted to helping out Vic K do anything and he he really wants everyone to because two-thirds of us are auditory Learners we don't learn very well uh just reading a book so you need to

in so let's if two-thirds of us are audit let's give away some of the stuff auditorally so they get it and I don't care where they listen to it under if they still have a cassette or a CD or their iPod or whatever new vehicle they got or today uh because of the memory stick put it on your memory stick but it's free just go to the website and get it what people really influenced your life as a young man what mentors took you under their wing and and taught you and you learned from who

invested in you well first of all I'm in graduate school and I'm you know I almost failed out of school cuz I was Mr party 101 man I just I was good at party and and somehow I could find them and then when they offered to let me leave school I said whoa I like this place I want to go a decade I want to be a university Professor which I was at Colorado for a while and you know now I'm buying a university so um with some other guys anyhow I decided to get good

and I started getting A's and and uh I'm in graduate school and like Gray's Anatomy to physiology is Alfred Richardson Dr Richardson I become great friends and I'm in Al's office and and uh I was getting A's in his class and just I I just I love the whole body and how it worked and he made it so real and applicable and he was an Assa advisor and and he said it's students first faculty second Administration never and I just I loved his model he said one day I'm in there talking to Dr Richardson he

said hey Mark the smartest guy in this planet because our school Southern University hired everybody at Harvard Wharton Yale and Stanford that got fired automatically at 65 30 years ago we were totally into an AG right and now suddenly they're there and he said you got to hear this guy Dr Buckminster Fuller and there 5,000 students in the arena we're sitting in the front row because of who he is and I just I watched Bucky I saw his Aura just emanate out like six feet in pink and white and you know yellow as a color

of intelligence I went I thought I knew everything right I'm a graduate school and I'm about to finish my doctorate and I just I thought I was somebody and then all a sudden I heard somebody that was really brilliant in 15 different channels had 2,000 major inventions had written 40 books finished Einstein unified field Theory explained on the schedule E equals mc^2 e is all the energy of physical Universe m is congealed as matter whether it's this or this or anything hard it's tied up and then and then the rest c squared C Bucky had

a new math new mathematics called triangled instead of squared it's to the triangle anyhow you know it's radiant and I went wow that's the guy I got to hang with I went to his office I got a job I was a seventh one of his students that travel literally around the world you know I was getting paid $200 a month as a a research assistant for seven years and I just I don't I think I own Bucky's body of material but B Bucky won to figure out how to make the world work for 100% of

humanity he'd been in the Navy during World War I that's how old he was right I came in he was 71 and I was 21 and um he wowed my soul and and just said hey look somebody's got to take care of the ecosphere the little biosphere that's wrapped around this planet that's only 10 miles high and 10 miles deep you can't live excep in that and we're polluting it we're killing ourselves in the old days if you thought the Earth was flat you could pollute in Kansas City which they did and they moved at

20 mi cuz there's so much horse PTI the horses couldn't lift their feet did you know that so they just moved all of Kansas City learn all sorts of things from you Mark well I know all sorts of stuff I I got to use CNN term I got a lot of factoids in there you know so Bucky just wob my soul made me bigger and then I tried to be Bucky which was dysfunctional which is I was building geodesic domes at a rate of $2 million a year and I built the Wall Street Racket Club

and ban laries and arboretums all kinds of cool stuff but I you know when the oil embargo hit I was building out a PVC polyvinyl chloride IE Petro chemicals and I was doing $40,000 a month and I thought I was big stuff right with monsano and I went Bob Allen said how do you sleep when you went bankr I said I slept like a baby he says what do you mean I said I slept two hours and I cried anyhow um then I had a tape Fallout cuz I'd sold so well going through college that

somebody gave me an audio tape by Cav Robert the dean of speakers I wrote him a letter and said I want to Apprentice to you and he he wrote me back and it was just amazing and then I went to hear him speak I I had two guys put up credit cards because I had no money to go to a seminar that's how critical who Cav is because a lot of people don't know yeah Cav Robert is a dean of speakers he was a lawyer he was he was trained by um Will Rogers and everybody

else founder of NSA found of the national speaker Association but never started until he was 65 and and was solid until he was 89 and heward our like the Tony Emy and Oscar in our industry the Cav right yeah and uh I just went cavat said you could do a multi-authored book I'm young and impression I hit the guy next to me I say are you any good at an editor cuz I'm a great writer he said yeah I was head of law school Journal Keith the green we did our first book that year I

made $200,000 selling a book from a platform called Stand Up speak out and win and since then I've never stopped doing multi-authored books I got a lot solo but I got I've written 117 books now in the last two decades so we've done a lot of books huh what are you most excited about right now making Humanity work just cuz there's so many people from all over I mean not only America but like one of my best students is josea espia second poest country is Guatemala comes up flies up monthly spend some time in one

of my seminars in the first six months of this year 32 years old he made a million1 100,000 and Guatemala got hit by Wilma and uh lost 100,000 houses he said hey look um we could do a web ucation seminar where you stay at home and just have a little camera on you and and do your seminar and uh we raised enough money to build 10,000 houses I got Brian Tracy I got Bob Allen I got Jack Canfield I got de we all did it in one day we stayed at home and we filled every

movie theater in Guatemala City I mean that could not have happened before right now mhm amazing you are an amazing guy and uh so much knowledge and wisdom that we didn't even get to and truly a Renaissance Man I mean just listening to you so much uh uh and and a person who has achieved a lot for himself but a person who wants to give and is generous uh with time and your energy and your your material possessions and I appreciate you being here good to get to know you a little bit thanks thanks Chris

Our Guest today is David Cook David is president of his San Antonio based Peak Performance firm that Bridges the gap between the sports and business Arenas as well as speaking and coaching he directs creative leadership Retreats that incorporate golf Andor Wilderness adventures in the Texas Hill Country David has been named one of the top 10 sports psychologists in the world is known as a leading Authority in the science of Peak Performance and represented the United States at the internet ational Olympic Academy in Olympia Greece he is a frequent speaker for the prestigious Zig Ziggler Corporation

has served as mental training coach for the world champion San Antonio Spurs and counseled hundreds of top athletes in businesses such as Exxon and American Express good to have you here David what a great time to be here yeah it's going to be fun um okay so here's my question yes let's Dive Right into this sports psychologist what's the difference between standing over a four foot putt wherein if you miss it you have to buy beer for your buddies in the 19th hole and standing over a 4 foot putt for $400,000 I tell you for

a lot of guys there's not that much difference you know a lot of people that play this game they uh they put too much of their s into it and so that putt missing that putt has a whole lot to do with their ego and who they are and their whole self-identity sometimes golf means too much and that's what causes what we call The Yips right it causes people to have all that stress and anxiety so in a way I mean obviously it's different but in a way when these guys are playing with their buddies

that they live with that are going to harass them or celebrate with them or needle them or whatever that 4- foot putt means a lot and often times causes great stress and great great anxiety what do people think about though some some people you know they're just playing a backyard game or whatever uh but then they get to this and now it means something how does that part about meaning create the inability to make a putt that they could make all day long I tell you and here let me give you an example of something

that you can try to see about that meaning take a putt take a ball and put it six inches from the hole and see what you're thinking as you take the putter back and hit it nothing take it back a foot nothing take it back two feet nothing somewhere between 2 feet and four feet you take it back and people all of a sudden they start start thinking I could miss this or this is real putt or this is not a gimme and and so there's a point at which we move away from that goal

there's a point at which that goal gets far enough away from us that all of a sudden different voices begin to speak to us it's the same in life it's the same in in in and in anything once we start adding meaning it's meaningless at 6 Ines it's meaningless at a foot it's meaningless at 2 feet but at 3 feet there's a threat and the threat happens around 3T because it's short enough you should make it and so if you miss it it really must you're not very good um or you can't get it back

it's you know it's it's gone forever um but meaning comes uh as we in sport in life as we Define the you know what it what it means to our ego to our self-confidence to our self-concept and what I try to teach people is you know it means too much let's really look at the truth instead of the LIE the LIE is always that a putt going in the hole or a basket going in the basket or a field goal going through the uprights says something about me that's true to the world and our culture

puts it right out there in front of everybody and either you're a failure you're a loser you're the goat and that's your label because that's what television entertainment that's what the fans say without understanding that that has nothing to do with the worth of a man and but that's of what we built in this culture my job does it go both directions do we say if I make this I'm great if I miss it I'm bad and the fact is is that neither are true absolutely so so it's about it's about knowing who you are

aside from your performance absolutely there's a head and a heart part of what I do the head part teaches people how to deal with the interference in the context of the uh performance setting that they're in the heart is about the perspective that they take into that contest and U I think in in my field probably in in the performance psychology field overall the number one issue is the fear of failure and the fear of failure causes people to walk into a contest with baggage on their shoulder before the game ever begins in other words

they've taken their potential and they've lessened it before they ever get to the field because they've taken something into the field with them that is not necessary to be there and it keeps them from being free to perform and to do the best best they can you don't get to be in the NFL unless you win a lot unless you're very good skilled athlete you don't get to the PGA Tour unless you can deliver you don't get to that level why then even at that level after having proven for 15 or 20 years that you

are the top one of the top 100 players in the world do you still have a fear of failure well several things number one it's a movement in a level uh the the people that win the the major Awards in the different sports this in college are moving to a pro level next year yeah it is really no different than the kid that played junior high ball moving to high school and the high school player moving to college the college moving to to professional every time you move a level most people that are just normal

people there's a question in their mind can I make that jump am I good enough and usually what happens is that we've idolized some of those people that are just in that level above us and all of a sudden we're surrounded by them I can remember one of my uh PGA Tour clients one day calling me up and saying I'm paired with him I saidou paired with who I'm paired with Jack and this was back in the 80s and they were both in contention actually for this golf tournament Jack Nicholas and the gentleman I was

working with he said it's the first time he said I'm paired with my idol this is the guy I grew up thinking about my entire life I mean since a kid was 6 years old so Jack was at the you know the the end of his career and this kid was at the beginning of his career they're both in contention they're 10 under power going into the last day and they're paired together he says what am I supposed to think about it was a great question this kid was good he had made it to the

professional levels he was on tour he had won a golf tournament but the issue now was he's stepping it up a level he's now paired with the greatest of all time and he wanted to know what am I supposed to think because my mind is is all over the place and we understand my background in sports psychology really sports psychology is the study of the Mind in performance it's sport you know we can set that aside it happens to be housed in the sport but in fact it's really the study of the mind and performance

and doesn't matter if it's business if it's drama if it's music if it's uh Sport and so the issue we understand is that game day is different than any other day in life and my profession what I spend my life my passion is teaching people how to perform their best when it means the most for this particular gentleman it was I'm playing with my idol there's a big piece of interference out there and I want to do my best in front of him um interesting what' you tell him you know what I told him and

I think it's true for all of us number one count it a blessing that you get to you get to perform next to your Idol number two understand that the 30,000 people that came to watch Nicholas today are going to be introduced to the next Champion your job today is to stay into your game play your own game don't apologize for getting in his way or out of his way you play your game he is no different than anybody else a competitor on game day and you can't allow him to take you out of his

game respect him honor him all that stuff but you play your game and at the end of the day know that if you play your game you play stay in the process that I that I teach um that you'll have 30,000 fans that you didn't have count it a blessing that's an interesting Theory I want to ask you about that the count it a blessing he shows up and and I suppose any body could apply this anywhere he shows up and he's playing with Jack Nicholas and and he's thinking oh no you know and and

he puts this meaning attaches this meaning to it instead of going how great is this right I've looked at this I've wanted to meet this guy for ages and now I get to play around with him and it's just it's a just a mental shift right right it the truth you asked me the question why would they fear failure on that day yeah is he's got 30,000 people usually there's 10 or 15 people watching him so yeah if he makes a mistake exaggerated you know to 30,000 eyes it's it's like speaking to an audience of

10 people versus speaking to an audience of 50,000 people yeah you know if you make a blunder with 10 people it's okay 50,000 you're scared to death that they're going to remember that forever and so as you move up in the sport World As you move up as a leader in your organization or position as you move up in an organization in business the pressure mounts because there's more people and more eyes upon you there's more responsibility and and and so we see that the mistakes really uh cause more people to have opinions about us

if we live by what I call the Great American trap the Great American trap states that um a person's Identity or worth is equal to their Performance Plus the opinions of others so many people that are watching this program right now understand that it clicks in their heart and they don't like it yeah because it is absolutely the formula for the fear of failure and the issue in life for us to understand that's why I talk about the heart and the head is you got to take the right perspective into the performance setting meaning you

understand where the worth of a man or woman comes from it comes from character it comes from faith comes from relationships it comes from Integrity you know it comes from value it comes from um uh the way you go about what you do uh being honest and truthful all those character traits yet the culture really looks at one thing I mean if we can sort of look at the American culture is that we have a scoreboard every day and at the end of the day there's a score and there's not a first place second place

third place fourth place the scoreboard at the end of the day you won or you lost for so many people and at the end of the day we see that we failed and so the people that live to that formula their self-worth their identity is is really beaten up they feel they just feel awful at the end of the day like a loser because they base their identity on the Performance Plus what they think other people are going to think about them because of that performance that's a that's a sad thing in our culture sure

you know I love the free enterprise system and I love competition that's why I'm in yeah what I'm in and and there's a certain way to think in the competitive environment to be the best you can be but you got to understand you must start with the right perspective and have a foundation there so that you don't haul in this fear of failure baggage that that attacks people when the performance and opinions of others is what makes them who they are um once I've got their heart right then I can really begin to help them

understand the process of thinking so that they have a chance for the potential to rise so is that the process that you start when you're working with an executive or you with an athlete do you start by by addressing the hard issues do you say hey we're going to get to the mind in a minute but first we got to find out what all these things are that you place is that the process you know I've done this for 20 years now in the in the last five years absolutely I cannot start with a head

only huh I had a player on the PGA tour a few years ago in a particular tournament that I was in and he asked to come in he was he was he was about to lose his card it was near the end of the year the first time in seven years the guy really lost his playing privileges and he was was afraid and cuz he wasn't high enough in the money wasn't high enough in the money had a few tournaments to go the odds of him winning those tournaments in his mind were were Neil but

he one last ditch effort he wanted to really work to see if there's a if anything in his mind would help him to perform to a higher level the kid was so skillful when I speak with a group of people when I'm working with individuals at that level I always began like yesterday I was in Houston with a great Corporation the room was full of 75 Executives of one of the best companies in America and it was easy to look out and say the issue in this room has nothing to do with potential I've talked

with your leaders I understand who it is that's in this room the Gathering of the resources that make up who you are the potential that's right here in this room is not at issue what's at issue is how do we allow that potential to come out on game day my job as a as a performance coach as a Peak Performance coach mental trainer in sport and business is to help people understand that having potential is not enough that you've got to you've got to be able to manifest that potential on game day it's got to

come out when it means the most and so we need to understand what that environment's like and we'll get to that in a few minutes this particular player had great skill he he was one of 154 golfers in this particular tournament that could have won the golf tournament we went through the process the mental process of understanding that in the context of a competitive environment you have one thing that you have absolute control over and that's what you think and that's the one thing that people give up they they allow the external factors to come

in and dictate their thinking and to create barriers and obstacles and adversity within their mind which keeps them from being able to filter down to the one thing they have control over and that's a thought process so the one thing you have control over is what you think and people when they understand that their next question is so what am I supposed to think and that's what I teach people I go through a process and it you know it' be particular to whatever environment they might be in so you know there's no one Pat answer

that covers everything but we do know let's talk about your setting let's talk about the environment let's talk about the skills needed and let's create a process oriented thought structure that with we call mental Journey that you go through before you pull the club back shoot a free throw uh walk into an interview let's let's take two of those I want to give you two two the let me finish the story I don't want them to hang hang on the story so yeah I taught him the process and and he knew the process but it

was good for him to to hear it we went out and hit balls and practice and I walked around with him and then the tournament began and he hadit a magnificent drive off the first hole I mean way down the Fairway and then he walked with a look of a defeated human being down to his ball his shoulders were slouched his head was down he was slower than the other guys walking and you could look at him and think where is this man what's going on in his life between the first and he parted the

first hole but between the first hole and the second T box you can't coach out there the caddy and you are the only ones that can speak but I still right between there and I looked at him and I just said I got a question for you I want you to think about something it wasn't coaching I was just ask him a question like a spectator might ask a player do you remember the first shot that you hit as a PGA Tour player 7 years ago where was it what was it like he raised up

he looked he thought about it he said it was unbelievable and I said where is that man what's the difference between then and now and what happened is he lost his love for the game he had lost his passion and desire for winning golf tournaments and he was playing that day going through the motions even the mental motions without a heart and if you don't play with a heart you're not going to win a golf tournament you might hit some good shots but you got to carry yourself Like A Champion you got to Think Like

A Champion you got to have your mind clear and you got to be be competing for the top prize and not taking up space and for him it was a matter of the heart he's on his way back now he missed a tour and had some family issues and all kinds of things he's on his way back now but it was really for him a regathering of himself and creating the passion for what he was out there for for him was about the heart I do not you ask the question I will not start with

anybody without understanding first of all tell me about your heart tell me about your perspective tell me about how you feel about this formula selfworth equals Performance Plus the opinions of others and if they hesitate and think deeply about that you know they're carrying a fear of failure and so we talk through that we got to we got to remove that we got to get out there and play for what it a little white ball going in a hole yeah sure has a not a whole lot to do with life you a free throw going

into a hoop doesn't have much to do with life now for all you coaches and all you Executives and CEOs and presidents before you write me off you got to understand I've been doing this for 20 years I've seen people succeed at the highest level yeah I've been with the Spurs through two World Championships I was with the Wizards last year when they got in the second playoff for the first time in 25 years I've been with players Five Guys on the PGA tour that won for the first time I've been to the Olympics in

Atlanta I've been to the British Open the US Open I've been to all these places and seen champ Champions and I've just got to say that success at the highest level with the greatest performers in the world has never fulfilled one person that I've ever worked with or seen win a trophy and so until we get the heart right that success is going to be meaningless when you get there so let's work on both things let's work on the heart have the right perspective so that the journey is really worth it and when you get

to the end it's just a destination it's not the end and let's see that it opens up a whole new door for another opportunity and let's live with a life of purpose and let's think right so that you can get there those are the two big deals that I work with I think it was Vince Lombardi who talked about the the the Roar of the crowd and the noise and the arena and then but ultimately you leave that you leave the championship field in your back in your room by yourself and I don't remember the

exactness of it but he M he was making that point of you know that's a moment yeah and that's great and it's fun and it's it's worthy of pursuing But ultimately your moments outside of that are so much more and so much more important they are yeah when you you know people come to the end of their life it's always about relationships it's always about um uh did their life stand for something did they leave something behind did they have a legacy um I really believe in legacies I think people ought to live for legacies

that they they should they should wake up every morning and know what it is that they're living for and then make sure what they do during the day meets meets that end goal I really am a big big deal in Legacy we don't have much time here let's make sure it lasts and let's don't do let's don't have a legacy that I held a trophy one day let's have a legacy that that trophy that that trophy went Way Beyond a piece of metal yeah that it open the door to things and people's hearts and and

that's really what it is it's it's a door opener if all you can say at the end of your life was I won 14 tournaments or I was the heavyweight champion of the world for a year and a half you know but if those things then allow you to open up other doors that create your life right that can then be summed up in your in your uh eulogy then that's really what you're saying life is all about and and it's it's sort of counterintuitive really the way you work this is important winning winning a

championship is important but this is so much more important and in order to make this happen you've got to deal with the much more important thing first the question is this why is winning a championship important not that winning a championship is important why is winning a championship import why is getting this position important why is selling uh this much and reaching this bar important because and you've got to answer the question and if that answer falls into the category of my purpose in life you go to work with passion every day do you ever

find people that just you work with an athlete very skilled and you ask that question and they just go absolutely I I don't know why because it's what always you know they that's interesting fascinating and it has to do with leadership that there's either parents or leaders around them never really helped them see beyond the success that they might have um I've worked with so many absolutely incredible performers that were lost deeply lost in life and and their social abilities and their physical abilities were miles apart and their social and mental abilities kept them from

allowing this incredible potential to rise and that's the debate today about letting young kids become professionals at an early age and things like that I mean going from college to the pros in the NBA yeah versus spending four years with a guy like Roy Williams or Mike shashy or someone like that can you imagine the difference that that person when they go straight to the pros they don't have that mentoring process I mean they're thrown into the lines immediately you're supposed to pick up this deal and get after it's a business you can be there

today and gone tomorrow in college there's a family around you there's an atmosphere there's discipline there's there's all those things I really am an advocate for um allowing kids to mature at a proper level and you know what there's some there's some young people that are mature in certain sports that that you make exceptions for but you you got to look at some other people and say man let's give you a chance to grow it's a big debate you know the answers who knows what the the right answer is I want to tell you about

an experience I had and then and use that as a platform for you then to tell us the importance of this the importance of a coach and the right coach when I was 11 years old I had a great job I was a ball boy for the Seattle SuperSonics oh wow seven years I spent and I started shortly after the season started and we were 2 and 11 and when we got to 5 and 17 the owner of the sonics at the time said enough is enough eliminated the previous coach Bob Hopkins who'd been the

cousin of Bill Russell and taken over when Russell left uh fired Bob Hopkins and hired who became the winningest coach in NBA history Lenny Wilkins same players uh he made a couple of adjustments same players went from five and 17 to reaching the seventh game of the World Championship same year we came back uh we lost the world championship that year uh to the what at the time of the Washington Bullets next year we won the World Championship same team different coach what is the importance of a coach and what does a coach do that

turns those same people around and enables them to go from 5 and 17 to making it to the seventh game of the World Championship winning the World Championship the next year what does a coach do what's what's the importance of a role and whether it's a coach or business owner Mom and Dad same role what's the importance of him yeah let's let's you know um let's start with what a dad is and how that you know a dad is a guardian of a dream when a kid is is born there's they're given skills and talents

and a in a father and a mother they're they're there to to help that dream come alive and true and and really lead the kid not push them not beat them not press them but encourage and draw them into their dream and those children that that have parents like that um they're free they're free to compete for that dream and they and they and they so often that they get there they the the journey is so awesome it doesn't even matter if they find to get to the end of the deal a coach is no

different a coach must create a dream that the players buy into and the players must have ownership in that dream and some coaches are really good at that they understand it's not just about X's and O's when you get to that level it's about the heart and the passion of the people that are playing for you and it's about the mind it's about being able to get them up and and manage the interference in their life in the in the whole world of professional sports and some people have a knack for doing that others are

really good at technicians and they're really good with x's and o's and and the great coaches I believe the greatest coaches of all times um have this ability to reach in and to create a dream that people can believe in and they want to be on that bus and they want to be a part of that and so they join in and they take their talents and they gifts and they and they strip off the fear of failure and they get after it and um that's the the That's The Power of influence in a person's

life the words that we speak as a coach as a leader absolutely will influence like how tell because I think that's a really important Point what do we say how do we say it in order to bring alive you know there's the old proverb that says the the tongue has the power of life and death and it's really true and a coach a parent a boss how does that work what we say and how it it inflames something in somebody well language is the Great influencer I mean it's that's what connects us and the words

you know language is made up of words and different words have different meanings what we have to understand when we're leading people is that the same word can mean something different to someone else for for a young man that comes in from the city the inner city respect is a big deal for that young man and to and to say a word um of failure towards that person in the context of a group of people is a is a real is a real symbol of disrespect for another kid that grew up in a military family

um and they walk in and and you and you and you challenge them in front of a group it's yes sir I'll do it I'll be better next time you get a totally different response our job as Leaders is not to come in and say my way or the highway I just don't believe in that it's to it's to lay the groundwork of what you expect but then understand that people are motivated and inspired differently and you got to carefully very care carefully watch the words that come out of your mouth we did a when

I was a professor at the University of Kansas for 12 years I I shered a lot of dissertations and thesis and one of my students wrote his dissertation on um on uh NCA division one basketball coaches and we we sent a question out to all the basketball coaches who would be the role model coaches uh for young coaches to look up to and and the the leading candidates were Shashi and Dean Smith and Denny crumb and Roy Williams and John Wooden and my student went out and interviewed these guys and he looked for commonalities and

there was a couple of them they all said this that their purpose really was to get their team on the court with confidence that was an agreeable Point among them that that if and if and if I could really boil it down to I want my kids to put their foot on the maple on Game Day believing that they can be successful so the followup questions how do you do that and every one of them agreed with this formula with a little different number they said for every criticism for every mistake correction for every weakness

that you point out you better come back with three positives Roy said I think it's more like eight8 to one or three to one and so that young people that are coming up they want to be the best they want to be coached they want to get there if you want to build somebody strong you don't beat them up and break them down see that's a model that we sort of grew up with and that leaves a lot of people and talented people on the on the outskirts because for whatever reason they came in and

they crumbled under those words however if we'd use different words you build strength you build power these people are able to realize some dreams in the past we didn't have time time was an issue so you come in there with the guns blaring you say do it my way or the highway get it done now screaming and hollering and we bring in a military model because in the military you got bullets coming at you and it's a life or death in sport it's not yeah you know and we've got people coming from all different backgrounds

they're not coming in to go to war they're coming in to accomplish a goal in a mission and and they can be tough and you can be hard on them and all that stuff but the issue is are you more positive than negative and we just know this that for most people and these coaches every one of them agree these are what you know these are the coaches that they said would be the role models for the for the future Generations they all said more positive than negative Rick patino spoke before me on a platform

the other day he said if you're not more positive than negative you need to get out of coaching he said that's the biggest change in his life of coaching from where he was to now is the switching from negative to positive people understand that as you move through life well what's interesting is when you list those names they are names that we all know because they're winners you know you listed off that name of basketball coach and I'm thinking uhhuh sure yeah yeah yeah that's what yeah and it's because they're winners and they're winners I

I find the the connection between the two to be very interesting it's it's the people who recognize that become the winners they're the ones who win the they win the competition but they also win the hearts and they're the ones whose kids keep coming back to the colleges to visit them you know who was far and above all of them is John Wooden I was going to say probably and you know what my student called him and John Wooden said you can come to my house and he spent an entire day in John wooden's House

John Wooden gave him an entire day of time to speak about this issue he thought it was so important a student I mean that's beautiful the story I love about John Wooden is when uh Bill Walton showed up and had a beard and long hair and he said sorry Bill we don't have beards on the team and he said well uh I'm going to wear a beard and John Wooden says well we're going to miss you that's exactly right he headed straight to the barber took it off and came straight back and so you see

he wasn't negative he said I appreciate your conviction yeah we're going to miss you yeah instead of saying you called him all kind of names and yelled at him he just basically said I believe in your conviction conviction is important but we're really going to miss you on this team yeah so you lay down The rules there's there's a there's two ways to coach one is what we call conditional acceptance and the other's called unconditional acceptance let's just take it in terms of being a college coach I asked a coach this question I always ask

them you know which one would you lean towards and they say well what do you mean I said here's conditional coaching the team shows up day one and you look at them and say here's the deal you do this you do it my way and you do it with intensity and passion and you never miss a step and maybe you'll play on this team but I'm telling you what every one of you is Expendable and you need to understand that and if you get out of line you're out of here now you understand that that's

conditional so the players come in understanding that if they don't make a mistake then they're okay and that if they don't make a mistake long enough they might get to play and if they don't get make mistakes in the big games they might even get a pad on the back someday that's conditional acceptance the other coach sees them and they come in they go you know something you are the most prized possession in the world to the parents that sent you here and I count it an honor to have you be a part of this

team now let me tell you something first and foremost this is a family and you know what there's differences in families and there's going to be arguments and complaints and things like that but you look around this is our family and I want you to know I'm going to honor that and as long as you're here you're going to play on this team and be a part of this family I love you I want you to know that right up front deal all right you'll never ever ever wonder if I love you or not or

if you're part of this team now let me tell you the rules you better show up and you better show up on the on the right time I'm going to push you harder than you've ever been pushed before because I care about you because I have a dream about this program and I want you to be a part of that and if we get there at the end of that dream you'll know why I pushed you so hard but you'll never question that you're a part of this team unconditionally I want you to know I

love you now that's a different that's a different these people are pushed as hard as these people but these people play out of the fear of failure and these people play out of acceptance I'll tell you a story about that you want to hear a great story was University of Nebraska volleyball volleyball team in 1995 and their coach great friend tremendous individual his name is Terry Pettit um was coaching and they were into a semifinal game and uh uh going to the national championships he had had a 21-year mission of bringing a national championship to

Nebraska and they're getting close but in this particular game the other team had the momentum and it was near the end of the game and I'd asked him that question earlier in the year about this conditional or unconditional coaching and it and it affected him he we talked ly about it and you said I want to say this but maybe I'm not all the way there whatever I mean he just he's a great philosopher and he really wants to take things to heart and build that into his program it's near the end of the game

they've lost some momentum the other team has now scored several points in a row and it's out of they're losing it the dream is over and he calls timeout it's just about at the end and he says the team's coming towards him he said I have no clue what I'm going to say to this team he said I'm not a you know big hugger big you know lovable hugable bear like some coaches might be I'm you know I'm I love the girls I'm serious we we do business and and um and I teach I'm a

teacher but he said they came to me and they looked at me and they were looking for something they were looking for Hope because they had lost it they lost momentum and all the girls circled around him and he said I don't know where it came from but it just started bubbling up from the inside and I looked at him and I just slowly moved my eyes across the room around that little huddle I every girl in the eye and I said I want you to know something whether you win or lose this match I

love you very very much and he turned and sat down that was it the other team's over there diagramming plays and they're doing their ex's nose and all this kind of stuff and they're still 20 seconds to go on the timeout or whatever and his girls they just got tears in their eyes they almost just burst out in tears and as he walked out of the Huddle the Huddle closed they put their arms around each other and they said let's go they walked out on the court and they just stared at the other team waiting

for them to come out something changed in their hearts the other team came out and they served and it was in the sudden death back then and Rally Point was going and Nebraska scored and scored and scored and scored and scored and won the other team had no chance at the honors banquet at the end of the year every girl they end up winning the national championship every one of the girls every single one of them said coach and they looked at him the season turned on a dime when you told us that no matter

if we win or lose you loved us and you know what it did it freed them up it took all of the fear of failure and it freed them up and that I don't know why more coaches can't do that I tell you the ones that I admir do Roy Williams I love that guy he did that he does that um you know he was one the one I was as close to at Candace as any uh they're able to do that the players understand that they care I think the the the issue of Roy

moving to North Carolina probably hurt him that decision harder than anybody else finally making it and who can blame a guy for going home his dream when he was a kid in North Carolina was coach in North Carolina basketball and he turned Kansas basketball into something that was so so amazing yeah and he built something and to leave that broke his heart because he knew that it was going to break some people's heart but he's going home who could blame you know who could blame a is that the same in Corporate America that okay so

it's one thing you're talking about a team they travel together and they're they've got this big common purpose now we take it into what the typical viewer is looking at they've got a team they run a small little small business 14 employees or maybe they're part of a division of a larger company they got 50 employees is the same relationship and the interactions between is is it the same thing the boss has to let them know uh look we have relationship regardless of performance is there what what's the similarities I cannot see a difference I

can't and some people might say I'm naive I can't see it I I speak like you do with hundreds of Corporations around the country top ones I mean you know they're the one two and three some of the top corporations in America I've been with and I would I would say this if they asked the question and that is this what's the meaning of an organization when you have a name you name an organization you have the name up here that entity what does it mean it it is defined by people it's defined by a

number of people right and it doesn't matter if there's a product a service or whatever all business is defined by people first those people can create it those people can sell it those people can Market it those people can communicate with themselves and be a team and make it happen it's always about people first and when you come into an organization and say instead of saying you've got to sell out for this organization which is just a name it's a name given to Define people you got to sell out to this this mon moniker whatever

it is then we're wrong I I I I keep waiting for and and I I know a few people that do this for the day that that an organization walks in and let's say I'm interviewing you for a job and the first question I ask you is number one tell me about your family number two tell me about your passion tell me about the Legacy you want to leave in life what is it that you're really about and you tell me about that and then I tell you a little bit about mine I'm say I'm

I'm going to hire you I mean how many how many guys have ever heard that because I know something what makes this man's heart tick is what I want to capture in my organization and if I have interest in that then I believe that person is going to be loyal that person is going to be hardworking now once I find that out I'm going to say here's the position we have and this is who we are let's you and I discuss for the next two hours this is not a 10-minute interview how your passion dream

Legacy and love for your family can be encouraged enhanced and brought about with the position we have for you right here how can our organization help you get there are you serious that's that doesn't happen very often are you serious and if we find out that the salary and the and the and the issues around this the ability to teach you leadership skills and the opportunity for you to do community service because I'm not going to make you work 80 hours a week and and and the life balance and all the stuff that we have

in this job I'm going to push you I'm going to encourage you I'm going to hold you to the task I'm going to you know have to follow rules but if you know that my deal as a leader as an organization is that you're important that you're family first and that my job is to help you reach your legacy and if the point at which this job can't help you do that anymore I want to help you find another one are you going to come to work differently is your is your family going to stand

at the door and go go Daddy go I want you working for that organization because they care about you like we care about you what is wrong with our organizations in America today is that people are going to work for a check and they know that just like in sport professional sport at times they can be a number and they have a they have a they have a you know a life cycle and if the job isn't done and it isn't done yesterday we'll get somebody else in there and all business struggle struggle with this

whole um you know transitioning of old and new and old and new and all that if we could keep people longer and they know that we're sold out for them first and that the organization is just a name and it's really here to help the people in our organization reach their legacies my gracious that's how you build a winning team that's how you build championships in sport that's how you make kids strong that's how families grow why would it be different it has to be more than a check because they're just coming to work for

a check then you got problems I I sat next to u a gentleman who spent most of his career as a second even sometimes third string quarterback and and we were sitting next to each other at a lunch and and somebody made reference to it cuz it was a close-nit group there was about 40 of us and we knew him so somebody poked a little bit of fun at him being and I turned him I said I always thought the best job in the world would be second string quarterback all that money with none of

those hits and he chuckled a little bit and he said yeah but at that level we all like to play yeah and and it was you know here's me going boy I'd love to make $3 million a year sitting on the sideline with the clipboard and the ball cap and he's saying no I want to I want to be in the game all Champions want to be in the game yeah all Champions want to be in the game I want sh if gears and ask you a question there are people who dominate their Industries winners

for long periods of times names like Tiger Woods Barry Bonds Wayne Gretzky Tom Brady although he's probably still yet we'll go to Joe Montana um are they Unique Individuals that other people cannot repeat or are they individuals who over the course of experience Etc have unlocked the keys to winning regularly I mean I I've got this theory that the difference between Tiger Woods and the guy who's number 150 on the on the on the money list probably not a lot in terms of swing and I mean they're all really really good I would say with

the names that you mentioned that we have this is the wrong term but the perfect storm coming together sure what you have is people that are physical genius that come together with mental toughness and great great ability to deal with interference and and you bring those two things together and you create a Michael Jordan you create a Tiger Woods you create a Wayne Gretzky unbelievable Talent so I think the honest answer to that is that these people are special physically and they're special mentally now the issue the real issue in life is there's a lot

of people that are gifted physically that don't understand what you and I teach right and they they're 150th on the money list right or they're 200th or they're in the CBA yeah or they're an NBA bust because they haven't understood the importance of this they're not disciplined in the mental side or maybe more importantly they weren't parented that way I think that one of the keys to Tiger Woods there's some great stuff about Tiger Woods that I golf is my field and I and I love I love the study of Tiger Woods is parenting great

parents his parents knew he was special early and his dad was the guardian of his dream he took him and moved him forward and um the other thing about Tiger Tiger does one of the things we talk about in in success and that is you've got to be self-referenced your when you look in the mirror you got to say am I better against that person in the mirror today than I was yesterday instead of of am I better than that guy am I better than that guy and that and that that the greatest measure of

success that we have is the person staring back from the mirror and so Tiger Woods wins the US Open at Pebble Beach several years ago I think he's 26 years old he shoots 12 under par he wins by 15 shots the next closest guy's overpar three Strokes he sets the all-time record for the US opening at Pebble Beach and breaks numerous records he's 26 unbelievable and so they asked him what's left for you great answer he said well butcher and I were just talking this is back when he and Butch were together we were talking

on the Range yesterday on Saturday and he said we we've come to the conclusion that I'm only about 70% there I've got 30% of improvement to do and you know what he did I couple years later two years later after he got sort of hit a ceiling for him yeah he changed his golf swing retooled the whole thing didn't and everybody got on the bandwagon of what's wrong with tiger why would he do that all these other guys in the past that have changed their swing some of them never showed up again why would he

jeopardize that oh by the way he's married now and there's a big interference and all this stuff bye-bye tiger you'll never get back and then this year somebody asked him the question they said they said why did you change your swing why did you go through all that and he said one two one and they said what do you mean he said that's how I finished in the last three Majors first second and first next question cool I love the way he interviews yeah you know those guy those great guys they have a they have

a they have a composure about them they're great interviews they're gracious people and they perform they grew up wanting the ball in their hand at the end of the game you got to want that yeah so there's a lot more people I believe that could could be there that don't get there because they don't have what we're talking about I want to give you this uh definition that I love and it it fits well because it's whether you're in sports or you're in business and this is about game day MH performance equals potential minus interference

you mentioned the word interference a couple times talk to us about that that equation performance equals potential minus interference every person I work with we start with that formula and that's the reason is this the potential is not enough on Game Day game is a place that uh is a cauldron of pressure game day is an environment unlike any other environment and and for people in business they they understand what game day is about they have game day moments or game day weeks or game day months you know we're talking about performing your best when

it means the most the big presentation that's it it's one thing to do it with your little crew is you're prepping it's another thing to walk into the client who's deciding whether you're going to spend $100 million on an ad campaign exactly right you you know or having to respond to a situation that's critical to the future of this business or your position or whatever it might be game day is different and when you look at game day you see the distractions that are um not normal the interference points number one the the the the

voices in your head the fear of failures and the perfectionist voice and the and the and the the uh uh this is it voice and the uh conservative voice they all competing for your attention and then we have the past how you've done in this situation in the past then we have the future like just think if this happens you could hold this trophy or you could get that promotion or you would be seen as this and all of that stuff is just flooding in when it has nothing to do with anything the issue at

hand is can you take the skills and talents and abilities that you know to be true at a moment in time and focus in on that and get the job done everything else is interference game day is just a great Arena to watch how people filter through interference and align their mind to the purpose at hand I you know focus is a big deal and to be able to filter and focus is huge and that's the difference between an or ordinary ex you know you know situation and game day so why would I prepare an

athlete with the X's and O's why would I prepare an athlete with strength training and and and practice and scrimmage if I never addressed what it's like walking into the Super Bowl yeah you got to be kidding me yeah why would I why would I have a guy hit and I love golf I do a lot of work in golf it's the worst practice sport in America why do we pound thousands of balls for those that do and they're very good players on a perfectly level quiet practice range on perfectly manicured grass with the same

Club over and over when the US Open is next week at shinok Hills and the wind's going to be blowing 30 m an hour grass is this deep and the rough is that deep and I've got the cameras on and I'm paired with some of the best players in the world I better I better understand that the beating of the balls is a part of sort of getting me physically ready but if if I don't address the environment in which I'm about to walk into I got no chance and that's where people go oh next

time I'm in that environment I'll be ready let's don't wait let's don't wait you don't get to go to a Super Bowl all the time you don't get to get in an NBA championship all the time when the when the opportunity knocks you better be ready to open the door yeah because Destiny comes by only a few times in your life we have a lot of people who are in sales and of course all of life is sales you know we're always selling um and and one of the questions I here regularly and I want

to kind of have you walk us through a real practical step byep I hear a lot of people say how do you not get nervous when you're going to speak in front of people and and there are people who just as part of their job they have to speak in front of three or four people some people every now and then 3 or 400 walk us through what you might tell somebody who their game day is going to be making a presentation doesn't matter if it's big or small but they they just don't like it

they don't feel right about it what would what would you tell somebody what are the real practical steps that you tell somebody to prepare uh as they're getting ready for giving a presentation so that they're not thinking about all those things that get them away all right let's think about it what in that setting distracts you the most you know what is it for most people it's failing in front of a bunch of eyes right or forgetting their lines or thinking they don't have anything to say so let's deal with the fear of failure start

with because they're in that formula that my success or failure as judged by these people it has a lot of meaning in this particular setting so let's deal with well let's deal with that thing first let's understand what this whole let's let's understand what the perspective the right perspective with which we're going in there for number one and then secondly do you have anything to say Do you believe in what you're going to say is what you're going to say important if it's not then don't do it but if it is then then wouldn't it

be important for these other people to have it and to know it do you have enough conviction in what you have the material you're going to share that it just might make a difference in somebody's life and if you do then we've got another step let's talk about the people that are coming why are they coming they're they've got some questions they've got some issues they need some information do you have something do you have something that can that that can trigger a thought process of movement in their life I think I do do you

know you do I know I do are you important are you doing something that's that's something you can be passionate about then do it now when information is given it it can transform a life whether it's done with perfection or whether it's done with passion just make sure you're passionate about what you share you don't have to be perfect nobody wants perfect they don't want slick they want real they want authentic can you be authentic are you an authentic person do you believe in what you're going to say if so now let's practice it and

let's take everything that's knocked you out of the game in the past and let's just talk through those things I call that mental tough mental toughness training take the issues that have knocked you out dispel the lies um bring out the truths and get somebody excited about what they're going to share one last question sure I know that your uh purpose one of your purposes in life is to help people fulfill their Destiny whether it's in sports business life give us a a brief comment on what it means to fulfill your destiny oh my goodness

I just believe that each person has a distinct purpose for being here and at the end of our life we need to know that we made a difference and that we took the skills and talents and gifts that we've been given and that we used it to the fullest and we need to surround oursel by people that believe that about us and share our dreams and goals with other people we need to have dads that are guardians of their dreams we need coaches to be Legacy coaches to people we need employees to really get after

it and do that with people but at the end of the day it isn't about success success is part of the journey and if you think right and have the right perspective you'll have a lot of success but in the end was did I make a difference and that's all about your legacy and it's people have got to spend time looking for it sometimes I get frustrated at public schools because we spend so much time teaching math and English and writing and all that stuff I'm I'm not upset about that part I'm just upset that

we don't have people find and discover their dream in their legacy and then help them help them get there a class on life coaching success in terms of success with that's part of the journey but not an end and a means by itself fascinating stuff thanks for being with us appreciate it you're so welcome Dennis waitley welcome thank you Chris it's great to be with you yeah it's good to have you here now um I like to help people get to know the person behind the personality because particularly it was especially when we're when we're

sitting down with someone like yourself who is so well known throughout the world and anybody who has even remotely studied any sort of personal development self-mastery has heard the name Dennis waitley and most likely according to the statistics read one of your books or listened to one of your audio programs and so uh this is just an informal chance for us to get to know you and the the thoughts that you have brought about and brought to fruition over the years and so I'm excited to be with you you and I spent a little bit

of time together but uh I like to hear some of the stories as well so maybe you could tell us a little bit about your early life well it's not too uh exciting except that I was raised during the World War II era and uh like all speakers I came from a poor family you know how we all say that we've overcome adversity to become great and uh I never went to bed hungry but we didn't have any money my idea of money my dad made $200 a month was his biggest paycheck and uh he

said you could never live in a house like that the rich people live there and they're born that way or crooked so my dad thought you had to be either born with it or crooked to get it and uh my mother made sandwiches uh for school and they were two pieces of Wonderbread mayonnaise and lettuce a little pepper and salt and I looked in it and I said what is this she said that's a chicken sandwich without the chicken I said well how do you get the chicken and she said you got to go mow

some Lawns and go to the store and bring your mama home with chicken so we didn't have money and my idea would have been maybe $800 a month would have been a a king's Ransom but uh it was a good childhood I listened to a lot of radio which maybe got my radio voice you know listen to Sky King who was Earl Nightingale in those days and so I developed an audio kind of ear for the spoken word and that was one of the things uh reading a lot and listening a lot uh was an

early childhood kind of thing now you mentioned ingest but it is true you know so many people say well I was born very poor and had hardships uh why do you suppose it is that so many people start out in sort of a you know tumultuous times or hard times but then they go on to achieve such great things I mean is there is there something about that in our formative years that makes us go on and and Achieve great things or I really think so I think so many people have so much going in

they don't take anything out or forward but if you don't have too much going in then you're compensating for what you don't have and you try harder and work harder so sometimes it's better to overcome it adversity because then you really appreciate success when you get it so when you were growing up did you say I want to become wealthy or I want to become a a world famous speaker or I think the speaking actually came out of the other things that you did we're going to talk about but did you have these sort of

I want to escape and have more than what I had as a child sure my mom and dad argued a lot about money my dad drank too much and smoked too much and instead of being a chip off the old block I wanted to be different uh than my dad I wanted to be a a man of the family and they argued so much I figured that they must be arguing about something that wasn't good so I wanted to be different from my father but uh I think I was inadequate and had ideas of self-doubt

and I think in order to get any self-esteem I had to go out and prove myself which means in athletics and in school that was a way for me to see that I was better than where we were coming from it's interesting you find a lot of people who didn't get that kind of uh self-esteem spoken to them by parents and so it's almost like we grow up trying to to achieve it so that we can I don't know prove it to ourselves or prove it to our parents was there some of that you wanted

to to show your parents how much you could become oh a lot of that in fact uh when when I was about 9 years old my dad would come into my room and he'd been drinking and he he would lean back against the light switch and blow it out and I said how'd you do that and he said I got bad breath from drinking he said but when the light's out for you my son it's out all over the world and he said I don't want you to grow up like me you don't have to

be like me but remember when you sleep the world is sleeping your dream when you wake up the world stretches and awakens with you and when you're not feeling good the world isn't a good place the only World you'll ever know is the one you see through your eyes and I said wow what a responsibility that I have to make the world as I see it through my eyes and I think that helped me because he left home for good when I was nine and I was left to be the man of the family with

my little brother who became my little Shadow and my sister so I had to overcome where we came from I think at that age so you had a lot of responsibility thrust on you that seems be another aspect of overachievers is is people uh they experience responsibility in an early age so I'm they grow up too fast is that part of it as well well I think I had to you know take care of my mom and she said you know I don't want you to grow up like your dad and you need to be

a good man and so I would ride my bicycle about 20 mi one way to go to my grandmother's house because at home I still felt inadequate but at Grandma's house she made me feel like I was special she said you're a good boy and you mow a good lawn and I'll give you a piece of lemon pie because you're such a good boy and I was thriving on any kind of positive input I could get and she was the one that gave me the positive input now you mentioned your grandma is this maternal or

paternal Grandma it's maternal okay maternal and you mentioned as we were preparing for our conversation you know I said who are your role models and you mentioned your grandmother tell us about that well she's the primary role model in my life and she and I planted a victory garden during World War II we put these little seeds in the ground and she said whatever you put in comes up and I said wow how do you know how do you know it's going to look like that she said because that's the way you plant it she

said the weeds will come in Uninvited and unannounced you don't have to even water the weeds but you plant the seeds of greatness and you grow vegetables or fruit or good people so remember model yourself after people with proven track records of success and you'll plant the seeds of greatness in yourself and she kept filling me with that kind of input and so the seeds of greatness was like gardening for me and I I really believe that you cultivated and harvested what you plant now where was this when you were growing up what uh area

of the country were you San Diego California still San Diego yeah I was in San Diego and and uh I still live there and my children grandchildren live there but I have fond memories of of my grandmother believing in me when that's all I had to hang on to yeah um as you travel around one of the things I'm sure you talk about is um avoiding naysayers and the people who speak negative things but then also the the selft talk that we tell ourselves and believe about ourselves um how can people maybe they don't have

a grandmother or an aunt or an uncle maybe they're not getting it from their parents or brothers or sisters or or even their spouse how can we find somebody who can be a positive influence in our lives somebody who can encourage us build us up like you're your grandmother was for you uh you weren't getting it at home and so your grandmother became that for you and and gave you the lift that you needed mentally and well there's several things you can do obviously it's good to be involved in organized extracurricular activities you find it

in sports on a team you find it in music with a band you find it by joining a camera club or a you know a reading club some kind of Club where people are doing positive things right you know you belong even if it's wrong with a gang but belong to some kind of organized activity where people have the same goal rather than the same problem that's one thing but the most important thing I think is to read biographies of people who have overcome enormous obstacles to become successful you read about colon Po and Oprah

Winfrey you read about Jack custo and you read about these average people common people who become uncommonly successful and you say wow they're not so special at least they weren't when they were kids so maybe there's a chance for for me if they did out of adversity what they did maybe I could too and you learn that they overcome enormous problems to become successful because that's what drove them what do you do if you have somebody in your life who is a close family member maybe a spouse or or even parents who still living even

if we're we're older um who are not particularly positive about the dreams that we want to achieve the work that we want to pursue uh those types of things how how do you overcome that I mean you don't want to sever the relationship uh and and yet we want to cultivate this atmosphere in our lives that is is positive and uplifting is there any tips you can give people who might find themselves in that situation well I've been in that situation because my mother's always been very negative uh she's 96 as as we speak and

believes that I should get a real job uh she gives me classified ads so you know wanted a good man for $1,500 a month with car still to this day yeah and she said the other day uh do you think anyone in our family will ever become successful and I said well you know maybe the grandchildren mom but what I've learned to do with her is I realized that she did the best she could with what she had to work with and that I wasn't going to change her belief so I pull the Venetian blinds

on the negative thing she said and everything she said negative I tried to reverse it it's a hot day I said good son she said it's raining I said good for the flowers so I would always come back with a positive even though she came in with the negative and that way I could reverse the thought and the other thing I did is develop selective listening when people would complain you know pity parties group griping Grudge collecting I would really try to selectively hear what the solution would be to the problem they were talking about

so I think it's very important to have a mastermind group and to hang around with optimists if you're around a negative atmosphere you have to have a good friend who's an optimist or you have to belong to some kind of group that's talking about things that's why I have lunch about once a week with people people who might have similar goals but different backgrounds and they challenge me to do better otherwise you might stay in some rut that you were in simply because the people around you were maybe poisoning the water a little bit and

of course the media and the commercial media and news media a little bit that's one great thing about this kind of program you know bad news cells the fire that burns another warms the general population and the fact they're glad they weren't the victim of the day so people pass on bad news it makes them insulated and isolated from the problem and they're glad that they weren't out there in the same way and it makes them feel better being mediocre than go challenging themselves because things are liable to turn out bad yeah yeah TV nowadays

it seems like what's the old saying if it bleeds it leads you know and and that is really one of the goals here is to is to open people's minds to the ideas and the people who are promoting these kinds of ideas to help them understand that that they can become better that they can succeed that they can achieve the things that they want to achieve now I wanted to go back back just a moment to Parenting because we're going to talk at the end of the show about some really exciting stuff that you're doing

but uh I was reminded of story I believe it was Ted Turner when he won time man of the year and he held up the magazine when he won it he said is this enough dad you know and why is it that the people who are closest to us can sometimes be the the hardest on us whether it's a parent or a spouse what what takes place there why why when we say that we love somebody can we be so tough on them I guess we we love them so much that we're so critical of

them we keep digging up the the the seeds that are planted to see how they're doing and what's bad about that is you you feel inadequate because they're criticizing you they're being a judge rather than a a role model they're being a Critic instead of a an encourager and parents don't really realize how important it would be to just listen to children and show interest in what they're doing instead of trying to make the children vicariously live their lives over again so that's really what many parents want they want their children to prove that they're

that the parents are good and so that's a real problem when I was about 12 I had a recurring dream so you asked me about positive thinking and how I got into this I had a dream over and over again it wasn't a nightmare it was a good dream and I was in a tuxedo and I was older and I was in Carnegie Hall and I was standing there in front of the audience and they Rose to their feet and gave me a Standing Ovation and in the front row was mom and dad and my

family my grandma and I remember saying in the dream is it okay now am I okay is is that acceptable behavior I mean am I am I a good boy now because grandma is the only one that said it not Mom or Dad or not really they so I was proving myself in those dreams as somebody that could do something special and about 25 30 years later I found myself in a tuxedo in Carnegie Hall and I did get a standing ovation but my parents weren't there but it still was the same effect on me

I still said to myself I'm okay now it's too bad that we need external approval though you know that we need an audience to tell us that we're okay it would be better if we were internal if we played a beautiful piece on the piano and we knew it was good because we did it for the sake of Excellence but if you have to have audience then it means maybe you're still trying to prove yourself yeah I think there's a balance because I think we we were created with a need for other people otherwise if

we were completely independent you know I wouldn't need you you wouldn't need me we all live our separate lives but really where it it gets out of whack is when it becomes you know an overwhelming need or um an unhealthy need how do you how do you balance that between you know you you want your mother's approval you want your father's approval but you can't live off of your mother and father's approval does that make sense I mean how do you find and what's so good about what you just said is that you want to

play for a gallery of one which is your own idea of being created for excellence but at the same time you want to help other people and you really want to be a good friend to other people and one of the ideas in life is to uh create other winners and that's one way where you can instead of just gaining approval you can actually help other people achieve their dreams and if you get out of yourself and into them you really don't worry so much about yourself and you don't become selfish you can have good

self-esteem but still give yourself away and you've given up nothing by sharing the best in you you haven't given up anything but you couldn't keep it anyway so unless you give it away knowledge and money are the same thing they don't do any good when you have them right they only do you good when you employ them so I think it's a great idea to say sure I'm as good as the best but no better than the rest and one of the things I need to do is pass my winds along and that makes me

feel better for Being Human so it's the balance between on one hand you don't want to be dependent on somebody else on the other hand you don't want to be completely independent or autonomous you want that interdependence sure and and then you're helping each other so it's it's a shared Victory it's it's a double win if you win I win if I help you win then I win too yeah healthy interactions and yeah kind of thing so who were some of your other Role Models over the years you've met I mean everybody you know who

have been some of the people that you've looked up to who taught you who you've learned from who've really made a a a nice investment in your life well I think you know Billy Graham has been one uh really uh I remember him looking at me and he said how many lives have you changed Dennis and I said I said one Dr Graham uh I've allowed mine to be changed but I I don't change people's lives and he said me neither he said I give them what I believe in they come down from the Outfield

to the infield give them some literature and a prayer and they usually go back to being themselves unless at that moment they've intersected a commitment that they make to change and I said wow that's kind of the way I feel but you've done it with a lot more people Dr Graham so he's been one that has been authentic an authentic uh preacher he walks the talk another one has been Dr Jonas Sol and he was my mentor and boss for many years he's the one that discovered the first polio vaccine and he said you know

you're a crazy guy you know nothing about science but a lot about people he said why won't people invest in science and I said because it isn't any fun people will do what they want before they do what they need and therefore they'll spend their money on tension relieving instead of goal achieving he says so what we have to do is make investing in the future fun I said exciting passionate and not don't pull too much on their negative emotional heartstrings but give them an excitement and they will invest in and he said that's a

good lesson he said so what about a hidden agenda what is that I said that's what people are really coming for and the thing we ask questions for Dr Su is to find out what they really want we do a want analysis and we find out what they're coming for and that's a hidden agenda so he was a great role model he said you know you ought to go back to school I'll help you get back I'll help you get into psychology if you're going to be selling a dream you better be underpinned with good

psychology so he's the one that encouraged me to get a doctorate in human behavior and introduced me to a lot of really important people like Abraham maslo and uh Victor Frankl and William Glasser and some of the real icons in the Carl Rogers uh and that gave me the incentive to want to be more professional about what I did I want to go back uh as we transition out of the role models and all that to uh Annapolis I mean that's that's a pretty amazing my son wants to go to Naval Academy I me that's

one of his big dreams and very few people get to have that kind of experience how did you end up at Anapolis well of course it's the only way you can get a free education when you don't have any money and when the Korean war is on instead of carrying a rifle you want to go hide in a service Academy but my dad said that if I stayed in the Navy kept my nose clean and didn't Rock the Boat I could retire with $800 to $1,000 a month he said that really early in life so

before he left home he really planted the seed that maybe a free education at a service Academy so I was obsessed with it told everyone that that's where I was going to go and then realized you needed an appointment Yeah by a congressman so I tried to get you know Senator Nixon to give me an appointment and then I didn't get that so I had to join the naval Reserve they activated my unit put me on a submarine and were sending me to Korea and I said this is not going to work so I studied

really hard to pass the fleet examination got into the Naval Academy and sure enough my mentor and big brother there was H Ross perau oh really yeah Ross perau was the Brigade Commander there and he had that same fiery intensity uh as he had when he used to run for president a couple of times but he was a really good role model and example for me at the Academy and I I think that I wasn't cut out to be a career service officer but on the other hand it taught me some discipline it taught me

some goal setting it taught me that takes a lot more effort than you think and it was really good for me that's that's why I became a pilot because it was exciting and and passionate yeah what kind of planes did you fly I flew uh first the old ad and then the a4d so I became a low-level attack carrier based pilot being catapulted off in the middle of the night can you imagine a poet being a pilot yeah you know every Landing was a control crash on the carrier as long as I caught a wire

it was great yeah it's amazing so how did you get then you got this period of time we talked about your early life then we talked about going to Annapolis and the things that you learned there how do you go from being a fighter pilot to being a bestelling author and speaker what what took place over that what was the transition give us a lay of the land there well I was more interested in people than I was in in uh being a combat pilot I was always trying to help the people Help the enlisted

men and and uh be a guy that was speaking more and of course what is a naval officer wants to be an admiral do speaking so I even even then I began to be interested in personal development rather than in just being a Defender but I think resigning my commission getting out of the Navy uh had some small children I went to work for aex corporation which had just invented the videotape recorder and then I went to Russia to this world fair there and Nixon and kusf were in the kitchen debating and cruff had his

shoe and he said we'll bury your grandchildren Nixon said no you won't and we smuggled out the videotape in our underwear back to the United States and I think the idea of video and marketing and management got me more interested in public service and in publicity but it wasn't until I came down to the so Institute and met Jonah Suk and decided to raise money for him and he said I hate to speak so you're going to go out and speak for me while I'm in the kitchen making the formula and everyone would be angry

because say here this guy coming and they said you're no Jonah salul I said no but but I'm going to tell you why science is so important so I had to explain complicated scientific things in layman's terms and I think I developed at that time an ability to go out and speak over and over and over again it was the fact that I did a little tape on you know P because at the same time during the 70s I became a a rehabilitation coordinator for the Vietnam prisoner of war and on top of that I

wrote my doctorate thesis on why no American prisoner ever escape from a minimum security Camp during the Korean War I couldn't believe it if you're in a minimum security Camp you don't try to escape but there's no barb wire if you're in a maximum security Camp there's barbwire and dogs and machine guns and you you escape why because you're a leader when you're purpose full you know where you're going when you're purpose less you stay for the duration so that became an underlying thesis for my whole if you will pitch in life was P could

be prisoner of war could be Prince of Wales could be power of women could be prisoner of wishes prisoner of work but more likely it could be psychology of winning depending on what you did with it psychology of winning when when people say Dennis waitley at least when I hear that I think of two things psychology of winning seeds of greatness and um so you you come out with this audio program psychology of winning and as we've talked you told me something really interesting you said I didn't do it so much for other people you

did it for yourself how did that how did that all come about how did you end up going from doing what you're doing speaking on behalf of uh Dr sulk and then all of a sudden creating the bestselling audio program of all time how does that how does that happen because I was losing instead of winning and because I was losing I I wasn't doing well professionally I I uh sold the so Foundation to another Foundation I ended up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in the middle of the winter not being wanting to be there I was

a California boy I'm in the worst winter I don't have a job anymore because this Sal Foundation is being closed down my kids want a mutiny I'm a single father with four children and my children don't want to be the Bad News Bears anymore they want to go back to California they don't want to be in Pittsburgh my son wanted to play football and they mutinied on me and there I was in the middle of the winter saying I'm not a winner I'm a loser what would make a winner If I Could Be A Winner

what would I do and I began to do more of my own research more of the things I learned from Suk and from the other behavioral scientists and I wrote the program for me not based on my success but based on what I wasn't doing and that's why I think that some people wait until they perform to feel valuable What If instead you felt value would lead to your performance and what if you could learn at the worst time of your life that that might be the moment where you could bring the best out of

you because when things are going well you Coast when things are not going well you have two choices wallow in it or get out of it so I wrote that program night after night day after day people would see me coming in this Medical Center in Pittsburgh and say what are you doing I said I'm writing a program for myself to try to get out of here and they said you're a California boy you want to go home huh and I said I want to go home with my family and so I wrote it for

myself I did a small tape of it Earl Nightingale happened to hear the tape because World Book childcraft had sent it to him because I did a speech for them and he called me and said you know you have a nice voice you're not well known but you have a nice voice good material I think maybe you know maybe we might be able to use you and that was he had the only tape program out in the spoken voice lead the field and The Strangest Secret I still really believe in The Strangest Secret I believe

we become what we think about most of the time I definitely believe we become that to which we're most exposed and I think the exposure really leads to a reflex Behavior because it's all habit and habits are are really comfortable they they're easy to get into they're hard to break they're really replace and they go from cobwebs in the cables so for me uh the Tape album was done for me Earl Nightingale discovered by some intersection and I was lucky that they used that album to build a mailing list I mean I wasn't known so

what do you use the album for yeah send it out you know send out the stuff why would they send that stuff out on me because I didn't demand a high royalty because I wasn't well known and wasn't that confident of myself to demand a royalty but had I demanded a high royalty they would never have done it so I got really lucky that they used me as a front-end list Builder how old were you at the time believe it I was almost 40 so I was in my late 30s so you know it shows

you that you can even have either have permanent potential but you don't have to do it when you're a teenager you can put it all together by by taking everything you've learned and turning failure into fertilizer or experience uh into something that comes together later in life and that's why I didn't really start making it until I was in my late 30s and early 40s so I think that we all reach a crossroad in Life or we can we don't have to believe that we're a failure because we haven't found out where we're going even

when we're in our late 30s or 40s you um mentioned a couple of people at particular times have come into your life and you weren't even really looking for them were you I mean you weren't looking for Earl Nightingale all of a sudden he he kind of shows up and the tape gets passed from here to here and is life like that I mean it seems to me like that's the way life really happens is you know we can go out and say I'm going to achieve this and I want but aren't we most likely

to be pleasantly surprised by things that happen upon us well I think yeah you're exactly right you know Robert Schuler says your greatest success will always be God's greatest is Secret in other words the person that helps you will be the least likely to have intersected in your life but there's that that great uh analogy if you will luck really is the intersection of preparation and opportunity if opportunities are not out there if opportunity is within you then if you're always out there you're liable to run into somebody who will help you get what you

want but unless you're out there so I have a UPS d and he says I've always wanted to be a rock star Dr waitley and I said where are you singing now he said no I'm delivering packages and I got this small I said no you don't understand whatever you want to become you need to be doing it now you can't put it on layaway you have to be practicing within when you're without you have to be singing Somewhere because if you look at everyone who's been successful you'll find that they're using their free time

their prime time as preparation for what they really want to do so they don't just wait for opportunity to show up they're out there intersecting it every day and that's where luck comes from yeah was it Armen Hammer said uh the harder I work the luckier I get I think that's what he said and and it really is true and I think maybe that's some reason why some people don't ever get to achieve their dreams is because they they aren't working on themselves so that when the door of opportunity does swing open they're able to

walk through it well that's true and that's why I like this kind of a program so much if you figure that we spend most of our free time watching other people making money having fun in their profession they're loving what they do the ones that are doing sitcoms in reality they love it because they're being paid for what they love to do and we're watching them and keeping their ratings up yeah because we're doing things that overcome the frustration of the mediocrity in a day that we really didn't want to spend and that's why I

think you got to live in prime time you got to watch things that you want to become and be inspired by what you watch rather than just titilated you know rather than just be shocked or viscerally stimul stimulated I think you have to be emotionally and mentally stimulated and inspired that's why I like to watch positive television because it really helps I watch National Geographic and Discovery Channel and the History Channel and I watch programs that really make me feel better about myself of course you know what that does it makes you motivated into realizing

you're not doing as well as you could and it makes you maybe forced to be a little stressed and get out of your comfort zone yeah so you end up doing uh psychology of winning how many audio programs did that sell that sold uh 2 million uh 2 million copies at $50 a piece wow uh first go around and it's just it's been chugging along uh for 25 years ever since Y what are the keys in the psychology of winning program if if somebody said what are the three main things that I would want to

walk away with that would um enable me to apply them to my life and change my life what would they be I think one of the first things would be that uh you believe in your potential and you invest in it because you're as good as the best but no better than the rest so if you actually believe that you're valuable without having done anything then that's potential and that way you'll put Education and Training into you so you have to at least you believe believe that you're better than what you're doing then I think

the other thing would be is that who's in charge here and I always say you know um God deals and says go ahead make your choice uh do what you choose but remember there are rules of the game and I will keep you as the field judge on track and so what I've done is try to be accountable and I tell people that accountability or personal responsibility that Winners make it happen and losers let it happen that Winners deserve to win there never was a winner who wasn't a beginner so when you begin anything new

you're awkward you don't feel confident so you need to still keep in mind you hang on to your dream when that's all you have to hang on to you feel responsible and accountable for the outcome and you focus all your intensity on desired result instead of penalty of failure you go through life driving through the windshield rather than looking through the rearview mirror if you're own always looking through the rearview mirror you're going in the opposite direction and a fear can become as much of a goal as a goal because the fear is a goal

going in the opposite direction so I think the feeling of deserving the feeling of accountability the feeling of having a focused idea something specific that you want maybe a Magnificent Obsession and then be willing to put the practice in that the rest of the population aren't willing to do because I think that uh if you do it right in drill you'll do it right in life I learned that as a pilot I learned that watching and and helping the astronauts observation imitation repetition simulation rehearsal internalization reflex they never was an Olympian who didn't practice so

much that when they went to do it they just remembered yeah they didn't try so I I think the self-d discipline combined with belief in self would be the key that persistence and looking at failure as the fertilizer of life you know trying to remain optimistic through setbacks the mental toughness of that would be another key you know you mentioned athletes you've worked a lot with athletes in fact chairman of psychology for the US Olympic Committee uh Olympic teams from 1980 to 1992 right and we we look at athletes at least I do you know

you go to a professional baseball game and you see this guy walk into the Batters box and here comes this pitch 90 M an hour it's curving the next next one 70 M hour there's so much to take in and we watch this person just effortlessly swing and hit this ball 410 feet over the the fence and there is a danger I think when we see successful people whether it's in athletics or business people or whatever to think that it came easy to them to think that oh they're just good at what they do or

they've been lucky or you know whatever these excuses we make to make it easy for them but what we don't see is the thousands of our hours of practice in a batting cage or or writing speeches and rewriting speeches if you're a public speaker all these different things what do you think is the key to developing our lives so that we can become successful uh as it relates to this practice makes perfect idea I mean it's one thing to say okay I can see what a professional baseball player has to do he has to take

hundreds and hundreds of pitches thousands of hours in a batting cage but how does that apply when you're a manager in a company or a a mom raising your kids how do you how does that concept transfer over well I think it's just the same uh behind every worldclass athlete there's a world class coach behind every worldclass person there's a world class coach you find people with proven track records of success who've been where you want to go and you learn the correct swing before you can play the inner game of anything so you got

to learn the swing with each Club golf is a great example most of us go out in the driving range and hit a bucket of balls and I go out and practice my hooks my slices my dubs right and my Lofts and I practice my mistakes because I didn't have a coach role model or mentor to teach me how to do it right I've been using trial and error and unfortunately the errors are the ones that are practiced and repeated what you do in each of these instances in my opinion is to find someone who's

doing what you want to do and doing it well maybe they're about your age or maybe they're older but they're usually someone that you can use as a role model uh you know you don't use a celebrity who you'll never meet and somebody who's you know I wouldn't look at M Michael Jordan if I were just trying to shoot better free throws right I would find somebody that was most like me I'd read about them I'd study their lives and I try to go to seminars programs and watch videos of of and I I'd rehearsed

the the correct swing because even Harvey McKay has been saying that in his books practice doesn't make perfect it makes permanent only perfect practice makes perfect so why would you practice your errors and that's why I tell young people why do you think that you have to go out and make all the mistakes yourself rather than listen to Veterans so every veteran should have a rookie and every rookie should have a veteran because the rookies have the energy believe they can't fail the veterans know if you persist you will succeed and the veterans also have

learned the correct swing so I think one of the secrets is to study success rather than failure and not go out in trial and error I think it's to simulate the real thing I said uh two things that I think of when I think of Dennis wayy psychology of winning seeds of greatness not many people get to have a great followup I mean there are lots of people that do a a great thing very few people or even fewer people actually do a great thing and follow it up with a great thing how did seeds

of greatness come about well I backed into that because I was known as as an audio voice you know kind of Pat Boon warmed over right you know some people no some people say to me you know how did you sell that many tapes you know I mean you're not that exciting and I said well thank you very much I'm excited on the inst they say you're no Tony Robins you know and I said no I'm not I'm I'm who I am and I don't try to copy other people but the interesting thing and of

course I like to make fun of myself I like to be a bob newart with a little Vince Lombardi shoved on the inside Bob newart personality on the outside I like to really poke fun of myself so I don't get impressed because one of the worst things you can do is begin to get impressed with yourself you know but uh I've said I've sold so many tapes because America has trouble sleeping and if you'll pop one of my tapes in at bedtime I mean it's really a good way to relax it's more expensive than NY

will hey same same sort ort of thing that's true but I think having spoken a lot for companies and remembering my grandmother I needed a sequel of some kind I didn't need son of psychology winning or psychology winning too so I went back to my grandmother's idea of the garden and I began to write another program only this time it was a book Because I had not written a bestselling book I mean psychology of winning as a book was was not a number one bestseller it was just a listening program so I wrote seeds of

greatness and likened it to the garden and remembered what my grandmother said about the seeds and the success and it happened to be one of the best selling books in in the in the 1980s what are the key seeds of greatness well the seed of uh the seed of Love would be to look for good uh in somebody I think to love someone is to look for the good in them and to overlook the blemishes and and to uh to realize that love is not conditional so unconditional love means you accept people in spite of

what they they do I think another seed is the a seed of U Faith there's no such thing is a lack of faith there's only good faith or bad faith because uh it either is depresses you your negative Faith or it inspires you and faith is in something unseen and maybe unknown and yet you believe it because you believe it with all your heart but it may not be something you've experienced firsthand and and I think the uh the seed of uh of perception or perspective uh looking Beyond yourself for meaning in life looking at

the big picture uh believing that it's unfolding as it should be and that that I'm I'm fitting into the harmony of the way it was created I think perspective is great being able to see clearly with a A Vision that of the world and not become pessimistic and of course the seed of uh of direction or or goals I mean goals are like U guided missiles they have a navigational guidance computer inside and you set a Target and makes negative feedback Corrections and hits the target if you don't have a Target it wanders aimlessly around

or self-destruct so I think uh some of those seeds were similar to the psychology of winning but they they really likened it more to a garden and at the end you realize the garden is never complete because just when you think it's a great life and the garden is perfect some ants and some aphids come over here it rains too much or rains too little and the garden always needs tending you never will have a perfect garden and life is like that too just when it looks so good something else comes along to make you

have to get back and cultivate and do some more planting yeah seeds of greatness has a uh a special part in my life because the first time I ever met you and I I'm assuming you remember this because we've talked about it a few times uh I was going to put on conferences I had this big idea I was going to be a conference promoter so I had a friend and I called him up he was putting on a conference where you were speaking and I said hey I'd like to come and just learn you

know kind of like you were saying if you want to do something go learn from people who are already doing it so uh my son and I came and he was probably N9 or 10 at the time something like that and um I called this friend and I said hey can I and help out to see the inner workings of putting on a conference and he said I really need somebody to drive Dennis weightly around so if you could be his Coast while he's here and I thought hey super so I had my son read

seeds of greatness I think when he was N9 or 10 years old and I was so impressed because uh he was just a chatter box you know after reading the book he wanted to know all the you know the questions and and uh I was just impressed that you took the time and that was really my first uh opportunity to meet you and to to see that that just like you've said you can't believe all the Press about yourself and I've always been amazed at at what a a Kind and Generous person you've been and

uh in all the different areas of your life and so that's always been impressive to me that's got to be one of the seeds of greatness maybe not actually written in the book but this idea of of being a a pursuer of achievement and those types of things but remaining humble how does humility play into this idea of I want to be successful I want to to be achiever an achiever but at the same time remaining humble about who we are and a Kind and Generous type of person well I feel that if you got

the real thing you don't have to flaunt a loud expensive imitation uh the people that shout the loudest are calling for help so there's always this in yourface kind of person and that works for gladiators because Gladiators need to intimidate people and maybe it works in the arena but in real life it doesn't I've always felt that arrogance is God's gift to shallow people in other words uh the longer the stretch of the limousine is that you need to ride in the more you need to stretch yourself to hide the lightly valued self of the

little child inside so I think self-esteem is inversely proportional to the stretch of the limousine because the limousine should be ridden in because you enjoy it not because other people are impressed by it so I think the people that try to be impressive are the least impressive the people that talk about themselves the most are very boring because one of the things that I've learned is no one cares really about what you've done unless it benefits the person who's listening why show slides of your trip they're not interested in where you've been unless you got

a ticket waiting for them so I I try not to say things that are important to me unless I feel there's some value for somebody else and I think humility is serving others with Grace and you stop to think about some of the greatest people they've got so much going for them they're so successful why wouldn't they be warm and generous and eager to share it I mean why wouldn't they give back to the fans what the fans have given them the financing and the the the agulation so why wouldn't you be the most humble

gracious warm open stay for hours and sign help little kids I mean after all that's what made you who you are sure and I've always felt that one of my daughters came home and she said dad there's this greatl looking guy he's an athlete and a student and he can dance and oh he's what a hunk and he spoke to me I said come on honey let me tell you something if he's good-looking and an athlete and smart and can dance and is a hunk he should be the most warm and because look what he's

got going for him yeah he's got all this success inside why wouldn't you pass on your winds and that's what I feel you unless you pass your winds on it's a hollow Victory to stand there over a fallen adversary to say look at me I'd rather they we did it you know share the glory and build other winners too and I think that really makes a champion what are some of the greatest lessons you've learned over life wow there's there's been plenty yeah uh some of them I've learned is that the uh persistence and Patience

are not exactly the same because persistence can become obstinance so what you can do is if I fail once then I need to learn more if I fail twice I need to learn more but if I fail three times I need to do it a little differently and if I fail four or five or six or seven times maybe I have set my goals a little too high maybe I need to bring them in a little bit and I've learned it's much better to succeed by the inch rather than to try to go for the

touchdown in one play to stair step success and pull myself along because you get reinforcement when you succeed in a small way and you can overcome your mistakes easier if you bite off little pieces rather than try to take these big because most people give up because they say I knew I knew it wouldn't work right that's because they're not incrementalization another thing I've learned is that I I am as good as the best meaning that I have potential that I can do but I'm know better than anyone who's ever been born or has yet

to be born and that's why I say I'm not impressed I I express but I don't impress and I've learned that that works for me and I've learned that some of the best people I've ever met are so humble and I say wow uh you know we talked about that maybe in coming over you know we talked about a a star who's nice right well why wouldn't they be you know why would they be this Primadonna BEC they're Primadonna because it came quick came easy and that maybe they didn't have to really work hard to

get it because you have to work hard to get it you never forget who brought you to the dance so I I try to remember who said the quote who to give credit to and make sure I never forget anyone who's ever helped me uh I think another thing that I've learned is that U failure really is the stuff that success is made of if you use it as mulch or fertilizer you don't want to wallow in your mistakes you want to learn from them so it's a learning experience and a temporary inconvenience but failure

is not a person it's an event I learn that every day failure is an event not a person so don't worry your failures on your back you don't have to carry them forward you learn from them and somebody told me that the other day they said you know I'm divorced and I said you're unmarried or single when were you divorced they said I was divorced three years ago and I said I'm glad it's over so in other words it's final yeah and now you can go forward and learn from that and maybe you know have

a better relationship next time yeah we all make mistakes we all have failures we all you know all the people that we see who are successful you can look back in their life and say hey there were there were problems there were bankruptcies there were divorces there were you know all sorts of of difficulties and yet isn't it true that the most successful people are really in many ways just the people who keep going they're the ones who decide to keep going instead of quitting it's really not rocket science you know they they do have

patience and persistence and they they hang in there and they keep trying they don't give up the other thing they do I think is your selfworth in the long run influences your net worth so your net worth is your achievement and your selfworth gives you a passport to achievement it allows you to believe that you can add a zero to your income and you don't have to uh wait for an opportunity you know we've talked about that earlier I will never wait for an incoming call because I've never had an incoming call offering me an

opportunity only offering me something to buy yeah people call me to achieve their goals I call them to have them help me achieve mine so I think you really have to make outgoing calls rather than wait for the incoming call to give you that lucky break you have entered into a new stage in your life where you're developing uh a lot of Concepts around a topic that is new at least your public life certainly not to your your personal life tell us what you're doing now well I I've decided to be more of a a

family leadership guy because I made so many mistakes raising my own children you know I've had his hers ours theirs been single father for 9 years and so I want to plant the seeds of greatness in the Next Generation and I'd like to see us pass on values to our kids roots and wings instead of Loot and things if you give your kids Loot and things they won't have any roots and wings because they'll believe that money grows on a tree that is given to them bye the Dad or Mom tree the credit card tree

or the born in America tree or the entitlement tree and it doesn't grow on that so I'm really hoping to take a new version of the seeds of greatness for the next generation and do some roots of core values and some wings of of self motivation and and expectancy and really try to help because I'm worried you know I'm always you know maybe when you get older you worry yeah I believe the country is in good hands with young leadership but I think there's a skin deep culture that's invested in immediate gratification and I think

we need to delay gratification ation for the goal rather than try to get everything now what are the key principles that you're trying to communicate through seeds of greatness in your family leadership program well I think one of the most important ones has to do with money believe it or not that uh we don't talk about money with our kids uh it's almost as taboo as sex and so if we talked about how money is earned how money is spent and let them go down and go to the grocery store and take the coupons with

us and learn to make choices based on what something's Worth to give children an allowance early to have them learn how to manage money 30% to spend now 50% to uh spend later in the year uh 10% to give away to someone needy or the church and then uh 10% for the future which you don't spend and learn how to use debit cards instead of credit cards and that you have to pay for your own cell phone bill and if you're going to message other students it's going to cost some money and to have this

mentality that if I give value then I receive value but it doesn't just come because of where I was born or who I am so that's one of the things would be to internalize value and then make them realize there's effort and delayed gratification to get there and I think the important thing is to develop a belief in one's potential that isn't always measured against celebrity or athletic ability that believe that I'm worthy of success and then get the discipline and early responsibility to make choices and live with those choices as long as they're not

dangerous in other words a parents role should be uh to plant the seeds to let them mistake U make mistakes in a safe environment as long as that doesn't damage them physically or emotionally and let them get the logical consequence or reward of their efforts and choices as early as possible so we can really develop a generation of shall we say hungry immigrants in our own country who are hungry for knowledge and are working as hard as an immigrant would work having just come to this country you think that sometimes we do our kids a

a lack of justice so to speak in protecting them too much not allowing them to experience the things that they need to experience oh I actually do we tend to give our children everything they didn't or and everything we didn't have we want our children to do better than us so we try to facilitate that and we really don't want them to fail and that's a problem because that's a very com uh healthy thing is to make mistakes so we tend to protect them number one but we expect the best because we want them to

live up to our expectation because it makes us feel like a good parent if they do well and the problem with that is that we probably engage them in way too many organized activities and we over promote their time and pretty soon it's all activity based and they don't end end up being able to be a child they don't have dinner together you know I just read the other day that uh the parents that eat with their children have children who are more successful in school and in college than those that don't eat with them

a few times a week so I think turning the television off during supper eating with the child and being a Hands-On parent rather than a parent that just uh tries to buy the child's affection rather than giving them time Dennis waitley thanks for being with us I appreciate you and all your knowledge and all the things that you've done and just all the things that we can learn from you and people like yourself who who sort of lead the way in the area of uh thoughts and ideas and action and goal setting and all that

type of thing so well thank you I really have to pay a compliment back to you though you know I've seen your growth and seen where you've come and you've come so far and I'm just so excited that we have a a generation of Champions that are in this new 21st century and I'm just excited to be a friend and also so a a co-mentor with you a collaborator It's Great To Be With You Chris thanks thanks y wo thank you yeah good to have you here I always like to have uh folks that I've

been friends with for a number of years and you and I have gotten to know each other the last couple of years through some speaking engagements and uh through the national speaker Association so I'm excited to let the audience know some of the things that I know about you and uh glad to have you here awesome good you know one of the things we talked about starting the the show with is to help America kind of peer behind the ve that are theems and you went to the United States Air Force Academy and I thought

it would be fun for people to be able to kind of sneak peek behind the scenes at what takes place at the fourmies and particularly from your perspective at the Air Force Academy what are some of the things that it takes to get into theems and what are the unique lessons that you feel like the young men and women learn at these acmis that prepare them for life that make them so successful when they get out well as a as a major in Air Force Reserve I'm actually a admissions liaison officer for the Academy so

I interview these young men and women with such potential to be everything they want to be so to speak and uh the toughest part of their senior year in high school is actually trying to get into the academy is because it's a complicated admissions process they have to go through Congressional nominations interviews so many steps how how does that work the Congressional because that's one of the things that I've heard is that you have to have a a letter from your Congress person right in addition to being interviewed one-on-one just like we're doing right here

with a uh uh an academy grad or liaison officer they have to go through uh a Academy review board with the congressman Andor his or her Personnel the his wingman so to speak and they asked the the this young man and woman a lot of questions about their background their values SAT scores academics so many things to dig deep not only into their ability to perform well physically and academically which the academy is a very challenging in but also what is the core what's behind that person and is this person going to be able to

make the military a career and will they be able to serve and do the mission which is obviously as you know not not very easy yeah what are the basic requirements for getting into the theems I mean when I think of theems I think of the creme de laem the the very top the top SATs you know student body president quarterback of the NF or quarterback of the high school football team what what is it what's the basic requirements we look for well-rounded individuals somebody that can get into Harvard may not be able to get

into the Air Force Academy if you're just purely academic that's not enough officers in the military especially when you're leading men and women in a combat need to be diverse resilience the ability to adapt to change uh physically Adept uh emotionally secure uh just a lot of subtle things that you really get when you talk to a young person about their background so how do you find that when you're sitting across the table from a 17-year-old how do you find diversity the adaptability change how do you how do you see that in a 17-year-old kid

you you look at their background uh what type of activities were they involved what's their their propensity to achieve success how do they get along with others and put them into various situations and ask them what they would do obviously anybody can make up stories when they're uh in an interview or whatever but really when you when you put them in a situation and uh find out how they would adapt and respond and as well as their past I think you can assess a lot about their character what's a day like at at one of

the academy what's a what's an average Tuesday look like well one of the things that's you know when you sign up for the academy and they take you off the bus the first thing they do is they line you up and everybody gets their heads shaved okay you're in the same uniform it sort of puts that whole equal playing field right uh into your life at the Academy and the reason why they do that is it really imparts the critical importance of being a team player that it's not an individual that wins it's the team

so when you look the same you dress the same you act basically the same you're in formation that is really really critical and that's how we live the four years there as a group as a team now is that get back to this idea that I read a book uh can't remember the exact name but it was on West Point okay and they they basically said that everybody that comes into theems is again creme deem they were the quarterback of the football team student body president 3.8 4.0 and so they all come thinking they're the

cats me out and they're used to being the leader they're used to being standouts and now they're in a a a group of peers who are all very similar and so the idea is to say yeah you're great and and you're been a great leader but your your peers are also leaders is that part of what they try to groom into you absolutely you know what they have a saying at the acmy the acmy take away all your god-given rights and then give them back to you his privileges over the next four years and the

reason for that is you have to realize what you're fighting for the freedoms that we have the things we take for granted every day and when you can't eat what you want to eat or get up when you want to get up and wear the clothes that you want to wear and they slowly give them back to you as privileges you really find out what makes being a free American so special and when they neutralize the playing field you've got to earn your rank back you've got to earn your way up and uh there's always

somebody better than you Chris uh and that's a humbling experience and you know when I talk about being a wingman you look to your left and your right and ask for help and that's being in the military and being an American in my opinion is all about so uh the day starts at as you would say o Dark 30 Right Dark 30 absolutely so tell us tell us what would happen accomodator I'll give you what it's like basically as a fourth classman a freshman first first year basically they get up and you got to get

your room and tiptop shape and that includes after you brush your teeth and you clean out the sink there can't be any water in the sink your mirrors have to be perfect shoes shine Etc lot like my home bathroom absolutely uh and what happens is you line up outside the hallways in the fourth classman are there to call minutes you you get all the upper classman ready for their day you call out the menu for the morning meal the days until graduation how many minutes till formation you have to know current events three current events

of the day the days until Christmas etc etc so you got to prepare before you walk out of that room why the rote memorization and the typical American would consider that wrote memorization how many days till Christmas and etc etc what is the purpose of that cuz I know that that's a a big part of the training in the acmy what is the purpose of that rope memorization it's about handling yourself and and doing things on the pressure because in the military in combat you've got to handle yourself and do things under pressure you got

to memorize the weather the target who's your wingman what are the frequencies what are the things you need to do and we start early and if you can't memorize the current events or your days until graduation you're probably not going to be able to do it m as a as a as a upper classman or as as an officer in combat so we put the young men and women Under Pressure mhm for 4 years and uh when somebody's asking you these questions you know days of graduation then you're you're stressed out well can you execute

under that and then we teach these men and women how to execute Under Pressure because you're going to make mistakes we want them to make mistakes but uh for example when we talk about the wingman when a fourth class is messing up his wingman his other fourth classman will come over there and and help him okay and memorize the days until graduation because you never could do it alone there's always somebody there so it's just a great feeling and it's very symbolic like I said of how you can live your life and your career as

an officer and and I've applied it to my personal lives as well so you march the breakfast you uh uh as a fourth class you got what's typical breakfast you've got like 12 minutes to eat and do everything not a is it a big pile of mush they give you like in the movies it's family style great food the academy uh they really take nutrition uh seriously and everybody shares and uh the Freshman normally don't get too much heat but it just depends you know uh and then you know it's like a normal College day

uh but we we separate to day 50-minute periods academics we march to to lunch we have uh academic caller Quarters at night inter murals military training later on in the afternoon it depends and then uh other than the Academic Year the Summers you have specific programs you travel across the country over to Europe uh as fourth classman you go through uh during your freshman to summer or freshman to sophomore year you go through series survival evasion resistance where they put you through a mock uh P situation and God willing none none of us will have

to do that but as we know now there's it's it's serious out there so we prepare early so that when they're out there in the real world they'll be able to succeed so lots of programs lots of opportunities for leadership uh and you're always challenged when you think back to your days at the Academy what uh what one two maybe three principles that you learned at the Academy have stuck with you most in your life today one of the most important components of the academy is the honor code MH we will not lie steal or

cheat nor tolerate Among Us anyone who does and that mission statement so to speak really is ingrained in us for those four years and it's something I've taken back in my into my personal professional life as well they understand at the Academy that you're going to make mistakes and no one's perfect but the older you get the more experience you get the more responsibility you get the less those mistakes are going to be acceptable so you learn the the importance of honor and integrity and and and accountability and when you're out there in the business

World in my opinion there's no black or white or there's no gray area for for integrity it's either black or white you're honest or you're not and at the end of the day you've got to be honest with yourself uh and be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know you're doing the right thing and as men and women you know with today with the Enron the world comms accountability Integrity are very uh you know they're put to the test and a lot of people fail uh that's one of the most important things

I've learned there now I know that when you travel around the country which you do quite a bit you've been a professional speaker for just a few years at this point uh making the transition from the business world that we mentioned in the in the intro but have been very successful uh jumping right in and and traveling all over the country speaking for all the major corporations in fact after this you're going to jump on an airplane and off to another another engagement and the primary thing that you talk about is being a wingman and

we're going to get to a lot of those principles but one of the things I found that's interesting as I sit here and talk to people like yourself is how much our upbringing affects who we are today and so you uh are going to tell us a little bit about your upbringing and how even at an early age through High School you had these themes of being a wingman and having a wingman as part of your life so tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in your home and where you

grew up and that type of thing uh I was the youngest of four children I have an older brother Steve and a sister Leslie they're married and have kids wonderful people and I also have an identical twin Dave and he's been my wingman in my whole life uh when you're a kid you always got somebody to play with you always have somebody to cry on and do stuff with so so the whole wingman concept really started at an early age for me my parents uh uh grew up very poor in New York City as you

can tell from my accent I'm not from Alabama yeah exactly uh I notice that you know it was always about education always about family always about depending on each other because that's how you succeed in life you know but my twin brother Dave was always there for me and still is today my number one confident my number one wingman you were in business with him for a while yeah in the merger and acquisition Dave taught me everything I know now and I'm trying to teach him a few things but uh he's somebody that I can

always call up and ask for help did pretty well well in high school academically and and physically I I did a lot of sports soccer which always talks about the team concept track Etc and then I was also a musician in band I was in Jazz Ensemble watching band uh and obviously when you're a musician you're just just one component of a whole piece and I really enjoy that uh I think that a lot of people they agree with the idea of teamwork and the general principle being a wingman but they don't really realize how

much everything we do is based on this idea that we have to have other people involved and those are the lessons that you learned growing up playing sports being in band uh those types of things right well I think a fallacy that a lot of people may have in my opinion I think to be the best wingman the trusted partner both in business and in life you've got to be your own wingman I call it getting in touch with the inner Wing man you know and you know if you're not prepared if you haven't done

the things necessary to to grow spiritually mentally academically physically whatever it takes at the end of the day you've got to do it yourself arold Schwarzenegger says you know no one ever got big watching me lift the weights you've got to do it on your own and the best way in my opinion to be a team player is to do your job the best of your ability become prepared on a personal level and then you can contribute to the team then you can be that person that people can call out to and ask for help

but it all starts with you but uh you can't do it on your own obviously and you need those other men and women in your life to be there for you to win so your wingman are expecting you to to take care of them but really they're expecting you to take care of yourself without doubt without doubt you know as a fighter pilot when we flew our combat missions I wanted to know if I was fine with You Chris that Chris wner took the time to study the threat he prepared he got the 8 to

12 hours of sleep he's serious about the miss Miss and if I saw you slacking off and not doing what's necessary to win I'm not going to want to fly with you now that that comes back to the training the academy the fighter pilot training all the things that we do with 33% failure rate and wash out rate in the military and fighter training so by the time you take the step to lead me on a mission or to be my wingman you're ready you're prepared and I can say Chris we're going to do this

together and I want you to back me up and check my six for the threat and I'll do the same for you let's push it up now I've went to your speech here a couple I guess about a couple weeks ago you were in Seattle and came out and and watched you do your thing it was great stuff and you did the push it up uh with the audience and they loved it I thought that was kind of funny anybody can get an audience to do a a kind of a a group activity like that

I'm impressed with so what's push it up what's that mean push it up basically when you're flying in formation on a mission push it up means add power get in a position let's run down track let's let's speed it up and it's very analogous to life mhm because when you get up in the morning it's not easy sometimes with all the pressures and the situations the the the things that we have to deal with every day on on uh on a personal professional level so you got to say push it up I got to make

it happen so what I do is I get my the my audiences to push it up with me and it's funny it's a it's a little thing we used to do before every mission in Korea where I flew in the 35th Fighter Squadron pantons I spent a year and before every Mission we would give each other the Hang Loose sign okay and that hang loose sign was symbolic of the eyes of that black panther okay which was our Squadron mascot yeah and while simultaneously thrusting our hands forward as if we were going to full power

on the throttles we yell out in a loud and thunderous Air Force voice push it up yeah to show that we were ready to take the fight to the enemy and win so what I get my audiences to do is on three to do push it up together yeah in one unified voice and some of them think it's a little funny or cheesy but then that's the point because it's not easy to push it up every day you've got to psych yourself out in your mind first and win in your mind first before you can

go out and Win For Real excellent so after you graduated from US Air Force Academy then what got accepted into pilot training and that's not the easiest thing either because you not only have to do pretty well at the Academy but you also have to be medically fit uh went to Pilot Training in Phoenix and then fortunately did well there and they asked me to stay on as an instructor pilot teaching instructor pilot and flying fundamentals to young men and women who just went out of the academy and just finished uh uh their initial screen

so I did that for a few years taught the young men and women and then was asked to be an instructor instructor pilot teaching future instructors the fundamentals of instruction which is completely different when you think about it how to teach these young men and women how to fly and understanding that individuals are are different they need different things to motivate and Inspire them different things to drive them to success so uh that was also a great Challenge and I really really enjoyed that cuz I got to meet a lot of other experienced officers and

Air Force pilots who did other things before becoming an instructor as well so when you're instructing these kids uh what what are you doing there is it is it classroom stuff or you actually putting them in a jet and going up it's a little bit of everything one-on-one instruction just like this putting them under pressure asking them the questions because if you can't handle it sipp in a cup of uh cold water oneon-one then you're definitely not going to be able to handle it under pressure in in a combat environment or in the weather or

at night so we do a lot of one-on-one instruction and then do a lot of simulation training and then we jump in the jet before you jump in the jet you're ready to rock and roll so it's uh a lot of different components and I spend a lot of time after hours on the weekends just sitting down with these men and women because flying isn't as easy as some may think the the fundamentals are easy but all the things behind the scenes the systems the weapon systems in an F-16 the the tactics the technology the

is so much that goes on behind the scenes so uh a lot to it do you remember the first time they handed you the keys the keys to one of those bad boys and and it was just you and no longer other people nobody else and there you go it was your first flight I I I remember uh remember it like it was yesterday but the I flew you know the Cessna and then the t37 and then I flew the F16 but F-16 solo flight was by far the most memorable because where were you was

it early morning it was early morning Phoenix Arizona beautiful Chris day I think it was uh like November or so M back a few years ago and I just remember sitting in this $30 million jet looking over the nose looking down my wing line and just thinking this is so cool I can't believe they trust me to do this yeah and I was hoping that my instructor pilot wasn't thinking the same thing he believed in me right his name was deck Slayton he lives in Atlanta Georgia and uh just an amazing amazing person you know

the confidence you build with these folks that you're flying with both your instructors your flight leads your wingmen the trust and confidence in them to get the job done you you can't put a price tag on that and that's what I Inspire in my audiences and my clients you know what does it take to build that confidence what does it take to build that trust so that when you go out on your missions in life to win and it takes a sa a lot of sacrifice and a lot of work you just don't wake up

being a Top Gun sure yeah in fact that was one of the other things I wanted to talk to you about there's was a movie I don't know if you ever saw it a few years ago I don't know I always wonder do do they consider the movie a pro or a con movie Top Gun well you know I'm definitely not Tom Cruz right but uh the thing about Top Gun it was a great movie A lot of the stuff was realistic in there but a lot of things that you might see in the movie

aren't really uh true with regarding the real world military the real world Top Gun stuff okay no fter pilot ever flyes a combat Mission solo we always always always fly as a team without wingman and the thing that I really emphasize that maybe Top Gun didn't emphasize are all the things behind the scenes with your other wingman on on the ground the maintenance troops your Intelligence Officers the weather Personnel the security policeman guarding the base at night so you can sleep before I strap on that jet there's a lot of things that came into place

that that came together so I can go up there and be confident and execute that mission and when you look at that in life and in the business world for example if I'm a sales manager which I was for a few years there was customer service tech support Human Resources Finance all those individual components within a company that are critical to getting the job done and if you don't build relationships with them if you'd understand how their role fits in the big picture if you don't appreciate them then I don't truly think you're building that

relationship and confidence to win um Top Gun was a great movie and I loved it but at the end of the day there's more about winning in battle than just the guys and gals on the front line so what was your uh what was your nickname you had it painted on the side of your jet it's obviously Waldo my last name wal and you got to earn that nickname and and they say you know uh you either earn it by doing something really stupid or you earn it by being in combat or whatever and I

admit I've done both but Waldo's the one that stck W the one thank goodness what uh you've earned Top Gun what does it take to earn Top Gun what what's that consist a lot of different Top Gun Awards Top Guns mean means you're the best in that particular segment and I I was airr Top Gun in one of the training programs I went through you know bombs closest to the Target airmanship situational awareness where you are in in relative to all your other wingmen listening on the radio is just your ability to adapt in this

environment and they rate you and you get awarded it but there's a you know even if you he second place as a fight of pilot isn't bad as well yeah exactly so you flew F-16 and 65 combat missions but over 2,000 flights out doing your standard training and that type of thing in Iraq and flew in Bosnia correct tell us a little bit about that what what is that like I would imagine that um even though your training has designed you to to go out that still going out and knowing that you're defending your country

and doing what's right but at the same time knowing that you might end a life that day uh is not something that is is so Cavalier that we sometimes see in the movies that there's a real sense and I know you well enough to know that there's a deep sense of responsibility and tell us a little bit about what that feels like to be going out flying a a mission a combat Mission and what's going through your mind in all the different areas combat is not a fun thing right and it's something that uh it's

really where the rubber meets the row when you're in the military we've got young men and women in in Iraq now and Afghanistan putting their lives on a line every single day you know and the training component is critical because at the end of the day your training takes over and if you don't feel comfortable in your training you're not going to be confident and if you're not confident you're going to be fearful and fear is a b product of that training and also of your attitude and the attitude that you have when you go

into a combat is going to determine your success without a doubt and I'm telling you I was afraid every Mission I went on my wingmen were afraid everybody that serves is afraid it's called being a human being right and that fear was so it just can strangle you okay but to you know to adapt to the fear and just deal with it and still execute was something I was critical and what I used to do before my missions and I still do when I'm doing other challenging situations is I I do what's called turn my

fear into Focus focusing on the right things to get the job done first I I focus on the mission you know when I strapped into my jet in Yugoslavia flying 7-hour night missions the mission wasn't about me it was about the poor men and women who were being murdered and and and pillaged you know in in Serbia they needed me to bring back their freedom so it starts when you're on the tarmac you've got a lineup of how many we've got well there was four four other aircraft flying with me plus another six to 12

other you know stealth Fighters tankers probably a whole slew of of aircraft and so when you're sitting there obviously you're you're making a checkdown of the flight instruments but at the same time you're focusing and developing your attitude for this is what this is about you got you know in the back of your mind you're thinking about it it doesn't just start in the jet it starts when you go to bed at night when you wake up in the morning you're just psyching yourself out saying okay this this is my job you know you want

to be Top Gun in training big deal this is where it happens you know in life we talk about philosophies and execution blah blah blah but when the rubber meets the road and the job gets has to get done this is what separates the you know the average people from the boys the women from the the girls yeah okay where you know it's time to execute so what I'm saying is fear is normal your attitude is going to take over and you got to put your attitude in the right place and focus is what it's

about focus on the mission the purpose it's not about you it's those that you're serving looking down my wing line you know with the in the F-16 this is cool and when I look down and I saw those folks that I was going to fly with it filled me with courage knowing that they were going to be there for me knowing that I could count on them if the missiles launched or if I screwed up God forbid they were going to be there to say wallow I got your covered I got your six I'm looking

behind you don't worry about it yeah and just as important was they needed me yeah because if I messed up Chris and I didn't do my job then I was going to fail in their and protecting them so and in combat they talk about you're you know you're afraid of dying whatever you're more afraid of messing up and and and having your wingmen get shot down than it is about yourself it's totally selfless I'm telling and thinking about their spouses their children and you want to get them home to their spouses and children the same

way you hope that they're going to get you home to your family as well and that's ultimately the the wingman that you're flyting for who are you fighting for at home yeah you know the loved ones that's what it's about it's not about combat and killing it's about doing the mission getting home to to to be with those that we love that is maybe one of the downsides to Hollywood and the way they've portrayed a lot of combat is that there is a lot of you know just sort of glory and basking in the the

explosions and the killing and you know the retribution and and all that kind of stuff and in real life it's it's much more sober than without a doubt I don't believe in the saying business is combat or life is combat combat isn't Fun there's lives lost there's walls built there's there's resentments if you have a combative nature and think about combat and everything that you do there's winners and losers I'm going to crush the enemy I'm going to crush you know when business the companies talk about crushing the competition but you know what today the

competitor could be an ally and a partner tomorrow so you got to be cognizant of those relationships hey compete fairly win with Integrity with compassion and honesty but you never know if you're really doing things that are going to soil the relationship with a future partner you better think twice in business today it's more Ric than that it's about cooperation communication and commitment not just about combat it's just it's just not what I think is important so overcoming fear first was Focus then what and then you focus on your wingman okay those those folks in

your life that are there for you that you can turn to and ask the three most important words in the English language other than I love you which is I need help tough for phop pilot to ask for help tough for real Macho men and women you know who are doing so so great to ask for help but you need to do that and then finally you got to f focus on winning winning not surviving cuz surviving isn't Fun you got to focus on winning and envision in your mind everything going as well as possible

chair flying I I talk about I don't know if we ever discussed that in detail talk talk a little bit about chair flying part of winning uh you know winning happens in your mind first before you do it for real and what we do is fight apilot is we chair fly we Mission rehearse we sit in the chair or wherever we are in the car restroom doesn't make a difference and we go through the mission in perfect detail mind and we don't just Envision it going perfectly we picture making mistakes we picture messing up a

radio call we we picture not getting the right air speed and engage in the proper systems and then we go back and do it again from A to Z so that by the time I'm done making the mistakes and fixing them because we're going to make mistakes in real life right we can do it as perfectly as we can so by envisioning it when you go out there for real you can do it and same thing that goes for for basketball players or for for surgeons sales managers who who are out there briefing a mission

or having a one-on-one sales briefing with a potential million-dollar client I'm contingency planning I'm asking myself what if things don't go well what if you ask me a question about price and value what if uh my my laptop fails do I have a backup plan or the surgeon is doing an operation and they suddenly go into cardiac arrest or something like that you talk about um perfect preparation as opposed to perfect execution is that right the whole Flawless preparation as opposed to Flawless execution a Flawless execution is a big business term MH and it rarely

happens doesn't it it rarely happens now ideally Flawless execution is we we want that all the time every fighter pilot wants false execution although we never fly a perfect mission but I think when we put the pressure on our on our wingman in in a company for example and we say falsy executed our mission this year is Flawless execution that's a high standard isn't it sure and as a human being we're probably not going to be Flawless especially when you have 4,000 people in your unit or you know even as a small uh a small

business you have 18 people working there 15 people you're not going to have that over over the course of the year so when you make a mistake and don't achieve the objective of flawless execution when you make mistakes what happens to your attitude more often than not you kind of get down you get down and when you're down what happens to your attitude you get more more down more down and and you become more fearful you're afraid to take risks you're afraid to to to reveal your true self you're afraid to push it up so

rather than push for flawless execution I say push for flawless preparation gather your intelligence brief your missions make sure you understand your environment study the threat do all the things you need to do behind the scenes Mission rehearse chair fly sweat and sacrifice on the ground so that when you go out there that Flawless preparation will eventually and hopefully lead to Flawless execution so it's a psychological shift push for flawless preparation that'll lead your people to be more inspired and fired up willing to take risks and do what's necessary to achieve near Flawless execution yeah

one of my goals with the show here is to have people like yourself who've achieved so much in life and been so successful is to bring them in and let people get to know the real story CU often times we see you know we look at Waldo and we go you know Air Force Academy grad pilot Top Gun successful business person decides he's going to get into speaking and now he's taken the speaking World by storm and you know that and you go wow wouldn't it be great to be walled up but then they don't

realize the things that have happened behind the scenes that you've had to overcome and one of the things that I would like for you to talk a little bit about is what you call your significant emotional experience and I think that's really going to help people because they're going to realize that you didn't get to to do and be what you've done without having to really overcome some significant challenges particularly as it pertains to the profession of a fighter pilot so tell us about that what happened to you there and and how your Evolution uh

of your life and career came to overcome those things okay I have a saying I talk about in my presentations the more you sweat in peace the less you believe in war the more you sweat in peace the less you believe more and all the things you do behind the scenes the sacrifices and the things you have to overcome to allow you to go out there and execute with as minimal bleeding as possible yeah uh we all have challenges in life things that we have to overcome when I was uh three years into my flying

career I went scuba diving down in the Caribbean you know in those quick two-hour courses they you hear about maybe you even participated in well I'm not necessarily a fish in the water I'm you know I've got some challenges but I'm okay I grew up outside the Atlantic Ocean but I went and I went on a scuba diving trip and long story short uh I went under 35 ft accidentally sucked in basically a whole lung full of water and had a panic attack 35 ft under the ground saw Stars my heart was panic I thought

I was literally going to die it was it was traumatic for me and I never had a panic attack before on my life then and I'm like I have got to go up now needless to say absolutely traumatic for me I got a B of the water saying that's the last time I'm ever going to scuba dive again my confidence was shattered uh and I literally thought I was going to die a few weeks later I was flying in the uh t37 flying on a on a training sorty and you you'd been flying for three

years at this years I had you were comfortable with the p comforable never had a bow with any you know never had issues it was my life yeah and I had a panic attack uh flying around 20,000 ft basically I I I started feeling claustrophobic not a good thing for a fight not a good thing and uh I realized then Chris that I had latent claustrophobia that had come out that that significant event dying and almost dying in that scuba diving accident brought it out and for the next few years in particular for the next

several months I was faced with dealing with that claustrophobia strapping on that plane teaching men and women how to fly dealing with that and and just putting that whole claustrophobia that panic and also I'm afraid of heights that's a whole another story I grew up another thing maybe being uh being a pilot at 30,000 ft might not be conduced too but those are great lessons because people get into situations in in business and they think that they have to be perfect or they have to have everything settled and it's not so much about having all

their issues settled it's about dealing with them and overcoming them and being successful in spite of them right so how did you do that you know you're claustrophobic fear of heights and they're sticking you in a small little space at 30,000 ft how do you do that passion not quitting when my passion for flying was so strong I wouldn't I would I refuse to let it take control of me you have opportunities in your life to let your your fears take over or to let your passion and your and your and your love for whatever

it is you're doing take over if I would have gave into that claustrophobia and didn't do all the things that I talked about focusing on the mission it's not about me and becoming so Adept and psychologically defeating this claustrophobia reading books putting myself in situations focusing on my my student focusing on my wingman I love flying so much that it was taking the joy out of my life I wanted to love flying I wanted to enjoy it so and flying did bring me joy so my passion was so strong I didn't give in to my

fear and that's what I think we need to do in life and in business and in our relationships be so passionate about what you're doing that you don't care about anything else except accomplishing this people are passionate about business people are passionate about dogs animals nature uh whatever don't give into the fear because at the end of the day when you go to bed at night you're going to close your eyes and say I'm not being true to who I am and I'm not being true to what I need and want in my life and

if you let fear control you you're never going to be able to be a success so how do you do that and let's get real practical is it a matter like when you got in that jet and you're claustrophobic and they drop the lid on you and you're in there and did you did you feel a sense of it like uhoh I'm in this tight space now and then you you just focused in let's make some some uh examples of how people in real life life who go out maybe they're afraid to cold call I

know you were saying you've got a new thing you're going to start doing called turn your cold call into a bold call people hate cold calling right so and they're they're looking at the phone and they're thinking oh I got to do this call but then they focus and they pick up the how do you do that how do you really get over your fear it it like I said before it all has to do with what you do before the scenes the sweat and sacrifice the preparation the training the discipline many people aren't willing

to do what it takes to discipline themselves to to prepare for their missions like I said before before I strapped in that jet I would think about my mission I would think okay I'm going to be claustrophobic this is a reality this is the truth acknowledging the truth acknowledging that you're going to be fearful and things are going to happen is so important when you have resistance that's what causes stress and anxiety and panic and fear when you acknowledge it you say okay I'm going to get claustrophobic to come on I used to say to

myself Bring It On you're going to get all right come on okay I'm feeling claic okay done and I would let it flow through my system acknowledge it rather than resist it and then psychologically get myself in gear Focus okay Rob stop being selfish it's not about you you've got a mission to do you want to be a fighter pilot it's not about you get out of your own mind think of the mission think of those that you're serving and then okay I'm a little afraid right now I got my wingman there they're going to

check me out if I start having a problem I'll say two I got a problem I need to land okay wallow I got got you right that's nice to know it's nice to look over your shoulder when you're in a stressful situation and a Clos in a big business deal and you pick up the phone and talk to your VP and say I need help bro help me out I got you cover Chris you talk to your wife or your husband and say listen I'm under an environment right now can you help me out that

that feels good to know that somebody's there it they absorb your fear and then lastly I think about winning I know that it's going to be a stressful s hours but I know at the end of that seven hours when I grab that Italian cappuccino in Italy where I threw my missions I'm going to sit down and I'm going to go I earned this this feels great this feels so much better than it would have felt if I didn't go on that mission I gave into my fears and went to bed you know so I

fill myself with those positive endorphins and I oh this is great and and that's those are kind of some of the steps that you need to do so really is mental discipline you were you were basically choosing to change your thoughts and by changing your thoughts you Chang your whole environment yes but it's it's not you people say confront your fears do them in spite of your fears you know I talk more about courage and courage despite feeling all that that anxiety and fear is important but there has to be a process that's why I

say Mission wingman winning and think about it shift shift shift because you mind can't think about multiple things at once you can only focus on one thing and when you're so engulfed that's why they talk about you know being in the present you know people like athletes fighter pilots surgeons you know with they so engulfed in the moment they're so focused they don't think about all those auxiliary demons that are going on the monkeys in our mind being focused uh in life is is one of the most critical components to success but as a step

and a process takes discipline work uh and eventually you become you'll train your mind and that will eventually lead to more of a successful mindset you'll become more successful in other things you do let's talk about some of the terms that you learned in the military and as a fighter pilot and now you apply in your speeches and your Consulting to business environment check six tell us about that that's big you heard me mention it a couple times before six o'clock if you think of a clock six o'clock's behind you okay and in combat that's

where the threat was coming nine times out of 10 behind you where you don't see it you're always looking over your shoulder for the threat 75% of the time we're looking outside the cockpit not looking forward or in our instruments but just as important as the threat Chris are my wingman mile away maybe right on my wing tip and I'm monitoring them I'm looking behind them because the threat might be coming to them if if I'm directly behind it's hard for me to see behind my back right and I'm flying especially strapped in an F16

especially going m one right but if you're flying a mile away from me and I could just go like this and look behind you and you could just go like that and look behind me Mutual support I can see things behind you that you can't see and we need each other to accomplish the mission and we're always backing each other up Mutual support I'm checking your six you're checking mine and if you take that to life when I'm flying a formation with that man or woman and we're doing that mission we we brief the mission

we train together we trust each other we know we're going to be there for each other and if you have a wingman that you're flying with on your business missions your husband and wife your kids whatever they're looking at you to be their wingman there's there's a lot that goes behind being a wingman you know people say hey I'm your wingman well there's a lot to say you're a wingman a trusted partner you better be training you better be preparing you better be in your own uh flying your own jet perfectly and I better trust

you when you're in business and in life uh to be a wingman means to be there for each other and uh I think when you when you're dealing with a situation a stressful environment at work when you talk to the person next door to you in the cubicle next door your supervisor ask for help fly a mission together that's kind of the same thing and it all starts with checking six and building that Mutual support how can you in a in a corporate environment or even a small business we we're we're continually told to take

care of your own you know take this is your realm you take care of it I'm not so sure that the whole Czech six idea has made it to Corporate America um how can they apply that what can they do how do you set that up do is it just something that leadership has to talk about do you have to set up systems so that people so that the sales team is looking out for the finance team and you know everybody's looking out for each other how does that work it's a tough not to crack

so to speak and they talk about silos sales marketing tech support engineering R&D and they're often in different buildings yes I talk about a couple things obviously when you have annual meetings quarterly meetings people need to understand how their role fits into the big picture yeah I used to be a VP sales of a payroll tax consulting company payroll tax you know not the most exciting thing for exit pilot to do sure yeah one day you're flying an F-16 the next day you're working on payroll tax that's another story but you know payroll and HR

they're so critical in getting the job done because if people aren't getting their checks on time and people aren't getting paid and they can't deal with all the human resource issues there that's going to affect the morale the attitude of the rest of the company uh people only complain to the payroll folks when they're not getting their checks on time but really what can I do to bring that bring a sense of passion and inspiration to those payroll folks bring them in let other people appreciate them if I'm in sales let me go out with

my payroll manager my tech my uh customer service agent let me learn what you do in your business and you can learn what I do in mine I tell my clients find a wingman in another segment of your company and take them out to lunch every month every month go to lunch and just ask them about what they do and it's going to increase your level your depth of your organization understand different roles and then more importantly you'll have somebody to turn to if you have an issue with tech support or customer service Hey Joe

this is wall we had lunch a couple times last month or whatever I have a problem I need help so that's really really important do those little things allow people to feel important in their organization uh and really really really like you mentioned before it's ultimately up to the leadership because it all starts from the top and goes down but you know the idea that you just gave of somebody in the sales department calling somebody from the finance department and all the different departments taking them out for lunch once a month that's actually probably a

pretty good plan for Upward Mobility if you if you want to raise up the ranks if you're knowing what's going on in these other groups you're not only going to be able to do your job better but you you're going to become kind of a go-to person cuz you're going to know you're going to have a broader understanding what's taking place in the corporate environment takes time and effort it does uh but something when you do that it builds more loyalty within the organization it improves my attitude it makes me want to sweat more In

Peace So I don't bleed more it's going to bring me uh to do the necessary things to win let's talk about contingency planning when we brief our missions like I mentioned before we contingency plan we sit down no fight ail starts a mission before we brief we set objectives we understand the weather the environment the timeline we allocate roles and responsibilities to the other members of our formation and then we contingency plan we basically say all right Chris we're going on a two ship formation today here's our Target these are our objectives etc etc now

if I get shot down for whatever reason God forbid you guys actually say that without a doubt yeah you have to you have to address it right nobody wants to but you have to we you got to be real right okay uh if my engine quit I need you to do X Y and Z if the weather changes here's our alternate field if the Sam goes from an sa2 to an sa6 this is what we can do if uh if I'm on fire whatever whatever and then I need to brief you hey if I mess

up you're the deputy flight lead you take over and Lead me how many folks in business have Deputy flight leads how many managers I talk to every every month that don't have somebody they can turn to to take over God forbid something happens to them they get shot down they lose their job or they have to take off a week cuz their kid kid is ill and they need to focus more on their family Deputy flight lead's important so we think about all these things on the ground and discuss them plan them out so when

it happens in the heat of battle we can respond because time is critical so when you contingency plan like I said a a a sales call you contingency plan a corporate meeting a merger an acquisition financials whatever you plan them on the ground you take the time to do them and then you can execute them more more efficiently when it really happens you mentioned Sams and you had an experience with h a couple of them and then a followup couple of them tell us about that what happened there uh April 28th 1999 and uh flying

out of Aviano in Italy I flew a mission into Belgrade this was during Allied Force operation Allied Force against lanan mosovich and we were targeted I was supporting a group of F-117 Stealth fighters who were taking out strategic Targets in downtown Belgrade I had four wingmen we were flying with and I was number too you know you cross the FEA the forward edge of the battle area into enemy territory you go Master arm hot and you're like okay this is it time to do it and uh around 2 minutes crossing the battle my radar warning

receiver went off I look out and no kidding I see two big red fireballs coming up at me just surfaced air missiles surfaced air missiles coming up shooting at me and it was the proverbial you know kill or be killed this is the moment of your life Waldo that you have got to execute how many times does that happen in real life when this is it this is your moment of glory and never like that though but still things that are crucial for people so I I I did my maneuver I lowered the nose G

gained the air speed and tried to do all the procedures floundered screwed up left and right but I did it enough tell us what you do when that happens okay well basically you got to lower your nose and this is the unclassified version you gain air speed because speed is life in an F-16 you lower the nose and what you're trying to do is basically gain enough energy and maneuver to break the rate lock which that's missile tracking on you and also cause it to run out of energy as it cor corrects on you okay

so you do these Maneuvers twist turn make a radio call to build the situational awareness telling the other folks you know scar two missile launch right three o00 my wingman's 5 miles behind me he knows he's in front of me right 3:00 is there MH and obviously he probably saw those two red fireballs coming up at me as well right cuz it was night and I do all those procedures okay the missiles blew up around th000 ft from my aircraft I saw him explode like I call them like sparklers you see on the 4th of

July and I remember thinking to myself it was at that moment in time that particular second where I I thought like I defeated the most incredible threat the first real no kidding threat of my life it was totally surreal and I will never forget how it felt um 5 minutes later we rejoined up and I got into another pattern another two missiles were launched on me yeah good thing you settled the first two you had another two I felt a little more confident but uh you know when you when I was able to defeat that

threat it gave me more confidence I was I was able to do a much better job and you know and that's very analogous to life as well yeah you have a missile launch at you one day it's going to happen again you got to be able to deal with them execute under the pressure and feel good about it because when you're feeling good and the endorphins are flowing through your mind correctly and you feel confident you're able to execute your mission and the procedures necessary a lot easier than if you're tense and scared and Afraid

you know afraid to uh to get killed yeah the first time you do anything or the first time you experience anything is a little difficult they might experience a little fear but by successfully achieving it the first time then the second time I I don't know that uh looking down and seeing surfaced air missiles ever becomes routine but it becomes much easier for you to handle because you've already conquered it once absolutely that's similar in life yeah uh let's talk about the process that you think is also good for corporate environment of briefing and debriefing

right well we talked about briefing you know sitting down before the missions and setting the contingencies and going out next but when we come back from our mission the critical component of accomplishing a successful mission is the debrief where you sit down at a table like this we take off our rank because there has to be an equal playing field and we discuss everything from A to Z everything we talked about in The Briefing then the planning all the way down to the execution landing and taxi back and we do this debriefing as as a

way to close the learning Gap Okay the reason why we take off our rank so to speak and we have an even even playing field is that if you're my commander my squadron commander Colonel and I was a flight lead that day and anybody could be a flight lead as long as they went through the program and earn that that uh privilege if I can't put you in a position where we feel on an equal playing field if I think that you're rank is going to intimidate me from telling you how it is you know

Chris you want in position and I told you break right and you didn't break right was there something wrong with your radios why didn't you do it and you need to be able to tell me well I I I wasn't paying attention I was focusing somewhere else I screwed up or whatever maybe a radio were out uh I need to be able to tell it like it is because in combat you've got to be able to execute and bring out these Lessons Learned in particular a lot of times there's young wingmen in the in the

in the crowd the new wingman that just started flying on your mission if I as a senior leader if I'm the flight lead the first thing we do is we admit our mistakes we expose our chest to daggers we call it saying okay men and women you know wingmen I screwed up today I we had a radar Trail departure in the weather and I didn't brief the air speeds on it that's why we got too close or I didn't breathe an alternate Airfield I forgot to do that in a mission and you know what if

we had an emergency over you know Bosnia or herina or wherever I wouldn't have known where to go and Joe I expect you next time to tell me and correct that when I expose my mistakes isn't that going to facilitate more communication from everybody else sure yeah and it's also going to facilitate communication from the senior leader so debriefing going over everything that went right and what went wrong finding out the root cause of those problems why do we mess up today and take that as a lesson learned so that everybody in that group can

learn from it and then execute it better next time sometimes that means taking that lesson learned if there was a trend item and going back into our training if we're consistently screwing up radar Trail departures maybe we need to train on that in the simulator maybe we need to have a mission and a training mission to go that if you're consistently messing up a cold call or uh failing to properly deliver or give a product demonstration maybe in the training department we need to fix that so take the Lessons Learned put it into back into

the organization so that everybody else can learn on it and then change your training and when you change your training you'll be able to change your execution and make it so is that something when you go in and work with clients you you talk to them about doing debriefing is that something that you find most people aren't doing most people uh brief their missions but they forget to do it on the ground and sometimes they'll sit down and they'll talk about it briefly for a minute or two over a cup of coffee but it has

to be a process there has to it has to be a specific detail process that goes through and it takes a uh a good amount of time to do that so quickly tell us about your analogy or your acronym of win what does it mean to win wi stands for work it now like I said before the more you sweat in peace the less you believe more the winners in life understand that it takes sweat and sacrifice that it takes work and they don't put it all till tomorrow they do it today they do it

now I think it's very important to think about that when it comes to success in life so many of us we put it off till tomorrow what we can do today and we understand that winning takes work and sacrifice and we do it now I think that's a good mindset to have uh and when you start working it now you can sit back and and reap the rewards and benefits of all the sacrifices and and and relax and have fun because that's what it's all about enjoyment you have a book in the works called wingman

yes tell us about that wingman how to transform relationships into victories and business and life it basically talks about some of the things we mentioned today but about at the end of the day it's about building relationships and caring about other people uh having compassion and being able to solve the problems and challenges in your life both in business and your personal life is how we win and wingman is about those relationships as a phight Aila Top Gun whatever it doesn't mean anything uh if it's not about the people that help me get to where

I am today and that's what the book's about it's great for business and personal development and I'm excited to write it and I'm excited for you to read it all right and it's coming out uh 2006 you're going get yeah end of 2006 December it should be up and running and I hope you hold me accountable to that because it's I got to start working it now I will I will appreciate it uh glad we had the time together and that uh America gets to see a little bit of the guy that I've already known

for a couple years so appreciate you being here with us Chris you're an awesome Wing man thanks man to watch the official version of Earl nightingale's legendary Strangest Secret click the video right there next to me I think you'll love it continue to believe and I'll see you there I'd like to tell you about The Strangest Secret in the world not long ago Albert schwitzer the Great doctor and Nobel Prize winner was being interviewed in London and a reporter asked him doctor what's wrong with men today