Start With A Win - How to UNLEASH your POTENTIAL with Jeff Lerner - Part 2 of 2

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And welcome back to Start With A Win. It's Adam Kantos here. We have Jeff Lerner on the line. Jeff is an entrepreneur. He hit rock bottom during the Great Recession, 2008, 2009, things like that. $495,000 in debt, you debt, just not in a good place. And since then, he's pulled himself out. He's built some amazing businesses. He's trained over

Starting point is 00:00:34 250,000 entrepreneurs in his online training network, helping people realize how to achieve more and find success in their life, both personal, professionally, as well as financially. So Jeff, let's get into the second half of this. We've been talking a lot about minimum necessary, how a lot of us have kind of trained ourselves to do just what's necessary for survival. Entrepreneurship is not necessary for survival. According to our society, you know, it's go get a job, fill your 401k as much as you can before you hit, you know, the magic retirement

Starting point is 00:01:11 age and then try and scrape by living off of that, which really doesn't create a whole heck of a lot of income, as we all know, which is why we have so many entrepreneurs on this show. Jeff, I want to dig into going to maximum possible and achieving great things. You've coached hundreds of thousands of people through this. First of all, what does maximum possible mean to an entrepreneur? And how do we fit this A word accountability into that in order for us to start achieving these things? Maximum possible to me basically just means doing what you're put on this earth to do. And like, if people believe that, they'll do it. If they believe anything less than that, they won't.

Starting point is 00:01:59 And so I think to get to maximum possible, you really have to endure some soul searching and be like, what am I, why am I on this earth, man? Is survival where it's at? Cause you can survive with a lot less than maximum possible. Right. Why? So, you know, we've been obviously trained by society, go get a job, make a paycheck, start a minimum wage, and maybe get a few raises here and there and work your way up a little bit. Or go work for a government entity or something like that. And I've been a government worker myself. I was a police officer for quite some time.

Starting point is 00:02:32 As well as an entrepreneur, I started a couple of businesses while doing that and, frankly, doubled and tripled my income as an entrepreneur. But how do we break away from minimum necessary? What is that realization we need to have in order to become something greater financially and freedom-wise? So obviously, I try very hard to solve this question that you're asking because obviously my business, Entra, and really my brand, Unlock Your Potential, everything that I'm doing now is wired around, well, unlocking potential. And human potential is a maximum possible endeavor. It's not a minimum necessary. So I'm very interested in solving this, not just, you know, I can say for myself, it took some of what we talked about on the last episode I did with you about just realizing that I don't want to be dependent on these large structures. There's a certain amount of that that's intrinsic to just being a human and we all sort of rely on each other. But, you know, I just, so early on, I had this very clear association in my mind of autonomy with happiness and fulfillment. Like we are free or we are fulfilled to the extent that we are free to do what we were created to do. By the way, the word fulfillment, a lot of people assume it's like to fill full, right? To feel like I'm fully filled.

Starting point is 00:03:59 That's not what the word means. It comes from the old English word fulfill on, which is the old English word for prophecy or destiny. Fulfillment comes from doing what we were created to do, our destiny. And so that's part one. But I mean, in terms of the actual sort of psychological mechanisms that can reach people, because that did it for me, but I will say I have learned that a lot of people have abdicated to some degree their willingness to dream. And what I just said is a very much of like a dream mindset, a dreamer state of like, oh, I've got this dream of what I was created to do. I have found through trial and error, that doesn't actually work for a lot of people because we get hammered so hard at a young age to get our head

Starting point is 00:04:45 out of the clouds and put our feet on the ground that like speaking to the dream center in most people's brains doesn't actually change behavior. And so I've basically had to resort to math. I'm basically just a person that spews a lot of math now, right? Like, like, let's look at your retirement plan, by the way, let's look at your retirement plan. By the way, where does retirement even come from? Do you know that? I'm a mathematician and a historian, right? I can show you that historically, retirement isn't even a desirable goal. It's just a way that they get you to be okay doing stuff you don't like for most of your adult life. And by the way, it was invented by Otto von Bismarck in the Prussian empire in the mid 19th century to try to keep the French

Starting point is 00:05:30 revolution from spilling into Prussia. He's like, oh, well, let's get all these young people out of the streets by putting them into the workforce so they don't revolt. Well, how do we make room in the workforce? Let's tell all the old people that the government will take care of them and create space. That was a political maneuver. This whole concept of retirement, other civilizations, other cultures don't even know what the word means. There's no word for retirement in Japanese, right? Because why would you ever do something as your life's work that your whole goal would be to get to stop doing it? That sounds like a waste of a life, right? And so anyway, but like, so I'm a historian and I point to like these anomalous realities of the world we inhabit today and why things are the way they are.

Starting point is 00:06:08 And I'm a mathematician that says, even if you want to go along with the plan today, let's actually pencil out the math, right? Like, what's your retirement plan? And most people, I mean, literally the what's your retirement plan is basically how I motivate most people because I can either get them with the fundamental lunacy of the idea of retirement, because it means you spent your whole life doing something you weren't excited to keep doing, or the practical reality of the fact that even if they want retirement, because all they want to do is play golf for no money, they're not going to be able to do it. You talk about raises. The average raise is 2.8%. The government inflation figures right now are between, you know, four and 8%. The non-government figures that, you know, I really subscribe to are probably more like eight to 10%. So you're

Starting point is 00:06:56 basically, so even if you're getting a raise, you're getting 7% poorer every year. That's your retirement program. Like anyway, that's the answer. That's awesome. You know, it's, it's fascinating when I listen to you talk about this because people ask me, what do you do? And I say, I'm retired. And they're like, oh, that must be awesome. I go, yeah, I get to work whenever I want. And I mean, that's kind of the way I look at it. And work is fun for me. It's my purpose. I get to build businesses. We buy and build businesses and help other people grow their wealth and their businesses. You know, just like you do, we stimulate entrepreneurship and that's what we are. That's what we do. And that's our retirement because it's our purpose.

Starting point is 00:07:37 It's, it's fascinating. It's, you know, when, when you, um, you know, listening to you talk and a lot of your materials, it's interesting because when I hear the purpose behind what you're saying, it's go find something that means something to you and build upon that and monetize that in order to grow yourself financially. And you don't feel like you work a day in your life. It's crazy. I'm happy.

Starting point is 00:08:04 I get up and work out every day like you do. I'm, you know, I have a wonderful family feel like you work a day in your life. It's crazy. I'm happy. I get up and work out every day like you do. I have a wonderful family life like you do. It's fascinating to explore this, but people think that hustle and grind are the answers. And I don't understand that. How do we get into this thinking we have to hurt ourselves in order to be the best we can be? Whereas mountain climbers enjoy climbing a mountain, but a lot of people who aren't mountain climbers hate climbing a mountain. Same thing with marathon runners. Marathon runners love running a marathon, but non-marathon runners don't love running at all. How do we get to love what we're doing and create that as our purpose and our income? So, yeah, I mean, there's a, there's, it's a good philosophical question. There's a

Starting point is 00:08:53 concept. I referenced the Japanese view on retirement or, or lack thereof a viewpoint on retirement because they're like, I don't, I don't speak that word. But there's another Japanese concept called ikigai, which is a really wonderful concept. I-K-I-G-A-I, if anybody wants to Google it, there's a lot of pretty images of it that visualize it. But it's basically the convergence of four things. There's what am I good at? What do I enjoy?

Starting point is 00:09:23 What does the world actually need? And what can I get paid to do? Perfect. And where those four Venn circles overlap, the nexus of that is called your ikigai. And ikigai is basically the Japanese word for like a unique purpose. And I think you've just got to look at your life, that question through that lens and ask yourself that question. Right. And, and, you know, at Entra, this isn't a, I'm not here to sales pitch Entra, but at Entra, we have a process for helping people go through that because the, the answer is in there, the, the breadcrumbs, uh, or I have a friend Dov Braun that talks about the red thread that's woven through your life or the breadcrumb trail or, you know, the whatever.

Starting point is 00:10:08 I'm even wearing a shirt called Insight, right? This is one of our events where we show people how to have sight within, how to go within. The answer is in there. There is something in you that you like to do, that you're naturally wired to do, that actually has some need or positive demand in the world, and that there's a viable economic model associated with, right? And I think the problem isn't so much finding the answer. The problem is surrendering to the question. If most people will go through a path of introspection, they'll, they'll state that question. They'll stake that question as the singular objective of their life is to find the answer to that question because the life that they want is on the other side of answering that

Starting point is 00:10:58 question. So it doesn't mean it's the only thing that matters to them. It's the precursor for everything that matters to them, right? And if they'll live that life until, and this is why we have, I know we talked in our last episode about the three by three success matrix, the life operating system, and then ultimately that fourth P of purpose. You don't just decide to be clear on your purpose one day. There's a battle readiness because frankly, if you were clear on your purpose today, but you haven't been training for it, you don't have the cash in the bank or the muscles on your bones or the clarity of mind or the communication ability.

Starting point is 00:11:30 If I showed you your clear, your purpose crystal clear today, you might not be in shape to go after it. You might just go get your butt kicked. You might fail at your purpose because you're not in shape. to start living a certain way to create stability, to create predictability, to create compound growth and development in all the major areas of life, and then be constantly doing reflection, introspection, and I say creation. Typically, your purpose will emerge through the process of creation. And as you start creating, this is why I'm such a big fan of content creation, like social media, right? I do not enjoy consuming social media. I find the consumption of social media, other than, by the way, listening to our podcast.

Starting point is 00:12:11 That's a great endeavor. But scrolling the feed is so uninteresting to me. It's just like eating sweet tarts and milk duds, right? It's just making me sick, even though it's kind of feels good in the moment, but producing content for the feed creation, being a create a content creator, typically through the endeavor of consistent creation, you will start to find the seeds of your purpose. And as it becomes more clear, you get more excited about doing the training and the prep to be ready for, for that clarity. You start to, you start to get excited about a life that really, really matters. And again, we have a process for helping people do that.

Starting point is 00:12:49 But at the highest level, it's basically just start creating content, like turn on a camera and start talking into it and see what comes out. And once enough words have come out of your mouth, eventually there's this natural refinement that starts to happen where eventually what you're talking about is the thing that you're on this earth to talk about. I love that. You're really honing in on your target. What are the challenges that I've seen entrepreneurs go to? And I mentioned this on the last episode that we're going to dig deep into the A word, which is accountability. And this is what gets people into shape, gets people happy, creates wealth, you know, really helps you live longer for crying out loud.

Starting point is 00:13:33 But ultimately, a holistically fulfilled life comes from accountability. Talk to us about that as you know, let's put, you know, put your coach hat on here, coach Jeff and entrepreneur and leader. What does accountability mean to you? And what should we as entrepreneurs be taking away from that? So I really appreciate this question. And I have a little bit of a maybe non-traditional or even contentious viewpoint on accountability. I think a lot of people think of accountability as, first of all, they either think of accountability as like someone else,

Starting point is 00:14:11 you know, like a coach or a trainer or whatever, a mentor, and that can be great. But, you know, but the reason that works is because of what I'm about to say. It's not because there's something inherently better about someone else than yourself. It's because it requires no willpower to be held accountable by someone else. And so, you know, for me, accountability emerged in my life because I have, I mean, one of the reasons I'm such a disciplined person is because I understand the depravity of which I'm capable. I have been a fat fast food addict. I have been, uh, well, food, food is kind of my, my, my drug of choice. I'll say, I can't say I've, I've been a junkie in nine other ways, but like I've let something get out of control in

Starting point is 00:15:00 my life and, and become a real degenerate around it. And so I know what it looks like when I'm not accountable. And the whole time I was not being accountable, I thought that if I just had more willpower, I would be accountable. You don't need willpower. And the reason it works to have someone else be your accountability partner is because it doesn't require your own willpower to be someone else. It requires their willpower to some degree, right? So what I tried to do in my life, and this is why every new entrepreneur and entrant on day one, I introduced them to our entrepreneurial life operating system, is eventually your beliefs, your rewards. There's a lot of research on this. If you go read the

Starting point is 00:15:45 power of habit by Charles Dewey, belief systems and reward structures are actually what create accountability without willpower. And there's, and so the way that my big breakthrough for this, I'm going to give everybody like this is this hack changed my life. Go read the book. Um, influence by Robert Cialdini. It's one of the great epic works of business and marketing, right? And psychology. And as you're reading that book, don't be thinking, how can I use these six principles of persuasion on other people to get their money? And simultaneously, don't be doing what Cialdini wrote the book for, which is be thinking about these things as a defensive mechanism of like, this is what all those

Starting point is 00:16:28 predatory marketers are trying to do to me. So I'm going to put my guard up against this. No, no, no. Be thinking about how do I use these methods, these principles of persuasion on myself? And I'll give you an example, the commitment and consistency principle. I think it's the fifth one that Cialdini talks about. He talks about how if you can get somebody to put like a little sign in their front yard, that's like, you know, mothers against drunk driving, then two weeks later, they'll be more willing to put a bigger sign in their front yard, like a freaking banner that blocks the view of the house than they would if you had just asked them in the first place to put up the bigger sign, right? Commitment and consistency. We make smaller commitments. And then psychologically,

Starting point is 00:17:13 we want to appear consistent because that's wired into our survivability because we know that people want other consistent, reliable people in their tribe. And so we're wired to be consistent with the commitments we make. So start using this on yourself. If you want to quit smoking, go update your social media status with a picture of yourself, like hitting it and change your status to just smoke my last cigarette. Tell the world, right? And now we will do a lot more to avoid appearing as an inconsistent hypocrite than we will typically do to avoid satisfying our superego that we're working really hard and we feel good about it. So start using these principles of persuasion to do things in your life that create positive pressure to be the person that you're trying to become. And that's how you take the willpower out of accountability is you start using the psychological principles of persuasion on yourself the way marketers use them on you. I love that. And I look at this as, first of all,

Starting point is 00:18:18 go get the book. Dr. Robert Cialdini is a great guy. He's a Arizona State University social psychology professor. I've spent some time on the phone with him and hired him to come speak. Great, great mind. He actually has a sixth factor of influence now. So you have to get his book, Presuasion. Oh, yeah. That one. Oh, yeah. So both Jeff and I are huge, huge fans of these psychological principles.

Starting point is 00:18:52 Jeff, let's take this accountability and roll it into busy versus productive, because it seems that a lot of entrepreneurs fall into this busy space. You mentioned, you know, just thumb scrolling on social media, things like that. I'll ask a salesperson, hey, what have you been up to? I've been busy prospecting. You're like, where have you been prospecting? Well, on Facebook. Okay, did you post some ads or how did you prospect? Well, I was looking for customers.

Starting point is 00:19:10 No, you weren't. You were surfing Facebook is what you were doing. So take all of this commitment, consistency, accountability, and roll this into how do we become productive instead of just busy? Well, first of all, as long as it's LinkedIn, then it's prospecting. Okay. I know people like, how many professionals let themselves off the hook for their social media fixations by saying, whoa, it was LinkedIn. Right. You looking for a job or what? Yeah. So let's call that out, first of all. But no, I mean, this is why, again, I default to the matrix, the, the, the, the, not the matrix, like the movie, the three by three success matrix that the origin of my life operating system that we listened to in, in, or that we talked about in the previous episode. Yeah. The Morpheus, I caught that red pill, blue pill. But, um, no, I, because remember I said, accountability comes from, or discipline comes from your beliefs and your reward structures, right?

Starting point is 00:20:09 And so I basically use this philosophy to create rewards in my life. But fundamentally, I've installed a belief. powerfully in the law of compounding that I'm willing to live this very simple daily process, which is my morning routine, which I can explain what my morning routine is, but it doesn't really matter. The point is that- We'll get to that. Okay. We'll get to that in just a second. Okay. But you have to have an intentional morning routine. And then what I call my daily deposits,

Starting point is 00:20:42 physical, personal, and professional deposits. Every single day of my life, and I mean seven days a week, I want to be able to go to bed at night with something I can clearly point to that created value, that generated compounding return. Not just, oh, I checked the boxes off of my project management tool. I mean, like I created positive compoundable growth in my physical life, my personal life, my professional life every single day. I don't care how small it is, but if I do it every single day, relentlessly without fail, I know over the course of a life, I will benefit from the eighth wonder of the world. That is the law of compounding. So I have a morning routine.

Starting point is 00:21:22 I have my daily deposits, physical, personal, professional, and I have something I call taking my nap, which is what I do before I go to bed, which is nightly assessment and planning, where I look back at my day and I basically say, did I do my morning routine? Did I make my physical, personal, and professional deposits? And then I look ahead at the next day and say, okay, do I have everything set up so that tomorrow morning I can hit the ground running? Because right out of the gate, first thing in the morning, you're like, you know, it's the whole eat the frog principle. Like your day is determined by in the first five minutes. If you wake up in the morning and you're like, wait, what am I supposed to do today? And you suddenly you go into like, I need to make a bunch of decisions about what to do with my time, you've immediately made success

Starting point is 00:22:05 inaccessible. But if you wake up every day and you're like, oh, I know exactly what I'm doing. I have a predictable morning routine. I did my nightly assessment and planning last night. So I know what the day consists of and I've got it all prepped and I'm ready to go. Then you get right into production first thing. So all of this is designed to reduce as much as possible with the goal, with the ideal of elimination of the need to make decisions. Like when I show you my phone, this is my day. I don't know who's listening or who's looking. Yeah, I mean it's for our listeners. It starts at 4 a.m. and all the blue up there, that's my morning routine.

Starting point is 00:22:45 And it's scheduled. I actually am going to be on a plane tonight until almost 9 o'clock. But I don't have to ever decide what I'm going to do with my time because I already built what's called a schedule. By the way, the root word of the word schedule is the Latin schedula, which means a slip of paper. So take the hint, write it down. The word for schedule literally means paper. If it's not written down, it's not a schedule. It's a hope.

Starting point is 00:23:12 That's all right. I can keep going, but I'll pause. Jeff, this is awesome. I know we're closing in on time here. I have a question I ask all of our amazing guests. This is the past two episodes have been incredible unpacking how to become a great entrepreneur, a great leader, find a more fulfilling life. And you mentioned it before, but I have a question I ask every one of our guests and that's, how do you start your day with a win? What does that morning routine look like? Oh, wow. I really, I swear to the audience, we didn't plan this. But yeah, my morning routine is the linchpin of my life. So, I mean, and I'll read it off to you. I get up at 4 a.m., says from 4 to 4.30,

Starting point is 00:23:52 prayers and gratitude. I start the day remembering that whatever, you know, I'm blessed to have found my purpose, but I'm not the one that created it. And I give, and most of that is actually gratitude. I think about the people I'm grateful for and ask for, you know, blessings over them. Then I have audio book slash podcast listening. So I actually start the day with one of these. I'm either listening to a podcast or listening to an audio book. And a lot of time I'm taking notes while I do that. And I kind of do that. That's from four 30 to five. I do that while I'm like getting my, you know, I have my baggie of vitamins and supplements that I take for the day and I'm organizing this and I'm mixing up my, I'm filling up my gallon jug of alkaline water. Like I have little sort of health and nutrition rituals that I'm listening to stuff, I practice piano. I still play piano for an hour a day. And then from six to 730, it says mobility, but really it's like going to the gym. It's basically lift at the end of the day. But that morning gym time is all about pliability and movement. And then I take, I have take Jada to school. I take my daughter to school.

Starting point is 00:25:14 And by then it's eight o'clock and I'm ready to get to work. And I do, I live that religiously. I'll bet you, I mean, sometimes it gets disrupted because of travel, like a red eye or something that just makes it impossible. But other than my recent two weeks off, because I got stem cells and I was under doctor's orders, I have not deviated from that morning routine more than occasionally, maybe one day in six years. Awesome. Awesome. Amazing. Jeff Lerner, unlock your potential. Everybody go check out Jeff Lerner's book. You can find Jeff at jefflernerofficial.com. Jeff, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on Start With A Win.

Starting point is 00:25:52 And thanks for all you do. Thanks, Adam. Thanks for joining us on Start With A Win. Be sure to like and subscribe to this episode and share it with your friends. Also, be sure to check out Adam on YouTube at Adam Canto CEO, as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, start with a win.

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Start With A Win - How to UNLEASH your POTENTIAL with Jeff Lerner - Part 2 of 2

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