Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - The Top 10 Empire Building Books to Maximize Your Growth - 029

Episode Date: January 10, 2018

As an entrepreneur, you have an obligation to yourself and your business to strive for continuous personal growth in order to scale your empire. In this episode, Craig Ballantyne and Bedros Keuilian share their top 10 books that helped them take control of their mental state so that they could become better leaders, persevere through challenges, and dominate their path. Here’s what you’ll discover: 6:35 - How this Dan Kennedy book will help you learn how to manage people and profits to keep your empire from collapsing. 9:38 - How Maxwell Maltz reveals the effects self image has in achieving our goals in his book “Psycho-Cybernetics”. 15:06 - How Bedros used the strategies from Craig’s “Perfect Day Formula” to become more disciplined and structured in his life. 18:35 - How to forget what we can’t control and focus on what we can through our thoughts, words, and actions. 20:23 - How former U.S Navy SEAL, Robert O’Neill, teaches you to develop mental toughness, leadership, and decision making skills to conquer obstacles.

An overarching theme in the books that we have chosen is perseverance, is taking control of your mental state, forgetting about the externals and saying, hey, listen, if you want to build an empire, it's not about catching the latest trend, it's not about hoping that your Facebook ad works. It's about you. Hey, friend, what are the top 10 books that you've ever read? Well, guess what? Craig and I are about to tell you the top 10 books that we've read that's helped us build our empire that might help you build your empire as well. on this episode of the Empire podcast with me, Bedros Kulian and Craig Valentine. Let's do this. What do you got, Craigie? All right. So the first one that I'm going to start off with, I think should be mandatory

reading in high school for a couple of reasons. And it's called Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel. Victor Frankel was a guy who spent years in a concentration camp in World War II. Now, here's the thing that I didn't realize until a couple years ago. It was his choice. His choice. So he was outside of Germany or Poland or wherever he was eventually captured, but his parents were still there. So he could have left his parents there and been free himself, but he decided to go back, knowing that he was going to get caught by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp. So he then went there, lived through it, and he's a psychologist or a psychiatrist, one of the two. And so he then wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, and it essentially, shows you. There's very famous quotes in there. It's very stoic approach to life about how you control

your response to whatever you're going through. In fact, he has one famous quote, and I don't have the exact words, but it's, you know, everything can be taken away from you except your response. And that is really the key. Because when you have that in your mindset, man, you can have the worst day in your business and you can say, you know what? Doesn't matter how all these external factors went today. I still have control over my thoughts, words, and my deed. And so when I read that book, I was inspired that way, like, hey, mental resilience, but then also physical resilience. I mean, this guy was starved, and yet he had to put in a full day of manual labor every day in freezing cold in winter

with boots that had holes in them. And this man survived for years, years. And it's an incredible, incredible book for mental resilience. That is amazing. Great book. So the book I had here was something that we, most people probably haven't heard of. We've all heard of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which is a fantastic book, and if there was an 11th book, I would add this to it.

But what most people don't know is Napoleon Hill also wrote another book that his estate did not want published. In fact, this book is called Outwitting the Devil. And it's a fantastic book, and I recommend that everyone, instead of reading this book, that you listen to it on audio. Oh, interesting. And the reason being is because the way that Napoleon Hill sets the picture is, he says, in the book, in the audiobook, he had a chance to corner the devil. And he said, hey, Mr. Devil,

I've got something against you. And he effectively put him in a court environment where the devil was on the stand. And he said, I need you to answer every question honestly. And he goes on to interrogate the devil. And for the first time ever in our lives, we get to hear the devil say how he meddles into our lives, into our thoughts, into our actions, creates fear within us. creates insecurities within us. And he is forced to answer honestly because Napoleon Hill is holding something over him. So I read that book a couple Christmases ago

because you recommended it. Now, how does the audiobook different? Is there two different voices? Yes, that's exactly it. So you hear the narrator's voice, which is supposed to be Napoleon Hill, and then you hear this deep, dark, devilish voice. Interesting.

And he says, I will answer it honestly, but I demand that you call me Your Highness. Right? And so it's not only entertaining, but it's very eye-opening, and that a lot of times that when we blame circumstances, we blame society, we say we just had a tough, tough, you know, the cards were stacked against us, and we've got a tough life. It's really, this is the life you've built, and this is the life that you live. And hell or heaven can very well be here on this planet. And I know this might really mess with a lot of people's paradigms, and so I do say read with caution, but I do say read with enthusiasm. that you will take full control of your mental, emotional, financial state because for the first

time ever what we normally blame on the devil, we realize that we have a direct hand in producing, which means that if we produce the fears and frustrations and the doubts in our life, we can certainly create abundance and wealth and happiness as well, because you can't just go around as a human and create death and destruction and fear without having happiness, abundance, and joy. And so I think this is a fantastic book that everybody should read. They'll get greater control over their mental faculties, emotional faculties, which will help them create and dominate further. But it's really interesting how Napoleon Hill's estate did not want this put out until the late 70s, well after Napoleon Hill died because they just felt it was such a controversial book

that if it was put out when he wrote it, when he was still alive, that he would be, you know, slandered and blackballed forever. Well, I mean, even in the 70s, it would have been super controversial as well because most people they didn't think they were architects of their own life as they are more today. Sure. Yeah, exactly right. Great, great book. So now I'm going to switch it up and I'm going to go with something that is really business-based.

And it's a book by my friend Vern Harnish and it's called Mastering the Secrets of the Rockefeller Habits. And in this book, it really has helped me with quarterly planning, with meetings with my teams, and it really does help set the foundation of building an empire. You know, my team and I went to one of the follow-up one-day workshops that his company puts on for people that have read the Rockefeller Habits. And the year after we went to this event, we had our best year ever because of the quarterly planning that we put into place. And really, the funny thing is, is we actually left the workshop halfway through because the workshop wasn't good, but then we went and did the work. And, you know, we sat down, we had hard discussions, and we made quarterly planning a priority.

And that was a huge growth spurt for us. So you go through it, and again, it's a great business book because it's not like most business books because you actually get instruction in it and work to do, not where most business books should be like a six-page article in Inc.com and store in a magazine instead of a full book. So this one, mastering the secrets of the Rockefeller habits, you're learning the habits of an empire builder in that one. That's a great one.

And so the next one I have here is also a business book. And I think it's really a great business book for anyone who's right now a solopreneur, maybe if you have one or two or three employees, maybe under five employees or by yourself, you've got to read this book by Dan Kennedy, which is ruthless management of people and profits. Yes. Because, listen, it is a rock star thing to do right now, to become an entrepreneur, to say that I want to create my own destiny and I want to create my own brand. I want to create my own product.

I want to create my own service. I want to have a massive following. I want to have a team. I want employees. I want production. But what we don't realize is unless we know how to manage people and profits, we are destined to fail, and this entire empire is going to collapse upon us. And so Dan Kennedy goes into his no-nonsense method of effectively telling you that sooner or later,

everybody turns lame. Which is true. Sooner or later, you and I are going to grow old and die. And effectively, we can't manage our empires and we're going to turn lame. And I want to turn lame or go lame by way of getting old and dying, not necessarily making a bad life decision. Right. And therefore being lame and then coming into work and then screwing up my empire. And so we see this happen all the time.

And now as a entrepreneur, you get to hear from Dan Kennedy himself who has dealt with a lot of profits and a lot of people exactly how to handle your organization. So it's a no-nonsense leadership book of if they're doing this. this, then you do this action, and you won't have that outcome ever again. And typically, when Dan Kennedy tells you to do something, he's telling you do this through experience. Yeah, absolutely. You got all the controversial ones here, huh? Yeah, yeah. All right, so I'm going to go to probably the best business book that has ever been written, and it's called Ready, Fire, Aim. It's by my mentor, Mark Ford, who wrote it under his pen name, Michael Masterson, so there's a whole bunch of names here, but Ready, Fire, Aim. Ready, Fire, Aim. Not Ready, Aim, Fire, but Reddy,

fire, aim. And so the great thing about this book is it walks you through four different levels of empire building. It helps you go from zero to a million through that first stage that you just subscribed, being that solo entrepreneur. And then it takes you from one to 10 million because there's a lot of different decisions that you have to make as you get to that level. And then as a guy who's now in the next level, you know that from $10 to $50 million, there's another level of leadership, of decision making, of organization that you have to pull together. And then finally, his last phase is 100 million and above. But Mark Ford, the guy who wrote the book, has built businesses. In fact, his one business is now $1.2 billion a year,

the Agora company that he's helped build, and they are really successful. And he is just, like Dan Kennedy, he's talking from experience. This is not theory. And this is a book that pretty much every entrepreneur I know has read it and recommends it. In fact, it's in Ryan Dice's top five books. Ryan Dice is the leader of digital marketer. And so if Ryan Dice says it's in the top five, it's definitely in your top five too. Brilliant. Brilliant. And so the next book I have here is Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, which is an interesting book. Right. Can you give me that title again? There's a whole bunch of weird names in there. Yes. Psycho-Ciberetics by Maxwell Maltz. Okay. And I recommend getting the Dan Kennedy edited version if possible. Yes. Dan Kennedy, in fact,

I think he bought the rights to it, right? He bought the rights and he re-edited the version and has a more updated version and Maxwell Malts was a plastic surgeon in the 60s back when they lived in black and white yes back in the 60s of course everybody lived in black and white there was no color then like we have today yes and in fact he was a plastic surgeon and he really only focused on working what all plastic surgeons did which is people who were disfigured from an accident or an injury but every now and again he would get a patient that would come in and this one particular patient that he talks about was an attorney and he said you know what I've got these ears that stick out and if my ears could just get pinned back I wouldn't feel so well he didn't say this he said I

believe I would I would win more court cases okay I believe I'm not taken seriously in court because my ear stick out and I have Dumbo syndrome and I was called Dumbo as a kid and Maxwell Maltz he would do the job but he would ask a lot of questions well why what outcome is it going to produce how are you going to feel afterwards and he realized over time that these people coming to him, it's not their ears that's the problem. They have a self-image problem. And what he quickly figured out was they thought that the lawyer thought, for example, if he has his ears pinned back, then he'll feel more confident, he won't be so self-conscious, and he'll win more cases in court. In reality, he didn't win any more cases than he was when

his ears were normal, like Dumbo. And so later, Maxwell Miles realized and started doing the research in, hey, these people are coming to me and asked, me to readjust their face or enhance their breasts or whatever it might be because they will have more self-esteem or self-confidence or at least that's what they think. But in reality they need to work on their self-image but has nothing to do with how their body looks. And so oftentimes as entrepreneurs, as people building empires, we feel that we might be imposters, that we're not bringing our best self, that I know I can increase my confidence

and the easier thing to do is to maybe not necessarily get plastic surgery, but let me get the nice car. Right? Let me get the nice suit. Let me get the nice house. Even the big muscles. Even the big muscles, right? When in reality, I've seen plenty of people who aren't in the best shape of all, don't have, you know, have a, what would look like otherwise a disfigured face, man, right? And are super successful, immensely confident. Yep. Because they have a strong self-image. And that self-image is what you and what other people or what you think what other people think of you. You know, here's a great example of that is our friend Sean Stevenson. Sean Stevenson, the three-foot giant, the motivational speaker you've probably seen on YouTube. His videos have been watched millions and millions of times.

I mean, man, this guy has built self-confidence at a level that most normal people don't have. And Sean is born with a disease that if he sneezes, he can break a bone. But he is so resilient and strong inside because of the mental work that he's done. He's just a fantastic guy. And like you said, I mean, there's a lot of people there who have some cards stacked against them in some way, but they just go, it doesn't matter, and they move on, and they have that psycho-cyberetics kind of

built into themselves. Dude, that's exactly right, and you used Sean Stevenson as a perfect example. I mean, and we, you know, I don't know who gave him the term, the nickname the Three Foot Giant, but I mean, what are we really saying? I mean, he's a giant personality, isn't he? And when you meet him and we just saw him three or four

weeks ago, and he's in a wheelchair, and they carry him up on stage on a wheelchair, and he just scoots around in that wheelchair telling stories, making you laugh, making you cry, making you feel, making you think. Holy smokes. You don't see the little three-foot guy on a wheelchair who has a disability. You see this giant who just took over your mental state for 10, 20, 30, 60 minutes

and rewired the way you should think. There's a man with amazing self-image, right? Self-confidence. And it has nothing to do with how his body looks and feels. Absolutely. And he's one of the best speakers that I've ever seen. I've learned a lot of him. Really, really great.

Okay. So now I am going to go to Elon Musk, the Elon Musk biography by Ashley Vance. What an incredible story. I know this is one of the most recent books that I've read. And I would rush home from work and read this book for two hours. I love that. That's how good it was. And it's just because you wouldn't, if it wasn't a true story, you'd say this, there's no way.

I mean, this is like too strange for fiction for what this guy has done. You know, he's reinvented three industries, solar power with solar. Solar City, Automotive with Tesla, and then, I mean, if there really was a space industry, I mean, he's really reinvented that as well. So, I mean, this guy is an unstoppable force of nature. And then I'll just add on to that. Neil Strauss just wrote an article about Elon Musk in Rolling Stone. Did you read it?

No, not yet. It is unbelievable because the first half of the article is about how sad and lonely he is because he doesn't have a girlfriend. You would not believe this article. It is mind-blowing. It shows this amazing human side of him and then goes, into like how he is also just like, you know, the world's most driven force of a person for what he's trying to do.

So it's a really incredible read, both the Ashley Vance book and Neil Strauss's article on rolling stone.com. So my next book here is, you might know the author himself, Craig Ballantyne, Perfect Day Formula. And I think we have it right here behind us. He's a beautiful man as well. He is absolutely a beautiful man. And in fact, I had the good fortune not to toot your own horn while you're here. But I had the good fortune to you.

I would prefer you don't toot my own words. Whether here or not. Yeah. But I've had the good fortune to hang out with you for almost a decade now well before you ever wrote the perfect day formula. And I've learned the discipline and self-structured strategies that you taught in the book through environmental exposure. And it's completely changed my life.

Again, when I think about the phase of leadership growth that I went through over the last five years, the environmental exposure to you and what you taught in personal discipline, structure. I remember you and I even talked about meditation. I'll even tell you where we were walking in a morning in St. Pete, Florida. I think we were at Joel's house for an event and you and I were on a morning walk and you're like, dude, me and Matt meditate all the time. And I'm like, you know what? I got to try and meditate. And after a little while, I said, hey, you just meditation's not working for me. You're like, well, just find an alternative that works for you. And that's how I've started my gratitude exercises in the mornings that have completely changed my life. Well, as it turns out, once we wrote the

book, and I read it, I realized everything in the book is everything that you had been teaching me through environmental exposure and personal discipline, structure, planning what you want for your life and eliminating what you don't want, the distractions. And so it's been a really big help for me, and I know it's a big help for all entrepreneurs who read it. You know, it's really interesting that, you know, we've spent the last seven or eight years coaching and through the coaching, we have mastermind meetings, and we end up sharing two or three meals per day for three to four days in a row, and doing that four times a year, we end up having a lot of time together. And it's been interesting to see us go from, you know, I remember in Nashville, we ate dinner

at 8 or 830 one night at the Opryland Hotel. We were there for a seminar. And I was like, man, that's a late dinner. And then I, and then you said me, well, I'm going back to my hotel room to work. And I'm like, you're going back to your hotel room at 10 o'clock at night to work. And then, you know, you'd, you know, it was a little bit late for breakfast. And then over the years, We evolved that from 8.30 dinner to like 6 o'clock dinner, sometimes 5.30 dinner. And then, you know, and then you would go back and you would rest and recovery. You'd wake up and you dominate in the morning. And you know, then you'd have a great day.

And you didn't have that hanging over. You're like, oh, as soon as we rush through dinner tonight, I got to go back and work. You know, in order to hit my deadline. That was the worst. Honestly, that was the worst feeling when I would feel like, hurry up on let's finish. I looked forward to dinner. It's not that I didn't. But it's like, let's hurry up and finish because I still have more work to do.

Yeah. Right. And, of course, then I would do the work. then I'd go to sleep later, and then I'd steal time away from our breakfast. So, hey, buddy, can we show up to dinner or breakfast a little later? Because I got a little more work to do. And so I was in the cycle of time theft, you know, stealing time from our relationship, from my sleep, from my work.

And maybe even missing your workouts on that schedule. Absolutely, absolutely. And it really became a necessity to start structuring my days better and being disciplined. And when I start working off lists, creating schedules, all of a sudden I'm dialed in. And you got an empire. Yes, beautiful thing. So my last book is a book that has changed my life. It's a very little book. So people might be familiar with the Dowda Ching, which is a book on Buddhism, I believe, and, you know, Zen sayings. Well, this is like my version of that, and it's a stoic philosophy. It's the translation of a guy named Epictetus, his teachings from thousands of years ago. And the little book is called The Art of Living by Sharon LaBelle. The Art of Living by Sharon LaBelle. And it's a very small book. And it's a very small book. And it's a very small book. And it's a very small book. And it's a little book. And it's a little book. And it. It's a little book. And it. It's a little book. And it. And it It's kind of like reading your horoscope because there's kind of like one lesson on every page and you flip it open and I just kind of read one per day and I'm like, oh my goodness, this applies to me

today. This is the message I was meant to read. And through it, that's where I discovered a phrase that I put in my book a lot, which is control what you can, cope with what you can't and concentrate on what counts. And this goes all the way back to Victor Frankles. Everything can be taken away from a man but his decision to act and the way that he feels. And it's the same thing. There's nothing we can do about the externals, the traffic jams, the rain, if our boss is angry,

if our, you know, some supplier has failed us. We can't control that. We can't fix it. All we control are our thoughts, our words, and our deeds, our actions. And so when I realized that, when I read that, I've really felt this weight of the world go off of my shoulders and go, everything's my personal responsibility. I was always a guy into personal responsibility, but I knew then that even how I felt not just my actions and my success in life, but how I felt.

I could be angry. I could feel tension if I was in the room with certain people. Or I could say, wait a minute, why do I need to feel this tension? I'm going to stop feeling this tension, and I'm going to relax, and I'm going to make this relationship a whole lot better. And so that book was just really, really, really important to me. I buy copies for everybody that I know that's in some type of struggle, because it really is that horoscope that shows up on the day you need it,

that little lesson. and you're like, yes, this applies to me. So if you take nothing else away from that book, it's control what you can, cope with what you can't control, which is a lot of things, and then concentrate on what counts. Brilliant.

So the last and final book that I have is actually by Robert O'Neill, and it's a book called The Operator, and the operator refers to as the Navy SEAL operator. And Robert O'Neill is the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden during that raid in 2011. And recently he wrote a book, And, you know, you and I were talking earlier about how over the last two years I've probably read about a dozen, dozen and a half of Navy SEAL books.

And soon I get to see a common denominator. Every single one of these guys started off very much like you and me. They're just average guys who, Robert O'Neill in his particular case, I mean, talk about an average guy who did extraordinary things. He lived in Butte, Montana, which was a little mining town, and he was going to be a coal miner. Unfortunately, he had his heartbroken in high school. And his heart was broken, and he just wanted to get away from Butte, Montana, and there was really nowhere to go. And so he went into the Marine Corps recruiting station. Of course, the recruiter wasn't there.

And so the Navy recruiter from next door said, hey, kid, what is it that you're trying to do there at the Marine Corps recruiting station? He says, well, I'm trying to see about going to the Marine Corps. I just want to leave Butte, Montana right now. I've had my heart broken. And he said, well, have you considered the Navy? He says, ah, well, I don't want to be on a Navy ship. He says, well, you know, they have these things called the Navy SEALs. And listen, all Robert was looking to do was just to get away, right?

And so I can tell you the dozen and a half books that I read, every single one of these guys have a similar story. They didn't grow up with any super strength, any superpower, anything magical about them. They became extraordinary because they committed to taking the steps to become extraordinary. Didn't it just become fearless? In fact, they have fear. They just dominate their fear. They didn't grow up as the type of people who run towards the bullets.

They were trained to run towards the bullets, and they trained for hours and hours, literally millions of rounds of ammunition to enter a room, clear the room, communicate, move, shoot. And to hear his story of how he went through Buds, the basic underwater demolition seal training, became a Navy SEAL, and then joined the top tier Navy SEAL, which is SEAL Team 6, and happened to be the guy. Again, every decision that he had to make, they went into Abadabad, Pakistan. to get Osama bin Laden in these two army helicopters. They're like these stealth helicopters that he couldn't really talk much about. In the book, it was redacted. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah.

And there's, you know, stealth helicopters, and they were just overloaded with Navy SEALs. And as it turns out, because the walls that Osama bin Laden lived behind were so high, there were 17-foot walls. They didn't, these guys didn't count on this happening, the Navy SEALs. When one of the helicopters went to land inside the compound, the walls were so high, it didn't let the rotors take on air. So all of a sudden the helicopter crash lands. Imagine this. You're going to kill

the America's most wanted criminal and you're a Navy seal. And President Obama has given you the green light and one of the two helicopters crash lands. Oh my gosh. Crashlands into the compound. And so immediately they had to go to plan B and plan B was, okay, we did a controlled crash land. The tail was put on the wall the best they could. It landed. Now the outside, so Robert O'Neill, wasn't supposed to be the point guy to go up into the room and kill. He was just supposed to be protecting the perimeter on the second helicopter. So now the guys from the second helicopter effectively went in. How did they get? Did they blow through the wall? Yeah, they blew through the wall. Yeah, they blew through the wall.

And already some of the guys were on the inside because their helicopter crash landed on the inside. So they helped open some of the doors. Got it. Got it. The combat had several doors. And through just how they leapfrog forward and forward and forward. Before he know it, he sees the bad guy, Osama bin Laden. And he sees that he's, you know, he's standing up and he's got a woman hostage in front of him. him and he takes aim and takes two shots over her shoulder right into his head and kills Osama bin Laden because he doesn't know if Osama bin Laden has a vest on or not where he's going to detonate himself. Now I just told you a whole story

about a guy who was heartbroken in Butte, Montana and every single step of going through Buds all he did was I just need to make it to breakfast this morning. Like every day of Buds, now I need to make it to lunch, I just need to make it to dinner. And then they have Hell Week in Buds and Hell Week in Buds and Hell Week is five days of no sleep, five and a half days of no sleep. And it was just, I need to make it to breakfast. I need to make it through the next evolution. I need to make it to lunch.

I need to make it through the next evolution. I need to make it to dinner. And the way they teach mental toughness, where they can take, it's a system. And it goes to prove that anybody who thinks that, well, I'm not cut out to be a hero, I'm not cut out to be an entrepreneur. I'm not cut out to be an empire builder. There's a system that the Navy has, that they will build you into a Navy seal if you simply do not quit. Interesting.

These guys during the Bud's Navy SEAL training program had a bell. And all you had to do was voluntarily ring the bell. In fact, during every evolution, they would carry the bell to the beach. They would carry the bell on the runs. They would carry the bell into the ocean. And you can give up any time. Just ring the bell, hang up your hat, and you're done. You don't have to become a Navy SEAL.

And every day, he just decided, I just need to get through the next hour, the next half day, the next day. And he became the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden and wrote. the book, The Operator. And in that book, there's so many wonderful lessons and actual examples of leadership, of facing your fears, of mental toughness, mental fortitude, and of decision-making on the spot. I'm talking life and death decision-making that you and I will probably never have to do as we build our empires. And this was a great book that opened my eyes, and I was able to extract so many great nuggets and apply them into my personal life. Amazing. Is that the one that we were listening to on audiobook when I fell in? Yes, yes, when we were driving back from Arizona. Yes,

that was it. All right. So why did you choose that one? Because I know you've read so many of those books. Is that really the best one of the Navy SEAL books that you've read? Yes. The reason I chose the operator is one, well, two reasons. One, you know, I'm a very proud American and and to hear his story why. Like why at some point, and I guess this is an origin story of how he even got there in the first place? Well, no, no, he knew, they were convinced. All these guys who are on those two helicopters, we're convinced we are going to our death right now. They're going to our death. And in fact, on the airplane, on the helicopter, he looks at his buddy, and his buddy's looking

at him, and they all are feeling the same thing. Like, we're going to our death. Like, that building that we're going to raid is probably rigged and it's going to blow up the moment they hear helicopters. And he explains why he went. He goes, because on September 11th of 2001, he says it was for that woman who dropped her kid off at the daycare, went into the World Trade Center. on the 50th floor and all she wanted to do was work and earn a living and when those airplanes

hit that building all she could do is throw herself so she doesn't burn to death throw herself out the window and her last act of decency was to hold down her dress so that people don't see her underwear on her way down to death oh wow and he goes i agreed to go into battle that particular mission for that woman right and so the two friends are talking like why are we doing this, we're going to our death, and they realized this is why we're doing it. It's for that woman, right? And so, as you know, like I said, I'm a proud American. I think that's a great milestone in American history that what our military, our voluntary military is willing to do for us to keep us safe and protected here in this country so we can grow and be happy and build empires and

help people and make an impact. But also, the way he tells the story, he and his co-author, really do a great job where he talks about, look, I was stressed out, we haven't slept for four days were rowing boats around San Diego because they do their budge training in San Diego. They're rowing boats around San Diego. And the mind starts playing weird tricks on you. They're rowing boats around San Diego Harbor where there's big Navy ships and his mind turned the Navy ship into a giant dinosaur that's in the water. And he looks at his buddy as they're rowing boats like four days straight. You see the dinosaur? Oh, I don't see a dinosaur. I see a giant dragon, buddy. Right? And he talked about, okay, it was just a stress response. Stress is a choice.

I choose not to see a dinosaur. I choose to see a ship, and he sees a ship again, right? And the way he tells the stories of how to deal with stress, how to deal with fear, how to overcome it, how it's a choice. The lessons extracted in there from it, it's a lot easier. It's not just war stories. It's a war story with a whole lot of mindset lessons that we can extract and use easier. Oh, that's beautiful, beautiful. And that really is like an overarching theme in the books that we have chosen, is perseverance, is taking control.

of your mental state. Yes. It really is forgetting about the externals and saying, hey, listen, if you want to build an empire, it's not about catching the latest trend. It's not about, you know, hoping that your Facebook ad works. It's about you, right? Amen. All right.

And so there's actually one book that wasn't on the list here that needs to be on the list. But the thing is, I'm the only person that's read it, and it's Man Up by Bedro Sculian. Because I actually read it last summer. You wrote it, so you kind of read it. But Man Up needs to be on that, and Man Up is coming out very soon. So tell people how they can get the 11th book on our 10 Best Books list. The way you can get the 11th book on the 10 Best Books list is by going to manup.com and, of course, getting on the early bird registration list.

And when the book hits bookstores and Amazon worldwide in September, we will give everybody who's on the manup.com early bird registration list a heads up ahead of time. and, of course, the first 2,000 people who get the book and send us to receipt, I'm going to send them a really special course that I created for high-performance leaders. Awesome, awesome. So that is manup.com to get the 11th book on the 10 Best Books list. This was really awesome. I learned a lot here.

Thank you so much for sharing your books, sir. And so everyone, please make sure that you go to Empire Podcast.com, download the latest shows, and go to iTunes and rate us and Stitcher and all those great things. Give us lots of comments and give us your feedback. on it right yes sir all right all right