The School of Greatness - 413 10X Your Business with Marketing Master Jay Abraham

Episode Date: November 30, 2016

"When you only eat what you earn, you find out what works and what doesn't." - Jay Abraham If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/413

This is episode number 413 with Jay Abraham. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to this episode of the School of Greatness podcast with Jay Abraham.

Now for those that don't know who he is, he spent his entire career solving problems and fixing businesses. He's considered one of the world's foremost thinkers in the area of revenue model generation, business model generation, strategic restructuring and marketing. Jay has significantly increased the bottom lines of over 10,000 clients. He's worked with some of the most well-known companies in the world, as well as individual brands. A lot of my friends that I know have worked with him. He's been featured in USA Today, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and many, many other publications. I wanted to break down and get inside of Jay's mind. which is a lot of money for entrepreneurs and brands to work with him on all these different areas of their business,

to really exponentially grow their business in ways they never even thought were possible. So I said, how can I tap into his mind? What can I learn to get out of this over the next hour to really give you the best insight to help you grow your business? So what we talk about are why certain entrepreneurs are limited by a cap that they can't break through. Also, the exact phrases to tell clients to make them want to give you referrals. A simple four-part process for harnessing the greatness within you, the four kinds of clients and what to do with them.

Also, the question to ask yourself to know if your goals are big enough. Guys, we dive in. So make sure to take notes. Share this with your friends. LewisHowes.com slash 413 to check out all the show notes, to watch the full video interview. Again, make sure to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and on YouTube. If you haven't subscribed yet, this is a good one. And we've got some big episodes coming up.

Without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only, Jay Abraham. Welcome, everyone, back to the School of Greatness podcast. Super excited about our guest, Jay Abraham, in the house. Good to see you, sir. Oh, my pleasure. I'm super excited about this. Yes. Now, I heard about you a few years ago, like whispers in the house. Good to see you, sir. Oh, my pleasure. I'm super excited about this. Yes. Now, I heard about you a few years ago

like whispers in the industry. You're like a whisper, like the godfather of business strategy, the marketing. Ramit Sethi was telling me how you like 10x his business in like less than a year and all these other people talked about you.

And then we finally met in person a few months ago at an event with Larry Binet and had a great little rapport in five minutes. Yes. And I was like, I got to get this guy on and learn more about how you've been so successful in – you've trained over – I think you said over 1,000 of the highest clients out there, roughly around 1,000, 700, 1,000, have you said? Well, it depends. Experts.

Experts. Experts. Yeah, we've done 7,000 industries. Industries. But you've worked with people like Tony Robbins, Ramit Sethi, Damon John, Stephen Covey, other names like that. Yes. And you work with them in their businesses to help them optimize their business? They come to me for three things. One, the ability to elevate the perception and to make more concrete the impact and value and also to develop either more entry level or more advanced variations of it. But I've been very blessed because in order to do that, I have to get a short course understanding. So I've been educated in a multiplicity of methodology, technology, philosophy, ideology. But people want to grow their business, right? What I do basically, I grow businesses for a living and I grow them in a multitude of ways.

And I'm a strategist and I'm a marketing person and I'm a business model remodeler and I'm a competitive advantage generator and I'm a channel developer and all those. And it's very dynamic. I'm not a specialist in a singular area. Gotcha. What would you say is the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs or business owners are making right now? Well, there's probably an integration. The first one is almost all of them are tactical. biggest mistake that entrepreneurs or business owners are making right now? Common theme.

Yeah. Well, there's probably an integration. The first one is almost all of them are tactical. They're not really strategic. They're not really making everything they do advance and enhance an ultimate long game plan. Number two, they really don't understand their market at a deep, connective, empathic level. Number three, they make it harder for people to do business with them. Number four, most people don't understand if you market externally by regular conventional media, it can be anything from Facebook, pay-per-click, anything else. All you're doing initially is vying for the first outer tier periphery of trust. And most people don't really use the greatest trust tank, fuel tank, and monetization capacity they have, which is referrals and endorsements where they've already earned trust.

and endorsements where they've already earned trust. I mean, there's a delta between me running an ad and you hopefully opting in and saying, okay, I'll give them a chance. You don't say it consciously, but there's a long process as opposed to if Ramit says, hey, Jay made me this, get on the phone and have him make you that. It's a done deal. Right. It's a no brainer.

Yeah. And I look at people and it's very funny. It's tangential, but we do these seminars and they're very diverse. Hundreds of different industries and we ask how many people run ads, how many people have sales forces. Then we ask how many people can actually say that 20 to 100% of your business is generated by word of mouth

or referrals and it's quite substantial. Then we ask them, okay, what's the percentage? What's the dollars? And it's even more shocking. 60%, $2 million. 40%, $500,000. Then we say, remain standing if you have in place at least one formal, systematic, strategic referral generating strategy that you're applying continually throughout the company. And 99% sit down. The rest, we say, okay, if you have two, the rest sit down. Then I say, well, first of all, because I looked at so many industries, we've identified 93 unduplicated referral generating strategies, systems that require no

money, no effort. They just need to be, I mean, no more effort just to be put in place. Then I say, let me tell you if I'm right in my perception. Tony would say my hallucination. And we say, so I believe a referral generated prospect buys quicker, negotiates less Buys more things Buys more often Buys longer Is more profitable Is more enjoyable Refers more people Cost you nothing to acquire

As opposed to how many of you spend 10, 20, 30,000 on ads and trade shows And pay-per-click trying to get that first Outer periphery of trust And I said there's something wrong with this picture. I'm trained to see what's not right but what's wrong with it. I'm a super critical thinker. But, yeah, I mean, I get on a tangent, but people don't take advantage of that.

So how do people implement a referral system in the online marketing world? Let's say if they have a business they're running online and depending on the industry, but how would you? Well, the first thing is, is a pre-assumption that you have such goodwill because you've added value that's perceivable and, um, and been realized in some way by your buyer. If you haven't, you don't, I mean, you better reevaluate your value proposition, but assuming you do, you've got a thousand customers and we call them clients. And that goes to another theory of mine, which is called preeminence, which I can discuss later if you want to. But what you do is you go to them with the truth. And your truth is, and there's lots of ways to articulate it, but you say my or our business,

you've been a beneficiary of our business. And then you do a little future pacing and you say, hopefully you have, and depends on whether it's product service, you know, that, you know, the person that existed before you availed yourself of our product or instruction, our podcast, our this is a much different person. The person you are now, now you're more of this and you program what they are and you give them a future pace. Now you're seeing life differently you're happy you're confident you're whatever it is and if you are like anyone else you realize how many other people were like the way you were that would be benefited and liberated so much and we exist to do that but we don't we can't reach them all on our own we We don't know where they are. We don't have a big budget. Most of our business is referral-based. So we turn to those trusted and valued clients,

and we ask your help to help us reach people that deserve a better life or deserve to be liberated, deserve not to be bullied, whatever. And that's one way. I can give you a hundred ways. Sure, sure. If someone has an online course and they've put a hundred students, sorry, clients through this program and they've got great results by many of them, not all of them, but a lot of them who took the action on the course, it could be on any topic.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And you got a hundred clients in, 50 to 60 of them had great results, amazing, they're like shouting from the rooftops. How would you implement a referral system for those 50 to 100 clients? What would be the next step? Well, why don't I show you the prefacing step because you're asking a question that it's presupposing post-result. Yes.

I'll give you a better way when you presuppose the result before it starts. You basically sit down in the beginning, and it's in your marketing, and it's in your interaction, whether it's live, whether it's recorded. And you say, our business exists. It lives or it dies by the referrals you bring us. We have a choice. We can put a lot of money in advertising and diversionary activities, or we can take all that money and invest it in more training, more support, more constant releasing of advanced materials we don't share. Yes. And we choose to do that. In exchange, we ask and we hope you're willing for one special consideration when you become a first stage client of ours.

It's this. We tell you what we're going to do. We're going to give you the best training. We're going to give you the best help. We're going to give you the best answers if you're confused. We're going to give you support. I'm just talking about information. I can't apply to anything. We're going to give you tools nobody else does. We're going to give you a higher success probability, and we're going to give you the motivation, the guidance, the pathway, and the crutches and tools to make it easier for you to take action and achieve your goal than not.

Only once, if and after what we've invested and promised to do for you, it happens. It happens. We ask you to identify two equal quality colleagues in your life who you care enough about that you wish the same kind or different, but the kinds of outcomes and introduce them to us, knowing that we have all these introductory information or education that's gratis. information or education that's gratis, and also if they wish to avail themselves, we won't consider their commitment binding for 45 days and until they've said, that's one way you can do it. So you set them up from the beginning. Wow. And how do you have them, what's the mechanism for the introduction? Is it like send them to an email opt-in? Is it an email introduction? Is it?

Well, there's many ways you can do it. As I said, we were talking offline and I said, the advantage of me, which is also the disadvantage is I can give you 150 different ways to do it. One way is to say, do this for us. We're having a short course primer on what we do, why we do, why it's different, and introducing some of our more grateful and impressive success stories. And it would mean a lot to us, but it would probably mean a lot more to anybody you invited if you would get three of your friends to come. That's one thing. Second thing is you've got a book.

If you have an online version and you're not selling much of it, You've got a book. If you have an online version and you're not selling much of it, you could say, we want you to gift this book to five people in your life that you know need it, but also you are confident will read it and will spend time really reflecting on it and get them to talk. I mean, you can do a million things. You can say, we want you to write to your colleagues, five of them. Give them specificity. But what I always do is try to enumerate who they are. And I have to tell a story to make it. Can I make it? Sure.

So years ago, I was very big in the training business. We were the largest client for a version of Wells Fargo Bank. And every week I would go to lunch with the bank manager who happened to be a really hot single divorced woman. And every week she would lament that she had no dates. And this woman's hot. I mean, she's good looking. She's intelligent. Success And this woman's hot. I mean, she's good looking. She's intelligent. Successful.

Successful money. You know, she revealed a little bit of her physical interest. So she would be a perfect date for anybody. Right, right. And so I'm wondering, after about the fourth time, I said, well, tell me what you're doing. And she said, well, I'm just saying to everybody, hey, why don't you guys help find me some quality dates? And I said, but you're not denominating what you want. You're not telling them what to do.

And I gave her a template in five minutes. I said, when you go back to the bank, do this all day. Go to everybody that you interact with where it's appropriate, whether it's the tellers, the managers, your clients, and just say, whether it's the tellers, the managers, your clients, and just say, I was thinking that I talked to you all about looking for a quality man to hang out with. And I don't think I ever explained to you what he might look like, where he might be. And so I gave her a context. He's going to be 40 to 50, a professional. He might be divorced, but you know enough about the background that it wasn't his fault. He's not brutal. He doesn't smoke. He's not an alcoholic. He's a good man.

He's a good father if he has children. He's got good values. His interests are such and such. such and such. He's not a confirmed bachelor. He's a confirmed sort of a romantic adventurer looking for a quality he wants and is interested in someone to spend quality time with. And then where he might be, he might be a church, he might be an ex-brother-in-law. He might be a neighbor. He might be in another branch. The next week she called and she has seven dates. Well, there you go. But the key is programming somebody, helping people. We make it very hard because we have the ignorance and I guess I'd almost call it insolence to think that everybody understands the implications and the dimension of our abstract requests or comments. And they don't.

The more you help people get clarity and concreteness and direction and actionability, the more predictable outcome you will get from it. But there's a hundred ways to do it. Sure. What would you say is one of the biggest success stories of one of your clients? One of the biggest case studies in terms of results in a year's time, one of your clients? Okay. Business results.

All right. Well, I can give you- Maybe you can't say the name, but you can say it. No, I can say the name. I can tell you a bunch of names. We did Entrepreneur Magazine when it first started. No one knew what entrepreneur meant. When was this?

1976. Wow. And we had to send out mailings with the actual Webster's Dictionary with all the, you know, how to enunciate it, how to pronounce it, what the definition was. Because no one knew what entrepreneur was. No one knew what entrepreneur was. Wow. And originally it was a magazine formatted membership for a hundred bucks.

And the whole premise was every month you'd get this very large report on an emerging small business opportunity. And it would tell you how to, if you wanted to franchise, who to go to. If you didn't want to franchise, who the best providers would be of doing it yourself. It would have some basic stuff on hiring people. 25 interesting pages, very good. And then it would go to archive. And that was it. And we were doing about a million dollars. Actually, we were doing 900. And I took all the archives and turned them into startup manuals because we had all these archives. We added boilerplate, which is just general information on how to hire an attorney, how to use advertising, how to get free art.

And we created about 200 startup manuals. And we sold them for $39 a piece. And we sold 300,000 of them in the first nine months. And then we took them and we reassembled them into categoric. We had the Entrepreneurs Low Investment Business Institute, we were 10 of them together. We had one that had all the food related services and those were $200. And all we did was repurpose. And we went, we wrote wrote we grew it nine times in less than a year we took a um we took a gold company when gold you're too young but gold was legalized in the 70s

and when it got legalized everyone would go to the wall street journal they would go to barons forbes to run ads i went to where uh there's, again, tell a story. Willie Sutton, you know who Willie Sutton was? Willie Sutton was the greatest bank robber of history. He robbed more banks, set more records, still holds them than anybody else. And he operated in the 40s, 30s, a little bit of 50s. When they finally got him, they said, Willie, why in the world did you rob so many banks? said, Willie, why in the world did you rob so many banks? And his answer was hilarious, because that's where the money is. So I've been trained not to go to the places where you're spending X and getting this much of the market, but where the real money is. So I took my client and we went to all the financial newsletters, all the investment seminar people,

all the people who back then were doing investment, economic books and selling them direct. And we became the recommended dealer. We were part of every welcome pack when somebody subscribed. We had a deal that I negotiated where twice a year we had a special edition that we paid for all about hard assets. We funded regional events with iconic other speakers we paid for. We gave all the profit to the newsletter because we wanted the investors. We went from $300 to $500 million in a year. But probably one of my two best stories that I like actually are from work I've done in China because they're hilarious.

I'll tell you one other one, too, that's cool. But the work in China is cool. So I've been helping Chinese entrepreneurs, really high performing ones for eight years. First time I went there, a huge audience and a young man came up to the mic and he said through translation, Jay, what do you do if your business is too small and the banks won't lend you money? And I said, okay, well, first of all, what do you do and what would you do with the money? And he said, I'm a local motorcycle manufacturer. Now only in China, you know, where you have a hundred million people in one city, are you going to have a local motorcycle? And he said, I want to get money so I can go to other parts of Asia, build a factory, hire salespeople, get retailers. And I said, okay, but why do you need the money?

And he said, I just told you. And I said, you don't need money. You need to realize that you are the solution to somebody else's bigger problem that doesn't know it. Go all over Asia and find somebody who is in a complementary, not a competitive business, but already has a big factory, not using their second shift, already has distribution and Salesforce and partner with them. That was like a minute and a half. And I do Q&A on the stage. So I come back a year later, one year later, same guys there, comes to the mic and now he looks like the Cheshire Cat. And he says, Jay, through translation, I did what you said. I said, that's cool what I say because I don't remember. He said, I went to Asia.

I got to Kuala Lumpur. I found the largest lawnmower manufacturer in Asia. They were in eight markets, eight countries. They had a huge factory. They weren't using almost any of the second shift. All I had to do was bring my tool and dies, which are the forms you use. The bolts. Yep, yep.

And there I had salespeople, distributors, 1,000 lawnmower dealers. We both split $10 million of profit in our first year. Amazing. And I have more if you want to hear them, but I mean, I've got tons of funds. Amazing. Why do you think this way? Uh, I was very blessed. I have no formal education. I got married at 18. The first time I've been married three times, I have seven children. I have no formal education, no negotiability. I, nobody gave me a salary job. The only jobs I ever got were crazy entrepreneurs who would stick me in a corner and give me

a chance to get a piece of, you know, sales I generated or markets I opened. And when you only eat, when you earn, you find out what works and what doesn't, what works better very quickly. I was a hopelessly curious and, um, I, I, I had a very, very, what do you call it, either a larger or a small stability factor. So I jumped not from one job to one industry to another. And after about eight industries, I realized that people in this industry don't have a clue how people in this industry, this industry, this industry think. They don't understand the selling approaches, the business models, the strategies, the access vehicles, the competitive approaches.

And I was able to take elements from two or three industries, add them to ones that didn't know it, and my performance was outrageous. And I realized, geez, I'm like the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. And so I started becoming much more aware of all the different ways, all kinds of different industries did it. And I was able to do that. Then I got very blessed. I was exposed besides the experts. I had some of the greatest specialists as client mentors. I had the Deming Organization. You probably don't even know who Deming was.

Deming was the father of process improvement, optimization, highest and best use theory. He's the one that went to Japan right after the war and helped the Toyotas and the Nissans and the Hondas become such successful manufacturers. And he taught basically how to make, he taught variability. If you look at any function, there's bunches of different factors combined to do something. I call them impact points. Each one has variability. And if you can make each one perform 10% better and you have 30 different elements, you're getting not 10%, but you're getting hundreds and hundreds of percent improvement. And I learned to learn about the geometry of business. I had the largest multivariable testing agency in the world,

and they worked for large corporations, and they would test millions of dollars worth of hypothesis, putting different collections of SKUs together on a shelf or different sizes, end cases, signage, signage outside, selling something and testing different ways of following up to see breakage or repurchase and factors. Then I worked for the largest strategic litigation consulting firm in the world, and they tested everything from venue, jury type. They a they had 150 phd sociologists and and psychologists they had a graphics department that it's almost like a forensic accountant depending on what side of the of the case you're on we could depict pain and suffering horribly or minimally and i got that's besides 465 major industries, 7,000 sub-industries, over 300 top experts, 1,000 total experts. So I have a lot of context to draw on.

I've done it around the world to see how it validates and what universal principles. And I've gotten to see how many better ways this concept of highest and best use. It applies to everything in your life, whether it's how you use your time, how you use your interaction with people, if you're a business, your team, yourself, your message, your interaction, what happens at the time of. And I've learned to look at all the impact or leverage points that go on, give you a couple of examples. And it's pretty well known in advertising, but the headline is the ad for the ad. People don't realize it's not just the headline that you see in an ad.

It's the opening phrase that you use if you're trying to get an appointment. It's the signage you use at a trade show. It's the way you embrace somebody at the front of the doorstep of a sale, a sales organization. It's the subject line in your email or your Twitter. We've changed the way somebody greeted somebody at the front door and tripled response. We've changed a headline and gotten 500 times, 500% more buyers and actually higher quality tickets. Nobody looks at that. Nobody looks at, If you look at a company that sells lots of different things and you look at different places they do it, you will see that different products,

different propositions, different media, different categories of buyers are worth different amounts. But if you don't know that and you treat everything as equal, you're going to spend the same amount on everything. Whereas, you know, one kind of a product buyer may buy more profitably up front and not buy on the back end. One might not buy well on the front, but buy 20 times. We learned what's called the lifetime value of a buyer or the marginal net worth. And it's looking at not just generating a sale, but it's strategically, what do you want that sale to do? And when you start looking at that, it changes your whole, I mean, we created a company from scratch, a company called Icy Hot, which is prominent today in retail. But when we bought it out of bankruptcy, and it was only doing $20,000 and it was selling the same thing by mail for $3. And nobody had ever looked at the buying history.

And we saw that for every new 10 buyers that came in, eight would buy every month for life because there was no cure for arthritis or bursitis. And out of every eight that bought, four would buy other products from us. And out of every four, I'm just averaging here a little bit off, out of every four, two would buy twice a year bulk for gifts. And we were selling it for $3. It cost us 55 cents. It was a long time ago to put out mail. So we were making $2.45.

Every time we brought in a $3 sale, we were accruing out of 10 people something like $200 a year for life and profit. Wow. And when we made that realization, we realized we could afford to lose money as long as our cash flow would handle. And I got on the phone and I set up deals with a thousand radio stations, television stations, publications, all kinds of media to run ads for us, selling our $3 product and keep all the money. And we actually sent them an extra 45 cents. So we were into it 55 and 45 a dollar as far as cost. But we went from 20,000 in sales to 500,000 buyers in the first year. And you could do the numbers, but better than that, we got so much no cost advertising that we forced retail distribution. If you know what that means,

it means that a mail order company sells direct and it makes money, but it's not a lot of asset value. When you become a consumer product distributed in drugstores and grocery stores, your value now goes to 10 or 12 times sales. And in a year and a few months, we got it to where we sold it for $60 million back in the 70s. Now, it's better than this to a big pharmaceutical company. And because they didn't appreciate intangible assets, they let us keep the 500,000 buyers who were all geriatrics plus they didn't prohibit us from using all of the distribution channels the thousand radio stations tv stations for selling other things and we got 60 million dollars so i've been through a lot of interesting things i can tell you tons more if you

want to talk well who was um who was more influential in your life growing up, mom or dad? Probably my mother because she was attention deficit. She was into reasonable self-acknowledgement, but she always wanted to try zany things. Okay. And my father, though, had a very high ethos. He wasn't terribly successful, but he taught me very high ethical plane. She taught me a very wonderful, non-linear way of looking at the fun, exciting, adventurous sides of life. And I had probably from that a hopeless curiosity that got me to question, to interrogate non-offensively entrepreneurs. I used to have, when I was young, I was so non-threatening that all these entrepreneurs would let me sit in their office in the corner watching them do business all day.

And I had no money. And I'd work all night to be able to do this. My first wife thought it was crazy. But they would take me to lunch because I had no money. I'd get to watch them do things. And people would look curious. Why is that person in the corner? And they wouldn't say anything.

And afterwards, they'd say, now, let me tell you what just happened. And I had all these wonderful mentors. I've had wonderful mentors all my life. And I'm a blessed beneficiary of a lot of people, smarter, brighter, much more successful, worldly, and deep, having taken an interest and contributed to me that's how i feel too just doing this podcast i get to connect with oh it's great yourself and just assimilate all the information so um you talked about funnel vision and why it's better than tunnel vision sure what does that mean well i i created this years ago most in life, whether you have a career or whether you have a business, you know pretty much what everyone else in the career does the way they do it. You know pretty much what your competitors do and the way they do it.

Then you know whatever else you read in a book or you go to a program or you see an article in a magazine, but that's it. And I consider that a tunnel because it's very limited. But when you understand this concept of optimization, which is highest and best use, and you understand that there are probably 25 impact or leverage points on the revenue side of anything anybody does, each one that can be enhanced from 10 to 1,000%, but it can't be enhanced if you don't know what they are. And then it can't be enhanced unless you know higher, better, safer, more profitable, more predictable, low cost ways of replacing them.

I'm getting a little confusing. So what funnel vision is, is taking the best options and opportunities and possibilities outside your business and funneling them into areas, activities, careers, businesses, funneling them into areas, activities, careers, businesses, marriages, anything you want to apply it to where it's never been really known and optimally is taking multiple ones and creating hybrids. So one is like this and the other is like that. So taking things from other industries. So taking things from other industries. Adapting, adopting, borrowing. Sure.

Appropriating, creating hybrids, synthesizing, and doing it continuously. And you run rings around everybody else. And it's very fulfilling because it's a power that no one else possesses. So it gives you great certainty, great strength. It's a very empowering thing, very liberating. And why do you think most entrepreneurs are limited to a certain amount of success? Why do you think they hit a cap and they can't break through? Well, there's three reasons. And the first reason is they don't know how much more is possible from time, effort, opportunity, people, interaction, media.

They don't know how many ways to leverage it up. how to access and fully harness, exploit, and really utilize the greatness that's within them. How do they do it? If you want me to tell you, I can give you a four-part, very simple process. Sure, sure, sure. Okay. But I have to give you my belief system first. Perfect. Okay.

But I have to give you my belief system first. Perfect. Okay. So I have a belief system that every human being is born within their DNA with a desire to be great. We want to be great students, great athletes, great, whether it's a career, business people, husbands, fathers, mothers, friends, lovers, anything. And yet probably at most two or 3% are ever great. The majority of us operate in this realm that I would call respectfully complacent mediocrity. Now, the assumption is that they're lazy or they aren't aspiring. My assumption is it's not their fault. No one has ever given them a context of understanding what true greatness is supposed to look like and feel like, both internal,

here, here, how you communicate, how you look at things, how you re-contextualize your interaction, and also how it is supposed to be received. If you don't know what you're supposed to be doing differently internally, externally, and no one's ever really framed it for you, you can't be that way. Now, then if you can get that far and figure out what it's supposed to be, you have to be able to gauge it against where you are, and it's a delta delta. And then you got to look at it in the whole totality of your life because there's like five or six categories. You can not be great in your business. You can not be great in your marriage. You can not be great in your health. And you got to figure out which area you got to deal with first because sometimes getting your business together isn't going to, it's moot

if you're going to die or if you're going to die and then on your deathbed, your wife and your children will leave you. So you got to find that. your heart, soul, mind is imbued with. So it's a natural, it's a font from which just automatic understanding, empathy, connectivity flows, and you know how to monitor, engage whether it is being received and also how to adjust it. That's the first thing. Then you figure out the difference. Then you got to figure out the pathway or ways to get from where you are to where you need to be. And most people don't have a clue how to do that. Or they choose like the analogy of the funnel tunnel. They choose the hardest, most difficult. They want to be a pole vaulter at the Olympics the first time out, as opposed to doing switchbacks that'll take you up the mountain safely

and has water stations. So if they are lucky enough to figure out the safest way to get from where they are there, then they have to have the courage to embrace it. Now, this is where it gets really tricky. And, uh, you're single. I've got a girlfriend. Yeah.

Okay. But no child married. No. Okay. I have seven children. Yes. So from very vast experience, my kids, when the very first time they tried to talk or walk or eat or poop or ride a bike, they were terrible.

Right. And it was scary. But what they required was a champion who believed in them, who they felt comforted, who would reassure them, who would get them back on the horse, who would keep, you know, keep advancing them. And most people don't have, and this is not a crass comment for a compensated mentor. I don't like coaches. I like mentors because they've been there, done that. They know it's possible and they can hold you to higher standard. But most people try to do everything alone. They don't have connection with people.

They worry alone. They aren't connected. You need advocates and champions who care enough to keep to hold you to a higher standard. And that's why people aren't great. Does that make sense? Absolutely, yeah. And if you can get those things, it's incredible. I mean, I just don't think, and it's not, there's no shame.

One of the biggest, I think, penchants I'm on is the relief of guilt because almost everybody is made to feel that they're not good enough. And the reason they're not good enough is they don't know what good enough is supposed to look like. That no one's ever helped them. And as soon as they know, it's very easy. It's not hard to be greater. It's not hard to be great. It's not hard to be greater. It's not hard to be great. It's not hard to be

exceptional, but it is hard if you don't have any idea what you're doing right, wrong, what you can, what you need to do to shift, how you have to think differently. And then it is wrong if you can't embrace it. I mean, a lot of people are so scared that they will be seen as weak or incompetent, that they're afraid. And vulnerability is a great, greatness is a byproduct of vulnerability, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And most people are afraid to be vulnerable. I agree.

I agree. What is something that you believe that almost everyone else disagrees with you about? I believe two things. I can't have a single answer. One is that I think people's goal in life is tremendously flawed. I believe most people are obsessed with an end result. They want to make a trillion dollars. They want to be in great shape. They want to have the hottest wife. They want to have the biggest house, the fastest growing company, the most toys. And they think that by getting that alone, all of a sudden their life's going to change.

The heavens are going to open. The angels are going to trumpet. Euphoria is going to prevail and all goodness is going to befall them when in fact it's anticlimactic. It's no different. It just increases the complexity of your life. I believe that your life is not about an end result. It's about the process. not about an end result. It's about the process. The fact that you and I are doing this for an audience of a million is wonderful, but if we were doing this for just you and I, that's fine too. The process is as good as it gets. When I travel, I have a very, and I think your goal in life is that every time you interact with anybody for any reason at any stage, your job, your responsibility, your opportunity, your privilege is to make that person better off because you were in their life. When we travel, and I travel a lot, I have a protocol. And I'm not saying this because I'm so cool.

I get off on it much more than I give. I do a lot of things in Asia and very sincerely not being discriminatory or a lot of Asians don't reveal a lot of emotion. go to Japan, when I go to almost anywhere, the first thing I do, because I fly on great carriers and I drink great champagne, so I usually need to hydrate for a day. So the first day I do nothing but hydrate. The next day I split it. I go into the lobby or the bar for four hours and I smile at people until they smile back. Quite fascinating to see the difference. How long does it take for them to smile? Sort of a battle of wills.

Three, four minutes. Really? Yeah. They'll smile at them for three minutes until they finally smile back. Wow. Where it's here, it's a couple seconds. Well, it's a different culture. I ride the elevator up and down for two hours and do it. I get off on the floors and talk to the housekeepers and the

servers. And it's very fulfilling and you know you're enriching their lives. But you're feeling, and we'll talk, and if they speak English, you'll learn their worldview. And it's very interesting, and they're husbands and wives and mothers, and they have the same hopes and dreams. Mm-hmm. And they have the same hopes and dreams. And I think that we talked a little bit. Most people and many young people today, and I have millennial children.

I have exes. I have a little younger than baby boomers. And I think they've lost track of true connectivity, humanity, humility. track of true connectivity humanity humility and and what really provides uh fulfillment and satisfaction in life and i mean i've got porsche maserati i got the the fastest production car in the world. I got a supercharged Range Rover. I got a beach house. I got a big house. That doesn't, I mean, it's nice. But when I die, I'm not going to say, oh, I wish I had another bedroom.

I wish I had another car. Yeah, that isn't going to do it. It's just a giggle and a diversion. I mean, the meaning of life, I think, is the interaction between people. And I think that the growth you give and get, the fact that you're always a teacher and a student, and that you should always be obsessed with learning. And the other thing I'll say, because it's all related, I think you have an obligation in your life to commit every time you interact with anyone to stop. And whether you're trying to sell somebody, have a discussion, you want to, there's a

couple of, I haven't used these nomenclature for a long time. You want to, first of all, examine how they're seeing life because no two people are having the same conversation because they didn't have the same background, same values, same image in there. And I'll give you a great example in a minute. You want to understand their values and what their life is like. You want to appreciate it because yours may be very different. You want to acknowledge them and show them that you are listening and respect it. You don't have to accept it, but you have to acknowledge that that's their reality. And I don't think most people are willing to do that. And listening is one of the greatest overlooked skills in hearing and demonstrating to people that you did hear and you really did grasp.

I mean, I've got a story that is outrageous that I'm happy to share or not, but it's a very profound demonstration of the power of this. Sure, go ahead. Okay, many years ago, it's a cool story. And I've got a couple of ways of nonlinear thinking. Many years ago, I was in Australia to do a seminar. And the most interesting thing was this was 20 years ago, and I was going to do four sold-out seminars with 300 to 500 people each at five grand. I was going to do a $25,000 one. Those were big numbers 20 years ago.

We flew in. My family was tired. We were at the Sheraton downtown. I couldn't sleep. I went upstairs to the concierge room, and I was drinking crevasse back then. And there was one man in the corner and I was always very curious. So I walked up to him and I told him two things, that I was from the United States and I was here on business. That was it. The rest of the 90 minutes we spoke, I just asked him questions. And I came to find out he was from Germany.

He worked for a large pharmaceutical company. He traveled the world calling on third world health ministers selling population control systems. I, of course, was curious what different population control systems look like, how you sold them, how you got an appointment to sell them, how when they were bought, the populace wanted to be controlled. I wanted to know whether it was done basically on the up and up or on the under and under. uh i wanted uh to know how many calls it took how long it was who administered it whether that was a back-end service or part of the package all kinds of questions then i switched and i wanted to know what life was like in germany cost school stability where you go on vacation you know what kind of education did he get? How do you

become this person? How do you make cold calls on health ministers all over the world? Then I wanted to know what he was going to do when he grew up because he had this incredible Rolodex. Then I found out that he was a keynote speaker at the Third World Health Convention that was there because there was security everywhere. And we talked a few more minutes and i'm drinking crevasse and after about five or six or maybe more i was starting to get very wobbly so i stood up and i said um uh excuse me i'm gonna leave thank you And as I got to the elevator, he said, wait, I have to tell you, you are one of the most interesting people I have ever met. And I didn't know anything about you. No, but here's what I, it taught me a defining lesson that is, that has guided my life. I'm leaning on the framework of the elevator, praying that when

the door opens, there's an elevator in it, not a shaft, because I'm pretty giddy by then. But I realized a distinction that I've carried with me for 20 years. If you want to be interesting, all you have to do is be interested. If you want to be respected, all you have to do is respect. It goes all the way down. Love, love. I mean, and it's very powerful, sort of a counterintuitive concept. And there's a concept that's called the you attitude. And it's that it's not about me.

It's all about you. In this case, it's not about me or you. You and I are nothing more than either conduits or what do you call it? We're vehicles to reach your audience. And you have a million people you reach, but you really reach a million individuals, one man or woman at a time. So we're talking not to a million people. We're talking to one person a million times. It's a whole different mindset. I'm probably

not explaining it clearly. No, no, it's great. Yeah. I feel like I could hear your stories all day. I have some cool ones. But I want to finish with a few final questions. I want me to tell you the Porsche story, because it's wonderful. Okay. One of the questions is...

Or the carnival story. The Porsche or the carnival? Okay. Or the AARP story. Okay. I'll remember. Okay. One of the questions that I have for you is, what's a question you wish people would ask you that they never do? I think very few people ask me how to make their life more. They're pursuing what they think will give them joy, which is money or success, instead of saying, how do I get more intangible compensation out of anything I currently or ever do. More fulfillment, not of things I do. Yeah. I mean, all kinds of things.

Yeah. Satisfaction, fulfillment, contribution, connectivity, and what's it look like? Because I don't think they know that. And then secondly, I hurt for 90. Kurt, for 90, now, if you look at the world all over, 95% of the business people are small. I want to call them entrepreneurs, but they're really not. They're proprietors because an entrepreneur is somebody that adds value and experience. And most proprietors are just basically sucking commerce out of them. They really are they're there and and and they got into it for a bizarre reason and they're not really excited and they're not really value-added uh they're just they're

commodities yes that stated most people don't i mean we took we created something called preeminence it's quite a wonderful concept i'll give you a five minute the preeminence. It's quite a wonderful concept. I'll give you a five minute. The preeminence is basically, and it came by modeling some of the most successful and powerful and wonderful companies in the world. But it basically is a premise that you want to be seen as the ultimate advisor, the most trusted advisor for life for the market you serve, irrespective of whether money changes hands, number one. Number two, that you're going to be the ones that are going to give them the advisor for life for the market you serve, irrespective of whether money changes hands. Number one. Number two, that you're going to be the ones that are going to give them the most honest appraisal of what they should do and what they shouldn't and why. And you're not going to try to sell them what they want to buy, but you're going to sell them either what they need and you're not going to sell them less or more and less combination, less quality, more, and maybe you're not even going to

sell them your own thing. You're going to tell them the truth, and you're going to educate them and liberate them so they have the power to be able to make the best well-reasoned decision. But it goes to a couple of other things. The most important thing is most people fall in love with their career or their business or their product or industry catalog. If you're preeminent, you fall in love with the people you serve. And there's four kinds of clients. One of the ones that pay you. If you look at, everyone calls people customers. If you look at the Webster's definition, a customer is somebody who buys a commodity or a service. So if you call somebody a customer, you're really saying to the

world implicitly, I'm no better than a commodity. Even though I'm upset that everyone treats me like a commodity, I'm raising my white flag, I'm a commodity. If you call them a client and you look up the definition, it's somebody who's under the care, the protection, the well-being. It has more of a fiduciary responsibility. But the key is you don't fall in love with your industry, you don't fall in love with your company. You fall in love with the people you enrich and you see the difference that you being in their life makes, even if it's because you care more, you protect them more. And you have four different categories of clients. The first are the ones that pay you. The next are the ones you pay your team. You have a moral obligation to grow and

develop your team and make them successful and happy and, and, uh, evolve for their own benefit. You have a responsibility to not just squeeze, uh, your team, but to grow them. You have a responsibility to collaborate with your vendors, because if you do, they'll give you the access, they'll give you intelligence, they'll make you a fortune, and they'll help fund you, and they'll do all kinds of things. And then you have a responsibility to collaborate in a partnering way with all your advisors. And you need a lot of advisors because in the 21st century, creative collaboration is the defining role. Nobody knows anything remotely close to all the specialized knowledge. And it's changing every six months.

And I can go on. So fast, yeah. Yeah. That's cool. What's the thing you're most proud of that you've done? I'm most proud of an unintentional achievement. In the course of my life, I've been able to impact tens of thousands of high value creating entrepreneurs on a worldwide basis who have created a preeminent-based enterprise who are sustaining, multiplying, and expanding values and character and leadership. By the way, leadership is another integral part of being preeminent. You are a leader. You have the moral responsibility to lead people in what's in their best interest. But I have had the effect on people. And because they are companies, you get this enormous leverage

because it's a triple leverage. You're leveraging the ownership who are instilling their beliefs in their team, who are instilling those beliefs in a different way in all the prospects and buyers, who are instilling them in their families, who are instilling them in their vendors. And it's, I mean, I have, I'm very proud. You look up preeminence, and I think I'm the top 40 or 50 pages on Google, but you can look it up all over the world. I'm also very proud. I did a book in Japan that was designed to help young adults avoid walking into the woods and committing suicide. I don't know if you know this, but in Japan, there's a horrific, they have 35,000 approximate young adults every year who feel hopeless and helpless. And there's one woods they all walk into. There's movies been made about it. Yeah, there's one that, oh, who's the one that does the commercials for Lincoln?

Matthew McConaughey. Yeah, he just did one last year where he walked into the same woods in Japan to commit suicide. And they just have petrified people there. And we collaborated with a foundation, I didn't make any money on it, to create hopefulness, happiness, possibility,

purpose, passion, and show them all they could do with a life, a career. And things like that. I've been, you know, I've helped influence some, you know, I'm on the World Bank President's Committee to grow entrepreneurship in third world countries. That's cool. I'm very proud of being able to be a mentor to people like Damon and Rami.

And I'm grateful of the fact that I have had influencers who've gotten me a level of understanding ethos value creation um appreciation for humanity it's things that yeah you know and i'm i'm i'm grateful i'm still viable intellectually yeah and that i keep growing i mean I have a wild disparate spectrum of totally different clientele all over the world. And I learn from them and they're all kinds of industries and it keeps me very stimulated. Who's one client you wish would call you to hire you or one potential client? I would like to do more private equity because they have big portfolios and I can – my methodology works for almost anybody. I like people that have a lot of moving parts, a lot of enterprises. I mean right now I got like crazy.

I got the number one elderly care company in China, the number one human resource leasing company. i got the number one specialty pharmaceutical i got a guy in japan that sold 70 million dollars of tiaras to dubai museum i got the number one guy that teaches dentists how to do implants i got i got a 15 billion dollar hedge fund i got the biggest roll-up in podiatry i've got uh i got a doctor in taiwan that takes only gets 5 000 new patients a year and these are people that no doctor hospital can figure out what's wrong with them i get into very interesting i have a oncology group. I have, I mean, I'm very diverse. I like diversity. That's cool. That's cool.

Before I ask the final couple of questions, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you for your incredible contribution to so many of your clients, to all the different entrepreneurs, business owners, the people who are looking to make an impact, looking to increase their profits, but they're looking to make an impact with their clients. The ones that are attracted to me and I'm attracted to, they don't want to just make money.

They want to make the money as a byproduct of making a difference. Yeah, yeah. Well, you've done an incredible job, again, with the whispers that I've heard about you for the years. Everyone talks about how you help transform their business and their life. So I want to acknowledge you for your incredible. That's gracious. Thank you. Yeah, your curiosity, your consistent commitment to learning and growing in each industry and mastering understanding the different industries to be able to apply it to anyone.

So I want to acknowledge you for your gifts to the world. That's very nice. Thank you. It's very sweet. Of course. How can we support you? I have one final question before. Of course. How can we support you? I have one final question before I ask it. How can we support you? Where can we connect with you? What's the biggest thing you've got going on right now? You can do three things. Number one,

we realized long ago that there's so many small businesses out there that accept a fraction of a fraction of the yield, and I got to tell a concluding statement, not a story, yield that the effort, the time, the opportunity could give them because they just don't know what's possible. We've set ourselves up to be one of the greatest entrepreneurial benefactors, and we actually give better stuff away gratis. We buy people our stuff stuff and we don't even ask for opt-ins. I mean, we should because my daughter would like to make money. I lose about a million dollars doing this. Anybody who's an aspiring or a real entrepreneur professional

worldwide should go to my website because- Jabraham.com? It's Abraham.com, but we have one part that's just charming. It's called 50 Shades of Jay. Okay. And we put the most eclectic spectrum. I interview people. I get rights to great things. I've got five hours on preeminence.

I do questions all over the world and problem solving, and we have tons of them. Tony Robbins and I, we do things together in London and they're there. And we've got just, you know, just Peter Diamandis and Tony, all kinds of really rich things that don't sell anything. The only thing that I want anymore is I look for companies to do long-term, I'll use the word deals. People have a lot of underperforming assets, underutilized opportunities, underperforming activities, undervalued intangible assets, under recognized, uh, relationships, things that can make, uh, a $5 million profit turn into 20.

And I get a fee, but I get a percentage and I like, I like real commerce as far as, you know, we do a few, I do a few seminars around the world, but mostly I just do Q&A for them and I do a few keynotes. But I like, if you're too small, which most companies are, then let us enrich you and it'll always come back. If you don't grow enough, you'll tell somebody. If you grow a lot, you'll come back and you can, but either way, if you want to be a preeminent, profitable and meaningful and fulfilled entrepreneur we have probably some of the greatest no cost no selling no stipulation no catch stuff and we do it because we can't and then if you're large enough i'm always eager to

talk to you about a long-term collaborative relationship. But it matters if not that. The others help me help as many people because I don't know who to reach always. Sure, sure. So Abraham.com will get you to those results. Yeah, the best one to start with is Abraham.com and then right-hand slash the number 50 shades because it's wild and it's wonderful. And then you get on. If you want to opt in we we send worldview stretching commentary all

the time but it's great and either way it's fine awesome and do you have a book about all your philosophy and everything as well i have let's see i have uh getting everything you can out of all you've got i've got um the sticking point the nine reasons most businesses get stuck. I've got the CEO who can see around corners. I've got bedtime stories for business owners. They're all up free. Cool. They're all on your site. They're all there. We have a couple new ones that are just coming out, but we have complete, you know, they're all free. Awesome. And there's no opt-in or anything. Awesome.

Well, Jay, this has been amazing. The final question is what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is knowing that at the end of the day, the world or a segment of the world is better off because you were in it. And if certainly you can be Mother Teresa, but you can also be somebody who dedicated herself to the scouts and the PTA. I read, and my wife thinks I'm crazy, I read obituaries. But I don't really read the really high profile ones. I read the little ones about, you know, she was, you know, she was a acting teacher in high school for 40 years. Or, you know, he ran the, he ran the science club. And I think that if you've

left the world more better off, more passionate, more connected, more excited and, and more, and, and just better, you've made them better because you were in their lives in any realm of, like we were walking in front of your facility because we were early and there's construction going on. Yes. And we were talking to the hardhats

and they're so nice and they're not vile and they're not, they were just very gracious and apologetic for the inconvenience. Sure. And they make you feel great. I mean, bringing someone joy,

bringing someone a sense of acknowledgement, bringing them happiness, having them feel listened to. One, I mean, when I first got on the World Bank Committee, we were talking about transforming uh you know all these third world struggling entrepreneurs are making 50 and teaching how to make 150 and the man that organized us all said do you understand it's profound if you help one and i think that it's it's admirable to have the loftiest goals, but it's equally as, what's the right word I would use? It's equally as shameful to dismiss the fact that you can make a difference one-on-one every day. Absolutely.

And it's just as important. That's it. I love that. I forgot. I do have one final question besides that. Yes, sir. This is called the three truths. Okay.

I ask everyone at the end of the interviews. If it's your final day, since you talked about obituaries, if it's your final day many, many years from now, you've created everything you want to create. You've created everything you want to create. You've touched everyone you want to touch. You've said everything you want to say.

And all of it was erased. And you're at your bedside. Your whole family, everyone there you care about is there. They say, we don't have anything to remember you by

except for our memories. But none of the content is actually out there online or physical. But here's a piece of paper and a pen. You get to write down three simple truths. You get to fit on this one little piece of paper. Note card. What would you say are the three truths about everything you've learned, experienced, lived, loved, that you would leave back as lessons for us? Your three truths. What would that be? Great question. That's a great question. One of them is I would scribble down as succinctly as I could so it didn't consume all three.

A quote from somebody named Bob Proctor, because it's wonderful. He says that 99% of all human beings struggle in life with the wrong question. The question is, am I worthy of whatever this goal is? And it could be a goal to be happily married, have a career, be wealthy, whatever. And his answer is, when you realize how much more is possible from your capacity, your energy, your commitment, the opportunity, your right question is, is the goal worthy of me? Not am I worthy of the goal? And I think you should ask yourself, is the goal I'm pursuing worthy of me? And it could be your marriage, the way you're dealing with it, parenting, health. The next thing I think is, I would say the greatest joy in life is to keep growing as a human being. And growth means many things, intellectual

knowledge, contribution. I'm at a point in my life, because I'm 67, going to be 68, where legacy starts being important. There are a lot of things I could do to make money. We did a quarter billion dollars of seminars in two years when I was younger, and they were very profitable. Today, I do only ones when I'm invited overseas. Not that I can't. It's just that's not what I want to do. I want to operate at a more impactful and significant way of leaving people better off. But at different points in your life, you're different.

I just think it's very important to look at your life and look at it in the context of, you know, what am I adding today? What did I add today? How did I make someone something better off? How did I grow myself? How did I make myself a better person? I just think things like that are more important. And how much can I respect others? Because I think And how much can I respect others? Because I think that our biggest flaw today is we're not connected. And it's the irony of ironies because the big rhetoric is the connected world. But I don't think we're connected. I don't think people have a lot of one-on-one.

I don't think they are deep in their commentary. I think people are obsessed with telling you all about me, not caring about you. And I think that there's a big tragedy there. There's a very famous friend of mine who's the number one expert on adult entrepreneurial ADD, ADHD. His name is Ned Hallowell, a very fascinating man. I should interview him. ADHD. His name is Ned Hallowell. Very fascinating man. I should interview him. And he said the biggest gap of

people today is a lack he said it's a lack of vitamin C. And it's not vitamin C from the sun. It's the connection. Connectivity. We're not connected. He also says the biggest mistake with most people is they worry alone and they build

things way out of proportion. So, I mean, I can go on and on. Sure. Was that number two or number three? I don't know. I wasn't counting. Give one more then. Okay.

Final truth. Final truth is that the greatest skill a person can possess and the most powerful singular uh tool you'll ever have is your is your genuine ability to ask socratic questions listen carefully and demonstrate that you heard the answer but keep taking it deeper and deeper because you'll always hit profound pay dirt. There you go. I love it. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming on.

My pleasure. Well, my pleasure. Hope to bring you back again and share more stories. It'd be great. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this one.

And if you did, make sure to spread the love. Share it out with your friends. lewishouse.com slash 413. Let me know what you thought. Send me a message on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. I'm at lewishouse everywhere online. So connect with me. Say hi.

I share all the updates about what's happening in my life, what's happening in my business. And we share all these podcasts everywhere. So you'll get snippets of these little insights when you follow me on social media as well. Grab a bottle of Organifi right now and get 20% off your order at lewishouse.com slash Organifi. If this is your first time here, thank you so much for being here.

We get over 1.4 million downloads a month. We hit over 25 million downloads recently. We continue to grow and it's because of you. You make such a difference in growing this, in spreading the message of greatness, in helping your friends achieve things they never thought were possible and giving them the insights about their health, their business, their lifestyle, their relationships, their spirituality to improve their life and help take it to the next level. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for getting this message out there, whether you share it with one friend or a hundred thousand followers of yours. Thank you for the support

and keep coming back because we've got some big interviews and episodes coming up, man. I am so pumped. I feel like every week I pinch myself because I'm like, man, I get to learn all this great stuff and then I get to share with all you guys. So for me, this is such a beautiful experience and I love each and every one of you for taking the time out of your day to be here. So thank you guys so much. And you know what time it is. Guys, it's time to go out there and do something great.