The Billionaire Blueprint for Success | Sharran Srivatsaa

You have scaled from 300 million to three billion. Most people don't know the story. I'll tell you the story that's freaking insane.

Misconception about you: When anyone has a big social media, I think people, and this happens to me, so this is why I assume it happens to you, but they see the social media and they're like, "Oh, I don't know, do you actually, do you know business?" And it's like, "Oh, no, I'm only the, you know, president of Real Brokerage, the fastest growing brokerage, you know, that exists. But it's fine. You know, I'm just a social media face, right?"

And something that I deeply respect about you is like how, like your depth and breadth of business knowledge. Like, you literally know every department. You know how to build a company from every level to every level and leadership. And it's like, anytime you're the only person I can really talk to about most of that stuff. I think you know that, right? Um, because most people, it's like one or the other. I think the fact that you can, you understand both and you have experience in both is what makes you so good at what you do.

One thing that I wanted to ask you, actually, is, and something that I've actually never asked you, is, could you, can you remember the challenges from scaling from that level? Like, from going to a couple hundred million to a couple billion? I'm curious that there's like one to three top challenges that you faced, or maybe transitions that you went through internally, yeah, to get there. And this is selfish because this is what I'm looking to do right now, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it, the crazy part is, um, most people don't know the story. I'll tell you the story. So there was a company called Telles, uh, that we had invested in, and it had, because a couple of our friends started this company, it was a real estate business in Beverly Hills, California. When we invested in it, it had like 10 agents in Beverly Hills. I, I didn't know anything about the real estate business that well. I kind of bought some homes, so I know that process. And we, we were just passive investors in this. And what happened was, I would get financial statements every quarter, and I actually read financial statements because I think your P&L is your business. And it didn't, it looked funny. So I called the CPA and I'm like, "Hey, what's, what's wrong with this? It looks kind of funny." He's like, "Let me do some research." We found that the then CEO was embezzling. And I was like, "Man, it's a one CPA. I'll bury your, like, embezzling somewhere else. This is not even that hard. You can't even embezzle, right?"

So, so I took a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs as a banker. I moved to California just to, like, relieve the CEO. Most people don't know this. I didn't have that much money at that time, so I reverse-mortgaged my house to buy out the CEO. Wow. And the entire job was, buy out the CEO, find a new CEO, go back banking. Well, I had to put a new deck together. I had to figure out what the new business plan was, etc. And my spreadsheet, this is going to sound really dumb, my spreadsheet had 300 million in it. And I hit an extra zero to three billion. And the entire spreadsheet changed. I was like, "Wait a minute. We would make this much money if, how did this happen?" And what it did is, it gave me a bigger and better future. It let me see something that I never saw otherwise. All I saw was a shitty first draft. I didn't see level 10. And that was super powerful. And I was like, "Wait a minute. If this is really true, I, I should try to build this." And that was the overall reason. So I went to the board and I'm like, "Hey, I believe that we can 10x the business in five years. I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to come up with a plan to do it. I will take no comp and I will, I will steer the ship to doing this." And they're like, "Well, if you're going to take all the risk, go for it." And that's how that process actually started. There was no, there was no opportunity to even operate this business. I'd randomly put an extra zero and, and, and the economics changed.

And Lea, here's the hard part. While you're going through the grind, it's very hard to capture the lessons. The only thing that I was able to do, I was able to learn in retrospect. Yeah, you can only connect the dots in, in, in background, right? Are seeing, looking backwards. And I came up with three things that we struggled with. A lot of things. I came up with three things.

The first one was, you're so distracted. There's, there's so many things on your plate. Yeah. When you're, when you're building, because growth is just like, do this, do this, do this, do this. It doesn't allow you to say, "Today, I'm only going to work on this," because there's, there's always so many things to do. So lesson number one for me was, singularity of focus. What can I do that will always allow me to push the business forward? And for us, we were in the sales business. So getting highly motivated sales people was the number one thing. So recruiting great talent was the number one thing. That was the singularity of focus. So I told myself, "I may not be able to do everything, but I'm going to dedicate half my day to this activity." So it's really simple. My singular focus is growing the business from a sales perspective. I need to go recruit the best sales. I have half the day. It may be in the morning or in the afternoon. I was always dedicated to this thing. And that one thing made it so much easier. Then we were able to. So that was lesson number one. Yeah.

Lesson number two is the cadence of accountability. Accountability. No one likes accountability. No, no one likes to be told, "Hey, here are your numbers. Here's what you want to do," etc. But what makes accountability easier, that I found, is if you do it in a group. So I'll give you, I'll give you the practical example. We had 11 sales managers that would hire our top agents. They would go out, meet with agents, hire agents. And if these 11 sales managers didn't have appointments, they wouldn't get agents. Yeah. So we had a 10-minute call every single morning, the huddle. And everyone would report two numbers: How many appointments did I have yesterday? And what am I committed to doing today? So they would say, "Leila, you're up three. Zero. Seth, you're up 22. Shiran, you're up zero. Zero. Alex, you're up one. One." That's how the call would go every single day. And we would write it down. Nobody ever said 30. And they came back the next day and said zero, zero, because they said zero. And they're like, "Man, I can't do a a double bagel day." After they can't do that, right? And so all that they did was, if they were in isolation, it would have been very, they would have been okay with sucking. But when they were in a group and they had to say zero, zero, and they had to come back the next day and say zero, zero, and they had to come back the next day and say zero, zero, now they were on the bottom of that pile. That cadence of accountability, that one 10-minute call grew the business. That one 10-minute call because all that the call was was like, "Great, Leila, zero. Chiron, one. Zero. Seth, 82." And now you started seeing aspiration, motivation, all of that associated with it. So that was a huge, huge lesson for us. That's number two, cadence of accountability.

And the third is good process. And good process alone drives good results. It is super hard for people to believe that you don't have a system to drive something because the crazy part is, no one's going to buy your company. They buy your system for running the company. That's all it is. Otherwise, you have so much founder risk associated with it. Yeah. We were able to sell our business and rebrand the entire business in under six months, and I was out. So the business that we built ran completely, it still runs completely autonomously without me because the systems drive everything. So we say, "Systems drive success." And if you can't show somebody the system, you don't have a system. I'm like, "Blah, blah, blah, you talked about it." I'm like, "That's great, bro. Show me." I'm like, "We do this, we do this, when this happens, we do this." Cool. I like that. That's a good system. So those three things are the biggest things that I learned: singularity of focus, cadence of accountability, and good, good process. And good process alone drives good process.

Man, it's funny 'cause it's like resonating me through right now, and I'm like thinking to myself, "Where am I lagging?" And I'm like, "You know, I've got the, the focus piece. I have that time to focus, but I focus on different things." Yeah, because it's like, "Oh, there's these five big things." And I'm like, "Oh man, I've got to dial back into what the one each day is," because I'm like, "All right, well, these five things across the company would drive, but the question is, I have to force rank them." So that, yeah, anyways, just holding myself account.

No, but that's good. The, the other thing also is, you asked a question about productivity, which is super interesting. Um, I run my life in sprints, just like software development. So I run my life in two-week sprints. Okay? And the two-week sprints are, these two weeks, I'm going to do these projects. And so someone says, "Hey, Shan, can you work on this presentation?" "No problem. That is next sprint." So it's, it's now I don't have to feel this, this tension of me having to remove something or add something more so that I have to stay up later or what have you. I have this level of effort that I can give to this sprint. I got two weeks. I'm traveling for one week. That means I only have half a sprint this week of this, this time. And so, uh, I'll give you a crazy example. We are just onboarding with a family office, and the guy was like, "Hey man, I need all this data." I'm like, "I got to pull offshore trust, trust bills." I'm like, "Dude, this is going to take me two weeks." And he goes, "When will you have it to me?" I said, "October 15th." He goes, "Why? How are you able to tell me that date?" I go, "That's my sprint." Huh. So, so I just blocked that off as my sprint, and I was able to deliver on that because good process, and good process alone drives good results. So when you tell somebody, you have good expectations, you make a promise to yourself that you're going to do it on that sprint. You make a promise to them that you're going to do it on that sprint, and they don't bother you anymore. Otherwise, they keep, they feel like they have to keep checking back in with you, which is the most annoying thing ever, right?

That's fascinating. So then do you keep like a backlog for course? Yeah, yeah. So we call them sprint candidates. That's just for me. Anytime I have an idea, I just put in the sprint candidates. And we do something called the review preview. The review preview, something like, you do, you do it on Sundays. So every Friday evening, before I shut down, yeah, I look back at the week. And it's, and I go through every meeting on the calendar. Yeah. I say, "Okay, I met with Lila. What is the follow-up here?" "Nothing." "I met with Seth. What's the follow-up here?" "Oh, I owe him blank." So I just write all the follow-ups down from the past week. That's review. And the previews look two weeks ahead. And what do I need to prep for? Review, preview, review, preview. So I just do that. It's a 10, 15-minute exercise on a Friday. And then when you're done, you're just settled. Then you can keep your promises to yourself.

It's so funny because I've heard you say review preview before. I never realized it's my look back, look forward. Exactly. Same, same. Exactly thing. I used to originally do one week back, one week forward. Now I do one week back, two weeks forward because of travel. Like, I'm like, "Oh, I didn't book that trip, or I need to build that keynote, or I need to turn those files in this week." And so now, even my assistant, she does the same thing. She's like, "Hey, Shiron." So I have her doing two weeks back, two weeks forward because she's, I want her to be ahead of me. Yes. She's like, "Hey, we didn't book these tickets or what have you." So that's been super helpful. Review preview and sprints give you like containers to work. So if you said, "I have five priorities," you can tell me, "I'm going to work on these three in sprint one, and those two in sprint two." So you, you still know they get done this month, and you keep your promise to yourself.

So let me ask you, when you define the sprints, and then you look at your calendar and say you have a bunch of meetings on your calendar that don't have to do with those things, are you like, "Cut them?" I try. I try to renegotiate. Renegotiate. Okay. Renegotiate when they occur. Correct. I'm like, "Hey, would there be, I'll be like, 'Hey, Leila, would there be an opportunity for us to do this, do it in two weeks as opposed to this week?'" Just try to renegotiate. Or I'll batch all of the things that are not into like, "One Thursday morning or one Tuesday afternoon," so I don't have chunky things taking over my time. Most people don't realize that it's totally okay to renegotiate priorities that you made to with other people, as long as you do it kindly, and as long as you do it with enough time. It's unfair if I come to you the night before a podcast and be like, "Hey, I can't do it tomorrow." That's not cool. Yeah. But if you do it two weeks ahead, you're probably saying, "Man, I, I would love the extra two weeks to prefer that anyway." So I, I'm totally cool with renegotiating commitments, as long as you do it with some time and with some grace.

I appreciate you going in depth that too, because like, a lot of the people who follow me, I think are very good at structure and following rules, but almost to a detriment, which is like, "Is it even serving you anymore?" And I know that's something I've had to work a ton on is like, "What are my levers of flexibility?" So it's like, so fascinating to hear yours, because I think a lot of people think like, "Okay, I can't cancel those meetings, though, because then it means that I'm not reliable." It's like, "Okay, well, what's most reliable is if you grow the business, right?"

Well, I'll tell you, the biggest shift that happened for me was, uh, it's, it's amazing how when the world puts you in difficult positions, you have to adjust to meet those needs. And so I got really sick. It was really hard to get doctor's appointments with my schedule. So what I told my assistant is like, I said, "Hey, for the rest of the year, block off all Fridays. And you can literally put all appointments on Fridays." That way, I know that on Fridays, I only do health-related stuff. So she had this easy cadence of just booking appointments. And after I got better, I left the Fridays blocked. And so I still work on four-day work weeks. But my, I still go to the office on Friday, but my Friday is a really good buffer day. And that allows me to plan, to think, to do projects that I'm interested in, to catch up, etc. That way, you don't take the stress into the weekend. Now, there's no weekend for us. Like, I work all the time. Whenever you have inspiration, you work. But since we have a family, I have to be somewhat respectful of that. The last thing I can, I don't want to come in and say, "Man, I'm going to work all weekend." I'll work chunky times, but I don't want to walk in stressed. So that Friday buffer day has been insanely helpful. And I would have never done that in my schedule unless I was sick. So internally, we call it 80% equals 100%, because it's 20% off. So we only work 80%. So 80% is only allowed to be scheduled. So 80% equals 100%.

That's fascinating. And it's, it's really reaffirming because I think, you know, something that, you know, my friend Trevor Cashy, he looked at my schedule and he said, "You have no buffer." I said, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Well, if I said I need, need this three-hour meeting, and we need to do this thing, where do you put it?" And I was like, "There's nowhere to go, right?" And he was like, "Yeah, you work with no buffer." Which is fine. He's like, "But you just know that you're going to have to constantly be doing." And then I was like, "Oh." And so that's when, you know, we put in place here, because a lot of times we have events on Fridays, but we put in a Wednesday quiet day. Good. Which, like the team, you know, everyone, obviously, there's sometimes where there's something going on that is on Wednesday, but like, for the most part, almost every single Wednesday is completely blocked for me. And it's like, I will fight for that Wednesday with my life. It's like, it has to be just like the most important reason in the world that something's going to happen on a Wednesday, because I'm like, "I need that time," because there's, it's not that I'm not working, it's that all these things have spilled or popped up, and it's like, you need time to work on them. Yeah. Yeah.

That's great. The, I have a, my doctor said something super interesting to me. He said, "Hey, did you know that most entrepreneurs who are men have heart attacks on Monday mornings?" I've heard that. And I said, I said, "Well, okay." And he's like, "Why do you have a smile on?" If I was like, "I'm just going to take Monday more off." You like, "You can cheat death." He goes, "Dude, you can't. It's not that easy." And I'm like, "But maybe it is, right?" It's, and I actually don't think it's about the Monday morning being the stressful time. I think it's about the bleed over from the week into the weekend that's actually not managing this right. So I actually believe the reason why entrepreneurs get stressed and have heart attacks Monday morning is because they don't have buffer days on Fridays. So if you just manage that, you know how you prepare shows just how much you care, right? And so having that makes it so much more important. So it's not the Monday morning that's the problem. That is just the manifestation of the symptom. The problem is that you hammer the week all week, and then you go into the weekend like you have more time, so you use the weekend as your buffer, and then you're stressed on the weekend. Then when you come back on Monday, you're like, "Man, I made no progress." And that's when everything starts to hit.

I think that makes so much sense. You know, it's funny because I, like, you know, I do the planning process, Monday R1, and it's like watching teammates start doing it, because it's always the people who say, like, they're like, "I'm just always, you know, there's so much going on, I can't get ahead." It's like, "Well, you can't get ahead because you haven't made time to get ahead, right?" And I think you and I both know that it's like, we have more on our plates than anybody. You, if you're not proactive, you spend your time just fixing crap, right?

Uh, for, for entrepreneurs who are watching, and you asked this, uh, I've been talking a lot about just, uh, how to manage the stuff that's coming at you, yeah, Slack's, DMs, pings, dings, bings, email, all of that, right? And one, we work in an email-centric culture. Like, I, a lot of email. I stay on top of my email, and it's just, it's easier for me to manage email because with text, you can't loop another person in, you can't hit forward. So I, I run all my life on email. Yeah. And most people don't. No one was ever taught how to manage email. And so they don't know how to manage email. They've, or they don't have a framework for managing email for themselves. And it's not about how you organize your email or your Gmail inbox, etc. It's like, how do you approach email? How much email do you do? When do you delete? When do you not delete? And I always teach my team this. I said, "Whenever I look, look at email, I only do, I only do 10-unit blocks." So I walk into email. If I'm checking email, I only do 10 things. I only do 10 emails at a time. Okay? It's like, I deleted four, I forwarded two, I replied to two. I'm done. That was 10. And then I'm done. And then the next time I come back to email, I do 10 more units. Next time I come back to email, I do 10 more units. So I only do 10 units of email at any given time. So email never feels heavy. So now you, like, otherwise, you can just sit in front of your email for three hours, and you'll feel like, as soon as you send one, you get one back. Then, then it's like, you started with 10, you replied to nine, but now you have 24. But instead, if you're like, "Hey, I only, I do this 10-unit blocks." I always just manage 10-unit blocks over and over. So even if I'm at my son's soccer game, I do 10 emails and then I put my phone away. And so it makes it a lot more approachable. So small things like that allow you to still stay light, still stay focused, because otherwise, you do three hours of email, then you're just tired. Yeah. So the more I can manage my energy and stay light, the more I can be inspired, the more I can be present, the more I can kind of be where my feet are.

It's funny because when you say that, I think about it like, I, I equate it to exercise. Like, I could work out three hours in one day instead of twice a week or three times or four times a week, but if I work out 45 minutes every day, it keeps my energy up. Of course. And same things. It's like, I see people that are like, "I'm going to dedicate this data. I got to get back to all my Asana tasks." We actually use Asana as the main. So I would say like, your email is my Asana. I come, and there's all these tasks and their projects, etc. And people say all the time, they like, "Forgot to go." And it's like, "You've created this daunting task because you, you shove it. It's like, it's a thing that you should constantly be looking at, because then it keeps it easy and light versus like this one, 'Okay, I'm putting this whole effort.'" It's like, it doesn't need to be that. It's actually more effective if you do it a little bit multiple times a day.

Well, the crazy part is, I'll give you an analogy. What a knowledge worker is to Asana, or is to a knowledge worker like us, yeah, is a hammer to a contractor. Mmm. It's a tool. Yes. Does the contractor like, "What do I do with this hammer now?" Does he walk around? No. He does. He's like, "I need a hammer. I'm going to go use the hammer." It's in my, it's in my bag. Yeah. Asana is a tool. You can't let it run your life. Now, it's then it's not approachable anymore. And then Asana now becomes this dark blob that you have to like log into. You're like, "I don't want to do this anymore, right?" But if you have a framework for handling it, that it becomes a lot easier.

That's so fascinating. I also love how you geek out over this stuff too, because like, you're the only person I can talk like, "Yeah, and emails and N." It's like, but, but the greatness is in the granularity, right? It's, if, if I can, that's why these online influencers are strange to me. Like, when the online advice is really weird, they give you the "why work harder, be kind, have grace." I'm like, "Okay, well, what does that mean then?" You have the "what." "Hey, here's a strategy." Cool. But like, "How do I do it?" Like, "No idea." Yeah. And most people don't talk about the how at all. And the how I do it differently today than I did 10 years ago because I've learned over time. And I wish someone had taught me. School doesn't prepare us for for this.

Here's, here's something super important. Our educational system does not prepare us for success. And the reason is because they don't define success well. Success is defined as a one-dimensional thing, which is money. But success is multi-dimensional. In fact, it has five dimensions, in, in my opinion. You have money, which is one. Relationships, energy, skill, brand. I'll tell you what I mean by that. These five things, you and Alex and I talk about this all, it's, you, you can horse trade all of them. Right? When you have money, you can buy skill. When you have relationships, you can, you can get money. Yeah. When you have energy, I just mean time, effort, uh, health. Now you have time to work. Yeah. And if you have a skill, if you are a soccer player, if you can run ads, if you can do podcasts, you get paid for that. Or most of all, if you have a brand. And, and most people don't know what brand is. To me, it's like trusted distribution. You put something out, people trust you for that. And fame is the most efficient business model. That is the one ring that rules them all. Right? So the reason we have not been given a framework for money is because we've only been told, "Hey, take this course and take that course." We made success sequential. And you're like, "Oh, you got to do this, then you got to go to college, then you got to go to grad school, then you got to get a PhD, then you got to do a postdoc." Then I'm like, "How much are you going to do?" And then, so what is success now then? Success becomes one-dimensional, which is, if I don't make money, I don't have anything else. What people don't realize is that you can have one of those five. You can have brand but no money, and still build something pretty cool. You can trade that. You can have skill but no brand, but you can trade that. You can have time, just energy, and you can trade that. Or you can have a network of relationships and you can trade that. Or you have money and you can buy all of it. But the cool part is, when you realize that success is just a trade for what you truly want with what you have, you start to realize that you can't dabble anymore. People dabble because they have a little money, they have a little relationships, they have a little time, they have a little skill, and they have a little brand. I'm like, "You're not going anywhere because you dabbled all of it, right?" But instead, if you just focus on one, like, "I just worked on my skill." Like Alex always says, "Hey, like, go learn ads for 30 days." You're now the master at it. So you have a skill. Now you can trade that skill with the marketplace. As soon as people realize that success is multi-dimensional and you can take one and trade with the other, it makes life so much easier as opposed to thinking money is one, it's a one-dimensional part of success.

So then, let me ask you this, when you were growing Telles versus now at Real, did you use the same framework at both? Or have you changed like with the dimensions, like how you grow each business by trading different, I'll say assets? Yeah. Totally. When, when I, when I started Real, it was, you know, we had roughly like 5,000 is agents when I started at Real, and we were growing, okay? I said, "Well, what is the dimension that I need to use?" Yeah. Exactly, right? And I was like, "Well, if I had the money, say we did, what would I spend it on?" H. I would spend it on ads. I'm like, "Okay, well, that doesn't help." Do I have relationships? Okay, I have relationships, so I have something there. Do I have time? Yes, I have time. Do I have skill? Yes, I have skill. Do I have brand? In, in our little world, I'm king. No one knows that, but in my little tiny universe, right? But because of that, we were able to grow. So literally, it was operationalizing brand to grow this. But it goes a little deeper, though, because you, that can get tired. You can get tired and resentful because you're spending a lot of time doing that. And the, the big theme for us was, how do I operationalize generosity? Okay? Because when you turn around and I said, "Hey, here's my business model. If I just give everything away, then one of two things happen." Number one, they love us and they want to come join us and they, we grow. Or second, they love us. Yeah. Either is a great win. Yeah. Either is a huge win. Yeah. So one is money today, the second is growth tomorrow. And so I was like, "Well, then the plan is to just operationalize generosity." I told our team, "It's way easier not to get content. It's way easier to invite everybody to the zooms. It's way easier to run events where they'll, it's open to not just the company, but everyone else. It's actually a lot easier. Can you imagine instead of going and finding a member's area to or like going, putting something on school?" Yeah. You can just put it online. Online, it's super easy to not gate things. Like, it's easier to not gate things if you just operationalize generosity by not gating things. That's what really helped. So to me, the dimensions were like, "What is the theme? Operational generosity." What can I use to do that? Let's just use brand and let's use skill. So I just use brand and use skill to use operationalize generosity.

Man, I love that. And I'm curious because you always say, "Work hard, be kind." How do you operationalize that in the company? Just by this one sentence: Assume that whoever you meet is sent to teach you something. Just assume that whoever you meet is sent to teach you something. Because if I did that, then I don't show up snoody. I don't show up like I know more. I don't show up like, "Why am I taking this meeting?" I don't show up anyway. So I just say, "Whoever I meet is sent to teach me something." And that forces me to say, "Hey, gonna honor this person. This meeting may or may not go somewhere. That's cool. Yeah. But this person was sent to teach me something today." When you do that, it's like, "I'm going to work hard to like, stay focused and listen. I'm going to be kind to allow them to teach me something today." And that one thing just allows you to not, it, it reframes expectations, right? You're like, "Why am I here? What am I doing?" It takes away from all of that. Saying, "Man, I'm meeting with Leila. This is so cool. Like, I'm going to learn something today." Like, that's really, really positive. And that changes your approach to any scenario, any situation.

You've mentioned in different interviews, uh, an entrepreneurial myth that you want to dispel, which is that hustle and grind works. But I know you, and you're also somebody who works very hard. So I was curious, how do you dispel this myth while also working very hard? As we both know, I think the hustle and grind works. You know, at some point, there's the, the whole answer to success is, you should know what you want. Yeah. You should have a plan. And you should do the work. And a lot of people just think knowing what I want is going to get me there. It's a secret. Or having a plan. I met with a coach, and I get there, that'll get me there. But you still have to do the work. And but what I believe is that the hustle and grind leaves you tired and resentful because you don't feel progress. And what you and Alex and I talk about a lot is the reason we feel burned out, or the reason we don't feel progress is we don't win. And when you don't win enough, it becomes really hard, and you feel tired and resentful. So if we can't engineer small wins into our lives, you don't have the courage, or you don't have the motivation to go hustle and grind more. You know, the craziest part though, right? Is there's nothing more frustrating for an entrepreneur than working hard and not seeing results. But if you can work hard and see results, you're like, "Wait, that works. Let me work harder." And when someone doesn't see the results, it gets really hard for them. So that's why the hustle and grind needs to be on the back of seeing results and having wins, however small wins they are. And then it becomes a lot easier because then the hustle and the grind feels like it has a purpose. So it's really hustle and grinding works if you're actually moving the ball forward. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

What is the most painful thing for people? They don't feel momentum. Right? If you and I feel momentum, we want to do more. We're like, "Man, I feel momentum. Man, I feel momentum." Or it's like weight loss. For the first 30 days, you see no change in the mirror. That's why the Zic revolution is a really good one, right? Because they see change right away. And then they can try to wean off of it. But you see change right away. If you don't see momentum, you're like, "I don't want to do this anymore." Uh, H. Yeah. That's really interesting because I, I say this one thing to entrepreneurs a lot. I say, "Most entrepreneurs work really hard on the wrong thing." Totally. Totally. And the interesting part about that is, when you work really hard and you don't see results, it's almost always a sequencing problem. Like you said, you're doing something in the wrong order. Huh? So instead of, you're like, "Hey, um, everyone told me that I should run Facebook ads." But you don't have anything free to give away, so you have no leads. And so you, you miss the sequencing of things. So a lot of times, you can just say, "Oh, wow, if I just had a free offer on the front end and a sale on the thank you page, I would do so much better." And so most of the time, when people are struggling and not getting the result, it's you just have a sequencing problem.

That's interesting. I've actually literally never thought about that. It's a sequencing problem. It's, yeah. So think about this, right? When a lot of folks watch content, binge on YouTube, watch all your stuff, and they're like, "Man, I did what Leila told me exactly." But then when they come to workshop, and you're like, "Hey, you just mixed step two and one." And all you did was, you take your experience and you overlaid the experience and said, "Yeah, you followed the blueprint, but for your situation, two needs to come before one." And then everything starts to work. So from our experience, all we see is that we can sequence things better. And the sequencing allows us to get momentum faster. Yeah.

That's like, in my, my verbiage would be, you're solving for the wrong constraint. Exactly. Right? Okay. That actually makes a ton of sense. When have you, like, can you think of a time where you were like, "I was working so hard for a long time on the wrong thing because it was the wrong order?" Oh, to it happened. Happens every day. Last week. It happens every day. So I'll give you an interesting part about this. A lot of times, uh, entrepreneurs want the perfect result. You and I were talking about this just off camera. They want the perfect result. "Hey, I'm going to build this book. I'm going to build this course. I want to do that." And instead, what they do is they just wait for six months to do that. I don't, if you've heard the story, there's a story about the 50 pounds of clay. Greatest story I've ever heard. So, uh, university professor walks into the ceramics class on day one, and he splits the class into two halves. He says, "You are all group one. You are all group two." And he says, "Group one, your job for this entire semester is to make the perfect pot. Don't do anything else for the whole semester. Your only job is to make the perfect pot." And he said, "Group two, your job is to make 50 pounds worth of pots." They call it 50 pounds of clay. And so semester goes by. At the end of the semester, they look at all the pots. And all the perfect pots came from group two. Came from the group that did more quantity. Came from the group that experimented with resequencing things over and over and over again. So I always tell our teams, "Hey, if you have an idea, let's get version one as fast as possible." We call it the shitty first draft. How fast can you get a shitty first draft? And as soon as you get the shitty first draft, it's like, "Whoa, I got something that I can react to, which is pretty cool."

It's funny because as you say this, it's like, you literally just showed me the shitty first draft of your culture book, and it's sitting right here behind you. Yeah. It's awesome, right? But that took us a year to build. And I was like, "We can't go another year not having a draft." Yeah. And how long do you think that actually took? 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, "There's no way that took a year." Most projects don't take that long because the zero to one feels so big because we think it's zero to 10 in our heads. And it's very hard for us to think zero to one because we can't see the result of a shitty first draft. We can only see the result of the perfect thing that we have in our head. And that perfect thing feels so far ahead. But then when you take the first step, you're like, "Man, I'm already at zero to one. This feels amazing." Because no one wakes up and says, "I want to make a shitty first draft." But if we can condition ourselves to saying, "What is the next thing that I can do?" It gets really good.

I'll give you a crazy story. This generic advice on the internet really bothers me. And it's so generic. "Oh, you should work hard. Oh, you should be kind. Oh, you should hustle more." I'm like, "Like, what does that mean?" And the worst that I've heard is this: "Well, if you got 1% better every day, you would be 4 million percent better at the end of the year." And I'm like, "Well, I can do compounding math, but what do you do at at noon? You're eating a burger and you're like, 'Hmm, how do I get 1% better?'" That is so amorphous. That's so weird. Like, the average person, even you and I, can't do that. So every night, I call this the DBQ, which is the Do Better Question. I ask myself this question every single night: What is one thing that I can do tomorrow that will make it better than today? So if you ask that question, it's the Do Better Question. What is one thing that I can do tomorrow to make it better than today? And that's way easier. That's more tangible. So I can say, "Oh, I didn't work out today. I need to work out tomorrow." One thing that I can do tomorrow to make it better than today. Well, I didn't make an offer today. Cool. I'm going to make an offer tomorrow. What is one thing that I can do tomorrow to make it better than today? So that way, you're always making your tomorrow better than today, which is insanely powerful. And that's like a tangible thing you can do. And that's also very context-sensitive because your 1% better is not the same as my 1% better because I don't know what that means. And all a lot of this like internet advice is so amorphous. It doesn't tell you what to do next.

No, I'm curious for you. Can you think of in the last week, like when you ask yourself that question, what something was for you? Yeah. Totally. So I'll give you an example. Yeah. Um, I was, I love, I've totally fallen in love with AI. I think AI is like the coolest thing. And so I was asking myself the night before, I'm like, "I keep thinking about this. I keep seeing ads about this. I keep reading articles about this. How do I get better doing this?" I said, "Hmm, every day from now on, I'm going to watch one AI video before I go to bed." That is the one thing that I can do tomorrow that will make it better than today. So I just built it into my, into my routine now. And it's not hard. And so just four or five videos in, I feel so much better because I actually did something with it.

That's funny because you sent me some of the stuff too. I'm like, "You are doing that." It's awesome. My wife thinks it's like the weirdest thing. She can hear me watching like a cloud AI video at night. And she goes, "What are you watching at one and a half speed? Do you, are you even listening to any of this?" I just think of her now like, "Loser, frustrated, dumb, commenting on your post." 100%. Yeah. That's amazing.

Um, question for you. So like, a lot of people who watch my content, I would say like, a common theme that comes up is that they feel like they've been working really hard and they feel burnt out. Or even if it's not the word burnt out, they talk about how they feel really stressed. And for somebody who does everything that you do, I've seen your calendar, I know your schedule, we talk every day, I'm like, "I know." And I'm curious for you, like, what have you found to be the top one to three things that you do to manage your stress? That's actually something I've never really asked you. So I was like, "What do, how do you do that for yourself?" Because I know I have my different ways of like mechanisms of managing it. What do you, whether it be like a mental framework or something you actually do out in the world?

The most important thing for us as entrepreneurs is to manage the one exhaustible resource, which is our time. And the crazy part is, a lot of people talk about time management, and it's just design. Right? And so the worst thing that any entrepreneur can do is wake up in the morning and says, "Hmm, what should I do today?" Like, that's the worst, worst thing. So my dad, I'll, I'll tell you a great story about my dad. We, we were, uh, I grew up in a very mediocre everything world, but with extraordinary parents. And my dad's like a purebred entrepreneur. Every single night after dinner, my dad would sit down. We had a one-bedroom apartment. My dad would sit down at the dining table, and he would open this leather journal. He had, open a new page. He would write the date of tomorrow on it. And he would write down all the things he was going to do the next day. And he called that creating tomorrow today. He did that, Leila, every single day of my childhood. So even now, that's the one thing I took away. Every night, I stretch before I go to bed, and I sit down.

And I'm like in a pigeon pose, and I've got my notebook. And I was like, "How do I create tomorrow today?" And whatever is on that list that I make for myself for tomorrow, I do not leave the office until I get those done. It is a pure commitment around that because now you're keeping your promise to yourself.

Most people are like, "Oh, I'm going to set an alarm for 5 a.m." and I'll snooze for a little bit. It's okay that you snooze, but you just broke the promise that you made to yourself. You set the alarm at 5 a.m. Leila didn't set the alarm at 5 a.m. for you. You set the goals that you were doing tomorrow, but you chose not to achieve those goals or targets. And that was the biggest lesson I took from my dad. He's like, "How do you create tomorrow today?"

And so, lesson number one for me is, tomorrow has to be designed today. Otherwise, I wake up tomorrow and I can't manage the stress because too many things are coming your way. Kind of that's number one. Yeah.

The second is, a lot of people don't manage work based on how much effort it's going to take. So they put "file taxes" and "take laundry" on their to-do list. And I'm like, those are two completely different things. File taxes may take you four hours, laundry may take you 10 minutes. Drive. But those two can be on your to-do list because you have no idea when you're going to do them. So everything for me is driven by the calendar. If I think something is going to take a four-hour block, I give myself a four-hour block to do that. And that is time blocking. And that forces you to work in the time that you have. A lot of, and we know that whatever time, like you said, gets allotted, that the project gets done. I can do a four-hour project in one hour if I give myself that one hour to do it. Like, how many times have you and I said, "Man, I got to leave on a trip tomorrow," and we get all of it done that day before? Why? Because you give yourself that time to be able to do it. Right?

But I think creating tomorrow today was like a huge shift for me. And I think I got really lucky watching my dad do it. Yeah. And my dad, there were times where he would not come home until like 10, 11 at night. And I knew that was because he didn't get everything done on that list because he made a promise to himself to create tomorrow today.

I'll give you a crazier story. On my team, we have this idea that, uh, every one Thursday a month, we say, "I'm not going to go to bed tonight until blank." Okay? It's a really powerful thing, right? Because you can say, "Hey, I'm not going to bed tonight until we redo our CRM." So that Thursday night, I literally have to do or whatever I am here until this project gets done. M-hmm. So I am not going to go to bed until this gets done. And it's amazing. You think it's going to take all night, but it's not. And we bang through that project and you're like, "Wow, I made a promise to myself and I kept this promise to myself." You burned the boats. You just said there is no choice. I am going to wait until I get this done. And that was super powerful. So one night a month, one Thursday a month, as a team, we do, "I'm not going to go to bed until blank." And that's super powerful. Like, that progress that you can make is insane when your entire team does that.

Do you give yourself permission during time like that, like almost, uh, I've heard like another friend of mine talks about like a work vacation? Like, "Today I'm going to give myself permission to only work on this project." And like, "I'm not going to exercise if I don't want to. I'm not going to do..." Do you do it like that? Or do you have other things that go on too?

No, I, I, um, I am, I'm a dog with a bone kind of guy. So to me, as soon as I have my mind locked on something, everything else falls. I have to get this done. And I've realized that the singularity of focus is a really powerful skill. And I'll tell you, Leila, where I, where I learned that. I learned that because it was all going back to personal integrity. How do I keep the promises I make to myself?

I'll give you the crazy story. Um, about 11 years ago, my, I was really sick and my doctors couldn't figure out what was going on. And so I went into like a sleep study. And the doctor said, "Hey, early in the mornings, your numbers look really good. You should just wake up earlier. Just shift your day up." And I go, "Oh, that makes sense." And he goes, "I don't know if it'll work, but just shift your day up." It being a 8:00 p.m. to 11:00, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Go 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Shift your day up because your numbers look better. Then I said, "Wait a minute. No, I have to wake up at 5 in the morning. There is, I don't want to wake up at 5 in the morning." So I called three of my best friends and I said, "Hey, would it be okay, just for the next week, where we can all get on a call at 5:00 a.m. for five minutes, right? And you don't have to say anything. It'll be my accountability because I need to get better health-wise." And they said, "Sure."

So I set up a conference call line. And the first day I did this call, it was like, ding, ding, ding. Three people joined. I was like, "Okay." So I delivered some two-minute message, and they all hung up. The next day, I get back on the call and I hear, ding, ding, ding, ding. I'm like, "Wait, there are five people on the call." I don't know why there are more people on the call. The next day, the dings were like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I go, "Wait, third day." And there's like 15 people on this call. I go, "Okay, I'm just going to keep going." I realized at the end of that week, there were 20, 25 people on the call because they had shared these numbers. And that's when what I call now, the 5:00 a.m. Club, was born. It's a five-minute call at 5:00 a.m. every single morning because I made a promise to myself that I was going to wake up at 4:45, 5:00 a.m. every morning. And now, when you have this group, I'm going to let this group down. So we've been doing this 10 years. I've got 3,000 plus calls. I've been waking up at 4:45 a.m. for 10 plus years because I have an accountability group of 9,000 people. Like, roughly 4,000 to 4,500 people show up on a call every single morning at 5:00 a.m. Pacific time for five minutes.

And have you ever given yourself permission, like today, I'm not doing it. I'm going to vacay. It's like something so, only when the time zones where I am doesn't work, I get a sub. So if we're in Hawaii, yeah, that would be like 2:00 a.m. Pacific time, uh, 2:00 a.m. Hawaii time. And I'm like, "Hey, can someone sub for me?" But I've taken the call in Europe. I've taken the call when I was in Asia. Like, whenever there's, it's a normal schedule, I take, I do the call every single time. Uh, we have, I'll tell you the craziest part. We have, uh, a couple of billionaires on the call. We have two, uh, members of Congress on the call. Have one head of state as in a president of a country that is on the call. It's thousands of entrepreneurs on the call because I can see the call log. That's so cool. Yeah. It's five minutes at 5:00 a.m. every single, every single morning, 365 days a year. Wow.

It's interesting because like I ask you the question about like, have you ever missed any for any reason? Because something I've realized is that, I don't know if this resonates with you or not, but like, I'm very good at setting rules for myself and following them. And I think where a lot of people struggle, and I've struggled in the past, is like, when do you know it's okay to break that rule? You know what I mean? Like, when do I set that list the night before, and then something, what does it make sense that a thing occurs that I say, "It doesn't actually make sense to complete this list?" Yeah. Do you struggle with that? Or is that something you figured out?

No, of course I do. And but you, it's nice to give yourself a rule to break a rule, right? So my rule is really simple. It's okay to suck, but it's not okay to skip. So I can go to the gym. I'm like, "Hey, I go to the gym. I'll do five minutes elliptical. I'm out." I sucked, but I'm not skipping. Yeah. So, so it's okay to suck, but it's not okay to skip. So if I'm reading a book and I'm saying, "I'm going to read 10 pages a night," maybe I'll read one page that night. Yeah. It's okay to suck, but it's not okay to skip. Because when you start skipping, it's really easy to fall off. Skip. People say, "Hey, you can't skip more than two days in a row," and things like that. To me, I'm just like, "Hey, it's okay to suck, but it's not okay to skip." So I just try not to skip.

But here's the cool part though. To do great things, we must do few things. And the reason why a lot of people do a lot of things is because their main hustle is broken. Yeah. The reason why people have side hustles is because you don't have a good main hustle. Yeah. And that's so, you don't need a side hustle, you just need a good main hustle. And so I always think about, why is this person skipping or why is this person missing? It's because they just have too much on their plate. If you only have four priorities, it's way easier to keep those priorities and way easier to keep your promise to yourself based on those priorities.

How do you set priorities for yourself given the position you're in now? Like, do you allow other people to have say over your priorities? Like, "Hey, I want you guys to tell me like, as well, like, do you think this is where I need to focus, given the business, like, given the size of the business that you're, you're over?" Or is it something you completely decide autonomously?

I think it's a blend. So I think we're tracking like a, you know, we're a $1.2 billion dollar business today. And it's, it's wild. We have 22,000 plus people. But we have a, they're very clear goals. So the goal says, "We need to do X." Cool. What, what are the teams that are going to do to help us get to that goal? Hey, what's Shon's role to do that? So I wake up in the morning and I'm like, "Hey, my job is to do one of these strengths. It's growth, culture, influence. That's all I do." And so if that means, if I'm not doing something related to growth, or something related to drive culture, or something to influence somebody, then I'm probably underperforming what I'm doing. So thematically. So I call it just thematic weeks. As long as my weeks are thematically the same, I'm doing the right thing. So over time, you will compound on that. But there's some days where, like you and I will talk about, "Hey, there was a fire today, right?" And so everything gets shut down. And you, you solve the fire because that fire is going to then affect culture later. Yeah. Um, but the teams have a very open dialogue of telling me, "Hey, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that?" Which is really good.

I, I'll tell you, one thing that I do with all my direct reports. It's very simple. At the end of the week, I say, "Hey, what was your high life for the week? What was your low life for the week? How can I help you next week?" And so they just send me one bullet point each. And it's really powerful because it's a same format that happens every week. It's easy to do. And so I'm like, "Oh, he's asked me for help on that project for three weeks in a row. I should probably help with that." So you start to see some patterns around it. But if we don't know what we have to wake up and do, something is wrong with, you know, the promises that we made to ourselves. Yeah.

No, it's really interesting. It's actually so powerful, like, just in having like our friendship, like when I'm like, "Hey, you've been where I'm going, and you are above a larger company than I've ever been above." Like, "Is it okay for me to be like, still handling these fires?" And you're like, "That." And it's funny because it's given me almost like permission to work on things that I know are important because I'm like, "If I solve this the right way, this fire, correct, it makes it better." Yes. And it shows everybody the importance of the culture. And that's actually something that I would love to ask you, which is like, do you see ever business leaders like delegating too much of like the work to other people because they don't see that opportunity?

I think it varies based on skill level. And I think a lot of folks sometimes be like, "Oh, that's a tough conversation. Can you have it? Can you have it for me?" Yeah. Or, uh, "That's a comp conversation. Can we just have HR have that conversation?" Yeah. So sometimes, based on tough conversations, people will want to either backpedal from it or not have it. And all I tell my team around that is, if you feel like you're delegating something, offer support in the delegation. So if I was saying, "Hey, Jimmy, on so, Jimmy on my team, I said, 'Hey, Jimmy, I'd love for you to make sure that our event looks great next week.'" He's like, "Man, I'm really struggling about these two things." "Hey, could I, do you want me to help you in this conversation with the vendor? Do you want me to jump on the call?" Now, Jimmy feels a lot a sense of support around it. What I, what we as leaders should not allow is when Jimmy says, uh, "It's better for you to have that conversation." "Short." I'm like, "No, no, no. That's not. I will coach you to have the conversation. I will support you to have the conversation. I will jump on the call with you to have the conversation. But there is no scenario where you delegated back to me." Like, that does not work. So I think us showing up for them is really powerful.

I will tell you though, I'll give you a super cool story around this. Uh, our last company, which I've told you about, when we were selling to Douglas Salomon, which is a public utility company, we were pitching the board in New York City. And so my partner, Peter, and I, at that time, we would wake up early and we would walk Central Park. Yeah. And all we would do, Leila, was roleplay. And so we would walk in Central Park for three hours, 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., right? We'd walk in Central Park. And he goes, "Okay, so Shon, what would you say if they asked you blank?" "What would you say they asked you about EBITDA?" And then I would answer it. He goes, "No, do it again. No, do it again. No, do it again. No, do it again." Right? And then I'd say, "Hey, but Peter, what if they asked me about this?" He's like, "Let me try." Then he would do it. And I was like, "No, do it again. No, do it again. You're missing that." "No, do it again. Let me do it." And so we would roleplay back and forth. So we roleplayed like four or five days pre-board meeting. And so when we got to the board meeting, and the board asked us a question, and we'd already rehearsed a question, we look at each other and we smile because they're like, "I got that one right." Because we already prepped for that.

And I think the crazy part is, when leaders delegate, they don't roleplay. So instead of saying, "Hey, Jimmy, go have that tough conversation," you're like, "Hey, Jimmy, are you cool having that conversation? Or would you like to like do a fun roleplay between us just so we can get comfortable?" And we call that the gift, giving people the gift of going second. Right? There's no pressure around that. You give them the gift of going second. And roleplay is like the coolest, easiest thing to do because they hear your language patterns, you hear theirs, you've already said it one time, so the second, second time is easier. And I'm a big fan of the, I don't love the word delegation, it's the empowerment associated with it. But I think the empowerment has to connect with a transfer of skill and confidence in some way. And the transfer of skill and confidence is only going to come from you sitting with them, or roleplaying with them, or coaching them through it. So as long as the culture of the organization is, "Jimmy should come to you and say, 'Hey, Leila, I know I have this tough conversation. Is it okay if I just roleplay with you? Or can you just coach me through it? What would you say if you were me? Or how would you start the conversation if you were me? Hey, if it goes sideways, I'm kind of nervous about this. How would I bring it back to this?'" Those are the conversations they should ask us. Because now we get to lift up leaders, which is really powerful.

I love that so much. And it's, it's funny you say that because I was literally, when I've had a lot of people I've had to coach on the tough conversation, I'm like, "All right, let's hit record. You're recording me on a Zoom or on the phone. If we're in person, and like, listen to the tonality." Um, because I'm sure you've seen it, it's like, most of those conversations go wrong not in what they say, but in how they say it, because they're freaking out, they're nervous, whatever. Um, but what I have seen a lot of in just actually, like, my content that goes out there about this, and then what people say is basically like, when they're teaching other people to have hard conversations, it's not that they are showing them, but that they are telling them. Yeah. And then they're like, "Go ahead, go fire that person. Go ahead, go give someone feedback. Go ahead." And I'm like, they're abdicating, right? They're not actually teaching. It's actually a theme that I've been talking about with our leadership too, which is, show, don't tell. Yes. Show, show them what you're going to do before you tell them how to do it. It's almost like, you know, it's like the framework of, uh, demonstrate, document, duplicate. That's so good. Yeah. Uh, that's what me and Alex came up with in terms of like, how you get people to learn things. But I love that you're saying that because it's something that I, I just feel myself like continuing to beat my head into the wall of like, "Guys, I swear, I know it feels like a lot because it is, but like, we have to show them before we can assume that they know how to do it." Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

There's, um, along those lines, I wrote this thing down maybe a few years ago, and I call it the learning dogma. The learning dogma is how people learn, right? With our employees, with our friends, whoever, with our children. So when you discover something, you get to learn it once. So someone heard you on a podcast and they heard the framework, they're like, "Oh, when you discovered something, it's cool. I learned that from Leila once." When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. But when you document something, you get to learn forever. That's good, right? So, so you guys remember that. Yeah. But no, it's super powerful, right? So a lot of times when you don't have recall, yeah, it's because you just don't have a framework around it. Yeah.

That's so interesting. And that's that one thing. So if people want mastery, uh, people leave mastery, I, in a very, um, unachievable way, just because they think, "I can, I've learned it, and I can teach it, so I'm a master at it." But what most people don't realize is, when you listen to something, you get to learn once. When you teach something, you get to learn it twice. That's a gem. Quick quote, by the way. And when, but when you document something, you get to learn it forever. So when you have a framework, you walk into a conversation, like when you're doing your workshops, and someone asks you a question, you can draw a pyramid and say, "Here's how I, the levels of this overall, right?" That's super, very, very fast. It can get your thinking into their thinking very quickly.

Do you have a framework for teaching people frameworks? Because when I first met you, for example, I remember I was like, "Yeah, for everyone who doesn't know, like, I knew nothing about real estate. We had just sold our companies, and I was like, 'Okay, you understand business, but you also understand in real estate, so I trust you, right?' And I was like, 'What do you think of all this stuff?'" And all the frameworks that you taught me, I was like, "Damn, you don't just know business in real estate, you also know how to break things down so people can understand them easily." I'm curious, like, have you distilled that into a framework?

I have. And I, I learned that through, um, from this guy named Richard Green. So here's a, here's a story for you, okay? You know the, uh, the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezos's of the world will get on camera and say, "Oh, if I can do it, you can do it too." And that's a bold-faced lie. Elon's half alien, so there's no way we can do what he does. Bezos, there's no way. Their experiences, their skill sets are completely different than ours. So I always thought, "Well, why do they say that?" Well, they say that because they can't say, "Shon, you can't do what I do," because that would be egotistical to say. Then I was thinking, "Well, but there's got to be a way for you to unlock the inner Elon, and you for me to unlock the inner Bezos." And me, how do I do that? And so my theory was, what is Elon's support system? What is Bezos's support system? What is Tony Robbins's support system? And then I said, "Wait a minute." Tony, by the way, phenomenal nature, amazing speaker. I said, "Wow, I can never be like Tony." But what if I could hire Tony Robbins to speaking coach? So I hired Richard Green, Tony Robbins's speaking coach, for $50,000 for three hours. Yeah. And probably the best all my speaking was until the time I met Richard Green, and everything after. And he, he shared this one idea with me, and I put it in my words. He says, "Shon, what you're trying to do is, you have all these experiences, knowledge, ideas, skills, experiences, and you're trying to take those experiences and put it in the audience's head. But you're trying to do that with charisma. You're trying to show up on stage with charisma, tell a great story, be, be animated, you know, have, have great media. And you're telling the story, but it's all charisma. You're trying to take your charisma and shove it into the audience's head. So when they leave, they're like, 'Man, that was such a good presentation,' but they have no recall. They can't remember anything." How many times have you and I gone to a presentation where we're like, "That was awesome, but I don't remember anything. I have no idea what happened." Right? That's so weird. But, but you enjoyed, you were entertained for that time. So that's just charisma.

So I said, "He said, 'Shon, you are really, you have great charisma on stage, but I don't remember anything that you said.'" I was like, "How do I fix this?" And he said, "It's about organizing your thoughts so that you don't, you don't put the charisma in their head, you put a framework in their head." And so I came up with this idea of organizing, operationalizing charisma. How do you operationalize that charisma? So now you have this learning dogma. I put that into a little box, and then I can put the box in their head. So now they have recall. And that becomes a lot better as well. So the, the framework is, how do I take something where I can organize it into something so I can put in someone's head? And the easiest way that I have found for myself is, uh, two rules. Rule number one is, one, two, three, too many. One, two, three, too many. As soon as you get to the fourth, you're like, "I forgot the first three." So it's one, two, three, too many. And the second is, can it somehow be established on a simple geometric shape? A circle, a square, a triangle? So that the, the brain can take a snapshot of it. And you know which goes in what box. As long as it's one, two, three, too many, and I can come up with a geometrical shape, I can just remember a lot more things.

I so agree with that. Because with our values, people like, there's only three. I'm like, "I just feel like I can't remember more than three." Three too many. If I'm on an interview and I have to recall our values, and there's six, I'm like, "Oh, let's check off these." Right? I'm like, "The side, I'm distracted." I love that. That's so good. And it's interesting because my main piece of feedback I give people when they show me presentations, so I'm like, "I love this, but put it into a visual." And they're like, "How?" I'm like, "A shape." And then people like, "What?" I'm like, "It's just easier to remember." Totally. You, it's like something with the brain. It's easier to associate that with something.

Well, well, think about, think about this. In the olden days, what did people do? They transferred knowledge in the walls of caves through diagrams. That's fair, right? That's how our, that's how we're wired. By the way, there's an amazing presentation mechanism that was actually created by a kindergarten teacher. And it's called FORMAT. And what FORMAT is, if anybody uses this, it will help, help people structure the ability to deliver anything. And it's the why, what, how, now. There are four frames. The why frame is, "Why is this important? Why is this important right now?" Hey, I'm talking about, uh, I'm talking about global warming. And it's important right now because all the rainforests are dying. Why is this important? Why is it important right now, right? The second is the what frame. The what frame is, "Well, there's four pieces that affect global warming." And then I say, "Piece one, piece two, piece three, piece four." That's the 10,000-foot view. Great. Now, it's the how frame. "Let me tell you how each of these pieces are affecting you." Here's piece one, here's everything about piece one. Here's piece two, here's everything about piece two. Here's piece three, everything. And then now I've given you the why, the what, the how. And the next one is the now, or the next. "So what do I do with all this information?" "You don't have to remember anything that I said. All I need you to do is to turn off your air conditioning at 6 p.m." That is the one thing. It's, what is the one domino that I kick? Right? So if we, any presenter, if they use the why, what, how, now frames, then you transition people through that process, and they feel so much more engaged with you because they're like, "Oh, yeah, he's answering every inbuilt objection that I have." Like, "Why should I listen to her?" "Oh, because it's important." "Oh, what is this all about?" "Oh, it's got four pieces." "Well, how, how do I actually do that?" "Oh, he just told me." "Man, there's too much. What do I, what, what should I do?" "Oh, just do this." Why, what, how, now. And it was actually came up with by a kindergarten teacher. Wow.

I love it because that's how they teach kindergarten. It's called FORMAT. I didn't even come up with it. Use it in all my presentations. I'm like, "I'm about to transcribe this podcast after we're done so I can, because I'm like, I need to use these to teach people." I love that. That's fantastic. Yeah. And then that way, you're also not, um, you don't feel pressure to give them 30 things to do at the end. You say, "Here's, remember, right? Here's, here's the first domino. The next is, that's the first domino." Well, here's the first domino, right? And that's super, super helpful when you can do that. Wow.

It's funny. Now I'm thinking like, when I met you, because Alex, I remember got off with you and he was like, "No, you need to meet him. I feel like you're like, really, you're going to love him." It's funny because I remember the point in time in which we met, which was a time where I told Alex, I was like, "I feel very alone in the business world." And he was like, "Well, why is it because you're a woman?" "No, it's not." I was like, "It's actually because we're surrounded by all these people who have monetary success and that are making all this money who I can learn from, but I don't want to because they're not the nicest people. They don't treat their team well. They don't actually care about their customers." And it's funny because I started thinking, "Maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe, you know, we didn't grow Gym Launch to be a billion-dollar company because I'm just like a naive idiot." And then I met you, and you had grown a business to be worth billions, and you were so nice, and so generous, and so kind, and you affirmed some of the things that I like wished so badly to be true in the world. And I was like, "Oh, it exists. Thank God, because otherwise I don't want to do this anymore." You know what I mean?

Thank you. Uh, I think the, I think this one-dimensionality of success is the thing that affects most entrepreneurs. And that is, everything is the barometer of money. Yeah. And if you can just realize that, "Man, I don't have that right now, but I can trade for it later." Cool. If I don't have that now, how do I trade relationships? How do I trade energy? How do I trade skill? How do I trade time, uh, to brand? If I just do that now, I know I can go build one of those. And maybe that's where the calling is in a lot of ways. Like, I, I'm not money-motivated. And to me, I'll tell you, there's a, uh, a lot of people do the DISC profile and things like that. I'm a 99D, 999. I'm a 99D, 999. I'm like, "I'm weird, right?" But my adaptive DISC, which is when I'm stressed, I'm a lower D, on higher I'm a more people person. So, uh, when it, when push comes to shove, I'm not a capitalist. When I'm push custom shove, I'm a teddy bear. Got it. And so I just realize that about myself and I go, "Okay, well, then how do I stay true to that version of me?" Yeah. That makes me comfortable in my own skin. So will I be a Bezos or a Musk? No, I don't want to. And I'm comfortable with that. Because I want to wake up in the morning and be with people that I love. And I'm like, "Man, if I can get a day with Alex and Leila, that's a good day." I don't, I don't care about anything else. And who cares about making money? I'm fortunate that I've had a decent, decent financial success. But afterwards, you realize, what are you going to do? Like, buy one more taco? Like, I don't, gqu. Yeah. It's not, most of the things that we need, we have. But if you can realize you can horse trade, it makes it really fun. Yeah.

Because I was going to ask you, because you, you, I was thinking about it, and we met when you were at the time where you weren't, you didn't have anything. So it's so interesting to see like, Shon then versus Shon now for me. And what do you, like, what's the big difference that you see? Because that's, I'm curious about that too. You seem happier now. Oh, just being in the, in just being in it. Said that more energized, happier, more certain of yourself, confident. Like, it just seems like you're doing what you, yeah, you're doing things you're good at with people that you like doing it with.

Yeah. Um, well, it gives you purpose, right? You wake up and you have purpose. You wake up and you have something to do. Like, this whole being retired is interesting, but you wake up and you have nothing to, you have options, you have nothing to do. And you're like, "That sounds great." It doesn't. It's really bad for, like, high-driver personalities like ours. I always want to do something. But, uh, but you don't want that something to be out of alignment. Yes. And then you get tired and resentful. So finding something that you can sink your teeth into is super positive.

I'm curious for you, because I think when you say you're not money-motivated, I'm the same way. Which is like, I'm just thinking about, I don't know how else to to verbalize it other than like, I want to build an excellent business, one that makes customers' lives better, employees' lives better, you know, but also can achieve financial success so that people actually listen to me when I tell them that this is how we did it, right? Um, when I wake up every morning, the first thing I'm thinking about is my team and my customers, right? It's like, those are the two things that are top of mind. And then usually the question I ask myself is, "Where can I support people? And where can I support the business?" Do you have like a, and this was something I had to like reflect on, like, "Okay, this is the first thought I have when I wake up, and it is a default to the people first." Like, "Who do I need to support in the team? And then the business." Do you have something that's like, it's what you think about that kind of directs you that you indirectly grow the business financially because you focus on this thing?

We all should have that. We all should have that. Because otherwise, it's very, you fall off the wagon super quick because distractions hit you. Like, we have 16,000 commercial messages hitting us every single day. They're all forcing us to get off the path that we're on. Yeah. And that's why the, the Sprints really help me. As like, I'm committed to doing these things. These Sprints are thematic. They're got to do with growth, culture, and influence. I call it GCI. Growth, culture, and influence. And if it's not GCI, I'm like, "Why? Why am I doing that?" If it's not GCI, like, "Why am I doing that?" And so that allows just everything is thematic. And that's been super helpful.

I'll give you, uh, the big lesson that I learned. I hired my first coach when I was 21. Okay? Craziest story, which you will not even believe. I was talking to my dad and on the phone, and we were growing, it was our first company. And my dad said to me, he goes, "Dude, you just need help. Like, you need somebody to talk to." I was like, "Dad, I'm fine. No one can understand what I'm going through." And he's like, "Where are you going?" "I'm going to this event with like 20 people. I got invited." So I went to this event, put my hoodie on, sat in the back, right? I'm like, "What am I doing here? Yeah, I got stuff to do. Like, what am I doing here?" And then this lady comes on stage. Just 20 of us in this room. And she starts talking. I was like, "All right, I'm here. I might as well pay attention." And every time I had a question that popped into my head, it felt like she read my mind, and she just answered that question. And I was like, "Wait a minute." So I had this question, and she answered the question. I had this question, she answered the question. So when I drive home back, I call my dad. Said, "Dad, you won't believe what happened." And he goes, "Seems like you need somebody to talk to." Yeah. So I said, "Well, I don't have the money. And what do I do with her?" She's like, "He's like, he can be a great mentor." I go, "Dad, like, it feels weird. She never met me." And so this, I wrote her an email and I said, "Uh, I was in this meeting. You did great. I would, I said these words: 'I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness.'" Oh, I will never forget that line. "I do not expect any meetings. I do not expect any phone calls. I just hope that from time to time, when I write you an email, you'll prioritize my responses. That's all I wrote." She writes back, "Is this a joke?" And I was like, "No, I didn't know how else to reach out to you." And said, "Write it up." So I assumed she meant a contract. And I had no idea. I was 21 years old. So I hit print on the email, I signed it, scanned it, and I sent it back to her. I don't know what else to do. And she's like, "Here are my wiring instructions." I wired her $110,000. And she became my first coach. So cool. Amazing. Amazing lady. Still talk to her even today. She told me something which was really cool. And she said, "Shon, you want to think about thematic decades." He's like, "What do you want to do in your 20s? What do you want to do in your 30s? What do you want to do in your 40s?" And she goes, "When you turn 20 or 30 or 40 or 20 to 25 or 30." But thematic decades are really powerful because it allows you to become the best version of yourself. Yeah. In, in that way.

I'll tell you the crazy part. In my 30s, all I cared about was energy. Like, I want to beat this sickness, beat this illness. Yeah. And it was a dark time for us. And all I did in my 30s was just get healthier. Yeah. And that was my, my goal. In my 20s, I just wanted to prove myself. I was like, "I, I am good at what I do. I need to show the world." So it was all, 20s was all about proving to myself. Now that, like, my, I'm in my 40s now, all I feel is mastery. Like, what is one thing that I can become best in world at? Like, the text message I sent Alex are, "Dude, I just want to be best in world at something." He's like, "And then of course, you know, philosophically, he's like, 'You don't need to be best in the world at that. You are best in the world at three things.'" He goes off philosophically about that. But my, my thematic decades are in my 40s. I just want to become best in world at something. Yeah. And that shines this light on mastery. And so when you wake up every morning, you're like, "If I run my week this way, is it getting me closer to to that?" To that. And so it allows you to at least recalibrate. You're like, "Okay, this week's a fire week. It's not going to happen. I'm going to go do it next week." Yeah. But it allows you to recalibrate in some way. So these thematic decades have been like a really nice North Star.

That's so interesting. So like, when you stepped into real, for example, do you think to yourself like, "How, this is a path that..." Yeah, yeah. "I just want mastery." Like, I was like, "How could I run like this? Is that my next billion?" We did a billion once. Let's do a billion again. When we started, we roughly had a $200 million market cap. In 18 months, we grew there to a billion-dollar market cap. And I was like, "That's my next billion. I want to get mastery at this." And that, when you do that, you like, keep your promise to yourself. Yeah.

You do. Question for you. That's kind of like a side note, but I obviously know about your, your wife and your kids and all that. And I'm curious like, what role do you think having support has played and you being able to have all this success?

I think the hardest part is is us not believing that our partners, our spouses, our friends, etc., will support us. Most people are just like, "Oh, they won't understand me. They won't support me." Etc. They never give them the chance. They never give them the chance. Uh, my wife and I have a very open relationship. And we tell them, she's like, "Hey, if you need to work, just tell me you need to work." And so on the weekends, if I need to work, I don't have to ask for permission. I'm like, she knows that if I need to work, I understand what priorities are, and I just tell her that I need to work. And there are times when I'm like, "Hey, uh, I got a bunch of stuff going on. I'm going to leave early and be back late." She's like, "Just give me a heads up." Yeah. And she knows that, uh, Shon without purpose would be a bad husband and a bad father. And I'll tell you the craziest thing. If I come home, uh, cranky or down, she'll look at me. She goes, "Can you just go sell something? You'll feel better. Just go sell something." And so she knows me so well that she's like, "You didn't sell anything today, did you?" I'm like, "No." She goes, "Can you just go sell something? Write an email. Go sell something. You will feel, you will feel better." And I've seen her on weekends saying, "If I'm short with the kids or what have you, that she will say, 'Hey, you're being short with the kids. Do you, do you need to work for a little bit?'" And it's great because she understands that.

I tell you the second thing though, is I've realized a lot of entrepreneurs will say, "Well, you know, uh, they put this undo pressure on themselves that when they're home, they have to be there with their children." ETA. I'm like, "They also learn from your work ethic." Yes. So my children see me work. And so they know when they come talk to me, they're like, "Hey, Dad, can you take a break from work? Or can I talk to you later?" They'll do the sorting question. It's really good. I'm like, "Hey, I need five minutes." And I'll say, "Well, is it like real five minutes or Dad five minutes?" Right? That's a joke. But it's okay. But at least they know that I'm working. And so now they don't bother me either because they're like, "You're working." And it's a really positive thing. So the work is not a work is not a stressful, negative thing in our household. It is what we do. It's, it's how we move the ball forward. It's our expression of our humanity. It's our expression of our purpose. And so my children know that they want a life of work. And it's super cool. My son wants to work with me. And that's like the greatest compliment you could ever get. So I really believe that you get a successful support system if you can be truly deeply honest with your support system, saying, "This is how I'm wired. This is how I work. This is how I think." And when you have that, you don't, it doesn't break. And so the more of that exists, the easier it is.

I, you know, people talk about like work-life integration and work-life harmony, etc. I don't know what that means because it's really, it's, it's just this amorphous idea. Yeah. To me, it's just, tell everybody that you, what you're working on and be really honest about it. And if you have to work, go work. If you don't want to work, don't work. Like, just be really honest about stuff. But so my, my work and my life are like super, they're just, they're in and out. And I, um, my dad always used to say, "I, you know, he's like, 'I work 80 hours a week. I just choose which 80 hours I work.'" Which is super powerful if you think about it, right? Yeah.

You know, it's great. I love hearing that because, um, it's actually for me, because it's something that's been top of mind for me. And me and Alex actually just did a podcast together and we were talking about like having a supportive spouse. I think it's good to.

Hear from somebody who like isn't in the business with their spouse, but I've seen how supportive she is. Oh yeah, because it's she doesn't take it personally if you're not great because you need to work on something. And I think that what I've seen a lot recently, especially with younger entrepreneurs and people that are like very uh ambitious young professionals, is they might have somebody, but that person takes it very personally that they want to work a lot. And what they don't, what I, what I think that person doesn't realize is that it's not about the work, it's about the growth.

Yeah, and so by telling them that they can't work, you actually prevent them from growing as a person, and then that person will eventually resent you, and then nothing's going to work. It's not about the work, it's about the growth. So good, isn't it though? It's so good because, you know, it's so good. It's like, you don't need to work, you know? We, we could just invest in real estate and call it a day, right? I could invest with in real estate with you, call it a day, not with myself, that's for sure. It's not about the work, it's about the growth. That's so good. So true though, right? That's so good. It's, I'm, we don't give our partners and our spouses and our friends enough credit. They're not dumb. They love you for a reason. They know you. Yeah, they know you're weird. They, they want to support you with doing that. Be more honest with them. Tell them those things now. And if, if for some reason it's not working out, just say, "Hey, here's who I am. Can you help me figure out a path that I don't want to insult you? I want to be there with you." And they'll tell you, "Hey, whenever you're with me and when you're at dinner, don't check your phone." They'll give you the rules and then just work through those, right? Tell you, just tell them. I, I think that all progress starts with telling the truth. It's just easier if you tell the truth. You don't have to remember lies. Just tell the truth.

I think it's kind of like it because you're so good at just communicating what's going on. Like Alex will call you and then I'll be with with you're like, "Hey, I'm with Neil, like talk in a couple hours." "Hey, I'm, I'm with the F." Like, it's just clear and it's like nobody takes offense to anybody just like telling them the truth of what's happening. Yeah, like, "Hey, I'm in meetings, can't talk." Like the other day, you called me because I was like, "Oh my God, this show." And you were like, "I called you twice." And I'm like, "I'm still in the show." You know, it's like, you just tell people what's going on. Yeah.

Uh, and I love because I've seen just how much you've brought the kids into it and like how knowledgeable they are of business and how young they are. It's so freaking cool. I'm just like, I want more people to do that. Like, I can't say because I don't have kids, but I'm like, if I ever do have kids, then I want it to be like that where it's like, you know, you and Neil were looking at investing in land and he's looking at buying land. He's like, "Dad, showing you properties." And you know, like, "She wants to start a unicorn." You have the unicorn on because she has the unicorn business. Like, so cool.

My coach told me, he said, "Hey, she said, uh, you should have one thing with your son and one thing with your daughter that's just your own." Okay? And that was her recommendation. And I said, "Well, why?" They're like, "Well, you just build a different bond doing that." Yeah. And my son had, my son and I had, not like, not we didn't build a business together. My daughter and I built this, you know, drop shipping e-commerce company together. And so every week we have a board meeting. She's the CEO and she's like, "Dad, how much did you sell this week?" Right? It's, it's hilarious, like having a 12-year-old tell you that, 8-year-old tell you that. But it's cool because now she knows that that's what work is. And and when we are talking about it, she doesn't care about the rest of the world. She doesn't care about Mom and Dad. She didn't care. She, she only, I'm her partner in that. My son, who's 12, Neil, who's 12, he just invested in his first piece of real estate as a 12-year-old. But the cool part, Leela, is I, any conversation that's not confidential, I just leave it open in the car for him to hear. So he sees how I handle things. But what people don't realize is with my son in the car, it makes me a better entrepreneur. It makes me a better father. I'm like, I can't get mad at this person because he's going to learn from my tonality. So it forces me to be a better person. So I put him on, I leave it on the on the speaker phone. So gives me accountability to be softer, to be kinder, to operationalize generosity more, because otherwise then he'll learn to speak like me. And that, that made us get a lot better. So now, even so, he'll say things like, "Hey Dad, uh, I want to ask for to to play volleyball and not basketball in PE. What should I do?" I'm like, "Just talk to your coach." He goes, "No, but do you have a script?"

It's amazing that he asks you that, right? Yeah, it's amazing. And and the reason he asks me that is because I told him a story when I was in, so I had, I, I had 39 one-on-one interviews to get a job at Goldman Sachs. 39 one-on-one scheduled interviews to get a job at Goldman, right? This is not including lunches, dinners, phone screens, nothing. 39 individual one-on-one interviews. I walk into one of these interviews with this managing partner. He shows up all frazzled. He puts like this big leather uh binder on the desk and he says, "You're a hot shot. I see hot shots come through here all the time." He goes, "Um, see if you can set me up a meeting. You got skill? See if you can set me a meeting." So he hands me this binder. He's like, "No, no, go ahead, open it." I go, "Okay." So I open the binder. It has, it says Lea phone number, right? I was like, "Would you like me to call?" He's like, "Yeah." I go, "Said, sir, I'm happy to call her. Do you have a script or something? Because I just want to represent you well." He starts, he smiles, he packs up his stuff, he puts it in his bag, shakes my hand. He's like, "You'll do great, kid." And he walks out. And then I saw him at the cocktail party and I said, "I'm sorry, that interview was like 46 seconds. Yeah, what did I do right or wrong?" He goes, "I've been interviewing young hot shots coming to want to work at Goldman Sachs for years, and you were the first person that didn't just pick up the phone and want to prove to me that they're hot shot. You asked me, 'Hey, can you give me some guidance on what to do here?' Because that made me believe that you're coachable." And I told Neil that story. And so now every time he's stuck, he's like, "So can you give me a script for that?" And I said, "Uh, you say, 'Hey coach, I really love volleyball versus basketball. Would it be okay if I played volleyball this year?'" And he goes, "Really? Can I say it?" I'm like, "Yeah, go say it. Roleplay right now." He gets confident saying that because I told him that story up front. And I would have had no idea how to call this person. Like, what do I say? I call and say, "Uh, I'm at Goldman." Like, it's weird. Yeah. So, but if it had given me a script, I would have just read it. And I, I don't, don't think people ask for that stuff. It so makes, makes life so much easier.

I think ask for help, right? Yes. It's been a theme I've had lately with people. I'm like, "I'm going and I'm in a one-on-one, for example." And then it's like, it's like resistance after. And I go, "Wait, do you not know how to do this?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Wait, just ask help. I have a SOP, I've got a video, I've got a this." I'm like, "What? I just, you got, but you got to tell me because I don't know." But you know what I have found is that most people don't ask for help because they don't know how to ask for help. Not that they don't want to, they just don't know how to. And I always tell our team, "Here's the language pattern. Could you please help me understand blank? Could you please help me with blank? Could you please roleplay with me about blank? Could you please blank?" Yeah. And they're like, "Oh." So now you'll see them frame their language around it. "Hey, Sean, could you please help me?" I'm like, "Yes." And I'm, I'm a true believer that people want to ask for help, but they just don't know how to without it affecting their self-esteem. Yeah. And so if we can just give them a language pattern to help with their self-esteem, it becomes a lot easier.

It's funny because I, I made a podcast on it the other day and the, the one piece I also, the frame I gave people is like, everyone always says that they, they're like, "I don't ask for help because I don't want to look stupid." I'm like, "Well, you're definitely going to look stupid when you write up so bad, right?" And so I'm like, "The smartest people." And I actually was looking at like the highest performers on my team, they're able to ask for help early because they're like, "I will fail here if I don't get help. Can you help me? Otherwise, I will eat." And so they never actually look super stupid because they don't allow themselves to fail because they bring in all these other people to help them succeed. Of course, you know what I mean? And so it's like, once I explain that to a few people, they were like, "It was like the light bulb went off." They were like, "Oh my gosh, so I look like an idiot because I don't ask for help?" And I was like, "Yes, you look like an idiot when you don't ask."

Well, the crazy part is like, it's not about being Tony Robbins, it's about getting Tony Robbins's support system. Yeah, like, it's all about the support system. If you can somehow figure out, imagine this, imagine if you and I had Tony Robbins's support system in our corner. Imagine if you, if I was Rocky Balboa and I had those people in my corner, that's what wins, right? And so I just want to, I want to make all this money so I can stack the support system in my corner. I just want to be like, "I pay you, I pay you, I pay you, you advise me." And that's so amazing because you, you can just outsource all the pain to the mentors. It's fair as opposed to having to deal with it yourself.

Do you at this point, like, have trouble finding mentors or people that you can listen to? Um, I do. However, uh, I've flipped from having a generic mentor to a sniper mentor, right? I have such a similar frame. Yeah, right. And so, "Hey, who's somebody really good at this?" I'll give you an example. Um, I met two guys who run this amazing uh media agency on Madison Avenue and they want, they were pitching for business. I've got to know them, etc. And I said, "Hey, I would love for you to be my mentors." They're like, "We don't have a model for retainer. It doesn't work like that. We do like million-dollar projects to make you a logo." Like, that's how they work. And I said, "Same exact phrase. I would like to offer you blank for a symbol as a symbol of my seriousness. You don't need any calls, you don't need any meetings. It's a one-year contract. You can quit it at any time. I'll still pay you for the rest of the year. All I want is that I will text you and it would be great if you prioritize your text back to me." And so now I have two media moguls from Madison Avenue that I can just text. I'm like, "I'm thinking about this for my brand. It sucks. Don't do that." I'm like, "Great. Thank you." It's so amazing because they're, they're so good at their at that field, right? And I love that. And and so I, I have my health coach. His name is Justin Roing chauffeur. He was the head coach for the Anaheim Ducks on the on the strength side. Super sharp. And he knows my personality inside out. He knows I have type one diabetes. And I can just text him. So I hire him just so I'm like, "You're my sniper mentor on energy. That's all I care about. And if I have more energy, more capacity, that's my mentor." So anytime I can find somebody that is so good at what they do, yeah, and I've been talking to this guy who's amazing at AI. I'm like, "Hey man, could you just be my AI coach?" He's like, "Well, not really." I'm like, "No, I'll pay you. Just I just want somebody to text when I have a question." Yeah. So the idea of just putting the sniper mentors in your corner so when you have a question, you don't have to be like, "Let me go to YouTube. Let me ask somebody who's already solved all of this." So, so good. And and it's, and I think money is a really important thing with this. Like trying to, I hate this whole "pick your brain" thing from people. I just want to offer people like, "Hey, let me just pay you." Yes, right? Because it's a symbol of seriousness. And I actually believe there is a karmic balance of all of this, right? So Leela spent 15 years working on this and she's going to give you one piece of advice and you're not going to take it to heart. Yeah. But when there's a karmic balance, it's like, "Oh, you are offering something for all that you have endured for the 15 years." You don't need the money, but it's a symbol of seriousness. And that's the karmic balance where you can just say, "Let me just write the check." Because we all feel good about this.

It's actually funny because you remember when we first met and I, I was like, "Man, I have so many questions for him." I remember telling Alex, I was like, "I need to pay him money or something because I can't like, I can't just like for free ask for all these things." Yes, you did. And like, I still feel weird about that right now because it was so long ago. Yeah, but I'm like, "Oh, like by the way, I will tell you this and I have not told Alex, I you this off M." Like, that is the one thing that bothers me so much because I love you both so much. You're my, some, my best friends in the world. I'm like, "God, that paid." Like, I feel so like, I can't believe I took money from them. Why? Well, I just, I, because we're like, you're my best friends now. Well, I remember what happened when he was like, "I was like, I have so many questions, Jason." And he was like, "Then ask them." And I was like, "No, I don't feel comfortable with that. Like, I have to pay him money because I don't know him that well yet. We've only talked like twice." And so, and then we became friends, you know what I mean? I feel like over, and it just, it uh, and plus, like, I, I mean, you spent some time explaining real estate, explaining deals. I didn't explain any of it. I was like, "All right, I know you just went over all of that. I don't know what that means. Can you help me understand?" Yeah, exactly. And that was when you were, that was also when you weren't actively working. Yeah, so it's probably much, I can't even imagine you doing that right now. Some of our phone calls were so, we because we were selling the business. Yeah, you didn't, you were not over in actively in any business. And so we all had way more time. Oh, yeah. It's funny to think about now, like years later, like we're all so busy. It's weird. I, I wish I, I can't even imagine like that was such a blur of not having.

That also goes to to when you tell people this is, if you're not working on the things that are fascinating and motivating to you, you will get burned out. You will win less and you will forget the thematic decades. Like weeks would just go by because you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to sit down and eat bonbons and play Xbox." Like, that's interesting, but it's not fascinating and motivating. To we are built for growth. I know. And like, we as humans are built for growth. And that's why when people start working out, they have this drug to like want to work out more because you're built for growth. When you learn more, you want more. You build for growth. Um, my goal is that can I just activate growth, the the feeling of growth in people? Because you can, you, you can never look back. You, you can never go back to the person that you were. No, once you've seen, once you've seen what it can do for you. No, you can't unlearn. You can learn new things, but you cannot unlearn old things. Yeah. I mean, you said it. It's not about the work, it's about the growth. Like, I'm not gonna, gonna forget that. No, it's so true.

I have a few rapid-fire questions for. I, I see that people do these on podcasts and so I felt that I would, I would rapid-fire you some questions. What's more important? You can only say one word. Culture or strategy? Culture. Emails or meetings? Which one? I love how you're stuck on it because I was like, "I don't know what I would say." Email. Like, forced. Because it should just start with an email and if it, we can fix it, I'm sure we can take it to a meeting. The opposite would be terrible because you're like, "Dude, this could have just been an email." Yeah. That's, I was like, if I feel like this one will stress out. Go-to productivity tool? Paper planner. Because when you write it out, you can just design it out and see where spaces and things look like. I, I still write out a lot. Everything. Last one. Fame or Fortune? Fame. Because fame is the most efficient business model. I love it. Dude, thank you. This is so much fun. I love this.

So let me ask you this to to finish this off. While you, while you were listening, what, like, what do you remember that we talked about? What was, what was interesting for you? I think that my, the biggest frame shift that I had was the Sprints and the focus with the time that you have each day to actually get your work done. As like, if I look at the discrepancy between like, uh, you know, what does Leela have to do to continue to level up as an operator? What's something you do that I don't do? I don't think I'm, I think that I am too accommodating of things that come up each week in terms of like, rather than like, I, I can do that in two weeks or three weeks or four weeks. I'm like, "No, I could do that this week or in two days or three days." And that is something that I will immediately implement and stop doing. But it's gonna change your life because I believe, yeah, because you'll get chunkier time to work on more important things. Yeah. And you'll do it, you'll do it better because you're not like, because what we have is if you're working on something and you know the other two more things, it's lingering. I, I know. Dude, and that, that's actually like, this whole week something's been lingering and I'm like, "I need to solve this problem." And then I was looking at next week and I was like, "When do I solve it?" Next week. And then I was like, "This, what are you doing?" I need to, I need these dedicated Sprints. And I think it actually, I could probably plan my whole quarter ear Sprints because I know what I need to work on. Yeah. Yeah. Everything is two weeks long because one week feels too short because especially if you travel or you have something come up. Yeah. Two weeks long enough. And I'm trying to add that, that those Thursdays on one Thursday per Sprint, which is, I'm not going to bed until blank. That is my. So Neil will say to me, "Is it your Thursday?" And I'm like, "Yeah." She's like, "All right, I'll talk to you in the morning." And so I just sit there, put my headphones on, and I'll just work till I get it done. I love that. It's, there's something so exciting about that too. I don't know why, but like working late, like it feels like nobody bothers you. You just work. And you're, but you also know you are committed. You burn the boats. You're like, "I am not going to bed until this gets done." That's fair. And and then when at that point, when my head hits the pillow, the feeling of accomplishment is so high. It's like, I, I feel good about myself. And very rarely, it's like when you're done with that tough workout, you're like, "Man, I can't believe I did that." Yeah. And that's super powerful. I love this. No, I think that is, I think that will change how I work from here forward. And it's really, really insightful. I know that maybe some people listening to that, they just got to even just plan the night before or the week before or things like that. But like for me, I'm trying to get like incremental improvements in my schedule and how I manage my time. So it was really, really insightful. Yeah. I mean, it's a, for you, a 30-minute block could add millions of dollars to the business. I know. Yeah. So it's a small hinge that swings a big door. And if you have it planned, or at least have space for it, you have no margin. That's what you know, that's literally what uh Trevor was saying, right? You just have no, no margin. And if you have no margin, you're just going from task to task to task. Yeah. And switching is super hard too. It is. That was really helpful.