Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - The Transformative Power of Mentorship with Ryan Blair

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Transform your perspective with the incredible journey of Ryan Blair, a man who defied the odds to transform his life from a chaotic youth in Los Angeles to a multimillionaire business leader. We uncover how Ryan took the helm at Vysalis Sciences, turning a staggering $6 million deficit into $150 million in revenue in just 16 months, a feat that speaks volumes about his resilience and strategic acumen. His bestselling books, "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain" and "Rock Bottom to Rockstar," offer not just stories of survival, but blueprints of entrepreneurial success powered by grit and determination.   Explore the nuances of mentorship and the pivotal role it plays in personal and professional growth. Ryan shares compelling insights into how having seasoned advisors can elevate one's competence and character, illustrating this with his own experience of scaling a vitamin company by leveraging an external sales force model. We discuss the necessity of making tough calls within a business, such as restructuring teams and enforcing zero-based budgeting, to ensure efficiency and success. This episode highlights how strategic mentorship and real-world learning can catapult your career while emphasizing the importance of building a motivated and skilled team to drive a company forward.   Beyond business success, we delve into the personal transformations that shape great leaders. Ryan reflects on the impact of life-altering events, such as his family's struggles with addiction, which led to a renewed commitment to mentorship and service. We highlight the balance between self-care and energy optimization, sharing techniques like meditation and focusing on personal relationships to maintain a healthy input-output balance in daily life. Ending on a thought-provoking note about the reciprocal nature of mentorship, we underscore the importance of gratitude and contributing to your mentor's success, creating a truly fulfilling and symbiotic relationship. Join us for an inspiring conversation that promises to leave you with actionable insights for overcoming adversity and embracing the power of mentorship.   CHAPTERS    (00:00) - From Drug Dealer to Millionaire (12:32) - Entrepreneurial Journey (17:10) - Building Success Through Mentorship and Strategy (21:42) - Strategic Business Turnaround and Efficiency (32:06) - Cultivating Belief and Customer Care (42:29) - Finding Purpose Through Mentorship and Service (46:41) - Personal Energy Optimization and Giving (55:31) - Responsibilities and Benefits of Mentorship (01:00:12) - Seeking Help for Future Success   💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #escapingthedrift #ryanblair #entrepreneurship #mentorship #businesssuccess #resilience #strategicacumen #strategicmentorship #realworldlearning #personalgrowth #teambuilding #efficiency #adversity #energyoptimization #giving #leadership #customercare #purpose #selfcare #balance #gratitude #futuresuccess

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Obviously this is a paid advertiser, which is how we get to be able to do what we do for you guys. So check them out, smell fresher, stay drier, boost your confidence from head to toe, try Mando. And now escaping the drift. I was trained to cultivate marijuana, bag it. I would give it to my friends in the neighborhood. At 11. Even before that. So marijuana, we grew it, you know, we bagged it. I would give it away. I'd

trade snakes for it, skateboards for it. Older kids in the neighborhood loved me because I just had him handfuls of it. Drugs were in my house from the very beginning. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift. And it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for a third. It says in the beginning, man, an episode of the show that gets you where you are, where you want to be. And today, ladies and gentlemen in the studio

with me is a guy. And this is a dude, man, that had a troubled youth, ran around with gangs, did a bunch of nonsense in the streets, but turn it around and became a multi-millionaire. He is the former CEO and founder of Vysalla sciences, sciences, which is a company that went from basically being $6 million in debt when he showed up to $150 million in revenue within 16 months.

So the dude knows how to turn it around. He's the bestselling author of the books, nothing to lose everything to gain in New York times. Number one, hardcover, So the dude knows how to turn it around. He's the bestselling author of the books, Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain, a New York Times number one hardcover business bestseller, and Rock Bottom to Rockstar on 2016, a guide to achieving entrepreneurial excess. Success! Good Lord, man. I'm struggling today.

So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Ryan Blair. Ryan. Thank you for having me, Jon. I think they took too much blood out of me this morning. I was stumbling there a little bit. I had a lot of entrepreneurial excess. Yeah, excess, it was.

It was, yeah. So for you to listen to this, I had to go do my every three month blood work so my wife can keep me alive forever today. And yeah, I think they took too much because man, that was a little struggle. Oh, that's all right, it was early in the morning. I thought I was having a stroke halfway through that.

I didn't know it was good. It's cause I've been, I was fasted. I'm now drinking my protein as we do this interview. So if you hear me gulping, that's what it is. But dude, Ryan, man, obviously, you know, you've got so many different levels of things you've done in your life, but I'm always curious when you have somebody that's an entrepreneur

that reaches those high levels of success. And if you've listened to the program before, you probably know we always kind of like to start with that nature versus nurture argument. So tell me about young Ryan, tell me about you, man. Where did you grow up? What was that like? So I grew up in the Los Angeles area.

My dad was an engineer, really brilliant man. My mom was a housemaker, a lot of love, and they both got addicted to drugs when I was a child. So my house was in turmoil and trauma and violence. Brothers and sisters all went to prison. So wait, dad was an engineer, so he's a professional guy. Yeah, yeah, he was an aerospace engineer. So he was very intelligent, in fact, too intelligent.

His mind got the best of him basically toward the end. Wow. So you normally hear those stories from terrible situations of socioeconomic hardship. I was in the middle class. So in the middle class, dad had $100,000 plus salary. This is the 80s. How does dad start using drugs?

Do you know? Like how does this happen? Cocaine, cocaine's a hell of a drug. Everybody was doing it in the 80s. This is kind of how it was. And you know, he was in the middle class, doing really well economically. He had some vices and some self-sabotaging behaviors.

He's no longer with us, so I've healed my relationship with him spiritually, so to speak. Yeah. But yeah, his brain got the best of him. So he had a lot of unhealed things that he was dealing with. How old were you when you knew this was going on? It was always in my life.

So it was always marijuana, always weird stuff going on, always violence, but I recognized that we had a drug problem in the household at about 11 years old or so. I knew that that was a problem. Oh man. Yeah, and I would, I was trained to cultivate marijuana, bag it. I would give it to my friends in the neighborhood. At 11.

Even before that. So marijuana, we grew it, we bagged it. I would give it away. I'd trade snakes for it, skateboards for it. Older kids in the neighborhood loved me because I'd just hand them handfuls of it. Yeah, drugs were in my house from the very beginning. Oh my gosh. So I asked what your first hustle was,

but I guess it was giving bags of weed for skateboards. I had a little marijuana distribution business, but I didn't understand the value of it. You know, I'd give them probably a pound for a snake and they'd be like, you know, did you know that this was illegal? I mean, did the, did the weight of that sink in at you at that time? No, I mean, I was raised, my dad had a criminal element to him and I was raised to, I knew it was illegal, meaning that if the cops came, this was a problem,

but I didn't understand the consequences of criminal behavior by any means because it was just naturally a part of my environment. You're just exposed to it. Yeah. So at what point, so obviously you start this at 11. Yeah. You said everybody went to jail.

Who went to jail? Brother went to jail for, one brother went to jail for armed robbery. Another brother went to jail for many times. My sister went to prison many times. And then one sister was the good sister. She was a straight A student. She kept to herself. She read books.

Everybody else, we acted out on our trauma. Went their own way. Yeah, she went internal and we all went external. Where is she? How's she doing? She's doing great. She's amazing. She ended up marrying a police officer.

And so one side of my family was criminals and the other side were cops. Interesting family reunion. Quite fascinating conversations. I have a buddy of mine. I have a buddy of mine literally that half of his like he's got relatives in the DEA and and then he's married to a Latina woman, and she has relatives in the cartel. That's always an interesting mixing of folks when they need to mix them. There's only a small degree of separation between a cop and a criminal. There's a fraction of a percentage, because to be a great cop,

you have to be able to catch a criminal. So you have to be able to think like one. You have to have some of the same attributes. You just have values that steer you toward the law as opposed to away from it. Yeah. All right. So growing up in this, did you ever get in trouble?

Like serious trouble? Yeah. I was facing four years in juvenile hall and I was being sent to this. What'd you do? Allegedly. Strong arm drawvery. Oh my God.

And battery. So you mugged somebody? Yeah, a couple times. How old were you? 15. And this was just a group of guys you were running with? No, they placed a case on me. So I was in a gang and I got in a fight with an older guy and he was over 18 years old.

I took his hat off his head in the fight. And so they loaded me up with charges now because I had a public defender and I didn't know any better. I was going to prison. If you have a wealthy family that can hire a good attorney, you'd never get armed robbery. Come on, the scales of justice are blind, I thought.

You'd never get armed robbery for taking a hat off a person's head during a fist fight. It was a hat. I took a hat. But my mom didn't know any better. And so next thing you know, I'm heading to four years in prison and I knew that because of the path of some of my family members and people in my neighborhood, in the event

that I went to prison, I was done. I'd be a professional criminal because I was very smart. I was very capable of creating a lot of problems. I was leading over a hundred people in the gang I was in at a very young age. And so I knew that once I went to jail, I was done. So I wrote the judge a letter begging for leniency. He granted it to me under the condition that I never returned to see him again. And he told me I should be writing in college, not in prison. And that changed my life because no one had ever believed I should go to college at all. I was a dropout, went to a continuation high school

and all of a sudden this man believes I should be writing in college. And so I had the dream to become a writer at that point. Okay, all right. So you had your GED at this point. No, no, I was 15 years old. I got my GED shortly after that. Then a mentor came into my life and he was in real estate

and he was a very wealthy person. Let's talk about that. How did you meet your mentor? So he started dating my mom and because my mom was near and dear to me, she's no longer with me, I protected her. The neighborhood we lived in, I wouldn't allow any man to come near her.

I had to be very protective of her. We were worried about drive-bys. I was always worried about her being killed and so she said, I met this man. He's a good man. He's wealthy, he's wealthy. He's in real estate and he wants to meet you. And I thought to myself, this is my way out of the ghetto. Right. And, uh, I had the meeting with him and, and he was very harmless, nice man. And,

uh, next thing you know, my life changed. What was, so did he offer to mentor you right away? It was just kind of, okay, did he stay with your mom for long-term? Who was with him longer? You or your mom? He took me under his wing as a grace by the grace of God. He took me under his wing immediately. He saw I had tattoos all over me.

He saw I was heading in the wrong direction. He gave me motivational personal growth materials like Lead the Field, Tony Robbins, Earl Nightingale, Dale Carnegie. He insisted that I read these things. In fact, he paid me to read them. He bribed me because I wouldn't have otherwise. He said, I'll buy you new clothes to go get a job if you just read this book. And so he really leaned in on me. Then he gave me his job is what they call, back then they called it a person Friday. And because I was a big kid, I was tough. He would have me do evictions for him.

So I'd knock on the doors of his rentals and I would evict people. And you know, that was my job is to process serve basically process serving. So, you know, it's so important, I think, especially in any point of your life, if you want to get to that next level, to find people that will mentor you. And you know, now I'm going to, I'm going to fast forward a little bit. So have you given back to others in that same way, or is that the biggest joy of what you do now? Yeah. The, you know, when there's an old, there's a proverb,

when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So my job is to give to anyone that's ready, right? I, I pay it forward as much as I can. Because I'm a spiritual person, my desire to mentor people is really, beyond that I think of traditional coaching or something of that nature, I really see it as an assignment. I'm here to help this person through whatever season that I've been assigned to. If they're suffering from trauma, addiction, or if they're just trying to scale a business and figuring out how to rise to that level of success,

I'm there to mentor them. Okay, did you go to college? Yeah. Okay, so- Yeah, so he insisted, my mentor insisted I went to college. So you started just community college, I'm assuming. Yep, went to community college, and then from there, it turned out, because in the gang,

I used to steal computers, and I used to have to reprogram them and I was really good at that that was my racket and this was at a time when computers were you know very valuable the skill of computer programming and computer engineering was highly coveted and and people were paying good money for it. So I went to college studying computer science and then got a job in the computer sciences field and took off. My career accelerated right away. By the time I was about 20 years old, I was making over $100,000 a year and going to college in the computer sciences

field. Just doing that. So at what point, because like most, most great senior entrepreneurs, like I like to say, are chronically unemployable. Vegas that did player tracking and player management for the casinos. And they dispatched me to meet with the casino heads and to meet with their heads of IT and to develop the product and to actually be a part of the sales of the product. And I said, I'm developing the product,

I'm selling the product, why do I have to have these other boneheads in the room with me? And that's what, I was like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. And I said, I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna do that. I the sales of the product. I said, I'm developing the product, I'm selling the product, why do I have to have these other boneheads in the room with me? And that's what had me go out of my own and start my own technology company. So that was the first thing, was the technology company four casinos, was it that? No, it was just tech in general.

It was called 24-7 Tech. Our byline was, if your network is a wreck, call 24-7 Tech tech and I just dispatched Network technicians to help people with network issues. I love that dude. We um, uh My previous life right? I was I was a partner to tech firm called pattern recognition At the time it's so funny now tech is such an interesting business to be in and because Very rarely do you land on what your

original core mission was, right? You just rely on it. So there was a program at the time, this may ring a bell for you, but they had a software called Marimba. It was essentially where you could manage endpoints remote. So instead of having to go into a company and drop a thousand new Windows CDs into the computer, see see information kids used to come on these silver shiny desk, the blue screen

and you had to manually put them in. And what this software did was allow us to manage a lot of end points remotely. And it was really just for big companies cause it was very expensive. But we convinced Marimba to let us sell it to mid and small sized businesses as you know, under a different umbrella. And anyway, uh, you know, we were doing that and randomly one of our texts was like, hey, you know, the the Clay County School Board in Florida wants us wants help with this

inspection software, you know, just on Palm pilots, where these guys can go into buildings and it pulls up the previous inspection. And then they do this and it makes purchase orders stupid. Right. Can we do it? And we're like, I mean, I guess, yeah, it's going to generate some money. We'll do it. Everything shifted into that business. And it's just so funny. We let this, we worked so hard to get this relationship with Marimba. We don't let it go very quickly and went all in on these inspection software's

that turn it to like fire inspection and private jet inspection, all the stuff. That's great. So as a tribute to your ability to pivot, well, so the question becomes with this, cause I think there's a lot of your story that you're gifted with that. So I'm curious. The reason I tell that story is not for any self-indulgence, but it's because I want to hear like,

what was your core mission of your original tech firm and where did you land? So I pivoted. I went to go raise a venture capital and they said that my business model was unscalable. It was hard. And I was devastated. You know, I took these meetings with various steam venture capital and they said that my business model was unscalable, it was hard and I was devastated. You know I took these meetings with very esteemed venture capitalists and they looked at me and they said this is this isn't gonna

work. Not gonna happen. So there was a broadband wireless services company and this was when prior to broadband being ubiquitous I was doing about 15,000 month of revenue I bought the company and then scaled it up and sold it and a $24 million transaction when I was, $25 million transaction, I was 24. Well, let's talk about that. Let's not, don't run over that. How'd you buy a company?

How'd you do it in 24? I leveraged my credit cards. You know, I bought it at 21, I sold it at 24. So no seller financing, nothing, you just. Yeah, I just leveraged. What'd you pay for it? $15,000. All in for this company. Well then I raised some venture capital

because I'd met some VCs. I raised about three million in venture capital about 21 years old. Leveraged that to then scale the business and then sold it at 24. Well let's talk about this man, because obviously such a big part of your history and I don't wanna just jump over my sell-outs.

I wanna talk about that. Well, let's talk about that first. And then we'll talk about the overall concepts of how you do turnarounds. So how did you come into Vysalis? Two entrepreneurs that were struggling with a vitamin company came to me at Skypipeline, the company that I was operating, it was VC funded.

I took an interest in them. They told me about their business model. It was highly scalable, external sales force. I had a friend, one of my investors at Skype Pipeline owned a company called Party Light Candles and they had a 60,000 person home party business. It was doing billions in sales. So I thought to myself that I could get them involved

and I could help these two young entrepreneurs. That's what I did. So you can put that together. Yeah. So my first question about that, I mean obviously when you got involved, I mean the place was negative and you left it 150 million dollars. No, well I bought it. I organized the buyout at about 20,000 a month, scaled it to 65 million a month and then sold it. Yeah, I mean so okay so where did you learn how to do this? You learn everything as you go.

That's the secret. Everybody that we see, like Elon Musk and everybody, they just learn it as they go. Every day you wake up and you learn it as you go. None of these people had any of this stuff figured out that they have figured out now when they started. It's just every day you have to have principles and a philosophy to figure it out as you go.

Dude, that is such the right answer. That's it. Such a great answer. And you meet these people that are doing remarkable things and you go to tour it out as you go. Dude, that is such the right answer. That's it. Such a great answer. And you meet these people that are doing remarkable things and you go to tour Elon's facility now and you say, how could I ever get to this level? He figured it out as he went. Every day he made mistakes, he made errors,

he took risks that were absurd and dumb, he figured it out as he went, and he just got better every day to now, easy Elon Musk that we know. I find the biggest thing holding people back and success in so many different businesses, they feel that they're lacking in something they don't have, be it knowledge,

information, capital, whatever, and they just see it as an insurmountable thing that they can't go get this stuff. And the answer is all high performers just figured out. Yeah, and every problem. You didn't learn how to approach a VC in a classroom, correct? No, no, not at all.

I didn't learn very much in a classroom at all, even though I did go to computer sciences and then eventually. They're not teaching about VC capital raising. I took some business classes and some marketing classes that were very valuable as part of my program, but no, it was all self-learning for the most part. And then mentorship. Mentorship,

you know, I called in great people onto my board. I had great people in my corner. I had people around me that held me accountable, drove me, and were impatient with me. You know, they did not like that I was underperforming. And as a result of having people that were way outside of my league on my board and as advisors, I had to constantly raise my level of competency and my level of character nonstop throughout my career. Okay, so how do you get that level of player to believe in you at an early age? How do you do it?

One, you have to have the belief that you're worthy of their mentorship. Two, and what people don't understand, every great leader, entrepreneurs and so forth has a mentor in their corner. The VCs act as a good VC is a good mentor. A good private equity group is a good mentor. So when you hear about these massively funded companies that have these huge exits, there's mentors involved in that entrepreneur's life.

They're keeping them accountable and helping them from stopping self-sabotaging behaviors and helping them scale in their leadership. Otherwise the companies fall or go backward. Yeah, they're not just gonna write you a check and walk away. No such thing as a silent partner in the VC world. No, and in fact, they're gonna write a check and then they're gonna beat the crap out of you

until you perform. Be very involved in all of those things. Well, let's talk about your system for turning companies around. Yeah. Like when you first walk in, let's walk me through. Let's say you just took over Widget Company X. You walk in, what are we doing?

Well, if to buy the company. Yeah, you just bought a company. So walk me through, let's walk, let's turn a fictional company around. You and I, right here on. I would immediately score every person on the team, A, B, or C, and I would eliminate all the Cs, and I'd tell the Bs, you better upgrade to A.

I would have a recruiting group that I have on staff right now, which I have on staff, start back filling the roles prior to me showing up, so that way I have talent lined up that wants to be a part of the opportunity. I'd move in, I'd cut people as fast as I possibly could, and I'd cut all the fat out of the business. All right, stop for a second.

Yeah. How do you ascertain who's talented, who's not? 50% of every company is operating, I'm sorry, 100% of every company is operating at some number under 100% productivity. If they need a turnaround, they're probably at less than 50% productivity. So I'm gonna get in there

and I'm gonna cut 50% of the staff out right away, and essentialize the business, prioritize it, and drive it as hard as I possibly can. Are you looking for aptitude? Are you looking for attitude? Are you looking for is the right person right seat or some combination of the three? I'm looking for work ethic, first and foremost.

In a turnaround, we all need to work 10 hours a day, six days a week, minimum, right? So it's really, in a turnaround, it's nine by nine by six. And so who's willing to join me? Nine by nine by six. I'm willing to incent them to do this though. So I'm willing to pay overtime. I'm willing to carve them in on equity.

I'm willing to put bonuses on the table, but we gotta be all hands on deck because we have to stop the bleeding. And that's what we're doing day one is we're stopping the bleeding. And it's gonna take tough decisions. We're gonna have to get rid of people we love, but we got to stop the bleeding. That's the first step that you do in a turnaround. Okay, perfect. So we got our people scored away.

Nice. I like that. Yeah. People, programs, products, you know, you're cutting everything you possibly can. Anything doesn't mean you're looking at everything. You're cutting like crazy. Elon Musk made that comment a couple of weeks ago. He said the reason that most companies fail is they don't cut enough. Yeah. When you're in the middle of a turnaround, the mistakes that I have made is that the entrenched people will fight to keep the resources, to keep the team members, to keep their spend high. People love spending money.

No one loves saving money, right? It's not fun to save money. It's fun to spend it. So you have to take it from a spend money culture to a save money culture, and not everybody's gonna be along for the ride. So, have to take it from a spend money culture to a save money culture. And not everybody's going to be along for the ride. So, you know, for example, there's a company that, you know, I've, I've been very close to that raised over $500 million. And there were a spend money culture. Now they have to turn into a save money culture. That is a very hard shift

for a company to do. Yeah, I think, you know, we made a shift in the last year with COO, one of our companies, and he went and just cut everything without sacrificing any service to our employees or our end users. The company over years, you just, why do we use that vendor? Because you just always have. When's the last time we priced this? We just haven't. And you start pricing everything in your business

and the amount of money he was able to put back in our pockets in that first six months was really incredible. That's an exceptional operator. And most people are not brave enough and smart enough to make those tough decisions. We use a zero-based budgeting method where we just look at what are a couple

known factors in the business. Let's say we have 100 leads coming in, okay? We have 100 leads. Now we need software for the leads. Okay, what do we need next? Well, we have to spend money to buy those leads. What do we need next? All right, we need somebody to call those leads.

All right, what do we need next? So we start from one particular influx, whether it be on the revenue side or one known, we have X many customers to serve. And then you take a blank canvas and you just add back each expense one by one until you've essentialized the business. So that you're trimming the fat that way. You're saying what's the bare minimum of we can do to maintain our level of service?

Yeah, and maintain the level of service to your point. Yes, where the customer doesn't feel it. Yeah, I have a thousand customers, so if you and I have a thousand customers that we have to serve, all right, how many people do we need to serve those 1000 customers? Great. We need 10 people to serve those 1000 customers.

We need one manager for those 10 people. Now you and I can run a business with one manager and 10 people. That's all we need in the software, of course, to track and manage and run some analytics. And so, essentializing it to the bare minimum. And then everything else that you keep should have an ROI attached to it. What is the return on investment of this expense or this employee that I'm keeping?

And then we have to drive that return on investment per expense, per program, per product, per employee to make sure that we're actualizing the ROI that we've identified. Now that's how we would go about the additional spend is that it should be a ROI generative spend outside of the essential spend. I think, you know, most of, a lot of the people listening to this show would be considered solo entrepreneurs. I mean, they're not running scaled businesses. They're, they're, they're everyday work. They're still hustling in the business.

They haven't made that graduation to CEO yet. And I would say the hardest thing to do when you're doing that process in your own business is in your own business is buying your own time. And I find that a lot of people struggle with that. Like, you know, yes, everybody says, oh, if you, you know, if you don't have a good assistant, you are the assistant. And I understand that you can't get out of your own way.

But I also, I also see a lot of solopreneurs that I work with that tend to throw money away at dumb things in the name of time. Like what saves me time? Yeah, but does it? That expense, like what is your time really worth? I think you may have overvalued your time. How do you have those conversations? One, if it could be done in two minutes, do it now.

A lot of times we're adding up a bunch of stuff on our list and we're creating a ton of tasks. you only need three or four things per quarter to move the needle that are, you know, significant initiatives. So what I've learned is to really focus on just a few objectives per quarter, knock them out, and then add to it. So if I get them done early than 90 earlier than 90 days, I might add three more. So three at a time. What are the things gonna move the needle? Everything else is nonsense, right? So that's one. Two is, I don't like,

I value my time at a high rate. So I tend to outsource everything that is not at that rate. But you've earned the right to do that. That there's so many people that are here, you know, they're early in that process, not running a scaled business, not, you know, especially in real estate, which is what we do. So many people love to call themselves the CEO of their own little too many jobs, right? Like to stop, just stop, right?

If you're not answering to a handful of investors of your business, please stop calling yourself a CEO. You've earned that, right? Yeah. Right. Well, but I would say that to those people, you have to master each process and you have, there's two things you have to design the process. You've earned that, right? Yeah. Well, but I would say that to those people, you have to master each process. And there's two things. You have to design the process, you have to run the process, and then you have to hand that process off to someone else.

And so once you've designed the process and you've optimized it and it runs effectively and you've documented it, then you can hand it off to someone else. That's the critical thing. So if I were starting a real estate firm, and I know very little about it, in terms of to the extent that you do,

the first thing I would do is I would go knock on the doors or do whatever you told me to do. I designed the process, I'd optimize it, and I'd hire somebody to fill that role, and I'd move on to another process or another problem that I was looking to solve on my way to scaling the business one process at a time. Because you're backfilling yourself.

And I think what people don't do is what you just said, the key to what you just said was documenting. So many people do not, like if you walk, I could walk into just, I could walk out this front door, walk into six different businesses and say, let me see your SOPs. And they would look at me like I was speaking Greek. Yeah. Yeah. And documentation is easy. You know, get a note file, step one, step two, step three, step four, step five, and just have a simple documentation. And then you know, it's a good process when you can hand it to someone else based on your documentation. And then ask any questions. a good process when you can hand it to someone else based on your documentation. And then ask them any questions.

And yeah. Well dude, there's so, I mean, Scribe, there's so many programs now that will help you build. Notion. Notion that will help you build great SOPs. And if you don't even, if you don't wanna go that route, just tell Chad GBT, ask me 100 questions about this process and help me build an SOP.

Yeah. And watch what happens. Yeah, there's a book called The E-Myth that changed my life early on in my career by Michael Gerber. I read it and I said, I have to learn how to properly document process. I learned that in the tech field. But the, and now, but I will tell you,

very few people can both create a process and run one. It's rare. That's really the entrepreneur's job. Once I don't expect people to, I don't hire people to create process and run them. I generally lead from the front, I create the process, and then I bring someone else in to run it.

One mistake I see many entrepreneurs doing when they scale is they hire people to create and run process. And oftentimes you just don't get optimal process. Bill, tell me. Because they don't truly understand your business. And they don't understand the business. And it's a special talent for someone who can show up to no process whatsoever, no structure, no organization

and create order out of chaos. That's a rare talent. Well, I mean, just even sitting here with you now for 27 minutes, right? I've kind of got your personality pet pretty much. You tell me. No, you're very high D, very high C. You're very analytical thinker.

You're very mathematically based. Everything is in the math with you. I'm a math guy, you're very mathematically based. Everything is in the math with you. I'm a math guy. You're a math guy, everything's in the math. So what traits do you think, obviously you've done it at extremely high level, so what traits do you think someone has to have to make them a very effective CEO?

Well, everyone has a different stack and using a software term. I've just built a stack, right? So you have your character and your competency and you have a stack of character traits and you have a stack of competencies that are necessary. On the competency side, as you can tell I'm a math guy, so I'm gonna break this engineer this down for you.

I try to reverse engineer everything, but on the competency side, you have to have sales, you have to have marketing, you have to have supply chain, depending on the product, you have to have finance, you have to have technology, you might have to have international, you might have to have treasury. There's a lot of competencies that you have to learn to scale you might have to have international, you might have to have treasury. Like, you know, there's a lot of

competencies that you have to learn to scale a big business. And those are skills. And you have to have the capacity to learn those skills. You have to have the desire to learn the skills. You have to have a life where you say, and a belief that you believe you can learn any skill, right? Which is on the character side. So beliefs is on the character side. That's my bad habit. I sit in here, watch somebody talk about business and I'll go, I could do that.

Yeah, right. That's who you have belief. I could spend that up in like a week. You go to some black hole and you're like, oh God, what am I doing? What am I doing? Stop, stop, what are you doing? Yeah, it's terrible.

It's my toxic trait, if you will. Yeah, I think I have that belief, but I also hire people that are really brilliant in that particular area quickly. That's my next question. Do you try to overcompensate your own inadequacies or do you backfill with other people? I get people very smart to teach me.

So the best mentors that I've had are team members that I've hired from, you know, into my company that knew finance or that knew software engineering. You know, these are the people that educated me. You know, I've had the privilege of serving alongside, you know, the former heads of major companies that I've been able to recruit into my company. And so that, they educated me tremendously.

So, and you know, so I'm always, and I'm also interviewing people that are in roles constantly to gain intel. So if I wanna start a business, I'll interview the product manager for X company or Y company so I can better understand what they're doing and how they're doing it and then apply those best practices to what I'm building.

See, it's interesting because you just kind of answered both in what I just said, which is, you know, A, it's what's best for the business is to backfill with people to fill your inadequacies. Don't try to just say I can overcome and be everything because nobody can be everything.

But it's also advised that you try to overcome by soaking up knowledge from the people that you backfill with. Yeah, you have to get to a level where you're not incompetent. Yeah. If I'm incompetent. A level of competence.

Yeah, if I'm incompetent on finances, you would not want to partner with me. So I have to have a degree of competency on this, which means I got to learn, I got to read books, I got to go to seminars, I got to hire people until I increase my competency. But I'm never going to be the guy organizing every transaction and figuring out the FASB rules and the gap rules and this, that and the other for each and everything. I'm not going to figure out Sarbanes-Oxley to every degree to go public. I have to hire people that know that, but I have to be competent enough to know, you know, how that stuff works and be able to speak finance with the finance people and

lead those finance people to be effective and productive in finance, for example. What makes a great leader in folks? What makes you a great leader and folks? What makes you a great leader? All the adversity that I've overcome. I gotta tell you, we're coming up on our annual awards thing. This is the first time I'm gonna talk about this. We're coming up on our annual awards deal

and every year for, this is, just so you know, I don't even think you know anything about me or Rocco. A little bit. A little bit, right bit right so yeah this is the number one real estate brokerage in Vegas or somewhere else anybody else as far as volume and you said you have 300 something for 500 85 585 our biggest competitor has like 1500 so we're battling out with some it's got a thousand more foot soldiers than we do we're still winning it's a good job or close we shouldn't be winning we've I don't know if we'll still be winning by

the time this comes out but we normally normally, we normally, we like to be second, which is good because it means I can still have quality people here and it doesn't matter. But you know, this year we do our little state of the union, we hand our awards to everybody. And I always talk about the new tech we're going to add in the new stuff we're going to add in. We're going to do this. And I had a situation happen where recently we lost our family pet. We lost our dog and to put them down at two hours before a party. I was having at my house. I'm talking about a tough, tough night, having a, you know, literally, you know,

we put him down and then two or people show up my house was interesting. But a week and a half later we're sitting there and a box shows up at our house and it's from chewy.com because my wife gets all the dogs meds and all the bus up in my house. Like, Oh God, I forgot to cancel his stuff. And so she, uh, you know, she calls them up and she goes, Hey, you know, our dog passed away. Is there any way I can return this? And immediately got an email from our account rep and he said, look, you know,

go donate it to a shelter. We're immediately gonna, you know, immediately gonna refund you. And we're so sorry about Barkley. You know, it's never just heartfelt kind of email to my wife about how're immediately going to, you know, immediately going to refund you. And we're so sorry about Berkeley. You know, it's never just heartfelt kind of email to my wife about how hard it was to lose pet. Five minutes later, she got another email from our old account rep. Oh my gosh, I just heard about Berkeley. That's so terrible. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. And my wife's like, look at this. Like this is crazy. And I'm like, this is like the greatest customer service I've ever seen. And I'm already thinking I would never do anything with any pet company ever again, other than

Chewy. And then later that night, they send flowers to the house. Yeah, like, bro. So, you know, I thought about as you get bigger and you scale on business and business and business, the thing that that moves the needle the most with all of this, all of the things that we do here and all the effort And all of the customer service. It's those magic moments like that. Yeah that make your company Really part of the fabric of the community with not just your clients, but also your employees Yeah, so I tasked all of our people here. I said dude. This is all we are doing this. I love it

I'm not adding anything else. I'm not adding anything else. Every single person that works for me in management or whatever else, they are tasked now with finding a magic moment for one of our people every week. Every I don't care. And we're going to compete every week and I want to hear what they were and I want to hear what we did. And it just has to be something that we did for some of our people every week, every single one in all of our companies. And that's all I'm focused on. And I think it's it's so hard when you think the way that both, because I'm very, I'm very, the truth is in the math. I say that every time somebody asks me a question,

that's my standard answer. Well, the truth is in the math, I need to look at the math. That's my standard answer. I like that. And it's so hard when you think that way that you get away from some of that stuff. So what do you do to instill that type of culture?

And obviously you do with a success. What do you do toill that type of culture? And obviously you do with a success. What do you do to install that type of culture? We've had programs like that. And in fact, I own a dog food company. I'm an owner in it that does similar things that you just described. So that math adds up. When you create connection with people,

and you create a relationship with people, that adds up. I had a good friend that was Vegas based named Tony Shea, the founder of Zappos who's no longer with us. Yeah, sure. And he did things like that too. And he was a highly analytical, brilliant Harvard guy. And he pioneered a lot of those things. Yeah, his book, the Zappos book was phenomenal.

Yeah, delivering happiness. Yeah. He'd deliver flowers. He taught me a lot about that subject, and this was one of the smartest entrepreneurs I had known and so I've implemented a lot of those programs because they add up, the math adds up to it. There's, you're creating belief in people. What is belief worth?

If people are filled with belief, they will do anything for you, right? If they have no belief, they will do nothing for you. So we need to constantly fill that belief tank in people and then with regard to customers knowing that you care, every other company out there doesn't care. So when your customers know that you care, that's what your competitive advantage is.

That you have empathy, right? So all these other companies don't care, you care, that's your winning formula. We're gonna care more. That is our objective amongst all of our brands this year is we're gonna care more than anybody else does. And that's an evolution that you've come to based on the fact that you've gotten to the level

that you're at and now this is gonna separate you from the pack. But in order to get to where you were, you first had to be ruthless with the numbers, you had to process everything, analyze everything, do everything in a very numbers driven way, and then now you're at this place where the machine is working.

Now you can add gasoline to the fire in ways that you couldn't before. So you can't do that day one, you know, to the same degree that you can today. Well, I think, too, I think if you're going to be a very effective CEO, you got to love you got to love what you do every day. And there's a lot of days in those number days that you're just like another day, another day, another day, another dollar, just looking at P&Ls, looking at balance sheets, looking at this, looking at that.

It's just another day. Yeah, I have a technique that I utilize where I look for love in every meeting. Oh, I love that. So like, if I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna be work, right? This is gonna be hard, or is going to be a long day. I go, okay, I have 16 opportunities to find love today in these meetings.

I have 16 opportunities to connect to a human being. Today's not going to be a hard day. Today's going to be a day that tests my endurance. So I'm turning it around every moment to try to optimize for happiness and to optimize to have fun as I'm working. And so that's the technique that I've utilized. As opposed to saying, it's gonna be rough, I gotta talk to 10 people today that have this. I say, oh no, I have an opportunity

to find love in 10 meetings today. And I'm on a scavenger hunt in each of those meetings. Trying to find it. To find it, right? Yeah, I try to look at everything as I get to do it. Yeah, I get to it. As you probably can attest to this. We are gentlemen of a certain age.

When you reach a certain age, your friends start to die. When they start to die, it's like, and there's no candlelight vigil for them around the lake. It's just like, yeah, dude didn't really eat that good. He didn't take care of himself. And unfortunately, I just lost my seventh, what I would consider at one point of my life, either a best friend or in that tight circle of three.

I just lost my seventh one. So I said I was gonna honor those guys. So I actually went and got my Memento Mori dog tags with all their initials on the back of it. And every time something comes up that I don't wanna do, I'm like, these dudes would give anything to be doing this. Anything to be doing this right now. So yeah, finding that why,

and so many people have to do things. I don't have to do anything. I get to do everything I do. That's beautiful. I'm gonna use it. I also have had lots of friends go and I pay tribute to my mentors that are no longer with us.

Tony Shay being one of them. John Wooden, the UCLA famed coach. So I'm often thinking about the shoulders that I stand upon and the great ones that have poured into me that are no longer with us and dear friends as well. So I love that. I think I'm gonna get something engraved on there

in their honor. I love that. Best practice. Yeah, dude, let me ask you this because you're coming from like, handing out weed for snakes, weird trade by the way, but you're trading weed for snakes and you're in a room with like John Wooden

and all these guys, you should mention. So was there ever a time in your life when you suffered through imposter syndrome or was that, have you always had this innate level of confidence in yourself? Either answer's fair. Yeah. You know, in retrospect, I was an imposter.

I just didn't know it. Ignorance is bliss sometimes kids. Yeah, and so looking back, like that guy that showed up to that room to raise money from VCs, I'm like, I can't believe he did that. Yeah, you know, but I didn't walk in, you know, I always a mission,

but I think because I was a fighter and I was a tough kid growing up, I had some, I had a thought in my head that I could beat these guys in pretty much every sport. I could beat these guys in a fight. I could beat these guys in nine out of 10 things. Maybe not in finance, maybe not in business, but I'm gonna learn everything I can from them

in those subjects. So I showed up very aggressive, you know, I was intense. I was there to get the information out of them, to extract what I possibly could so that I could achieve my objectives. Just unapologetic about it. Unapologetic, because I showed up to a person, it's like I'd size the person up and I'd say, if we were in a street fight, you would not be disrespecting me right now.

So I'm showing up to you with respect. I want the information that you have, I need the help that you have, but I was man to man in those meetings. I wasn't afraid of those people. Yeah, love that. No, that's good. I wanna talk a little bit about the information that you have. I need the help that you have. But I was man to man in those meetings. I wasn't afraid of those people. Yeah. Love that. No, that's good. I want to talk a little bit now because obviously, you know, you run now your faith-based entrepreneurial coaching. You run that. So let's talk a little bit about your faith because obviously it's very important

to you. At what point did you find that? So I was raised by a grandmother that was very faith driven. She taught me the foundational values. But when my family got addicted to drugs, I strayed from it. I also was partying and living like a rock star. Then when I started making tens of millions a year, I was really living like a rock star, decadent life.

I got completely away from it. Then my mom died. and as she was dying, I made a commitment to her. I confessed to her. She died tragically. She fell down a flight of stairs. She was in a coma for two years. I couldn't see her all the time and I was parting like a rock star. And so sometimes I wouldn't go see her and I was out partying in Vegas and doing crazy stuff. And I felt bad about that. I guilt about that. And so as she was dying, I told her the reason why, you know, I haven't been able

to see you is because I've been living this, this double life and I'm not the son you think I am and on the other side, you know, you're going to see everything. And I'm going to be, I'm going to, I'm going to change. I'm going to honor you. I'm going to do things differently. And that then broke me wide open. When she passed away, I broke, hit the rock bottom of all rock bottoms from an emotional and mental and spiritual level.

Took two years off of work, went and rebuilt myself, prayed, meditated every day, nonstop until I was ready to go back out there and reenter the world of entrepreneurship. And I did so through mentorship. I decided day one, I was just going go back out there and re-enter the, you know, the world of entrepreneurship. And I did so through mentorship. I decided day one, I was just gonna start mentoring people. I didn't have a good business idea. I was pretty weak coming out of the cave, so to speak. And I said, you know, I'm just gonna mentor people and see where that takes me.

Let's see what happens. And now I'm building an AI tech platform and doing autonomous coaching and deploying software in many different companies. And I have a movement of coaches that are serving companies all around the world right now. How important, so when you say, look, obviously faith based is God belief. We get that.

But are there elements of purpose drivenness that there's, there's giving back into the community for this stuff? I mean, is there elements of that involved in these things? I only want to work with people that I like at this stage of my life, you know, if I don't like you. If we don't have a shared sense of humor, if I don't admire the entrepreneur. Life is too short.

Right, I just, I don't wanna take calls from people on a Sunday that I don't believe in and care about and want to help. Like, I have to feel a noble duty to serve this human being and that I know in my way of giving them what I know and helping them through whatever problems they're up against, whether personally or professionally, they're gonna tithe more, they're gonna give back more,

they're gonna do good in the world. And I get to participate in the legacy that they create directly or indirectly. I'm not trying to optimize for money at this stage of my life, trying to optimize for the good that I can create. And knowing that I'm helping a young man like I just did this morning,

has got 500 people on his team and he's serving a bunch of individuals. And I help him with just a small practice that is gonna help him in the season. And he's a young CEO. And I told him, look, if I were in your situation, I go do this, he goes and does it, he gets results, he moves on to the next challenge.

It's life-giving to me. It doesn't take anything from me. It actually fuels me up. It makes me excited about my life because I can serve. Let me ask you this. So maybe you are, I'm not, right? There are days when I'm just off, right? When I'm just like, man, I'm just not at a place to do,

like I pray my phone doesn't ring today. Like, I mean, we have a lot of people that work for us. And I'm just like, please tell them to call me today cause I don't want to snap at somebody. And I want to be like, why don't you just figure this out? Why are you calling me? Like there are days, not a lot of them. I mean, I'm pretty, pretty even keel,

but I have those days, man. So how do you get up to serve for others when you just don't feel like getting up at all? We all have those days. So anybody who says they don't have those days, it's a myth, right? You look at the Tony Robbins and people like that that I love and adore, they have those days too.

I know them personally. Everybody has them. It's being able to recognize that you're having that day. I like to look at it as an input-output ratio. If I'm drained, I need to put more into me. That means I need to spend more time in nature with family or I need to optimize around my health and my well-being that I'm putting too much out. Out is action. So I'm looking at input output ratios every day. And if I'm drained, today's an input day. If I'm inspired and I'm ready, today's an input day. If I'm, if I'm, you know, inspired and I'm ready, today's an output day.

And every day I'm looking at my input output ratio, how much am I putting in the tank versus how much am I taking out? And then when I don't have any more to give at the end of the day and I'm exhausted, well, I know I haven't optimized my input output ratio correctly. So during the day I'm putting things in the tank, might be a quick meditation. I might go do a boxing lesson, things like that that are gonna fuel me up. Are you a TM guy?

Yeah. Me too, yeah, I love it. So, but if I miss my midday meditation, I'm gonna be cranky, I'm gonna be triggered, and if I'm triggered, that's an indicator as to where I need to do the work and where I need to do the optimization. I get triggered all the time,

I get frustrated all the time, my team feels that. I feel bad about that when that happens and I just take responsibility for it and say, I still got work to do. Let me go back and do some work and I'll come back, you know, refreshed and energized. But sleep is everything. And I've learned, I found a device, it changed my life. I'm not affiliated with it. There's not a plug for anything that I own. It's called the Pulsetto. You put it on your neck. The Pulsetto. Yeah, it stimulates your vagus nerve and I sleep like a baby.

It's like 300 bucks. It's a Pulsetto. Pulsetto. And I have no affiliation with this company. Really? I was sleeping like four or five hours a night. Now I'm sleeping eight hours a night on this thing. Really?

Yeah, no medication, no sleeping pills. Yeah, dude, I track my sleep. We were talking about biohacking before. I track my, I mean, I track everything. Yeah. And it just, you put it on your device 10 minutes before sleep. It's, there's a sleep program on it.

It like sends electric shock waves into your vagus nerve and I sleep like a baby because of it. Dude, I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like 300 bucks. Yeah. I do the, I do the ground. Like I try to get off the blue screens two hours before. I get on the grounding mat and I'll run it down to about eight megahertz.

So it's that low megahertz to kind of chill you out. And it's been, you know, it's a good, but I was going to actually, my next one was going to be the eight sleep. Cause a buddy of mine just said that thing is magic. That's my next one too. He said, it's just magic. He's saying it's magic, but I'm going to try that,

which is great. It's so interesting that you were talking about the input output, you input output variables for yourself. Because I was talking about, I look at marriage that way. People ask me like, what's the secret of good marriage? I'm like, dude, it's like bank account. You make deposits and withdraws. And you better not ever be overdrawing your wife.

That's how you do it. Sometimes, why does your wife let you stay out after the fight till late sometimes with the boys? It's because I show up for her all the time. And so I always make way more deposits on my draws. But it's interesting, I never thought about that with myself. Like am I feeding myself enough of what I need?

Yeah, one of the things that I do, by the way, I'm a newlywed, so I'm taking your advice. Congratulations. I'm taking your advice on keeping a long- That's it, a deposit on your draws. Marriage. One of the things I do is I write up a list of all of the activities that give me life. The sunset, the sunrise, watering the plants, walking the dog. And I have that long list of

activities. And in the event that I have a gap or I'm a little exhausted or I get triggered, I just go do one of them. Some are less time than others. So I might pick one that's more optimized for whatever the window is. I got a speed bag in my house. It gives me joy. I get into a flow state. I hit that thing for 10, 15 minutes, and then I'm pumped. I got a little trampoline that I'll go bounce up and down on. You know, I'll go dance on the thing, play some good music.

And it's just a way to get my state shifting and to put something in to shift that frustration energy or that negative energy. It's cumulative. Dude, what a great exercise. You should have a note in your Apple Notes that says like, just a list of all those things you can do quick, how long they take,

so you don't even have to think about it. When you hit that spot, you're just like, I got 20 minutes, I gotta turn this around. Yeah, just pick, draw one from a hat. Draw one from a hat real quick. The other thing though, if you wanna shift the energy into you, there's two things you can do.

There's one you pour into you, the other is you pour out to someone else. Tithe, give to a friend, do something good, anonymous, don't take credit for it, try to help a friend, and they don't even know you're trying to help them. So, take on a project where you do some good,

that will shift energy heading in your direction as well. Yeah, it's so hard to balance out the social media aspect of everybody's got to do everything you do and let me go give to the homeless. I'm like, well, I just want other people to be inspired by what I'm doing. Yeah, I agree. It's better if you leave the camera off. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's only one thing we do all year where we turn the

cameras on. It's when we go pay off the layaways for Christmas. That's like the only thing that we ever say, this is what we're doing because we want more people to come next year. Right? Yeah. You should be doing things in secret as well as things publicly. That's why they call it secret Santa. Yeah.

It's like public Santa, secret Santa. The greatest, the most pure gift that we can give is one where we have no intention of anything in return whatsoever. So I don't want it on social, that's the most pure gift. But it's okay if we're, we're giving with some intention. There's nothing wrong with that. We just want to be public about that. You know, yes, I have an intention. I want

to drive traffic to my firm for these gifts, because I believe every firm should do that. Nothing wrong with that. We want to give with pure intention. And we don't want to be honest about the intention that we're giving the gift with what's your fit. And because obviously, we're not publicizing, I'm just curious what your favorite thing is you do. Do you have one little thing that you do consistently that is your favorite thing to do, just giving? I like to involve people in the conspiracy of giving

and they don't know it. So I might tell you, hey, you know, let's give a gift to someone that we both mutually know, let's say, and then I ask you, hey, I'll send you a hundred bucks, you give it to them. They don't know that I've given it to them. You are now involved in the gift, I'm involved in the gift. So we're unlocking multiple blessings.

So it's a conspiracy of giving, and they have no idea that I was, you know, the person that was a catalyst there. So I say to you, don't tell them, you know, that I'm involved, I'll send you a hundred bucks, you give it to them. You say, okay, let's do it. And then you involve me in a conspiracy to give.

And so together we're conspiring to give more, and we're involving multiple people in the gift. I do it with my son all the time. I love that, that's great. Dude, it's so important to teach the kids that. Probably my favorite thing I do all year is around Christmas for the 23 days of, or 24 days. Sometimes we get the 24th, depends on how busy we are,

but it's always the 23 days. Every day we'll give away a hundred bucks. Just randomly. Just randomly. And I do, I always want to do it with my kids as much as possible, just so they can just see, just hear, you know, which is great. I love doing that.

A leader like yourself, by the way, there's somebody that needs you, you could call up and just pour life into. You call up and, not on your team, because that's different. There's people outside your team that you know in the industry, you could just call up and say,

hey, I just wanna tell you, I think what you're doing is great, and just keep at it. That will shift the energy, because we give to our team all the time, but when we take time to give outside of our team, that also shifts the energy heading in our direction. Well, it's so funny,

I had something happen the other day that's never happened, unless I was speaking somewhere and obviously in an obvious place, right right because then people always come up and talk to you after but I bought kind of an audacious car and I'll say it's audacious but I've always wanted the car so I bought the car I can afford the car bought the damn car right and it's for me it's not for anyone else but there's a benefit to the car because it's now happened twice. I've had two younger age kids, young adults, kids, whatever, blah, blah, come up to

me and ask me, what do you do? And how do I do like, what advice would you give for me? At your age, you can do that. I love that. I don't recommend a lot of young people will do that. And they'll buy the Lambo because no, no, no, it's dumb. And they'll buy'll, well, they'll buy it because they try to justify it. That's going to be a lead engine. Generally speaking, you're not going to pay for the Lambo through leads. No, you're not.

No, I am. I am saying I appreciate the start. You asked me to give back not because it's generating me a different, I, I, I used to have a classic car that people wanted to take pictures with and, uh, and it was always a privilege. Like people would just say, it's a life dream of mine to take a picture with this car. I say, please get in it. Get in it. I agree. You know, and it's important for us to share in our wealth in different ways. And so

congratulations that you're doing that. I love that. Honestly, it's my favorite part of the, I love the car, but it's my favorite part of it. Yeah, that's awesome. Because it just, you don't, I'm just, I'm at the sandwich place, right? And it happens there. It's just a little bit of a secret. And it's an inspiration. It's great.

And it's good to share that inspiration. And you know, I've had a lot of rock star moments, right? And I'm very careful now, and I measure my intention very closely, but I like nice things as well. And I like to share those nice things with others. Yeah. No, I dig that.

What advice would you give if somebody was that 18 to 24 year old struggling, trying to figure it out, what advice would you give them? Get a mentor, pursue multiple mentors, keep going until you find somebody, extract information from every individual, and acquire skills. Your life is acquire skills.

Your life is about skills. Skills pay the bills, so acquire skills at all costs. Yeah, and I'll say this about that too, right? Because I had somebody say to me not too long ago that works for me, and the kid said, he's a great kid, he's doing a great job. And he said to me, he goes, well, I don't know if you know this or not,

but you're my mentor. That's what he said. And I gotta tell you, if you, well, you know, I don't know if you know this or not, but you're my mentor. And that's what he said. And I gotta tell you, if you want somebody to take an interest in you, I don't know how you can hear that is a someone that has achieved relative success and not feel an instant responsibility. Cause whole, man, I felt this instant responsibility

for this kid's success in a different way that I did just cause he works for us, right? I was like immediately like, oh my God, like I gotta make sure this kid's success. In a different way that I did, just cause he works for us, right? I was immediately like, oh my God, I gotta make sure this kid wins. If I'm his mentor, now I'm responsible for what happens to him. Being a mentor is a role. It's an assignment.

There's something spiritual there. Whether you're spiritual or not, there's something there. It's a part of our tradition and humanity and in teaching and in passing on to the next generation. So it's hardwired into our DNA to mentor. So when that child, that young man invoked mentorship and told you that you had that coveted role in his life, that then activated you at a new level in your relationship. So that it's important for us to carry the mentorship tradition on and to be good mentors to people. But I think the reason I said that

was to young people listening, like, look, it's kinda like assigning the girlfriend, boyfriend label, maybe a little bit, don't be, not on the first date, don't be too aggressive with it, but once somebody's helped you a little bit, feel free to tell them, hey man, just so you know, you're my mentor,

or hey ma'am, whatever it is, you're my mentor, whatever it is. And I think you're getting, the response that you're gonna mentor or hey ma'am, whatever it is, you're my mentor, whatever it is. And I think you're getting, the response that you're gonna get from that person is, man, it was a lot. It was like, whoa. It does create a sense. It has to be authentic.

Yeah, and it was. Yeah, it has to be authentic. And the first job when you're pursuing a mentor is figure out what you can give to them. Right, he was giving to you. He's giving you his time, his energy, his desire to help build your firm. So there's an economic connection there. Most of the time we don't figure out what to give to

the mentor first. So I was always saying, what can I do for you? Can I donate to your charity? Can I donate time to your charity if I don't have money to donate to your charity? How can I serve you first and foremost? Because I know what you're going to give me. I understand clearly what I want from you. So I don't understand clearly what I can give to you. So help me clean up your yard, your garage. You want me to talk to your son. What can I do for you? And then once I get that relationship established, that it's going to be reciprocal, then we have a mentorship relationship. It has to be reciprocal. He's giving to you. But I think it's, I think it to a certain extent though, if somebody shows me enough gumption, the fact that they just want to learn,

and then you can't be an asshole. Anytime somebody's an asshole with me, I'm out, right? If you start, what should I do? And I tell them and they do the polar opposite, I'm like, okay, you don't need me. Well, they have to want to learn, they have to take action on what they taught them, and then they have to at least give you

some gratitude in the process, right? So what you receive back is gratitude and that gives you fuel, right? Yeah. When somebody- Sometimes that's enough for me. Sometimes that's enough. Hey, if somebody gives me gratitude,

that adds to my life. That gives me good energy. I feel that I'm thankful for that. But there's a concept spiritually called bread of shame. We want people to know how they can earn your time. So I will make people, they say, I want you to mentor me. I'll say, I need some help in my garden. Right?

I do. You know? I need some help. I'm like, show up, I need some help. Why? Because I'll resent you if I don't feel like you are showing up to contribute. Now, what can you give me?

You can't give me money. You can't, if you're broke, you wanna help me? Help me with my trash, help me with my garden, help me with organizing my garage. Give me time back. And then I'll give you $10,000 worth of my time, which is an hour, right? So just give me a couple hundred dollars worth of your time

and I'll give you 10 of mine and I'll be happy with that trade. Well, dude, that is a trade that anybody should be willing to make. Oftentimes people want though. They ask, they ask, they ask, and they're not willing to give in return. That's the question. It's like, would you, okay, would you work in somebody's garden for $10,000 an hour?

Yeah. I'm gonna say, yeah, okay, great. Well, this dude's gonna give you $10,000 worth of knowledge. Go help him pull some weeds. Yeah. Yeah, that's the litmus test that I have for people that want my help. I have a property in Northern- That's Mr. Miyagi stuff right there.

I do, yeah. I have a property in Northern Arizona and off the grid 80 acres. Yeah. And I got work to do there at all times. So if somebody wants my mentorship, I'll put your work up there. All right. Well, dude, Brian, thank you so much for coming in, but I want to keep you on schedule. I know you got a flight.

Thank you. If they want to find you, how do they find you on Instagram? I'm at real Ryan Blair, or you can go to alter call calm, a L T R ca ll.com. Cool, brother, it was good to have you through your welcome back anytime you want to come back and we'll see you again. I mean, look, I think if you listen to this today, as with so many of the high level people we come through, the key to your future success normally lies on the other side of your

ability to number one, ask for help but number two, be worthy of it. See you next week. What's up everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list.

But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.