From Broke to $3B: Billionaire’s Secrets for 2025 Revealed

Summary

• Scaling from $300 million to $3 billion involved key challenges and transitions, including dealing with distractions and maintaining Singularity of focus. It's vital to identify one task that pushes the business forward and dedicate significant time to it.

• Cadence of accountability is crucial for growth. Implement daily check-ins where team members can report their current progress and future commitments to maintain motivation and aspiration.

• A good process drives good results. Create systems that allow the business to run smoothly without relying heavily on founders.

• Run life in two-week sprints, focusing on specific projects. This approach helps manage time effectively, providing room to accommodate unexpected tasks without feeling overwhelmed.

• Conduct a review and preview at the end of each week to assess completed work and prepare for upcoming commitments.

• It’s okay to renegotiate priorities as long as it’s done with kindness and enough notice.

• Create tomorrow today by designing the next day’s plans the evening before to avoid waking up without a clear agenda.

• Be adaptive and allow yourself variations in routine, but adhere to the mantra: "It's okay to suck, but it's not okay to skip."

• Documenting work leads to longer-term learning and recall compared to merely discovering or teaching it.

• Use frameworks like "Why-What-How-Now" for organizing thoughts and communicating effectively.

• Focus on thematic decades for personal growth turning specific life stages towards mastering crucial skills and experiences.

• Honest communication with partners about personal focus and work commitments fosters better understanding and support.

• Encourage asking for help with a clear framework to make it easier for team members to express their needs without affecting their self-esteem.

• The concept of "operational generosity" helps in building trust and fostering positive relationships, which is key in brand growth.

• Emphasize the importance of maintaining not just a supportive family but a capable professional support system to facilitate personal and business growth.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing some of the actionable strategies we discussed to improve both personal and business productivity. Start by creating two-week sprints for projects. This helps keep focus and allows space to tackle unexpected tasks without feeling overwhelmed. Everything should have its designated time in these sprints, helping you manage your energy and tasks effectively.

Implement a cadence of accountability with daily check-ins. This helps everyone stay on track and motivated. You can apply this to teams or even to yourself, checking what was accomplished and what needs doing each day.

Focus on identifying one core task that pushes your business forward. For me, recruiting top talent was that task, so I dedicated a chunk of my day to it. Determine what that singular focus is for your business or personal growth and allocate time daily for this.

Create tomorrow today by planning the next day every evening. It prevents waking up feeling lost and helps maintain a clear direction for your tasks.

Consider block-scheduling in two-week periods and having specific buffer days, like a blocked-off Friday for planning and reflection. It ensures you have time to catch up without stress bleeding into your weekends.

Lastly, teach effective assistance-seeking by framing requests clearly, like "Could you please help me understand…?" This encourages communication without affecting self-esteem and builds a culture of support and problem-solving.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"Your P&L is your business"

– Leila Hormozi

"Singularity of focus"

– Leila Hormozi

"The cadence of accountability"

– Leila Hormozi

"Good process drives success"

– Leila Hormozi

"It's okay to suck, but it's not okay to skip"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

you have scaled from 300 million to three billion most people don't know the story I'll tell you the story that's freaking insane misconception about you when anyone has a big social media I think people and this happens to me so this is why I assume it happens to you but they see the social media and they're like oh I don't know do you actually do you know business and it's like oh no I'm only the you know president of real brokerage the fastest growing brokerage you know that exists but it's fine you know I'm just a social media face right and something that I deeply respect about you is like how One like your depth and breadth of business knowledge like you literally know every Department you know how to build a company from every level to every level and Leadership and it's like anytime you're the only person I can really talk to about most of that stuff I think you know that right um because most people it's like one or the other I think the fact that you can you understand both and you have experience in both is what makes you so good at what you do one thing that I wanted to ask you actually is and something that I've actually never asked you is could you can you remember the challenges from scaling from that level like from going to a couple hundred million to a couple billion I'm curious that there's like one to three top challenges that you faced or maybe transitions that you went through internally yeah to get there and this is selfish because this is what I'm looking to do right now you know what I mean yeah it the crazy part is um most people don't know the story I'll tell you the story so there was a company called telis uh that we had invested in and it had because it couple of our friends started this company it was a real estate business in Beverly Hills California when we invested in it had like 10 agents in Beverly Hills I I didn't know anything about the real estate business that well I kind of bought some homes so I know that process and we we were just passive investors in this and what happened was I would get financial statements every quarter and I actually read financial statements because I think your p&l is your business and it didn't it looked funny so I called the CPN and I'm like hey what's what's wrong with this it looks kind of funny he's like let me do some research we found that then CEO was embezzling and I was like man it's a one PPN I'll bury your like embezzling somewhere else this not even that hard you can't even embezzle right so so I took a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs as a banker I moved to California just to like relieve the CEO most people don't know this I didn't have that much money at that time so I reverse mortgage my house and to buy out the CEO wow and the entire job was buy out the CEO find a new CEO go back banking well I had to put a new deck together I had to figure out what the new business plan was Etc and my spreadsheet this is going to be sound really dumb my spreadsheet had 300 million in it and I hit an extra zero to three billion and the entire spreadsheet changed I was like wait a minute we would make this much money if how did this happen and what it did is it gave me a bigger and better future it let me see something that I never saw otherwise all I saw was a shitty first draft I didn't see level 10 and that was super powerful and I was like wait a minute if this is really true I I should try to build this and that was the overall reason so I went to the board and I'm like hey I believe that we can 10x the business in five years I don't know how to do it but I'm going to come up with a plan to do it I will take no comp and I will I will steer the ship to doing this and they're like well if you're going to take all the risk go for it and that's how that process actually started there was no there was no opportunity to even operate this business I'd randomly put an extra zero and and and the the economics changed and Lea here's the hard part while you're going through the grind it's very hard to capture the lessons the only thing that I was able to do I was able to learn in retrospect yeah you can only connect the docs dots in in in background right are seeing looking backwards and I came up with three things that we struggled with a lot of things I came up with three things the first one was you're so distracted there's there's so many things on your plate yeah when you're when you're building because growth is just like do this do this do this do this it doesn't allow you to say today I'm only going to work on this because there's there's always so many things to do so lesson number one for me was Singularity of focus what can I do that will always allow me to push the business forward and for us we were in the sales business so getting highly motivated sales people was the number one thing so recruting great Tal tent was the number one thing that was the singularity of focus so I told myself I may not be able to do everything but I'm going to dedicate half my day to this activity so it's really simple my singulator focus is growing the business from a salese perspective I need to go recruit the best salese I have half the day it may be in the morning or in the afternoon I was always dedicated to this thing and that one thing made it so much easier then we were able to so that was lesson number one yeah lesson number two is the Cadence of accountability accountability no one likes accountability no no one likes to be told hey here are your numbers here's what you want to do Etc but what makes accountability easier that I found is if you do it in a group so I'll give you I'll give you the Practical example we had 11 sales managers that would hire our top agents they would go out meet with agents hire agents and if these 11 sales managers didn't have appointments they wouldn't get agents yeah so we had a 10-minute call every single morning the Huddle and everyone would report two numbers how many appointments did I have yesterday and what am I committed to doing today so they would say Leila you're up three Z Seth you're up 22 shiran you're up 0 0 Alex you're up 1 one that's how the call would go every single day and we would write it down nobody ever said 30 and they came back the next day and said z z because they said zero and they're like man I can't do a a double Bagel day after they can't do that right and so all that they did was if they were in isolation it would have been very they would they would have been okay with sucking but when they were in a group and they had to say z00 and they had to come back the next day and say z00 and they had to come back the next day and say z00 now they were on the bottom of that pile that Cadence of accountability that one 10-minute call grew the business that one 10-minute call because all that the call was was like great Leila 0 Chiron one Z seth8 82 and now you started seeing aspiration motivation all of that associated with it so that was a huge huge lesson for us that's number two Cadence of accountability and the third is good process and good process alone drives good results it is super hard for people to believe that you don't have a system to drive something because the crazy part is no one's going to buy your company they buy your system for running the company that's all it is otherwise you're have so much founder risk associated with it yeah we were able to sell our business and Rebrand the entire business in under six months and I was out so the business that we built ran completely it still runs completely autonomously without me because the systems Drive everything so we say systems Drive success and if you can't show somebody the system you don't have a system I'm like blah blah blah you talked about it I'm like that's great bro show me I'm like we do this we do this when this happens we do this cool I like that that's a good system so those three things are the biggest things that I learned single later of focus gence of accountability and good good process and good process alone drives good process man it's funny CU it's like resonating me through right now and I'm like thinking to myself where am I lagging and I'm like you know I've got the the focus piece I have that time to focus but I focus on different things yeah because it's like oh there's these five big things and I'm like oh man I've got to dial back into what the one each day is because I'm like all right well these five things across the company are would drive but the question is I have to Force rank them so that yeah anyways just holding myself account no but that's good the the other thing also is you asked a question about productivity which is super interesting um I run my life in Sprints just like software development so I run my life in two week Sprints okay and the two we Sprints are these two weeks I'm going to do these projects and so someone says Hey Shan can you work on this presentation no problem that is next Sprint so it's it's now I don't have to feel this this tension of me having to remove something or add something more so that I have to stay up later or what have you I have this level of effort that I can give to this Sprint I got two weeks I'm traveling for one week that means I only have half a Sprint this week of this this time and so uh I I'll give you a crazy example we are just onboarding with a family office and the guy was like hey man I need all this data I'm like I got to pull offshore trust trust bills I'm like dude this is going to take me two weeks and he goes when will you have it to me I said October 15th he goes why how are you able to tell me that date I go that's my Sprint huh so so I just blocked that off as my Sprint and I was able to deliver on that because good process and good process alone drives good results so when you tell somebody you have good expectations you make a promise to yourself that you're going to do it on that Sprint you make a promise to them that you're going to do it on that Sprint and they don't bother you anymore otherwise they keep they they feel like they have to keep checking back in with you which is the most annoying thing ever right that's fascinating so then do you keep like a backlog for course yeah yeah so we call them sprint candidates that's just for me anytime I have an idea I just put in the Sprint candidates and we do something called the review preview the review preview something like you do you do it on Sundays so every Friday evening before I shut down yeah I look back at the week and it's and and I go through every meeting on the calendar yeah I say okay I met with Lila what is the follow-up here nothing I met with Seth what's the followup here oh I owe him blank so I just write all the follow-ups down from the past week that's review and the previews look two weeks ahead and what do I need to prep for review preview review preview so I just do that it's a 10 15 minute exercise on a Friday and then when you're done you're just settled then you can keep your promises to yourself it's so funny because I've heard you say review preview before I never realized it's my look back look forward exactly same same exactly thing I used to originally do one week back one week forward now I do one week back two weeks forward because of travel like I'm like oh I didn't book that trip or I need to build that keynote or I need to turn those files in this week and so now even my assistant she does the same thing she's like hey shiron so I have her doing two weeks back two weeks forward because she's I want her to be ahead of me yes she's like hey we didn't book these tickets or what have you so that's been super helpful review preview and Sprints give you like containers to work so if you said I have five priorities you can tell me I'm going to work on these three in Sprint one and those two in Sprint two so you you still know they get done this month and you keep your promise to yourself so let me ask you when you define the Sprints and then you look at your calendar and say you have a bunch of meetings on your calendar that don't have to do with those things are you like it cut them I try I try to renegotiate renegotiate okay renegotiate when they occur correct I'm like hey would there be I'll be like hey Lea would there be an opportunity for us to do this do it in two weeks as opposed to this week just try to renegotiate or I'll batch all of the things that are not into like one Thursday morning or one Tuesday afternoon so I don't have chunky things taking over my time so most people don't realize that it's totally okay to renegotiate priorities that you made to with other people as long as you do it kindly and as long as you do it with enough time it's unfair if I come to you the night before a podcast and be like hey I can't do it tomorrow that's not cool yeah but if you do it two weeks ahead you're probably saying man I I I would love the extra two weeks to prefer that anyway so I I'm totally cool with renegotiating commitments as long as you do it with some time and with some Grace I appreciate you going in depth that too because like a lot of the people who follow me I think are very good at structure and following rules but almost to a detriment which is like is it even serving you anymore and I know that's something I've had to work a ton on is like what are my levers of flexibility so it's like so fascinating to hear yours because I think a lot of people think like okay I can't cancel those meetings though because then it means that I'm not reli it's like okay well what's most reliable is if you grow the business right well I'll tell you the biggest shift that happened for me was uh it's it's amazing how when the world put puts you in difficult positions you have to adjust to meet those needs and so I got really sick it was really hard to get doctor's appointments with my schedule so what I told my assistant is like I said hey for the rest of the year block off all Fridays and you can literally put all appointments on Fridays that way I know that on Fridays I only do health related stuff and so she had this easy Cadence of just booking appointments and after I got better I left the Fridays blocked and so I still work on four day work weeks but my I still go to the office on Friday but my Friday is a really good buffer day and that allows me to plan to think to do projects that I'm interested in to catch up Etc that way you don't take the stress into the weekend now there's no weekend for us like I work all the time whenever you have inspiration you work but since we have a family I have to be somewhat respectful of that the last thing I can I don't want to come in and say man I'm going to work all weekend I'll work chunky times but I don't want to walk in stressed so that Friday buffer day has been insanely helpful and I would have never done that in my schedule unless I was sick so internally we call it 80% equals 100% because it's 20% off so we only work 80% so 80% is only allowed to be scheduled so 80% equals 100% that's fascinating and it's it's really reaffirming because I think you know something that you know my friend Trevor cashy he looked at my schedule and he said you have no buffer I said what do you mean he's like well if I said I need need this three-hour meeting and we need to do this thing where do you put it and I was like there's nowhere to go right and he was like yeah you work with no buffer which is fine he's like but you just know that you're going to have to constantly be do and then I was like oh and so that's when you know we put in place here because a lot of times we have events on Fridays but we put in a Wednesday quiet day yeah good which like the team you know everyone obviously there's sometimes where there something going on that is on Wednesday but like for the most part almost every single Wednesday is completely blocked for me and it's like I will fight for that Wednesday with my life it's like it has to be just like the most important reason in the world that something's going to happen on a Wednesday because I'm like I need that time because there's it's not that I'm not working it's that all these things have spilled or popped up and it's like you need time to work on them yeah yeah that's great the uh I have a my doctor said something super interesting to me he said hey did you know that most entrepreneurs who are men have heart attacks on Monday mornings I've heard that and I said I said well okay and he's like why do you have a smile on if I was like I'm just going to take Mone more off I you like you can cheat death he goes dude you can't it's not that easy and I'm like but maybe it is right it's and I actually don't think it's about the Monday morning being the stressful time I think it's about the bleed over from the week into the weekend that's actually not managing this right so I actually believe the reason why entrepreneurs get stressed and have heart attacks Monday morning is because they don't have buffer days on Fridays so if you just manage that you know how you prepare shows just how much you care right and so having that makes it so much more important so it's not the Monday morning that's the problem that is just the manifestation of the symptom the problem is that you Hammer the week all week and then you go into the weekend like you have more time so you use the weekend as your buffer and then you're stressed on the weekend then when you come back on Monday you're like man I made no progress and that's when everything starts to hit I think that makes so much sense you know it's funny because I like you know I do the planning process Monday R1 and it's like watching teammates start doing it because it's always the people who say like they're like I'm just always you know there's so much going on I can't get ahead it's like well you can't get ahead because you haven't made time to get ahead right and I think you and I both know that it's like we have more on our plates than anybody you if you're not proactive you spend your time just fixing crap right uh for for for entrepreneurs who watching and you asked this uh I've been talking a lot about just uh how to manage the stuff that's coming at you yeah slacks DMS pings dings Bings email all of that right and one we work in a email Centric culture like I a lot of email I stay on top of my email and it's just it's easier for me to manage email because with text you can't Loop another person in you can't hit forward so I I run all my life on email yeah and most people don't no one was ever taught how to manage email and so they don't know how to manage email they've or they don't have a framework for managing email for themselves and and it's not about how you organize your email or your Gmail inbox Etc it's like how do you approach email how much email do you do when do you delete when do you not delete and I always teach my team this I said whenever I look look at email I only do I only do 10 unit blocks so I walk into email if I'm checking email I only do 10 Things I only do 10 emails at a time okay it's like I deleted four I forwarded two I replied to two I'm done that was 10 and then I'm done and then the next time I come back to email I do 10 more units next time I come back to email I do 10 more units so I only do 10 units of email at any given time so email never feels heavy so now you like otherwise you can just sit in front of your email for three hours and you'll feel like as soon as you send one you get one back then then it's like you started with 10 you replied to nine but now you have 24 but instead if you're like hey I only I do this 10 unit blocks I always just manage 10 unit blocks over and over so even if I'm at my son soccer game I do 10 emails and then I put my phone away and so it makes it a lot more approachable so small things like that allow you to still stay light still stay focused because otherwise you do three hours of email then you're just tired yeah so the more I can manage my energy and stay light the more I can be inspired the more can be present the more I can kind of be where my feet are it's funny because when you say that I think about it like I I equate it to exercise like I could work out three hours in one day instead of twice a week or three times or four times a week but if I work out 45 minutes every day it keeps my energy up of course and same things it's like I see people that are like I'm going to dedicate this data I got to get back to all my Asana tasks we actually use Asana as the main so I would say like your email is my Asana I come and there's all these tasks and their projects Etc and people say all the time they like for got to go and it's like you've created this daunting task because you you shove it it's like it's a thing that you should constantly be looking at because then it keeps it easy and light versus like this one okay I'm putting this whole effort it's like it doesn't need to be that it's actually more effective if you do it a little bit multiple times a day well the crazy part is I'll give you an analogy what a knowledge worker is to a SAA or a is to a knowledge worker like us yeah is a hammer to a contractor m it's a tool yes does the contractor like what do I do with this Hammer now does he walk around no he does he's like I need a hammer I'm going to go use the hammer I'm always going to use the hammer it's in my it's in my bag yeah Asana is a tool you can't let it run your life now it's then it's not approachable anymore and then Asana now becomes this dark blob that you have to like log into you're like I don't want to do this anymore right but if you have a framework for handling it that it becomes a lot easier that's so fascinating I also love how you geek out over this stuff too because like you're the only person I can talk like yeah and emails and N it's like but but the greatness is in the granularity right it's it's if if I can that's why these online influencers are strange to me like when the online advice is really weird they give you the why work harder be kind have Grace I'm like okay well what does that mean then you have the what hey here's a strategy cool but like how do I do it yeah like no idea yeah and most people don't talk about the how at all and the how I do it differently today than I did 10 years ago because I've learned over time and I wish someone had taught me that school doesn't prepare us for for this here's here's something super important our educational system does not prepare us for success and the reason is because they don't define success well success is defined as a one-dimensional thing which is money but success is multi-dimensional in fact it has five dimensions in in my opinion you have money which is one relationships energy skill brand I'll tell you what I mean by that these five things you and Alex and I talk about this all it's you you can horse trade all of them right when you have money you can buy skill when you have relationships you can you can get money yeah when you have energy I just mean time effort uh Health now you have time to work yeah and if you have a skill if you are a soccer player if you can run ads if you can do podcast you get paid for that or most of all if you have a brand and and most people don't know what brand is to me it's like trusted distribution you put something out people trust you for that and fame is the most efficient businessman model that's that is the one ring that rules them all right so the reason we have not been given a framework for money is because we've only been told he take this course and take that course we made success sequential and you're like oh you got to do this then you got to go to college then you got to go to grad school then you got to get a PhD then you got to do a postdoc then I'm like how much are you going to do and then so what is success now then success becomes onedimensional which is if I don't make money I don't have anything else what wor people don't realize is that you can have one of those five you can have brand but no money and still build something pretty cool you can trade that you can have skill but no brand but you can trade that you can have time just energy and you can trade that or you can have a network of relationships and you can trade that or you have money and you can buy all of it but the cool part is when you realize that success is just a trade for what you truly want with what you have you start to realize that you can't dabble anymore people dabble because they have a little money they have a little relationships they have a little time they have a little skill and they have a little brand I'm like you're not going anywhere because you dabbled all of it right but instead if you just focus on one like I just worked on my skill like Alex always says Hey like go learn ads for 30 days you're now the master at it so you have a skill now you can trade that skill with the marketplace as soon as people realize that success is multi-dimensional and you can take one and trade with the other it makes life so much easier as opposed to thinking money is one it's a onedimensional part of success so then let me ask you this when you were growing Tellus versus now at real did you use the same framework at both or have you changed like with the dimensions like how you grow each business like by trading different I'll say assets yeah totally when when I when I started real it was you know we had roughly like 5,000 is Agents when I started a real and we were growing okay I said well what is the dimension that I need to use yeah exactly right and I was like well if I had the money say we did What Would I spend it onh I would spend it on ads I'm like okay well that doesn't help do I have relationships okay I have relationships so I have something there do I have time yes I have time do I have skill yes I have skill do I have brand in in our little world I'm King no one knows that but in my little tiny universe right but because of that we were able to grow so literally it was operationalizing brand to grow this but it goes a little deeper though because you that can get tired you can get tired and resentful because you're spending a lot of time doing that and the the big theme for us was how do I operationalize generosity okay because when you turn around and I said hey here's my business model if I just give everything away then one of two things happen number one they love us and they want to come join us and they we grow or second they love us yeah either is a great win yeah either is a huge win yeah so one is money today the second is growth tomorrow and so I was like well then the plan is to just operationalize generosity I told our team it's way easier not to get content it's way easier to invite everybody to the zooms it's way easier to run events where they'll it's open to not just the company but everyone else it's actually a lot easier can you imagine instead of going and finding a member's area to or like going putting something on school yeah you can just put it online online it's super easy to not gate things like it's easier to not gate things if you just operationalize generosity by not gating things that's what really helped so to me the dimensions were like what is the theme operational generosity what can I use to do that let's just use brand and let's use skill so I just use brand and use skill to use operationalize generosity man I love that and I'm curious because you always say work hard be kind yeah how do you operationalize that in the company just by this one sentence assume that whoever you meet is sent to teach you something just assume that whoever you meet is sent to teach you something because if I did that then I don't show up snoody I don't show up like I know more I don't show up like why am I taking this meeting I don't show up anyway so I just say whoever I meet is sent to teach me something and that forces me to say hey gonna honor this person this meeting me or may not go somewhere that's cool yeah but this person was sent to teach me something today when you do that it's like I'm going to work hard to like stay focused and listen I'm going to be kind to allow them to teach me something today and that one thing just allows you to not it it reframes expectations right you're like why am I here what am I doing it takes away from all of that saying man I'm meeting with Lea this is so cool like I'm going to learn something today like that's really really positive and that changes your approach to any scenario any situation you've mentioned in different interviews uh an entrepreneurial myth that you want to dispel which is that hustle and grind works but I know you and you're also somebody who works very hard so I was curious how do you dispel this myth while also working very hard as we both know I think the hustle and grind works you know at some point there's the the whole answer to success is you should know what you want yeah you should have a plan and you should do the work and a lot of people just think knowing what I want is going to get me there it's a secret or having a plan I met with a coach and I get there that'll get me there but you still have to do the work and but what I believe is that the hustle and grind leaves you tired and resentful because you don't feel progress and what you and Alex and I talk a lot about is the reason we feel burned out or the reason we don't feel progress is we don't win and when you don't win enough it becomes really hard and you feel tired and resentful so if we can't engineer small winds into our lives you don't have the courage or you don't have the motivation to go hustle and grind more you know the craziest part though right is there's nothing more frustrating for an entrepreneur than working hard and not seeing results right but if you can work hard and see results you're like wait that works let me work harder and when someone doesn't see the results it gets really hard for them so that's why the hustle and grind needs to be on the back of seeing results and having wins however small wins they are and then it becomes a lot easier because then the hustle and the grind feels like it has a purpose so it's really hustle and grinding works if you're actually moving the ball forward yeah totally yeah yeah what is the most painful thing for people they don't feel momentum right if you and I feel momentum we want to do more we're like man I feel momentum man I feel momentum or it's like weight loss you for the first 30 days you see no change in the mirror that's why the zic revolution is a really good one right because they see change right away and then they can try to wean off of it but you see change right away if you don't see momentum you're like I don't want to do this anymore uh H yeah that's really interesting because I I say this one thing to entrepreneurs a lot I say most entrepreneurs work really hard on the wrong thing totally totally and the interesting part about that is when you work really hard and you don't see results it's almost always a sequencing problem like you said you're doing something in the wrong order huh so instead of you're like hey um everyone told me that I should run Facebook ads but you don't have anything free to giveway so you have no leads and so you you you miss the sequencing of things so a lot of times you can just say oh wow if I just had a free offer on the front end and a sale on the thank you page I would do so much better and so most of the time when people are struggling and not getting the result is you just TR have a sequencing problem that's interesting I've actually literally never thought about that is that's a sequencing problem it's yeah so think about this right when a lot of folks watch content binge on YouTube watch all your stuff and they're like man I did what Leila told me exactly but then when they come to workshop and you're like hey you just mixed step two and one and all you did was you take your experience and you overlaid the experience and said yeah you followed the blueprint but for your situation two needs to come before one and then everything starts to work so from our experience all we see is that we can sequence things better and the sequencing allows us to get momentum faster yeah that's like in my my verbiage would be you're solving for the wrong constraint exactly right yeah okay that actually makes a ton of sense when have you like can you think of a time where you were like I was working so hard for a long time on the wrong thing because it was the wrong order oh to it happened happens every day last week it happens every day so I'll give you an interesting part about this a lot of times uh entrepreneurs want the perfect result you and I were talking about this just off camera they want the perfect result hey I'm going to build this book I'm going to build this course I want to do that and instead what they do is they just wait for six months to do that I don't if you've heard the story there's a story about the 50 pounds of clay Greatest Story I've ever heard so uh University Professor walks into the Ceramics class on day one and he splits the class into two halves he says you are all group one you are all group two and he says group one your job for this entire semester is to make the perfect pot don't do anything else for the whole semester your only job is to make the perfect pot and he said group two your job is to make 50 pounds worth of pots they call it 50 pounds of clay and so semester goes by at the end of the semester they look at all the pots and all the perfect pots came from group two came from the group that did more quantity came from the group that experimented with resequencing things over and over and over again so I always tell our teams hey if you have an idea let's get version one as fast as possible we call it the shitty first draft how fast can you get a shitty first draft and as soon as you get the shitty first draft it's like whoa I got something that I can react to which is pretty cool it's funny because as you say this it's like you literally just showed me the shitty first draft of your culture book and it's sitting right here behind you yeah it's awesome right but that took us a year to build and I was like we can't go another year not having a draft Yeah and how long do you think it actually because okay here's the theory I have which is so for example each quarter I send out a survey to the team and the survey says you know like tell me the top wins that we've had tell me the top places you see opportunity tell me what you would do differently if you were CEO and whenever I sent it out I would give them like a week and then nobody ever did it until the last day and so I was like this is ridiculous so then instead I just drop it and I say it's it's just now and so you get like three hours fill it out it takes five minutes and I know it's like I get a higher compliance rate a higher completion rate when there's a less amount of time so I'm curious like how long do you think that actually took 20 minutes yeah yeah I was like there's no way that took a year most projects don't take that long because the 0o to one feels so big because we think it's 0 to 10 in our heads and it's very hard for us to think zero to one because we can't see the result of a shitty first draft we can only see the result of the perfect thing that we have in our head and that perfect thing feels so far ahead but then when you take the first step you're like man I'm already at zero to one this feels amazing yeah because no one wakes up and says I want to make a shitty first draft but if we can condition ourselves to saying what is the next thing that I can do it gets really good I'll give you a crazy story this generic advice on the internet really bothers me right and it's so generic oh you should work hard oh you should be kind oh you should hustle more and I'm like like what does that mean and the worst that I've heard is this well if you got 1% better every day you would be 4 million per better at the end of the year and I'm like well I can do compounding math but what do you do at at noon you're eating a burger and you're like hm how do I get 1% better that is so amorphous that's so weird like the average person even you and I can't do that so every night I call this the DBQ which is the do better question I ask myself this question every single night what is one thing that I can do tomorrow that will make it better than today so if you ask that question it's the do better question what is one thing that I can do tomorrow to make it better than today and that's way easier that's more tangible so I can say oh I didn't work out today I need to work out tomorrow one thing that I can do tomorrow to make it better than today well I didn't make an offer today cool I'm going to make an offer tomorrow what is one thing that I can do tomorrow to make it better than today so that way you're always making your tomorrow better than today which is insanely powerful and that's like a tangible thing you can do and that's also very Contex sensitive because your 1% better is not the same as my 1% better because I don't know what that means and all a lot of this like internet advice is so amorphous it doesn't tell you what to do next no I'm curious for you can you think of in the last week like when you ask yourself that question what something was for you yeah totally so I'll give you an example yeah um I was I love I've totally fallen in love with AI I think AI is like the coolest thing and so I was asking myself the night before I'm like I keep thinking about this I keep seeing ads about this I keep reading articles about this how do I get better doing this I said hm every day from now on I'm going to watch one AI video before I go to bed that is the one thing that I can do tomorrow that will make it better than today so I just built it into my into my routine now and it's not hard and so just four or five videos in I I feel so much better because I actually did something something with it that's funny because you sent me some of the stuff too I'm like you are doing that it's awesome my wife thinks it's like the weirdest thing she can hear me watching like a clawed AI video at night and she goes what are you watching at one and a half speed do you are you even listening to any of this I just think of her now like loser frustrated dumb commenting on your post 100% yeah that's amazing um question for you so like a lot of people who watch my content I would say like a common theme that comes up is that they feel like they've been working really hard and they feel burnt out or even if it's not the word burnt out they talk about how they feel really stressed and for somebody who does everything that you do I've seen your calendar I know your schedule we talk every day I'm like I know and I'm curious for you like what have you found to be the top one to three things that you do to manage your stress that's actually something I've never really asked you so I was like what do how do you do that for yourself because I know I have my different ways of like mechanisms of managing it what do you whether it be like a mental framework or something you actually do out in the world yeah the most important thing for us as entrepreneurs is to manage the one exhaustible resource which is our time and the crazy part is a lot of people talk about time management and it's just design right and so the worst thing that any entrepreneur can do is wake up in the morning and says hm what should I do today like that's the worst worst thing so my dad I'll I'll tell you a great story about my dad we we were uh I grew up in a very mediocre everything world but with extraordinary parents and my dad's like a purebred entrepreneur every single night after dinner my dad would sit down we had a one-bedroom apartment my dad would sit down at the dining table and he would open this leather journal he had open a new page he would write the date of tomorrow on it and he would write down all the things he was going to do the next day and he called that creating tomorrow today he did that Leila every single day of my childhood so even now that's the one thing I took away every night I stretch before I go to bed and I sit down and I'm like in a pigeon pose and I've got my notebook and I was like how do I create tomorrow today and whatever is on that list that I make for myself for tomorrow I do not leave the office until I get those done it is a pure commitment around that because now you're keeping your promise to yourself most people are like oh I'm going to set an alarm for 5 a.m. and I'll snooze for a little bit it's okay that you snooze but you just broke the promise that you made to yourself you set the alarm at 5 am. Leila didn't set the alarm at 5: am. for you you set the goals that you were doing tomorrow but you chose not to achieve those goals or targets and that was the biggest lesson I took from my dad he's like how do you create tomorrow today and so lesson number one for me is tomorrow has to be designed today otherwise I wake up tomorrow and I can't manage the stress because too many things are coming your way kind of that's number one yeah the second is a lot of people don't manage work based on how much effort it's going to take so they put file taxes and take laundry on their to-do list and I'm like those are two completely different things file taxes may take you four hours laundry may take you 10-minute drive but those two can be on your to-do list because you have no idea when you're going to do them so everything for me is driven by the calendar if I think something is going to take a 4-Hour block I give myself a 4our block to do do that and that is time blocking and that forces you to work in the time that you have a lot of and we know that whatever time like you said gets allotted that the project gets done I can do a 4H Hour project in one hour if I give myself that one hour to do it like how many times have you and I said man I got to leave on a trip tomorrow and we get all of it done that day before why because you give yourself that time to be able to do it right but I think creating tomorrow today was like a huge shift for me and I think I got really lucky watching my dad do it yeah and my dad there were times where he would not come home until like 1011 at night and I knew that was because he didn't get everything done on that list because he made a promise to himself to create tomorrow today I'll give you a crazier story on my team we have this idea that uh every one Thursday a month we say I'm not going to go to bed tonight until blank okay it's a really powerful thing right because you can say hey I'm not going to bed tonight until we redo our CRM so that Thursday night I literally have mon do or whatever I am here until this project gets done MH so I am not going to go to bed until this gets done and it's amazing you think it's going to take all night but it's not and we bang through that project and you're like wow I made a promise to myself and I kept this promise to myself you burned the boats you just said there is no choice I am going to wait until I get this done and that was super powerful so one night a month one Thursday a month as a team we do I'm not going to go to bed until blank and that's super powerful like that progress that you can make is insane when your entire team does that do you give yourself permission during time like that like almost uh I've heard like another friend of mine talks about like a work vacation like today I'm going to give myself permission to only work on this project and like I'm not going to exercise if I don't want to I'm not going to do do you do it like that or do you have other things that go on too no I I um I am I'm a dog with bone kind of guy so to me as soon as I have my mind locked on something everything else fall I have to get this done and I've realized that the singularity of focus is a really powerful skill and I'll tell you Lea where I where I learned that I learned that because it was all going back to personal Integrity how do I keep the promises I make to myself I'll give you the crazy story um about 11 years ago my I was really sick and my doctors couldn't figure out what was going on and so I went into like a sleep study and the doctor said hey early in the mornings your numbers look really good you should just wake up earlier just shift your day up and I go oh that makes sense and he goes I don't know if it'll work but just shift your day up it being a 8:00 p.m. to 11 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. go 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. shift your day up because your numbers look better then I said wait a minute no I have to wake up at 5 in the morning there is I don't want to wake up at 5 in the morning so I called three of my best friends and I said hey would it be okay just for the next week where we can all get on a call at 5:00 A.M for five minutes right and you don't have to say anything it'll be my accountability because I need to get better healthwise and they said sure So I set up a conference call line and the first day I did this call it was like ding ding ding three people joined I was like okay so I delivered some two-minute message and they all hung up the next day I get back on the call and I hear ding ding ding ding ding I'm like wait there are five people on the call I don't know why there are more people on the call the next day the dings were like ding ding ding ding ding ding ding I go wait third day and there's like 15 people on this call I go okay I'm just going to keep going I realized at the end of that week there were 20 25 people on the call because they had shared these numbers and that's when what I call now the 5:00 a.m. Club was born it's a 5 minute call at 5:00 a.m. every single morning because I made a promise to myself that I was going to wake up at 4:45 5 a.m. every morning and now when you have this group I'm going to let this group down so we've been doing this 10 years I've got 3,000 plus calls I've working up 445 a.m for 10 plus years because I have an accountability group of 9,000 people like roughly 4,000 to 4,500 people show up on a call every single morning at 5:00 a.m. Pacific time for 5 minutes and have you ever given yourself permission like today I'm not doing it I'm going a vac it's like something so only when the time zones where I am doesn't work I get a sub so if we're in Hawaii yeah that would be like 2: am. Pacific time uh 2: a.m Hawaii time and I'm like hey can someone sub for me but I've taken the call in Europe I've taken the call when I was an Asia like whenever there's it's a normal schedu I take I do the call every single time uh we have I'll tell you the craziest part we have uh a couple of billionaires on the call we have two uh members of Congress on the call have one head of State as in a president of a country that is on the call it's thousands of entrepreneurs on the call because I can see the call log that's so cool yeah it's five minutes at 5: am. every single every single morning 365 days a year wow it's interesting because like I ask you the question about like have you ever missed any for any reason because something I've realized is that I don't know if this resonates with you or not but like I'm very good at setting rules for myself and following them and I think where a lot of people people struggle and I've struggled in the past is like when do you know it's okay to break that rule you know what I mean like when do I set that list the night before and then something what does it make sense that a thing occurs that I say it doesn't actually make sense to complete this list yeah do you struggle with that or is that something you figured out no of course I do and but you it's nice to give yourself a rule to break a rule right so my rule is really simple it's okay to suck but it's not okay to skip so I can go to the gym I'm like hey I go to the gym I'll do five minutes elliptical I'm out I sucked but I'm not skipping yeah so so it's okay to suck but it's not okay to skip so if I'm reading a book and I'm saying I'm going to read 10 pages a night maybe I'll read one page that night yeah it's okay to suck but it's not okay to skip because when you start skipping it's really easy to fall off SK people say hey you can't skip more than two days in a row and things like that to me I'm just like hey it's okay to suck but it's not okay to skip so I just try not to skip but here's the cool part though to do great things we must do few things and the reason why a lot of people do a lot of things is because their main hustle is broken yeah the reason why people have side hustles is because you don't have a good main hustle yeah and that's so you don't need a side hustle you just need a good main hustle and so I always think about why is this person skipping or why is this person missing it's because they just have too much on their plate if you only have four priorities it's way easier to keep those priorities and way easier to keep your promise to yourself based on those priorities how do you set priorities for yourself given the position you're in now like do you allow other people to have say over your priorities like hey I want you guys to tell me like as well like do you think this is where I need to focus given the business like given the size of the business that you're you're over or is it something you completely decide autonomously I think it's a blend so I think we're tracking like a you know we're a $1.2 billion do business today and it's it's wild we have 22,000 plus people but we have a they're very clear goals so the goal says we need to do X cool what what are the teams that are going to do to help us get to that goal hey what's shon's role to do that so I wake up in the morning and I'm like hey my job is to do one of these strengths it's growth culture influence that's all I do and so if that means if I'm not doing something related to growth or something related to drive culture or something to influence somebody then I'm probably underperforming what I'm doing so thematically so I call it just thematic weeks as long as my weeks are thematically the same I'm doing the right thing so over time you will Compound on that but there's some days where like you and I will talk about hey there was a fire today right and so everything gets shut down and you you solve the fire because that fire is going to then affect culture later yeah um but the teams have a very open dialogue of telling me hey can you help me with this can you help me with that which is really good I I'll tell you a one thing that I do with all my direct reports it's very simple at the end of the week it say hey what was your high life for the week what was your low life for the week how can I help you next week and so they just send me one bullet point each and it's really powerful because it's a same format that happens every week it's easy to do and so I'm like oh he's help asked me for help on that project for three weeks in a row I should probably help with that so you start to see some patterns around it but if we don't know what we have to wake up and do something is wrong with you know the promises that we made to ourselves yeah no it's really interesting it's actually so powerful like just in having like our friendship like when I'm like hey you've been where I'm going and you are above a larger company than I've ever been above like is it okay for me to be like still handling these fires and you're like that and it's funny because it's given me almost like permission to work on things that I know are important because I'm like if I solve this the right way this fire corre it makes it better yes and it shows everybody the importance of the culture and that's actually something that I would love to ask you which is like do you see ever Business Leaders like delegating too much of like the work to other people because they don't see that opportunity I think it varies based on skill level and I think a lot of folks sometimes be like oh that's a tough conversation can you have it can you have it for me yeah and or uh that's a comp conversation can we just have HR have that conversation yeah so sometimes based on tough conversations people will want to either backpedal from it or not have it and all I tell my team around that is if you feel like you're delegating something offer support in the delegation so if I was saying hey Jimmy on so Jimmy on my team I said hey Jimmy I'd love for you to make sure that our event looks great next week he's like man I'm really struggling about these two things hey could I do you want me to help you in this conversation with the vendor you want me to jump on the call now Jimmy feels a lot a sense of support around it what I what we as leaders should not allow is when Jimmy says uh it's better for you to have that conversation short I'm like no no no that's not I will Coach you to have the conversation I will support you to have the conversation I will jump on the call with you to have the conversation but there is no scenario where you delegated back to me like that does not work so I think us showing up for them is really powerful I will tell you though I'll give you a super cool story around this uh our last company which I've told you about when we were selling to dougas Salomon which is a public UT company we were pitching the board in New York City and so my partner Peter and I at that time we would wake up early and we would walk Central Park yeah and all we would do Lea was roleplay and so he would say we'd walk in Central Park for three hours 5:00 a.m. to 8 am. right we're walk in Central Park and he goes okay so shiron what would you say if they asked you blank what would you say they asked you about iida and then I would answer it he goes no do it again no do it again no do it again no do it again right and then I'd say hey but Peter what if they asked me about this he's like let me try then he would do it and I was like no do it again no do it again you're missing that no do it again let me do it and so we would role playay back and forth so we role played like four or five days pre- board meeting and so when we got to the board meeting and the board ask us a question and we' already rehearse a question we look at each other and we smile cuz they like I got that one right cuz we already pre for that and I think the crazy part is when leaders delegate they don't role play so instead of saying hey Jimmy go have that tough conversation you're like hey Jimmy are you cool having that conversation or would you like to like do a fun roleplay between US just so we can get comfortable and we call that the gift giving people the gift of going second right there's no pressure around that you give them the gift of going second and role play is like the coolest easiest thing to do because they hear your language patterns you hear theirs you've already said it one time so the second second time is easier and I'm a big fan of the I don't love the word delegation it's the empowerment associated with it but I think the empowerment has to connect with a transfer of skill and confidence in some way and the transfer of skill and confidence is only going to come from you sitting with them or role playing with them or coaching them through it so as long as the culture of the organization is Jimmy should come to you and say hey Lea I know I have this tough conversation is it okay if I just roleplay with you or can you just coach me through it what would you say if you were me or how would you start the conversation if you were me hey if it goes sideways I'm kind of nervous about this how would I bring it back to this those are the conversations they should ask us because now we get to lift up leaders which is really powerful I love that so much and it's it's funny you say that because I was literally when I've had a lot of people I've had to coach on the tough conversation I'm like all right let's hit record you're recording me on a zoom or on the phone if we're in person and like listen to the tonality um because I'm sure you've seen it it's like most of those conversations go wrong not in what they say but in how they say it because they're freaking out they're nervous whatever um but what I have seen a lot of in just actually like my content that goes out there about this and then what people say is basically like when they're teaching other people to have hard conversations it's not that they are showing them but that they are telling them yeah and then they're like go ahead go fire that person go ahead go give someone feedback go ahead and I'm like they're abdicating right they're not actually teaching it's actually a theme that I've been talking about with our leadership too which is show don't tell yes show show them what you're going to do before you tell them how to do it it's almost like you know it's like the framework of U demonstrate document duplicate that's so good yeah uh that's what me and Alex came up with in terms of like how you get people to learn things but I love that you're saying that because it's something that I I just feel myself like continuing to beat my head into the wall of like guys I swear I know it feels like a lot because it is but like we have to show them before we can assume that they know how to do it totally yeah yeah there's um along those lines I wrote this thing down maybe a few years ago and I call it the learning Dogma the learning Dogma is how people learn right with our employees with our friends whoever with our children so when you discover something you get to learn it once so someone heard you on a podcast and they heard the the framework they're like oh when you discovered something it's cool I Le I heard that from Lea ones when you teach something you get to learn it twice but when you document something you get to learn forever that's good right and so so you guys remember that yeah but no it's super powerful right so a lot of times when you don't have recall yeah it's because you just don't have a framework around it yeah that's so interesting and that's that one thing so if people want Mastery uh people leave Mastery I in a very um unachievable way just because they think I can I've learned it and I can teach it so I'm a master at it but what most people don't realize is when you listen to something you get to learn once when you teach something you get to learn it twice that's a gym quick quote by the way and when but when you document something you get to learn it forever so when you have a framework you walk into a conversation like when you're doing your workshops and someone ask you a question you can draw a p pyramid and say Here's how I the levels of this overall right that's super very very fast it can get your thinking into their thinking very quickly do you have a framework for teaching people Frameworks because when I first met you for example I remember I was like yeah for everyone who doesn't know like I knew nothing about real estate we had just sold our companies and I was like okay you understand business but you also understand in real estate so I trust you right uh and I was like what do you think of all this stuff and all the Frameworks that you taught me I was like damn you don't just know business in real estate you also know how to break things down so people can understand them easily I'm curious like have you distilled that into a framework I have and I I learned that through um from this guy named Richard green so here's a here's a story for you okay you know the uh the Elon mus and the Jeff basos of the world will get on camera and say oh if I can do it you can do it too and that's a boldfaced lie elon's half alien so there's no way we can do what he does Bezos there's no way that their experiences their skill sets are completely different than ours so I always thought well why do they say that well they say that because they can't say hey Shon you can't do what I do because that would be egotistical to say then I was thinking well but there's got to be a way for you to unlock the inner Elon and you for me to unlock the inner Bezos and me how do I do that and so my theory was what is elon's support system what is bezos's support system what is Tony robbins's support system and then I said wait a minute Tony by the way Freo nature amazing speaker I said wow I can never be like Tony but what if I could hire Tony Robins to speaking coach so I hired Richard green Tony Robinson speaking coach for $50,000 for three hours yeah and probably the best all my speaking was up until the time I met Richard green and everything after and he he shared this one one idea with me and I put in my words he says he Shan what you're trying to do is you have all these experiences knowledge ideas skills experiences and you're trying to take those experiences and put it in the audience's head but you're trying to do that with Charisma you're trying to show up on stage with Charisma tell a great story be be animated you know have have great media and you're telling the story but it's all Charisma you're trying to take your charisma and shove it into the audience's head so when they leave they're like man that was such a good presentation but they have no recall they can't remember anything how many times you and I gone to a presentation were like that was awesome but I don't remember anything I have no idea what happened right that's so weird but but you enjoyed you were entertained for that time so that's just Charisma so I said he said Shan you are really you have great Charisma on stage but I don't remember anything that you said I was like how do I fix this and he said it's about organizing your thoughts so that you don't you don't put the Charisma in their head you put a framework in their head and so I came up with this idea of organizing operationalizing Charisma how do you operationalize that charisma so now you have this learning Dogma I put that into a little box and then I can put the Box in their head so now they have recall and that becomes a lot better as well so the the framework is how do I take something where I can organize it into something so I can put in someone's set and the easiest way that I have found for myself is uh two rules rule number one is one two three too many one two three too many as soon as you get to the fourth you're like I forgot the first three so it's one two three too many and the second is can it somehow be established on a simple geograph geometric shape a circle a square a triangle so that the the brain can take a snapshot of it and you know which goes in what box as long as it's one two three too many and I can come up with a geometrical shape I can just remember a lot more things I so agree with that because with our values people like there's only three I'm like I just feel like I can't remember more than three three too many if I'm on an interview and I have to recall our values and there's six I'm like all let's check off these right I'm like the side I'm distracted I love that that's so good and it's interesting because my main piece of feedback I give people when they show me presentations so I'm like I love this but put it into a visual and they're like how I'm like a shape and then people like what I don't I'm like it's just easier to remember totally you it's like something with the brain it's easier to associate that with something well well think about think about this in the olden days what did people do they transferred knowledge in the walls of caves through diagrams that's fair right that's how our that's how we're wired by the way there's an amazing presentation mechanism that was actually created by a kindergarten teacher and it's called format and what format is if anybody use this it will help help people structure the ability to deliver anything and it's the why what how now there are four frames the why frame is why is this important why is this important right now hey I'm talking about uh I'm talking about global warming and it's important right now because all the rainforest are dying why is this important why is it important right now right the second is the what frame the what frame is well there's four pieces that affect global warming and then I say Piece One Piece two piece three piece four that's the 10,000 foot view great now it's the how frame let me tell you how each of these pieces are affecting you here's piece one here's everything about piece one here's piece two here's everything about pce two here's piece3 everything and then now I've given you the why the What the how and the next one is the now or the next so what do I do with all this information you don't have to remember anything that I said all I need you to do is to turn off your air conditioning at 6 p.m. that is the one thing it's it's what is the one Domino that I kick right so if we any presenter if they use the why what how now frames then you transition people through that process and they feel so much more engaged with you because they're like oh yeah he's answering every inbuilt objection that I have like why should I listen to her oh because it's important oh what is this all about oh it's got four pieces well how how do I actually do that oh he just told me man there's too much what do I what what should I do oh just do this why what how now and it was actually came up with by a kindergarten teacher W I love it because that's how they teach kindergarten it's called format I didn't even come up with it use it in all my presentations I'm like I'm about to transcribe this podcast after we're done so I can because I'm like I need to use these to teach people I love that that's fantastic yeah and then that way you're also not um you don't feel pressure to give them 30 things to do at the end you say here's remember right here's here's the first Domino the next is that's the first Domino well here's the first Domino right and that's super super helpful when you when you could do that wow it's funny now I'm thinking like when I met you cuz Alex I remember got off with you and he was like no you need to meet him I feel like you're like really you're going to love him it's funny cuz I remember the point in time in which we met which was a time where I told Alex I was like I feel very alone in the business world and he was like well why is it because you're a woman no it's not I was like it's actually because we're surrounded by all these people who have monetary success and that are making all this money who I can learn from but I don't want to because they're not the nicest people they don't treat their team well they don't actually care about their customers and it's funny because I started thinking maybe I got it all wrong maybe you know we didn't grow gym launch to be a billion dollar company because I'm just like a naive idiot and then I met you and you had grown a business to be worth billions and you were so nice and so generous and so kind and you affirmed some of of the things that I like wished so badly to be true in the world and I was like oh it exists thank God because otherwise I don't want to do this anymore you know what I mean thank you uh I think the I think this one dimensionality of success is the thing that affects most entrepreneurs and that is everything is the barometer of money yeah and if you can just realize that man I don't have that right now but I can trade for it later cool if I don't have that now how do I trade relationships how do I trade energy how do I trade skill how do I trade time uh to Brand if I just do that now I know I can go build one of those and maybe that's where the calling is in a lot of ways like I I'm not Money Motivated and to me I'll tell you there's a u a lot of people do the disk profile and things like that I'm a 99d 999 I'm a 99d 999 I'm like I'm weird right but my adaptive disc which is when I'm stressed I'm a lower D on higher I'm a more people person so uh when it when push comes to shove I'm not a capitalist when I'm push custom shove I'm a teddy bear got it and so I just realize that about myself and I go okay well then how do I stay true to that version of me yeah that makes me comfortable in my own skin so will I be a Bezos or a musk no I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that because I want to wake up in the morning and be with people that I love and I'm like man if I can get a day with Alex and Lea that's a good day I don't I don't care about anything else and who cares about making money I'm fortunate that I've had a decent decent financial success but afterwards you realize what are you going to do like buy one more Taco like I don't gqu yeah it's not most of the things that we need we have but if you can realize you can horse trade it makes it really fun yeah CU I was going to ask you because you you I was thinking about it and we met when you were at the time where you weren't you didn't have anything so it's so interesting to see like shiron then versus shiron now for me and what do you like what what's the big difference that you see because that's I'm curious about that too you seem happier now oh just being in the in just being in it yeah said that more energized happier like more certain of yourself confident like it just seems like you're doing what you yeah you're doing things you're good at with people that you like doing it with yeah um well it gives you purpose right you wake up and you have purpose you wake up and you have something to do like this whole being retired is interesting but you wake up and you have nothing to you have options you have nothing to do and you're like that sounds great it doesn't it's really bad for like high driver personalities like ours I always want to do something but uh but you don't want that something to be out of alignment yes and then you get tired and resentful so finding something that you can sink your teeth into is super positive I'm curious for you because I think when you say you're not M motivated I'm the same way which is like I'm just thinking about I don't know how else to to verbalize it other than like I want to build an excellent business one that makes customers lives better employees lives better you know but also can achieve financial success so that people actually listen to me when I tell them that this is how we did it right um when I wake up every morning the first thing I'm thinking about is my team and my customers right it's like those are the two things that are top mind and then usually the question I ask myself is where can I support people and where can I support the business do you have like a and this was something I had to like reflect on like okay this is the first thought I have when I wake up and it is a default to the people first like who do I need to support in the team and then the business do you have something that's like it's what you think about that kind of directs you that you indirectly grow the business financially because you focus on this thing we all should have that we we all should have that because otherwise it's very you fall off the wagon super quick because distraction hit you like we have 16,000 commercial messages hitting us every single day they're all forcing us to get off the path that we're on yeah and that's why the the Sprints really help me as like I'm committed to doing these things these Sprints are thematic they're got to do with go growth culture and influence I call it GCI growth culture and influence and if it's not GCI I'm like why why am I doing that if it's not GCI like why am I doing that and so that allows just everything is thematic and that's been super helpful I'll give you uh the big lesson that I learned I hired my first coach when I was 21 okay and craziest story which you will not even believe I was talking to my dad and on the phone and we were growing was it was our first company and my dad said to me he goes dude you just need help like you need somebody to talk to I was like Dad I'm fine no one can understand what I'm going through and he's like where are you going I'm like I'm going to this event with like 20 people I got invited so I went to this event put my hoodie on sat in the back right I'm like what am I doing here yeah I got stuff to do like what am I doing here and then this lady comes on stage just 20 of us in this room and she starts talking I was like all right I'm here I might as well pay attention and every time I had a question that popped into my head it felt like she read my mind and she just answered that question and I was like wait a minute so I had this question and she answered the question I had this question she answered question so when I drive home back I call my dad said dad you won't believe what happened and he goes seems like you need somebody to talk to yeah so I said well I don't have the money and what do I do with her she's like he's like he can be a great mentor I go dad like it feels weird she never met me and so this I wrote her an email and I said uh I was in this meeting you did great I would I I said these words I would like to offer you $10,000 as a symbol of my seriousness oh I will never forget that line I do not expect any meetings I do not expect any phone calls I just hope that from time to time when I write you an email you'll prioritize my responses that's all I wrote she writes back saying is this a joke and and I was like no I didn't know how else to reach out to you and said write it up so I assumed she metant a contract and I had no idea I was 21 years old so I hit print on the email I signed it scanned it and I sent it back to her I don't know what else to do and she's like here are my wiring instructions I wired her $110,000 and she became my first coach and so cool amazing amazing lady still talk to her even today she told me something which was really cool and she said sh you want to think about thematic decades he's like what do you want to do in your 20s what do you want to do in your 30s what do you want to do in your 40s and she goes when you turn 20 or 30 or 40 or 20 to 25 or 30 but thematic decades are really powerful because it allows you to become the best version of yourself yeah in in that way I'll tell you the crazy part in my 30s all I cared about was energy like I want to beat this sickness beat this illness yeah and it was a dark time for us and all I did in my 30s was just get healthier yeah and that was my my goal in my 20s I just wanted to prove myself I was like I I am good at what I do I need to show the world so it was all 20 the 20s was all about proving to myself now that like my I'm in my 40s now all I feel is Mastery like what is one thing that I can become best in World at like the text message I sent Alex are dude I just want to be best in World at something he's like and then he of course you know philosophically he's like you don't need to be best in the world at that you are best in the world at three things he goes off philosophically about that but my my thematic decades are in my 40s I just want to become best in World at something yeah and that shines this light on Mastery and so when you wake up every morning you're like if I run my week this way is it getting me closer to to that to that and so it allows you to at least recalibrate you're like okay this week's a fire week it's not going to happen I'm going to go do it next week yeah but it allows you to recalibrate in some way so this these thematic decades have been like a really nice North Star that's so interesting so like when you stepped into real for example do you think to yourself like how this is a path that yeah yeah I just want Mastery like I was like how could I run like this is that my next billion we did a billion once let's do a billion again when we started we roughly had a $200 million market cap in 18 months we grew there to a billion dollar market cap and I was like that's my next billion I want to get Mastery at this and that when you do that you like keep your promise to yourself yeah you do question for you that's kind of like a side note but I obviously know about your your wife and your kids and all that and I'm curious like what role do you think having support has played and you being able to have all this success I think the hardest part is is us not believing that our partners our spouses our friends Etc will support us most people are just like oh they won't understand me they won't support me Etc they never give them the chance they never give them the chance uh my wife and I have a very open relationship and we tell them she's like hey if you need to work just tell me you need to work and so on the weekends if I need to work I don't have to ask for permission I'm like she knows that if I need to work I understand what priorities are and I just tell her that I need to work and there are times when I'm like hey uh I got a bunch of stuff going on I'm going to leave early and be back late she's like just give me heads up yeah and she knows that uh shiron without purpose would be a bad husband and a bad father and I'll tell you the craziest thing if I come home uh cranky or down she look at me she goes can you just go sell something you'll feel better just go sell something and so she knows me so well that she's like you didn't sell anything today did you I'm like no she goes can you just go sell something write an email go sell something you will feel you will feel better and I've seen her on weekend saying if I'm short with the kids or what have you that she will say hey you're being short with the kids do you do you need to work for a little bit and it's great because she understands that I tell you the second thing though is I've realized a lot of entrepreneurs will say well you know uh they put this undo pressure on themselves that when they're home they have to be there with their children ETA I'm like they also learn from your work ethic yes so my children see me work and so they know when they come talk to me they're like hey Dad can you take a break from work or can I talk to you later they'll do the Sorting question it's really good I'm like hey I need five minutes and I'll say well is it like real five minutes or dad five minutes right that's a joke but it's okay but at least they know that I'm working and so now they don't bother me either because they're like you're working and it's a really positive thing so the work is not a work is not a stressful negative thing in our household it is what we do it's it's how we move the ball forward it's our expression of our Humanity it's our expression of our purpose and so my children know that they want a life of work and it's super cool my son wants to work with me and that's like the greatest compliment you could ever get so I really believe that you get a successful support system if you can be truly deeply honest with your support system saying this is how I'm wired this is how I work this is how I think and when you have that you don't it doesn't break and so the more of that exists the easier it is I you know people talk about like work life integration and work life Harmony Etc I don't know what that means because it's really it's it's just this amorphous idea yeah to me it's just tell everybody that you what you're working on and be really honest about it and if you have to work go work if you don't want to work don't work like just be really honest about stuff but so my my work and my life are like super they're just they're in and out and I um my dad always used to say I you know he's like I work 80 hours a week I just choose which 80 hours I work yeah which is super powerful if you think about it right yeah you know it's great I love hearing that because um it's actually for me because it's something that's been top of mind for me and me and Alex actually just did a podcast together and uh we were talking about like having supportive spouse I think it's good to hear from somebody who like isn't in the business with their spouse but I've seen how supportive she is oh yeah because it's she doesn't take it personally if you're not great because you need to work on something and I think that what I've seen a lot recently especially with younger entrepreneurs and people that are like very uh ambitious young professionals is they might have somebody but that person takes it very personally that they want to work a lot and what they don't what I what I think that person doesn't realize is that it's not about the work it's about the growth yeah and so by telling them that they can't work you actually prevent them from growing as a person and then that person will eventually resent you and then nothing's going to work it's not about the work it's about the growth so good isn't it though it's so good cuz you know that it's so good it's like you don't need to work you know we we could just invest in real estate and call it a day right I could invest with in real estate with you College day not with myself that's for sure it's not about the work it's about the growth that's so good so true though right that's so good it's I'm we don't give our partners and our spouses and our friends enough credit they're not dumb they love you for a reason they know you yeah they know you're weird they they want to support you with doing that be more honest with them tell them those things now and if if for some reason it's not working out just say hey here's who I am can you help me figure out a path that I don't want insult you I want to be there with you and they'll tell you Hey whenever you're with me and when you're at dinner don't check your phone they'll give you the rules and then just work through those right tell you just tell them I I think that all progress starts with telling the truth it's just easier if you tell the truth you don't have to remember lies just tell the truth I think it's kind of like it because you're so good at just communicating what's going on like Alex will call you and then I'll be with with you're like hey I'm with Neil like talk in a couple hours hey I'm I'm with the F like it's just clear and it's like nobody takes offense to anybody just like telling them the truth of what's Happening yeah like hey I'm in meetings can't talk like the other day you called me cuz I was like oh my God this show and you were like I called you twice and I'm like I'm still in the show you know it's like you just tell people what's going on yeah uh and I love because I've seen just how much you've brought the kids into it and like how knowledgeable they are of business and how young they are it's so freaking cool I'm just like I want more people to do that like I can't say because I don't have kids but I'm like if I ever do have kids then I want it to be like that where it's like you know you and Neil were looking at investing in land and he's looking at buying land he's like Dad showing you properties and you know like she wants to start a unicorn you have the unicorn on because she has the Unicorn business like so cool the my coach told me he said hey she said uh you should have one thing with your son and one thing with your daughter that's just your own okay and that was her recommendation and I said well why they're like well you just build a different Bond doing that yeah and my son had my son and I had not like not we didn't build a business together my daughter and I built this you know Drop Shipping e-commerce company together and so every week we have a board meeting she's the CEO and she's like Dad how much did you sell this week right it's it's hilarious like having a 12-year-old tell you that 8-year-old tell you that but it's cool because now she knows that that's what work is and and when we are talking about it she doesn't care about the rest of the world she doesn't care about Mom and Dad she didn't care she she only I'm her partner in that my son who's 12 Neil who's 12 he just invested in his first piece of real estate as a 12year old but the cool part Leela is I any conversation that's not confidential I just leave it open in the car for him to hear so he sees how I handle things but what people don't realize is with my son in the car it makes me a better entrepreneur it makes me a better father I'm like I can't get mad at this person because he's going to learn from my tonality so it forces me to be a better person so I put him on I leave it on the on the speaker phone so gives me accountability to be softer to be kinder to operationalize generosity more because otherwise then he'll learn to speak like me and that that made us get a lot better so now even so he'll say things like Hey Dad uh I want to ask for to to play volleyball and not basketball in PE what should I do I'm like just talk to your coach he goes no but do you have a script it's amazing that he asks you that right yeah it's amazing and and the reason he asked me that is because I told him a story when I was in so I had I I had 39 one-on-one interviews to get a job at Golden Sachs 39 one-on-one scheduled interviews to get a job at Goldman right this is not including lunches dinners phone screens nothing 39 individual one-on-one interviews I walk into one of these interviews with this managing partner he shows up all frazzled he puts like this big leather uh binder on the desk and he says you're a hot shot I see Hot Shots come through here all the time he goes um see if you can set me up a meeting you got skilled see if you can set me a meeting so he hands me this binder he's like no no go ahead open it I go okay so I open the binder it has it says Lea phone number right I was like would you like me to call he's like yeah I go said sir I'm happy to call her do you have a script or something because I just want to represent you well he starts he smiles he packs up his stuff he puts it in his bag shakes my hand he's like you'll do great kid and he walks out and then I saw him at the cocktail party and I said I'm sorry that interview was like 46 seconds yeah what did I do right or wrong he goes I've been interviewing young hot shots coming to want to work at Goldman Sachs for years and you were the first person that didn't just pick up the phone and want to prove to me that they're hot shot you asked me hey can you give me some guidance on what to do here because that made me believe that you're coachable and I told Neil that story and so now every time he's stuck he's like so can you give me a script for that and I said uh you say hey coach I really love Volleyball versus basketball would it be okay if I played volleyball this year and he goes really can I say it I'm like yeah go say it role playay right now he gets confident saying that because I told him that story up front and I would have had no idea how to call this person like what do I say I call and say uh I'm at Golden like it's weird yeah so but if it had given me a script I would have just read it and I I don't don't think people ask for that stuff it so makes makes life so much easier I think ask for help right yes it's been a theme I've had lately with people I'm like I'm going and I'm in a one1 for example and then it's like it's like resistance after and I go wait do you not know how to do this and they're like no I'm like wait just ask help I I have a sop I've got a video I've got a this I'm like what I just you got but you got to tell me cuz I don't know but you know what I have found is that most people don't ask for help because they don't know how to ask for help not that they don't want to they just don't know how to and I always tell our team here's the language pattern could you please help me understand blank could you please help me with blank could you please roleplay with me about blank could you please blank yeah and they're like oh so now you'll see them frame their language around it hey Shon could you please help me I'm like yes and I'm I'm a True Believer that people want to ask for help but they just don't know how to without it affecting their self-esteem yeah and so if we can just give them a language pattern to help with their self-esteem it becomes a lot easier it's funny because I I made a podcast on it the other day and the the one piece I also the frame I gave people is like everyone always says that they they're like I don't ask for help because I don't to look stupid I'm like well you're definitely going to look stupid when you right up so bad right and so I'm like the smartest people and I actually was looking at like the highest performers on my team they're able to ask for help early because they're like I will fail here if I don't get help can you help me otherwise I will eat and so they never actually look super stupid because they don't allow themselves to fail because they bring in all these other people to help them succeed of course you know what I mean and so it's like once I explain that to a few people they were like it was like the light bul went off they were like oh my gosh so I look like an idiot because I don't ask for help and I was like yes you look like an idiot when you don't ask well the crazy part is like it's not about being Tony Robbins it's about getting Tony robbins's support system yeah like it's all about the support system if you can somehow figure out imagine this imagine if you and I had Tony robins's support system in our Corner imagine if you if I was Rocky Balboa and I had those people in my corner that's what wins right and so I just want to I want to make all this money so I can stack the support system in my corner I just want to be like I pay you I pay you I pay you I pay you you advise me yeah and that's so amazing because you you can just Outsource all the pain to the mentors it's fair as opposed to having to deal with it yourself do you at this point like have trouble finding mentors or people that you can listen to um I do however uh I've flipped from having a generic mentor to a sniper Mentor right I have such a similar frame yeah right and so hey who's somebody really good at this I'll give you an example um I met two guys who R this amazing uh media agency on Madison Avenue and they want they were pitching for business I've got to know them Etc and I said hey I would love for you to be my mentors they're like we don't have a model for retainer it doesn't work like that we do like million dooll projects to make you a logo like that's how they work and I said same exact phrase I would like to offer you blank for a symbol as a symbol of my seriousness you don't need any calls you don't need any meetings it's a one-year contract you can quit it at any time I'll still pay you for the rest of the year all I want is that I will text you and it would be great if you prioritize your text back to me and so now I have two media Mogul from Madison Avenue that I can just text I'm like him thinking about this for my brand it sucks don't do that I'm like great thank you it's so amazing because they're they're so good at their at that field right and I love that and and so I I have my health coach his name is Justin roing chauffeur he was a head coach for the Anaheim Ducks on the on the strength side super sharp and he knows my personality inside out he knows I have type one diabetes and I can just text him so I hire him just so I'm like you're my sniper mentor on energy that's all I care about and if I have more energy more capacity that's my mentor so anytime I can find somebody that is so good at what they do yeah and I've been talking to this guy who's amazing at AI I'm like hey man could you just be my AI coach he's like well not really I'm like no I'll pay you just I just want somebody to text when I have a question yeah so the idea of just putting the sniper mentors in your corner so when you have a question you don't have to be like let me go to YouTube let me ask somebody who's already solved all of this so so good and and it's and I think money is a really important thing with this like trying to I hate this whole pick your brain thing from people I just want to offer people like a hey let me just pay you yes right because it's a symbol of seriousness and I actually believe there is a karmic balance of all of this right so Lea spend 15 years working on this and she's going to give you one piece of advice and you're not going to take it to heart yeah but when there's a kic balance it's like oh you are offering something for all that you have endured for the 15 years you don't need the money but it's a symbol of seriousness and that's the karmic balance where you can just say let me just write the check because we all feel good about this it's actually funny because you remember when we first met and I I was like man I have so many questions for him I remember telling Alex I was like I need to pay him money or something because I can't like I can't just like for free ask for all these things yes you did and and like I still feel weird about that right now because it was so long ago yeah but I'm like oh like by the way I will tell you this and I have not told Alex I you this off M like that is the one thing that bothers me so much because I love you both so much you're my some my best friends in the world I'm like God that PID like I feel so like I can't believe I took money from them why well I just I cuz we we're like you're my best friends now well I remember what happened when he was like I was like I have so many questions ason and he was like then ask him and I was like no I don't feel comfortable with that like I have to pay him money because I don't know him that well yet we've only talked like twice and so and then we became friends you know what I mean I feel like over and it just it uh and plus like I I mean you spent some time explaining real estate explaining deals like I didn't explain any of it I was like all right I know you just went over all of that I don't know what that means like can you help me understand yeah exactly and that was when you were that was also when you weren't AC working yeah so it's probably much I can't even imagine you doing that right now some of our phone calls were so we because we were selling the business yeah you didn't you were not over in act actively in any business and so we all had way more time oh yeah it funny to think about now like years later like we're all so busy it's weird I I wish I I can't even imagine like that was such a blur of not having that also goes to to when you tell people this is is if you're not working on the things that are fascinating and motivating to you you will get burned out you will win less and you will forget the Thematic decades like weeks would just go by because you're like oh I'm just going to sit down and eat Bon bonss and play Xbox like that's interesting but it's not fascinating and motivating to we are built for growth I know and like we as humans are built for growth and that's why when people start working out they have this drug to like want to work out more because you're built for growth when you learn more you want more you build for growth um my goal is that can I just activate growth the the the feeling of growth in people because you can you you can never look back you you can never go back to the person that you were no once you've seen once you've seen what it can do for you no you can't unlearn you can learn new things but you cannot unlearn old things yeah I mean you said it it's not about the work it's about the growth like I'm not gonna not gonna forget that no it's so true I have a few rapid fire questions for I I see that people do these on podcasts and so I felt that I would I would rapid fire you some questions what's more important you can only say one word culture or strategy culture emails or meetings which one I love how you're stuck on it because I was like I don't know what I would say email like forced because it should just start with an email and if it we can fix it I'm sure we can take it to a meeting the opposite would be terrible because you're like dude this could have just been an email yeah that's I was like if I feel like this one will stress out uh go-to productivity tool paper planner because when you write it out you can just design it out and see where spaces and things look like I I still write out a lot everything last one fame or Fortune Fame because Fame is the most efficient business model I love it dude thank you this is so much fun I love this so let me ask you this to to finish this off while you while you were listening what like what do you remember that we talked about what was what was interesting for you I think that my the biggest frame shift that I had was the Sprints and the focus with the time that you have each day to actually get your work done as like if I look at the discrepancy between like uh you know what does Lea have to do to continue to level up as an operator what's something you do that I don't do I don't think I'm I think that I am too accommodating of things that come up each week in terms of like rather than like I I can do that in two weeks or three weeks or four weeks I'm like no I could do that this week or in two days or three days and that is something that I will immediately Implement and stop doing but it's GNA change your life because I believe yeah it because you'll get chunkier time to work on more important things yeah and you'll do it you'll do it better because you're not like because what we have is if you're working on something and you know the other two more things it's lingering I I know dude and that that's actually like this whole week something's been lingering and I'm like I need to solve this problem and then I was looking at next week and I was like when do I solve it next week and then I was like this what are you doing I need to I need these dedicated Sprints and I think it actually I could probably plan my whole quarter ear Sprints because I know what I need to work on yeah yeah everything is two weeks long because one week feels too short because especially if you travel or you have something come up yeah two we weeks long enough and I'm trying to add that that those Thursdays on one Thursday per Sprint which is I'm not going to bed until blank that is my so ni will say to me it's your is it your Thursday and I'm like yeah she's like all right I'll talk to you in the morning and so I just sit there put my headphones on and I'll just work till I get it done I love that it's there's something so exciting about that too I don't know why but like working late like it feels like nobody bothers you you just work and you're but you also know you are committed you burn the boates you're like I am not going to bed until this gets done that's fair and and then when at that point when my head hits the pillow the feeling of accomplishment is so high yeah it's like I I feel good about myself and very rarely it's like when you're done with that tough workout you're like man I can't believe I did that yeah and that's super powerful I love this no I think that is I think that will change how I work from here forward and it's really really inle I know that maybe some people listening to that they just got to even just plan the night before or the week before or things like that but like for me I'm trying to get like incremental improvements in my schedule and how I manage my time so it was really really insightful yeah I mean it's a for you a 30 minute block could add millions of dollars to the business I know yeah so it's a small hinge that swings a big door and if you have it planned or at least have space for it you have no margin that's what you know that's literally what uh Trevor was saying right you just have no no margin and if you have no margin you're just going from task to task to task yeah and switching is super hard too it is that was really helpful