In Search Of Excellence - Relentless Work Ethic: Why It Is Essential For Entrepreneurs | E60

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Work ethic is THE single-biggest determinant of your success.  In this epsidoe, learn from how the best in the world refine their work ethic and hear their thoughts on how to achieve true excellence in life and business. What is success? What are the key ingredients to success? How to overcome challenges and stay motivated? How to give back and inspire others? These are just a few of the questions they will answer. Tune in to hear more and grow and thrive on your path to excellence!(00:00) IntroductionSandee domain (www.sand.ee > www.sandee.com)Become indefatigable(03:42) Mike Horn – World’s Greatest ExplorerLatitude Zero Degree ExpeditionWe only have 30 000 days! Use them!Surviving death squadDon’t worry about the stuff you can’t change! (09:05) Bob Pittman - CEO of iHeartRadioPassion isn’t something you planHired at NBC in Chicago as a 20-year-oldWhatever you do, do something you enjoy!(10:43) Jon Gordon - Best Selling Author and Keynote SpeakerDid a lot of research on how to be positiveTalented at making complex ideas simpleCreated weekly positive tipsJon's #1 tip - Gratitude Walks!That will flood the brain with positive emotionsMind is like a garden - weed the negative! Feed the positive!(13:22) Chris VossThree most important ingredients to successBe a little bit better every dayBe a better team player vs. the team leader (if you want to go far, go as a team)Hear people out(16:27) Brian Lee - Founder of LegalZoom and The Honest Company, and CEO of Arena ClubHow important is it to be passionate about what you are doing?Always passionate about the mission of his businessesWith Arena Club – for the first time passionate about the service and offerThe start of Arena cardInnovation comes from fixing something that is broken!(23:46) Caryn Seidman-Becker - CEO of CLEAROvercoming insurmountable challengesBe proactive!Look around corners!Make predictions and act on them!Take care of your own!(27:38) Ben SherwoodWhen you’re great at something, great things happen to youWorking hard is necessary, but not sufficientGiving back is a very important piece of successThe voice that leads you to excellence can be ruthless (go easy on yourself)Constant thriving can be ultimately counterproductiveBe kind towards yourself and the people around youSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

The mind is like a garden. Weed the negative, you can feed the positive. And over time, the garden of your mind starts to look amazing. The more you know, the more you surround yourself with amazing people, the easier it becomes to reach your goals. I've often described to my kids my work is like a giant video game. I can't wait to get up in the morning and start playing. At the end of the day, I don't want to put it away. For most entrepreneurs, it's usually about experiencing something and thinking, I could

do it better. Your job as a leader is to look around corners and being proactive and not reactive. Focusing on getting just a little bit better each day. You want to go fast, go alone. You want to go far, go as a team. And that sometimes the pursuit of excellence requires a little bit of self-awareness and a bit of kindness to oneself and kindness to the people around you. Welcome to In Search of Excellence.

This week, we're going to do things a little bit differently. And I'm going to give you a set of highlight clips from all of my reels talking about work ethic, which I think is the single greatest determinant to our success. And it's also been a huge ingredient of my own success. I'm going to give you a couple of examples. We created the largest beach database in the world, a company called Sandee, S-A-N-D-E-E. We have cataloged more than 100 categories of data for more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries across the world. For a long time, we only had the domain sand.ee. The.ee is in Estonia. And for six and a half years, we tried to get the domain sandy.com. We looked on the register to find out who owned the domain name. And it was owned by a woman in Aurora, Colorado, who was a

real estate agent. And she was unwilling to sell the name because her husband had bought the name 21 years earlier as a birthday gift, so it had a lot of sentimental value to her. I called Sandy at least once a year, offered to come out to Aurora, Colorado to meet with her in person, which she declined, and after six years, she finally said, all right, let's have a conversation. I think I sent her over 25 emails over that period of time, and finally, we were able to agree on terms and we were able to get what we want. To me, another part of my success has been what I call philo, in which I've been coaching for over 20 years. That means you're the first person in and you're the last person to leave. You will advance your career in ways you never thought would be possible.

In faster ways, you would be possible. If you're the first person in the office and you're the last one to leave. That means if your coworkers get in the office at seven in the morning, you get in at 6.45. If they leave at 11 o'clock in the morning, you leave at 11.05. I'm not saying you leave the office at 4 p.m.

if your boss leaves at four o'clock. I'm talking about working long hours. That means not 40 hours a week. You wanna do the extra. You wanna go the extra mile. You wanna work about working long hours. That means not 40 hours a week. You want to do the extra. You want to go the extra mile. You want to work more than everybody else. And of course, I know about a work-life balance. So you need to find the right work-life balance for you. But the more hours you put in, generally, the more successful you're going to become. A lot of people over the years have used a very interesting term when they're talking about me, and that is indefatigable, which means persisting tirelessly. And that's very,

very closely related to work ethic. I really equate them as pretty much the same thing. And I'm going to encourage you, are you indefatigable? Are you working as hard as you can possibly work? Are you challenging yourself? Can you do better? Should you do better? If you want to get ahead, be indefatigable. Now, without further ado, here are some amazing clips from my podcast of my amazing guests who are talking about the importance of work ethic and the success they've had in their career and also in their personal lives. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Let's go back to the firing squad when you closed your eyes and thought you were seconds from dying. What were you thinking at that exact moment? In Search of Excellence,

how is it related to 30,000 days? You know, I believe that one life to the average age of 82 years old, that's the average age that we live to around the world, we have 30,000 days. And half the time you're asleep. So you've got 15,000 days that you can actually do stuff. And then until, well, let's say to the age of 10 years old, you're not really living life. You're kind of being taught how to live life so we don't have a lot of time on on planet earth to really do what you want to do and and once you find your passion that's when these days count and you want to live each day to to its full capability and capacity and and that's why i i i love your subject about excellence. The more you know,

the better you inform, the better you educate yourself, the harder you work, the more you're interested in what others do, the more you build relationships instead of destroying them, the more you help people, the more you become helped. The more you surround yourself with amazing people, the easier it becomes to reach your goals. And those things are the search for excellence that I did in my life. Just the fact that I wanted to go out there and just make my life a better place because I am allotted 30,000 days in a lifetime. And those 30,000 days, we've got to be able to live to the fullest of our capabilities. And basically that's what I did.

I can't. So just the death squad, I don't know if the death squad was just trusting people that I shouldn't have trusted, going, walking right towards the lion that was going to eat me. And I was caught with another guy that I thought was a rebel, but he attached himself to me and we kind of traveled together. And having two people to stop and one to scout out, to find information and stuff made it easier for us. So we were caught together. And when we were caught by the rebels, obviously, it was like we were put into a hut and kept present in that hut. And that night, well, when we were caught, they said they were going to publicly execute us the next morning.

So unfortunately, the guy that I got caught with was shot first. And I was going to be shot second. When he fell, I just walked forward and I took the gun, the Kalashnikov of the command and put it on my head. And I said, just shoot me. But that willingness of me to survive made him afraid. That willingness of saying that I'm not who you think you are. But if you think I'm really a rebel, shoot me while I look at you. But I'll be your biggest problem for the rest of your life you will never get rid of me I'll be in your mind I'll be

everywhere and I'll haunt you so that power of survival that I needed to portray to him just mentally made him hesitate at that moment why they shot the other guy first is because he reeked of fear. He died the night before. He said he was going to die and I believed I would survive. Although that if I believed that I survived, that I would survive and I actually die, I wouldn't know. So why don't you want to give yourself a chance of survival in your mind? Why should you worry? If you worry, you die. If

you don't worry, you also die. So why worry about stuff that you cannot change? Be able to be the power that influence people, that overpowers people in moment that you really need it. And that hesitation let that policeman come out and actually save my life and said, this is a military affair. This is a civilian affair. This is not a military affair. We cannot be executed military wise. So I was taken in by the police. And a couple of hours later, I had the gun in my hand.

The commander was put in front of me and I had the right to shoot him. Because I was protected by Museveni, the president of Uganda. Everybody knew that I was coming through and that I'm just an explorer and they should leave me out. So the roles changed. And when they said, shoot him, I just said to him, listen, I'm still alive. He did nothing wrong in my eyes. That's why I cannot shoot him or kill him. I'm alive. I'm fine. What he did might have been wrong, but he didn't kill me. Passion isn't something you plan.

It comes out of nowhere. And somehow I got really, really interested in radio. And the bug bit me. And it's interesting. I look back now. I was 20 years old when I was hired at NBC in Chicago, WMAQ. And I think it's five years earlier, I was a part-time disc jockey in Brookhaven, Mississippi. How on earth did that happen? And, you know, you get lucky breaks, but part of a lucky break is to know to take it, to

know to do it and follow that. And I, you know, in the twenties, I think twenties are about people trying a lot of things until something hits them and they go, Oh, I love doing this. You know, you're going to spend more time at work than you are spending the money you make at work. So you ought to have something at work that you love. I've often described to my kids, my work is it's, it's like a giant video game. And I can't wait to get up in the morning and start playing at the end of the day. I don't want to put it away. And I think that's what we're in search of in whatever we do.

And, you know, some people do stuff that makes them a lot of money. Some people do things that barely pay the bills. Some have to do multiple things, but whatever you're doing, you should do something that you really enjoy doing. And I look at my age, work is my golf. My friends go out and golf. I like to run and futz around with work stuff. That that is a real passion and a real stimulation and just arouses my curiosity and gives me a place to focus it. I started this weekly positive tip. I knew I wanted to write and speak.

So what am I going to write and speak about? I want to be more positive. Okay, great. So how can I become more positive? I start to research all the ways that I could be more positive. And this was during the emerging field of positive psychology. And so a lot of these ideas weren't even prevalent. They weren't pervasive in the world. And they weren't even known. So I was doing a lot of these ideas weren't even prevalent. They weren't pervasive in

the world and they weren't even known. So I was doing a lot of these ideas. I was doing the research and I have a coaching mind. I've been called an applied genius. I'm able to take ideas that are very complex and then apply them and make them simple. So I was taking all these complex ideas and then making it simple for myself. And then I started this weekly positive tip where I would share what I was doing with others. What was your first tip? The thank you walk. The research shows you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time. So if you're feeling grateful, if you're feeling blessed, you won't feel stressed. So what I did for me, and this is my number one tip to being more positive myself, this rewired my brain from negative to positive. And it's helped so many people around the world,

like millions. Every day, I take a walk of gratitude. And while I'm walking, I just say what I'm thankful for. And the research is when you're doing this, you're flooding your brain with these positive emotions and your body too, that uplift you rather than the stress hormones that slowly drain you. And over time actually slowly kill you if you let them. So when you do this, you're creating a fertile mind that is ready for great things to happen. The mind is like a garden. Weed the negative, you can feed the positive, right? And I try to do both. Weed the negative, feed the the positive you do that on a daily basis we did negative then feed the positive each day and over time the garden of your mind starts to look amazing weed that garden feed it nourish it one day doesn't do a whole lot but do it for a week do it for a

month do it for a year do it for a lifetime the garden of your mind looks amazing and that's what I did and that's what I did. And that's what I wrote about first thing. I started sharing that tip. I started doing it. That saved my marriage. That changed who I was. It's been my number one tip. And I've seen the impact it's had on my life and others. And we know the power of gratitude. Like when you appreciate, you elevate. You elevate your mood, your mindset, your performance, and the people around you. When you practice gratitude with others and you appreciate them, they perform at a higher level. I work with a lot of companies, a lot of organizations and leaders on being better leaders, building great teams. And

gratitude is a foundational principle and practice that everyone I share with follows. So when you do that, it makes a huge impact. Let's talk about success. That's one of the goals of my podcast, inspire, motivate people on their path to greatness and excellence. What are the three most important ingredients of success on that path to excellence? First of all, I think the biggest one is really just focus on getting a little bit better every day. You'd be surprised at how quickly you get, how far you get quickly by getting a tiny little bit every day. Plus, you know, the other fringe benefit. If you have a day you didn't get better, you don't feel this great sense of loss. Like, oh, my God, I'm never going to recover that.

You know, the feeling of loss is probably impacts us more than anything else. So focusing on getting just a little bit better each day. Also, success. You want to go fast, go alone. You want to go far, go as a team. Be a better team player versus a team leader. That's been a real struggle for me because I always led. Diva, you guys support me.

Flipping around, how do you support the other team? How do you start putting the team in front of yourself? That also seems counterintuitive. And again, you'd be surprised at how far you get in six months if you go as a team. You want to go far, go as a team. And then third is probably hear people out. I mean, people are dying to have their say. You'll also accelerate all your relationships and all your outcomes by hearing people out rather than giving direction, which is you want them to listen to you. So hear people out to

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How important is it in search of excellence to have passion to be successful at what we're doing? It's a great question. I think you definitely need to be passionate about what you're doing to get the full effort. Because it's it's always a grind right it's always a grind so if you're not passionate about something you're never going to put in your your entire body and soul into it unless unless you are and so even with with legal zoom with shoe dazzle with the honest company um i was very passionate about the missions of those businesses. So the mission of bringing affordable legal services to the world, the mission of having women feel beautiful about themselves, basically for $3 or $9 a month and getting a new pair of shoes every month, it made everyone happy.

With the Honest Company helping to build or to create a non-toxic world i mean what's more important than that right it's like they're so i was extremely passionate about all the missions of those businesses but this is the first time with arena club that i'm passionate about not only the mission but the actual offering and the service. And it's only because I've been collecting trading cards, baseball cards mainly, since I was a kid. So I remember I was seven years old at the time and my dad took me to my first Dodger game. And I just fell in love with the game and being at the stadium.

And Steve Garvey was our game and being at the stadium and steve garvey was our our first baseman at the time and i i went and bought his card at the card shop i rode my bike to the local card shop and i i bought a steve garvey card and i held on to it all these years i still have it um and i i i started collecting cards then and i never stopped most of my friends stopped you know most of my friends stopped like yeah so most most do they stop in junior high school or high school or whatever i collected in high school college law school young adult old adult and i just i just love it right i just love collecting my heroes um and it's a it's a category in the industry that I thought was pretty ripe for some innovation. Because there hasn't really been that much innovation in the space for a while.

And so the idea that we had was to digitize the physical. I mean, how many guys do you know that collected cards and those cards are sitting in a shoebox in their closet or their parents' closets or basements or whatever it is? Everybody. A lot, right? And so I always felt like, gosh, it would be so great to bring all those out and to digitize them all and then put them on blockchain. And you could display all your cards at Arena Club online, and those are your cards, verified and authenticated, that you can buy, sell, and trade with each other. And that's the genesis of Arena Club.

It's really kind of, we call it bringing the card show to life. And so my happiest days are spent at the card shows and card shops, going with Davis, my son, who you know. And I just love it um i just love it i just love it i love the the wheeling and dealing and the the action of the card shows and for anyone who's ever been to card show you know it's like you walk around with your little zion case and it's like i'll trade these two cards and 50 bucks for that card and there's just a lot of excitement um and no one's ever brought that online.

I think we're one of the first platforms that allow for trading even. And we're trying to build this community where people can really follow each other and like each other's cards and so forth and trade with each other and have a lot of fun doing it. So that's the idea of Arena Club. Some of the inspiration was because you sent in a card to another grading company. We don't have to mention which one. The way the grading cards work is if you have a 10, they're manually graded by people sitting in a room. They measure the center of the car, the borders, the picture, the quality, the colors, everything., the quality, the colors, everything. A 10 card, Michael Jordan, I think you told me this correctly if I'm wrong, rookie card, if it's a 10, it could be 250,000. If it's a nine, it could be 50,000, 25,000. Eight

is way less. You had a great card. You know your cards well. You send it in, it gets graded. It takes three to six months. You pay a fee. And it came back, I think, at an eight. That's right. And you said, this is easily a nine, maybe a 10. You can appeal the grade. It comes back in a plastic sleeve that's sealed with a grade on it. So you can't change it.

And so you said, OK, well, this is not an eight. This is a nine. You send it in. It's an appeal. You pay another fee, a more expensive fee. It takes three to six months and maybe even a year because they're way backed up. This is a huge business. There was a company in the space last year that sold for $800 million. One of your competitors, but you're going to kick their ass once you get going.

And then you started saying, okay, well, that's not fair. I'm going to do some more research. I'm going to see how they grade these cards. And you are very resourceful by going to LinkedIn and finding employees who used to work at these companies and say, how does this process happen? And you realize and you heard that the former employees told you, well, we sit in a room, we use microscopes, we grade the carpets. We don't have a manager who tells us what to do, but some days they come in and they say no more nights. And you took something that was a problem and you fixed it. How important is it not to accept the status quo on something like this? And how much of a motivation is it to be an entrepreneur by looking at things? Not only do you have the passion, but you're trying to fix something that's broken.

I think that's most of the time. I think for most entrepreneurs, it's usually about experiencing something or consuming something and thinking, I could do it better. Or it'd be great if it was done this something or built something, at least innovative. It's one thing to say, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm just going to completely copy that company. That's a little bit different. I'm saying anyone who's innovating and creating something new or looking to create something better than the status quo. And so very similar to what you described with Arena Club, yeah, I was kind of fed up with what was out there, right, from the marketplaces that exist or the grading companies that exist and so forth. And I just thought I could do it better with more

transparency, with more ease, with seamless transactions, all on blockchain. And so I just thought, I'm going to go do this. And I hope people like it. And so that was the idea, even for LegalZoom. The idea for LegalZoom really came about because some of these law firms charge a lot of money for some very simple legal procedures. They're forms. Yeah, they're forms that you file. Why should it cost $2,000 to form

a corporation, right? Or $3,000 even, right? In today's inflationary world. And so a lot of ideas come about like that. And even with Jessica Alba in The Honest Company, I remember what she told me. She said, why do all eco diapers have to be brown? Why can't we make them cute? Is what she said. And with really fun patterns. And it struck a chord with her. I was like, you're right. They should be.

And we could do that. Right? So it's like a lot of times entrepreneurs come up with these ideas because they're not happy with the status quo. And they want to innovate and make something better. And our search for excellence, how important is it to overcome challenges, especially those that may seem insurmountable? So going back to learning, you know, I learned a lot in the 2008-2009 market downturn. And you could map that market downturn back to what was happening in 2007.

And burying your head in the sand is a sure way to not win. And so on February 25th, Ken and I were on a train down to D.C. I believe the stock market was down four and change percent. You were reading what was happening in Asia and in Italy. And it was like, hmm, you know, there were a few cases in Seattle, right? Just a few. And we thought that there was a big problem. You could read a lot of tea leaves.

We talked to a lot of people. We put together a lot of data. And we started taking action on February 25th. So being proactive and not reactive is massively important. And your job as a leader is to look around corners and to, you know, make predictions and to act on them, not to wait till it hits you in the face with a two by four. And so we did start taking action that day, taking our marketing budget to zero. You could always, what's the worst thing that can happen? You're wrong and you turn it back on.

We did start to put our team members on a leave of absence plan and make sure we were taking care of them. And we also took our salaries to zero, just mine and Ken, zero. And we contributed that to one clear fund where we could take care of team members around the country. And so it was that action that allowed us to both communicate it to our company in aggregate on March 16th and then move on to Health Pass to see what was coming around the corner and leverage our assets. Again, our mission is to make experiences safer and easier. And we believe that there would be another card in your wallet, and we're all about digitizing those and connecting people to all the things that make them them. Well, your vaccine or your test

results are part of that. And so we were able to move quickly because we were proactive, because we had learned a lot from the markets for, you know, a few decades. And you've got to act, and you've got to look around corners, and you've got to put yourself in a position to lead and be proactive. And by the way, your teams want stability. Your teams want leadership. Your teams want to know that someone has a plan, that we're not making it up as we go along. And so we did those things. By the way, traffic wasn't down 90.

It was down 98. And if you ever want to stress test a model and you are a subscription travel business, take it down to borderline zero and see what happens to your business. And I think because we built trust and because we took care of our members and we were still there for them, for the few who showed up every day, it went a long way to coming out of it with even greater strength. I'm going to make a statement and then I'd like you to react to it. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. When you're great at something, great things happen to you.

Kind of true, kind of false. I think that when you're great at something, great things can happen if you're also lucky. If you're also in the right place at the right time. If you can stay out of your own way, if there are lots of ifs. So I think that it's hard for great things to happen to you if you aren't great at something, but it's easy for not great things to happen to you even if you are great at something, if you see what I mean. That is, I think that being really good, working hard is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition for great things to happen. When I think about being the best that I can be and living up to

my own potential, a huge part of me wants to give back to others less fortunate and trying to make a positive, impactful difference in their lives. You're involved with a lot of things I know, and you've been giving back for a long time. How important to you is giving back for your sense of accomplishment? And where is that on you're in search of excellence to be the best that you can possibly be? Top of the list. I think that doing well means doing good. I think that to make a difference, success has got to involve helping people who are less fortunate.

So in this new company that we started, Mojo, one of our founding principles is that we are here to help level the playing field between haves and have-nots. There is huge inequality in youth sports. There is a huge divide between families with resources and families that don't. Two-thirds of the families that have money play sports in the United States and kids play all the way through high school. Only a third of the families without money in the United States get to play sports. That's not right. So one of our founding principles, the very beginning of this company was that we can only do well as a company if we do good and make sure that everyone

has access to the best coaching and the best resource. And that's why we've made Mojo free for anybody to use. There is a Mojo Plus that you can buy for $19.99 a year that has additional features, but we think baseline, everybody should have access to the very best coaching in the world and the very best tools and resources. And that's part of a core philosophy that you cannot succeed unless you are doing good and making the world a better place. That's another reason why we've launched Mojo in partnership with Coaching Corps, which is a wonderful nonprofit, sort of like a Peace Corps for coaches in the United States with 10,000 coaches who volunteer in low-income areas to help kids play sports. And we're putting Mojo Plus, the preferred, the premium version of Mojo

in the hands of all the coaches at Coaching Corps across the country to help them get the best resources they can possibly have. So I'm with you, Randy. I think that giving back is an important piece of success. And I also think back to Adam Grant's book, which is called Give and Take. By the way, I had the title wrong, Give and Take. Giving is an incredibly important piece of the success and excellence formula i have one thought to leave you with and leave your listeners with because i think that the thing that is missing in the in the books about excellence in the

in the writing about excellence and the pursuit of excellence is a very important idea which is to go easy on yourself to be patient to not be punishing that those who seek excellence have a voice in their heads that is relentless, that is merciless, that can be cruel. And I think that one of the things that I've learned with time and maybe with some success is that that voice can be very, very destructive. And that that voice, that relentlessness, that constant striving can be ultimately counterproductive. And that sometimes the pursuit of excellence requires a little bit of self-awareness and a bit of kindness to oneself and kindness to the people around you. Because that quest, that sometimes insatiable quest can be very, very hard and even unhealthy. And so one of my thoughts, especially when I'm around young people who drive themselves hard or mid-career people who are

driving themselves unbelievably hard, or even advanced stage careers driving themselves so hard is go easy on yourself. It's okay. You're going to end up where you're going to end up. You're going to achieve what you're meant to achieve. The road will take you where you are supposed to go. But if you aren't easy on yourself, if you don't go easier on yourself sometimes and take care of yourself, you're in for trouble. I love ending on that. That is just perfect.