The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlock Your Potential: The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World by Jeff Lerner

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Unlock Your Potential: The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World by Jeff Lerner https://amzn.to/3IQQ7ki We all know the world has changed dramatically in the 21st century. The opportunities that defined past generations and steered their course through life (aka "The American Dream") just aren't out there for us anymore. Today, 54% of college graduates regret choosing to invest in a degree, over 70% of Americans detest their jobs (part of why they change jobs every 20 months on average), and 2 out of 3 of Americans will never be able to stop working and retire. But what are we supposed to do? Is there an alternative to the "system of systems" we live in: school, college (debt), job, different job, more different jobs, 401K/pension, retire (hopefully but probably not)? And if there is an alternative can it really work for everyone regardless of where they currently are in the system? Is there something else out there that works equally well for the 18-year-old deciding whether or not to go to college, the 45-year-old questioning his/her career path, the 65-year-old who is way short of being able to retire, and anyone else feeling dazed and confused in the modern world? In Unlock Your Potential, author and entrepreneur Jeff Lerner answers those questions with a resounding YES! He shows readers how the failings of our education, employment, and retirement systems have opened doors most people didn't even know exist. And, most important, he'll show YOU how to step through those doors—where they exist, how they work, what it takes to go through them, and what's on the other side. Jeff is the founder and Chief Vision Officer of ENTRE Institute, the world’s fastest growing education company and the first institute of higher learning dedicated to entrepreneurialism. Now, he is sharing his story and lessons learned from his own rags-to-riches journey from a broke musician to a $100 million entrepreneur. In this book, you'll discover “digital real estate—an asset that generates income, builds wealth, and supports any life you choose to live—along with strategies any employee, business owner, retiree, child, etc. can use to escape the broken system and create their dream life in the modern world. Let Unlock Your Potential serve as the blueprint: a master key to unlocking your full potential and living a life no one told you was possible. Herein lies the key for anyone, anywhere in the world to escape the broken system and create a quality of life that was unimaginable a generation ago.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys. Without you guys, we'd be nothing. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys.

Without you guys, we'd be nothing. You guys are the greatest, smartest, most intelligent audience ever formed and known to man. I believe we're trying to get that in the Guinness Book of Records, or at least we're trying to get you to believe it. So there's that. We have some amazing upcoming guests on the show, and I've been really just pleased with some of the bookings that we have. I believe we have another billionaire that we've scheduled on the show,

I think coming in in June or July. And we also have the captains of one of the ships who is during COVID. He stood up to the U.S. government who was trying to force him to deal with his ships. We're going to have Captain Brent Crozier, U.S. Navy captain. If you remember, he called out for help on the USS Roosevelt and was having problems with COVID decimating his men. And when he did so, the U.S. government was not happy with him. uh they took down his leadership and removed him from the ship but when he did he walked off the ship to a standing ovation to all of his uh soldiers and uh so it was quite a remarkable moment if you remember during covid but we'll have him on the show uh fairly up soon which would be kind of interesting uh to have that interview so be sure

to stay tuned refer to the show your family friends and relatives if you haven't done that you need to do that. Just reach out to a friend and say, I love you so much and I'd love to make you more intelligent, sexier, and brighter

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What can you do? That's all you can do. We have an amazing gentleman on the show, a brilliant mind, and he's going to be sharing with us everything he's learned that's going to make everyone smarter, including me, because that's why we have guests on the shows, because I'm trying to be smarter. It's not working because, you know,

I sucked a lot of lead paint chips when I was a kid, and I did flunk second grade. So there's that as well. He is the author of the amazing book that came out August 2nd, 2022, Unlock Your Potential, The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World. Jeff Lerner joins us on the show today, and he has an amazing mind. He has brought to the show. He has written me a written guarantee that he has the most amazing delivery he's going to give you today. So if you're not tuning in and listening to the full show, you're going to lose out. So don't lose out. See what I'm doing?

I'm playing my audience as much as I can. was a professional piano player with an injured wrist facing eviction and divorce, struggling with depression and $495,000 in debt. In the 10 years that followed, he founded three eight-figure businesses and lost 50 pounds and got remarried. A turnaround he credits to a unique approach to entrepreneurship, entre being in capital letters uh those of you not watching the video and he called it the three p's in 2019 he founded entre e n t r e which enrolled over 200 000 students in three years and in 2022 was named to the forbes business council he currently splits his time between entre podcasting and publishing free training online. He's also married a father of children to four and never misses a workout and still plays the piano every day. Welcome to the show, Jeff. How are you? I'm so good now. Grateful to

be here and excited to get to connect with you and your guests. And we're excited to have you as well. Hey, yes, audience. We love them one way or another, however they come. I'm the guest, actually. You are the guest. The audience is a guest. Everyone's guest here except for me. Well, you know, I don't know. They could throw me off the show at any time.

You know, my bosses sometimes aren't happy with me, which is me. So give us a.com. Where can people find you on the interweb, sir? JeffLearnerOfficial.com and as you're typing the word official i hope that you will be fuming over those unnecessary characters and excessive finger movements and you will support me in trying to get the owner of jefflearner.com to sell me his domain because he's not doing anything with it there you go i had the same story i had the same problem my domain i just got taken

when domains first whatever and then the guy died and it just got loose and now some snl guy has it uh so thanks for coming on the show uh but talk to us a little bit about your origin story we we kind of uh skimmed over there on the bio but it sounds like you had quite the journey and you played piano for me earlier which was really beautiful beautiful. Well, yeah, thank you. So I'll give you the quick version and then we can, we can double click on any pieces that you, you find worthy. Um, I'll start by saying, uh, I'm going to try to pick like the most relevant highlights that inform the whole story. Right. So I was an only child. Uh, I was born with a genetic disorder. And I think that's really important to my story because I have kind of this like underdog me versus the

world feeling because I grew up getting bullied and teased and feeling like, well, me versus the world. Right. And and then I ended up dropping out of high school. I got kicked out of high school my sophomore year. And what was supposed to be my junior year never really got traction. So you could debate whether I dropped out my junior year or sophomore year. But anyway, it all came to an ignominious ending. And when I told my parents that, you know, look, I basically view schooling as this long form vocational training like i'm clearly just being groomed to have a job someday and you know presumably along the way they want me to borrow a bunch of money and get a college degree so i can get a slightly better

job so that i can pay back all the debt that i used to get the slightly better job with the college degree so like i'm out i don't want to do any of this anymore. And that should come as a relief because now you don't have to deal with- Now you don't have to pay for college. Well, and you don't have to deal with little Jeffrey coming home in trouble every day. And yeah, I was just not, I didn't work well with the school system. I do not institutionalize very well. And so I literally dropped out and I said, but I also don't expect you to pay for me for the

rest of my life. So given that I'm 16, I was 16 when I dropped out and I said, you were already going to, you know, presumably support me until I finished high school at 18. So I've got two years when I was already on your, on your dole. So if you'll buy me a piano, I promise I'll practice really hard and try to get some gigs. And hopefully by the time I would be graduating from high school, I can start supporting myself as a musician because I can actually see myself enjoying that and making a life out of doing that. And they went for it, but they didn't really have a choice. I kind of forced their hands because they got a, at the time I was making them that proposal, I was also, had been written up by the Houston Independent School District truancy officer for excessive absences.

And they basically had said, if Jeff comes back to school, we're going to give him a ticket. And if he keeps missing, he could be fined or cited or whatever. And my parents were like, okay, we we give just jeff just do your thing but they said uh you know there's a very good like statistically it is probable based on this this life choice that you're going to be flipping burgers at mcdonald's in 10 years and uh you know if you want to make your bed just be prepared to sleep in it and i said i think they said that to billy joel didn't they yeah yeah they? Yeah, yeah. He was like a handyman, did odd construction jobs. And yeah, I did not.

I will say, I obviously, I probably don't have to say this. I did not end up having the same success that he did as a piano man. Hi, Voxers. Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com.

Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff, with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO. And be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. But I did end up having a really nice career. Even as a high school dropout, I practiced really hard.

This was my first experience of like, you know, what people there's so much I learned, like what people tell you is realistic or reasonable or even possible says everything about them and nothing about you. Because I had everybody from friends, family, even the piano faculty at the local university saying like dude you're 17 years old you're not going to teach yourself piano and become a professional piano player like you're too late and you met you missed the window uh and i spent 10 12 hours a day for three years straight getting good enough to start getting gigs and have the basis of a career and ultimately get accepted into university on a piano performance. Well, it was a music composition with an emphasis in jazz piano performance

and ultimately full scholarship. Wow. So I ended up with no high school degree. And so I learned all this stuff. I learned like, first of all, if I just outwork anybody's expectation of me, I can do things they don't think I can do. Secondly, if I get good enough at in-demand skills, they will waive requirements. They'll waive the, they'll change the rules. Like for example, that rule that says like, yeah, you're really supposed to finish high school before you go to college. They just, they just forgot about that because I got good enough at the piano that, that they had a spot. They needed a pianist in the jazz orchestra. And suddenly it didn't matter that I hadn't finished high school.

And like, so anyway, I just, I kind of had this early reinforcement that like the rules don't matter as much as people say, people that say the rules matter or only saying that because they played by the rules and they, they really need other people too. So they don't question their own life choices. Anyway, so fast forward, I had a really nice 10-year career as a professional piano player, played a lot of really wonderful gigs, played for a lot of probably some of the types of people you have on this show. I mean, I played piano for billionaires. I played private parties at elite high-end mansions. I played corporate engagements for Fortune 500 Christmas parties. And I played for society galas and fundraisers.

And I was like in the society scene. So basically, so picture the contrast. I'm like the little piano player wearing a tux in the corner who makes, you know, who barely subsists on $37,000 a year and plus tips or whatever. But I'm hobnobbing with like billionaires and uh what i had in common with them was freedom right i'm a jazz musician they're a billionaire we can both do kind of what we want when we want the difference is they just like the things they have available to them are much nicer and more expensive and they know where their rent's getting paid at the end of the month or you know that kind of thing but uh i i drew this connection to a life of creativity a life of

of i don't want to say freedom none of us are truly free we all have like responsibilities if nothing else to find food and water every day but like uh i i sort of saw this i saw and what they had in common all these people i was playing for other than the the occasional like athlete or celebrity was they were entrepreneurs they started companies and in the real in the modern world the only people that have enough money to basically live the life that everybody thought about, everybody dreamed about as a child are basically entrepreneurs. I don't want to oversimplify that too much. I mean, yes, if you're a upper level management at a fortune 500 company, or you maybe you work at a big bank or you're just killing it in the mortgage business during a boom

in the South of Florida, or like there are exceptions to that. But generally, entrepreneurs are the ones that have the lives that we all dreamed of as kids. And I decided to go hard into that. So I began a phase of my life all through my 20s. I was playing piano at night. I was going to school in the mornings, playing piano at night. And in between, I was trying to start businesses. And I stumbled and failed at about a dozen of them. It was technically 11, give or take a few, kind of half-hearted this or that. And then by my late 20s, I ended up in a mountain of debt. You read off the figure, $495,000. $495,000. I mean, you should have thrown another $5,000 in the debt so you could make a half a million mark. You might as well go for it, right?

I know, right? But it's funny, too, because I get this hate online. People love to poke holes in stories and pretend everybody's a scammer or an imposter. And people will be like, there's no way you could have gotten $495,000 in debt if you were only making $40,000 a year. Well, that actually should be true for the record. They should not extend this much credit to people that make that little money. But this was 2006. This was the crazy run up to the great recession. Yeah. And I was able to get an SBA loan to open a couple of franchise quick serve restaurants that I thought were, you know, my next entrepreneurial big, big gamble. And, uh, I opened two restaurants right into the headwinds

of the emerging great recession. And a year later I was out of business and I owed half a million dollars to banks, landlords, tax authorities, unemployment commissions, you know, a variety of vendors and debtor or creditors. And so, uh, I went online, you know, I was so, so picture that I'm 20, let's see, 2008, I'm 29 years old. I'm $495,000 in debt. I've actually developed arthritis in my, in my right wrist. Um, because, because I started so late, I started at 17 and I practiced 12 hours a day. I gave myself arthritis. I didn't grow up biomechanically doing the movement of playing piano that much.

So I couldn't, I mean, not that I could have gone back to playing piano to pay off half a million dollars in debt. That wouldn't have worked anyways. But I was kind of at this place where I got evicted from my apartment. I had to move in with my estranged wife's parents. We were separated, but they felt sorry for me. And I'm kind of like, what am I going move in with my estranged wife's parents uh we were separated but they felt sorry for me and kind of like what am i going to do with my life and i went online hold on you're you're strange wife parents that's a that's a challenge i'm sure yeah that's that's what you

call that's what you call rock bottom right there yeah yeah um living in the spare bedroom of your of your your soon-to-be ex-wife's parents house who's now living in her childhood bedroom trying not to pass you in the hallways and even though you share a bathroom you're not allowed in it at the same time like it was it was real weird um but anyway i uh i i basically went online and i did what i probably a lot of people did the last few years through the pandemic too is like how do you make money online? Like alternative ways to generate income or whatever the Google search was. And at the time I found, specifically I found something called affiliate marketing,

but more broadly, I found the world of digital entrepreneurship and the world of digital value creation, which whether it's promoting affiliate products, whether it's providing digital location neutral services, whether it's selling products through e-commerce, whether it's, you know, what it later evolved into, which is publishing and content creation and influencer type stuff like that whole world, call it modern entrepreneurship. I discovered in 2008 and, uh, I was apparently I'm pretty good sitting at a keyboard. Doesn't, you know, computer keyboard or piano keyboard.

I was able to pay off that $495,000 in debt in 18 months with affiliate marketing. I moved out of my now divorce, now ex-wife's parents' house, uh, moved to New York city. Well, let's see. I moved to Montana, spent six months skiing. Now that I was debt-free life, you know, I just enjoyed myself. Then I moved to New York. Then I met my current, uh, well at the time, girlfriend lived in Utah, moved here, got married, raising a family. And I've just been doing digital entrepreneurship ever since. So I did, I did affiliate marketing for about five years.

I had a digital agency for about five years that I sold. And then in 2008, and I had a couple of e-com stores and did some other stuff. And so I guess to bring this all to a head, in 2018, I took stock of my life. I was now 39 years old. I had just sold my agency, multiple seven-figure exit. So I was comfortable. I wasn't like a billionaire, but I was comfortably retired at 39. And I looked at the journey that I had been on over the last 10 years, where 10 years prior to that, I had been, you know, as I described at my rock bottom.

And I thought, okay, if a high school dropout jazz musician turned online marketer, turned entrepreneur can have this kind of transformation in 10 years. And yet most of the people around me, I live in like an upper middle class neighborhood. And I remember standing in my front yard, looking at all the other houses. It was like a Tuesday morning or something. And none of the other dads were home. They're all at work. They're all, they're the ones that went to college borrowed student debt you know climb the corporate ladder doing what you're supposed to do they're all living the american dream and none of them are home to enjoy it meanwhile the the bum musician is retired at 39

playing with his kids and i was like okay maybe i should teach the world like go tell the world about plan b and uh and i, I started putting out videos about how I did what I did and these new modern entrepreneurial skills and digital marketing and sales funnels and this alternative economy to call it the meta economy rather than the in real life economy. And, uh, I, the videos got traction. People started sharing them. And within about nine months, my videos had been viewed 2 million times. And so I called up a friend of mine, another digital entrepreneur. And I said, dude, I like, I think I'm onto something. People are really interested in like it's time, right? This isn't like a fringe thing anymore. I think it's ready to

break into the mainstream, this idea of becoming like a digital entrepreneur. And so we put a course together and I started selling it on Facebook ads. And that was summer of 2019. And now we're up around 300,000 students have enrolled in that or some other version of that course. And we've got one of the biggest education platforms in the world called Entra Institute. We teach entrepreneurship for the modern economy. We help working adults reorient their lives toward a career that's more fulfilling. There you go. Well, that's pretty awesome, man. I mean, that's quite a comeback story.

I mean, that's the beautiful part about being an entrepreneur. I mean, we tend to fail a lot early on. I didn't get along well with school. I recognized very early on it was a game that was being played with me. I think I was, I wrote about this in my book. I realized that, what was it? I was in high school and I needed to take 54 credits to graduate. They had me set up to where if i passed all the stupid classes

i was going to need 54 credits but i only needed 26 to graduate so i did the math and i'm like why am i working so hard to to uh you know complete all this crap i was a dumb student uh and my parents weren't rich i wasn't going to harvard or Yale or anything. I knew that my grades were awful and I wasn't getting accepted to anything. In fact, my parents were really realistic. They're like, we're poor. You're going to have to get a Pell Grant to go to college. And that's how you're going to college. And it's like, I'm not going to some Ivy League thing.

And so I just figured out early on the game of the people, like you mentioned earlier, the people who sell college are the people who are like, well, I did it. So you have to do it. It wasn't that, it wasn't that great. It wasn't that productive for me. Uh, in fact, back, you know, back then it wasn't a lot of debt that you went in. Like it is now it's crazy now. And, uh, uh, and so I just figured out the game early on that was being played with me.

And I'm like, you know, I don't think i want to play this game and i started this uh i started thinking on the box that really assuming what i was doing so um in your book uh let's plug the book and and get talking about that um what what's some of the stuff people are going to find in unlock your potential the ultimate guide for creating your dream life in the modern world yeah so gosh it's been, it's been a little bit, you know, when you launch a book, so much goes into promoting and launching the book, and then the dust settles, and you go back to your life, and every now and then you get asked to talk about the book. So, you know, I'm sort of like remembering my talking points,

but, you know, it's basically three books in one. It is, obviously, there's my story is kind of woven through it, you know, kind of little engine that could rags to riches, whatever you want to call it, right? Like proof that this stuff actually works applied in the context of a human life. Um, it's also kind of like an actual how to guide on how to navigate the modern economy and how to find the best opportunities. You know, one of the things that I'm really insistent on is that there's no prescription, there's no one size fits all prescription for success. You know, one of my friends always

says a prescription without a diagnosis is called malpractice. And so I think, you know, you have to really get to know someone before you can prescribe the right program for them. And we do that, like, for example, at Entre, we have an algorithmic assessment called Success DNA, where we actually, it's kind of like a personality slash professional skills test, where based on that, we say, hey, here's an opportunity that we think could be a good fit for you and the path to get there. But in the book, I sort of do a, like a comprehensive survey of how to attack different types of opportunities and how to know which one is maybe the right fit for you.

And then the third book within the book is like a full-on doomsday economic treatise, right? And what's cool, I mean, I get, I will admit, I get a little bit of a, I don't know, pride out of this, that I published it in 2020. And I was talking about inflation. I was talking about dilution, you know, currency inflation. I was talking about interest rates. I was talking about macroeconomic cycles. I was basically saying the American dream is dead man walking and it's just waiting for a gust of wind to blow it over and then literally uh i mean i i wrote i guess i published it during the pandemic but obviously the timeline of writing a book i wrote it before yeah so all the stuff that the pandemic exposed about the world i basically called in my book oh wow and so, I mean, I was talking about how AI and, you know, mechanization was going to replace all these jobs. And I actually go through and I have the list from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of all the industry categories that are going to be gone by 2030. And again, this was before ChatGPT made this a top of mind conversation for everyone. Oh, yeah.

And so it's actually really cool to look back at the book and be like, oh, got like called it, called it, called it, called it, called it. And already gave people the prescription on what to do about it and how to future proof themselves and improve, dramatically improve their quality of life at the same time. And, you know, and then wrapping again, it all around my story where I spent, you know, I spent 10 years, call it really 20 years. Cause I had before I had my 10 years, which is now 15 as a successful entrepreneur, I had 13 years as a failed entrepreneur. Like I started my first business, right. When I dropped out of high

school at 16 and from 16 to 29, I failed over and over and over. So I have this long narrative that kind of proves out the thesis of the book and what's possible for the average person. There you go. There you go. We have a question coming in from the audience. The entrepreneurial journey can be very difficult. It requires an extreme work ethic. How do you balance work uh life work harmony i know matthew's an entrepreneur as well for accounting i believe well i love so it's interesting the way he asked the question hey and hey matthew thanks for tuning in appreciate the question you used my favorite word in the context of your question and my least favorite word in the

context of your question in the same question. My least favorite word is that word balance, work-life balance. And the reason I don't like work-life balance is the word balance, you picture a scale, right? And that means if I have more work on the scale, then I have less life on the scale or more life on the scale, less work on the scale. And it's a zero sum either or. I like that. But then you also use the word harmony, which that's the word I love. Work life in harmony. I mean, a couple of musicians here, I can play two notes at the same time and let them both ring as long as the soundboard will keep quivering. And I don't have to remove one to add more of the other.

And if I pick the right two notes, or if I organize them the right way within the structure of the piece, they actually sound better together than either one would by themselves. And so I- I love that analogy. Yeah, that's how I think of work in life is harmony.

And especially as entrepreneurs, and I realize I'm giving sort of a philosophical answer, right? Like operationalizing it is the hard part, but really to decide, hey, I'm not going to, like, I'm not going to buy into this false binary discussion about trying to balance work and life. I'm going to say, screw it. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm all in. My life probably isn't going to look like what so-and-so saw 2.2 kids on TV watching the Nick at Night reruns, typical American family household. My life's just going to be different. I might be working all the time, but the difference is i have the flexibility like i i use my i'll use myself as an example i go on i probably go i'm probably traveling a hundred days a year wow and i almost always have at least my wife probably one of my kids a lot of times two of my kids and sometimes three of

my kids my fourth kid doesn't really like to travel that much or he'd be there too. But like, but I'm also, it's not like I take the days off. I mean, it's my own company, but it's not like I message HR and like, Hey, I'm out of the office these hundred days a year. I just take my laptop and I'm kind of, and I'm on my phone and I'm on Slack on my phone or I'll set up in a coffee shop or, I mean, I've worked, I work at the beach. I worked, you know, we go to Vegas a lot because I live pretty close to Vegas and we'll go stay at, you know, the Wynn for like three or four days, which is right across the street from Fashion Show Mall.

And I'll take my laptop in my backpack to Fashion Show Mall while my wife and kids go shop. And I just work at the E-Bar at Nordstrom. And like, I'm in harmony. I'm not in balance. I'm in harmony. while my wife and kids go shop and I just work at the E-bar at Nordstrom and like, I'm, I'm in harmony. I'm not in balance.

I'm in harmony. There you go. I, is fashion. So mall still open. Oh, it's great, man.

I spent my teens here and 20 years and I come back and forth between Vegas and Utah. Um, and I'm up here right now, but I didn't know if I thought they closed it. I don't know. I don't know. I can't keep up with what's going on.

They probably did during the pandemic, but it's no, it's, it's thriving now. Yeah. Oh, there you go. That's the one in Murray, right? No, no, no. Fashion show. Oh no. You're talking about, oh, what is that place called?

But that one's open to town square or no town squares in Vegas. Yeah. Fashion place. I get them all confused too. Yeah. I don't know. Fashion show malls on the strip across from the wind oh oh you're okay you're talking about las vegas okay i'm getting my utah and my thing it's funny you you mentioned some utah stuff and i was like i was like there it is um uh so it looks like matthew agrees with this you nailed

it i am truly trying to focus on harmony and stop the work-life balance i love that uh that's brilliant i think there's more there's more to that though uh one of my favorite words that i've i have these kind of like anchor words in my life and one of them is is the word enrollment like even as even in sales i much prefer the term enrollment right like getting people to voluntarily choose into something not not like strong arm, you know, make them do what I want them to do. And so, you know, within what I just said in answer to Matthew's question is like, I mean, assuming you have a family, like family is the big X factor.

If you're by yourself, you do whatever you want and who cares, right? But how to enroll your family into this idea of a life where maybe mom or dad is always kind of on, like work doesn't clock out and clock in in the way that maybe a lot of people have historically grown up with or think of the way work is supposed to work. That's one of my least favorite words, it's supposed to. But to enroll family into this way of being in the world, because that's the reality of entrepreneurship, right? It's not a clock in clock out thing. There's got to be perks. There's got to be upside. There's got to be this shared vision of a life that you're creating together as a group that is powered by the fuel cell of your entrepreneurial work-life harmony.

But it's got to deliver for them too, or else it's not really harmony. There you go. There you go. So what do you see for the future of you and your company? What do you have your eye on going on in the future? Any thoughts on AI? I mean, you mentioned ChatGPT as well. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I have multiple businesses now. Entra is probably the one I'm most visible

with and the most passionate about from the standpoint of like, it's my mission business. It's how I'm going to try to change the world. There are hundreds of millions of kids or at least probably tens of millions of kids out there just like me, not a fit for traditional school. Don't see the path. Don't see the point. And ultimately, I want ENTRE to expand. Right now, it's it's for working adults because they're the ones that are craving the life change and have the money to pay for some new tutelage. But ultimately, I want us in schools. I actually want us as an alternative to the school system. And we are, we do have pilots going now. We're in our second year of pilots with a school district in Southern California and a school district in upstate New

York, which purely by coincidence, we were able to get into those programs because we actually had teachers from, or one was a school administrator and one was a teacher from those school districts that went through our program and saw that what we were really trying to do was change how people think about work, not just get people to drop out of school and start a business or, or, or, you know, so once they realize like, we're not a threat, we're actually just a reform movement, they actually worked with us to get us into their schools. And so we have pilot programs going there. We just actually launched a program with a chain of charter schools in Minnesota.

So we're starting to make some inroads there. And then I have a number of other businesses that I'm involved in now. And it's funny. I'll just in now. And, you know, this, it's funny when I, I'll just say this, when I stopped trying to be successful in the way that most people define it, which is like, what can I do to make a lot of money and, you know, make myself look good and build a big audience or customer base or whatever. And I simply pivoted into like, what am I actually passionate about? And what, what is the thing that I think

I could have the most positive impact on in the world, which was this education conversation. I'm actually far more successful financially and otherwise than I was before. It's kind of funny. You know, Viktor Frankl in the man's search for meaning Viktoror frankl said which is a fantastic book everybody should read he says um us was a success like happiness must cannot be pursued it must ensue and it ensues once you essentially once i don't remember the exact quote but essentially it ensues once you find the meaning i mean it's the book is man's search for meaning once you find the meaning of your life happiness and success success will ensue. But if you're pursuing happiness and success, you'll never find them. In fact, they will disappear precisely because you were looking for them. And I will just say, uh, amen, man. Like I have sold, I have

more businesses. Now I have more opportunities. Now I have more things like, you know, being on shows and meeting people and people interested in what I'm doing now than I have more opportunities now. I have more things like being on shows and meeting people and people interested in what I'm doing now than I ever did when I was trying to be a successful entrepreneur. And as far as AI, it's actually interesting you bring it up. I just got involved in a partnership with basically a private equity group that's backing AI ventures. And so to start to draw attention and opportunities into that, I'm about to start, I'm going through a crash course right now and learning everything there is about how AI is going to transform business. And my goal is to empower business owners,

including myself, to optimize their businesses with AI. What I would say is so far, my general takeaway about AI is that everybody, it's popular now to say, oh, you're going to lose your job to AI. AI is going to take all the jobs. AI is not going to take the jobs. Someone who's good at AI, someone who knows how to use AI to do the job better than you is going to take the job from you. It's still going to be a person. It's going to be an AI-informed person. So I want to go out and help inform the world about AI and ultimately attract investment opportunities for this PEDL. There you go.

We're working on an AI bot for Chris Voss where I can come on the podcast and be like, welcome to the show. How's it going, eh? But the beautiful thing I have is charisma and funniness and stupidity. Welcome to the show. How's it going? Hey, um, but, uh, you know, the beautiful thing I have is charisma and funniness and stupidity. And, uh, I was going to say, I don't think that's going to,

I don't think it's hard to replace making people laugh. Yeah. That's not going to pass the Turing test. That's all I'm going to have. That's all I'm holding on to. That's my last log, but thankfully I'm old. So,

uh, you know, when the Terminator, uh, turns on us and all that shit uh you know i'll be fine i'll just be like yeah it was a nice run we had a good run in it but no it's exciting to see what the future that's going to bring and it's definitely revolutionary i think it's going to be this is going to be huge i mean some of the things i see

are just amazing so uh give us your final thoughts as we go out on the show, Jeff, anything you want to share or plug as we go out? Yeah, I will share some of my most deeply held beliefs, and I'll use ENTRE as an example. So at ENTRE, people come to ENTRE and maybe some of your listeners will come to ENTRE. Thanks. Great. We'd love to have you. There's the plug, but I'll tell you what you'll find. What you won't find is a school that teaches you a bunch of business stuff because there's plenty of those. And admittedly, some of the business stuff we teach is probably a little more relevant than what a lot of others do, but what you'll really find at its core and what I'm most passionate about, what I think sets not just entre apart, but my work in the world is what I call a life operating system.

The thing I want to really encourage people on is, there's a number of different ways to say it, right? How you do one thing is how you do everything. Or the key to happiness and fulfillment is to figure out why you were created on this earth. What are you really meant to do? Look back at your personal narrative and find the through line that orients you toward why you're here that's unique and different

and explains why you have fingerprints and you're not just like everybody else. And then integrate your entire life toward that end. Figure out why you're here, what you're supposed to do, and then integrate all the different aspects of your life. Ultimately, create a systemized way to live. One of the reasons my bio references the fact that I never miss a workout, I play the piano every day, I spend time with my kids, I do this, I do that, is because I've created an operating system for my life that I basically make no decisions

on a daily basis. I always know what I'm supposed to do next. I pretty much always know. I mean, that's not true. I mean, you run a business, you make decisions, but I've limited it to only emergent decisions that require immediate response, like what to wear, where to go, what to do, what meeting to be on, what appointment to take,

when to get up, whether to work out or not, what to eat, like all that stuff is automated. And I want to just encourage people that, you know, discipline equals freedom. Like Jocko says, discipline equals freedom. I love that. Oh my, oh my gosh. Yeah. And that if you will, you know, and we don't have time to fully unpack this, but most people are capable of, I conservatively say about two and a half times whatever they're currently doing is at minimum what they're capable of if they would just sufficiently systematize their life. There you go. Discipline is such a key word, dude. Yeah. We teach you how to do that at Entra. More than courses, we actually teach you how to install an operating system in your life so that you're even cut out to go be successful as an entrepreneur. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been insightful to have you on the show, Jeff. We talked about a lot of wonderful things and stuff. Give us your.com so people can find you on the

interwebs, please. Again, jefflearnerofficial.com and that's also my handle at every platform but twitter it's too many characters for twitter um twitter i'm the jeff learner but everywhere else instagram youtube linkedin facebook you name it um tiktok jeff learner official there you go thank you jeff for coming on the show we really appreciate your insights thank you man it's been a lot of fun. There you go. And check out the book. You can order wherever fine books are sold. Unlock Your Potential,

The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World. Because who wouldn't want that? No one wants to create their nightmare life. Although I think some people have issues and subconsciously want that. But maybe that's your dream life, is to live a nightmare.

I don't know. You can work that out with your psychiatrist. I talked to mine and he says I need a lobotomy. Anyway, guys, thank you very much for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys. Be sure to refer this show to your family, friends, and relatives because you need to have five people in your downline. We're not an MLM, but we're just kind of like a cult, the Chris Voss Show.

But there's like no suicides or death and they're just living your best life. The best life living cult. Is there such a thing? I don't know, but we just made we just made one anyway guys we love you very much thanks for tuning in go to youtube.com fortress chris fos goodreads.com fortress chris fos uh linkedin the big linkedin newsletter the big linkedin group and go see us on tiktok please for the love of god follow us over there we're trying to be cool but i'm old and it's not working because you got to be young to be on there and we're trying thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time and that should have a sound