How to make progress faster than everyone transcript

Here's my here's my question though. When you're sitting there frying wings at Buffalo Wild Wings, like how how do you even have the capacity to think of like I'm going to be successful and like how far could you even think? Cuz I remember, dude, when I was working a job, I was living in a supplement store like a typical supplement store like a GNC. You walk in, you buy like $20 vitamins and like that's the people I'm dealing with, right?

Like minimum wage job at the time. Yet I was in the back like learning, taking courses, whatever between people that were walking in. I was always studying. the guy next to me was always on Netflix, right? And like there's a clear gap in our life of where I am and where he's at right now, right? Because of that. But I only even had so much foresight at the time, right? Like at the time I could only fathom making 10K a month as a huge goal, right?

Then you get there and then it's next, it's next, it's next. And then, you know, I'm sure now even the deals that we're talking about, right? We're talking about hundred million dollar deals, billion dollar deals, etc., right? Whereas like no way our brain could have fathommed that at the time, right? So like what where were you mentally? Do you even remember like when you were doing those jobs like how far ahead could you even like think or see?

There's this concept of excellence and excellence is does is irrelevant and doesn't consider what you're supposed to be excellent at. Excellence comes from being present and doing the best that you can in the current moment that you have. If you think about the future, you're just preparing to have a just your brain melt with impossibilities, with anxiety, with things that you can't control because the future is not real.

So, I don't live in the future. I don't think about the future. I just want to do what I'm doing right now. Well, all I want to do right now is on this podcast give you the best of me, right? And if we operate with that same attitude always, then life will always give us the best present moment. So, I was telling, you know, I was walking into your office and I was telling Laura, I was like, "Wow, I don't regret any of the comeup.

I'm so glad every part of my experience was what it was because I was so in the moment enjoying it when I was driving in my Ford Buick doing door-todoor sales, knocking, I wasn't thinking about one day sitting in the McLaren or in the private jet." And I wasn't like, "Oh, I'm missing out on that." I was just like, "I want to do this thing really, really well." And if you just enjoy the present moment, which is all that you have, and you just with all your effort, just want to honor God and with all your your might, everything that you do, your energy is just to reflect him, then you want to do everything well.

Business is an art, entrepreneurship is an art. Everything is just a a masterwork of God's greatness. So you don't want to, you know, paint God in a poor light, you know? So everything that you do is a reflection of him and then you just point back the glory, be like, why was this so epic? Well, just God makes everything epic, you know? Makes sense. But at the same time though, a lot of people work really hard. They give other might they do everything they can, but they're kind of still like not where they want to be.

You know what I mean? Where's that gap? You think? Like I think it has to do with it's not about working hard. It's about becoming a different person. >> Because it's not about working hard. When God tells you, "Be still and know that I am God." That's the antithesis to the work culture that everybody tells you you're supposed to subscribe to. If God takes care of the plants and the birds and the trees, he's going to take care of you as long as you're part of natural order.

The thing is, we operate outside of natural order. People want things that they don't truly want. You know, you know, they've been hit by Edward Bernay's propaganda of having 19 cars. You're like, look, I got 70 cars, but you know what? I made a business out of it. I'm like, yeah, he cracked the game, right? Whereas the other guy is trying to flex the car in order to keep up the lifestyle, to keep up the image, to keep playing the mini game. >> So, the treadmill, >> correct?

So it's not about the thing, it's not about the lifestyle. It's about the mindset. And I think the mindset has to be be present. Do things with excellence and understand that when you plant a seed, you don't wait for 9 months looking at the ground asking, "Yo, why is this not You don't get upset. You're just like, "Hey, I'm planting the seeds. As long as I water it over 9 months, 10 months, 12, 12 months, 3 years, natural order will take care of the rest. and it'll yield a hundred times, a thousand times the initial seed, the initial investment.

That's how natural law works. Just people don't want to wait for the process. The process is the prize. That's how I consider it. The process, the the seeing the plant grow, like that's the beauty. Picking it, eating the fruit is only rewarding if you saw the entire process because now you're associated with the growth. You're associated with the excellence. You and I can sit and go and smoke a cigar on a lake and be like, "Wow, this feels epic." Why? because we knew what it was to work in fast food restaurants and we knew the the struggle.

If you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you don't I've sat with bro I've sat with kings. I've sat with queens, princes, and I tell you they don't eat different stakes that we do. They don't have a better lifestyle that we do. They were just exposed to all of these things without having to earn them. So, they don't have the same level of specialty or the same level of emotional attachment that we could experience.

So they miss out on so many things of life that you're like, I wish I always had this. No, you don't. You want to earn it. You want the adventure. You want the journey. You want the hero's quest. You want to unlock that treasure chest. And wow, there's a surprise. If life is all predictable and you want already everything, then might as well just die. You know, you want to play. You want to enjoy. You want to be alive.

Playing, you know, that's that's a good word. Play. >> Yeah. Be [ __ ] serious. Like everybody's so serious. Everybody's taking the game so seriously. Relax. You're going to die. You're not taking anything with you. Hang out. Enjoy. Be present. live with excellence. And people be like, "Well, how's this going to make me more money?" Well, just try it. Just try just try doing what you're doing with excellence. >> Yeah. >> And you're going to win.

If you're at a job and you do everything with excellence, your jobs, your job manager, your boss is going to notice and he's going to give you a raise. If you work with excellence in your business, you're going to have more customers. It's inevitable. It's going to happen. Plant more seeds and you will get more results. >> I love it. Key here though is like leveling up your character. Like you said, you have to cuz that changes everything around you.

And it even changes um the luck that you have, right? Like you're saying, like it creates more opportunities. I think people value luck as like this lucky charm that happened to happen, you know, roulette basically. Oh, he got a great hand. You know what I mean? But at the end of the day, I think it's a correlation of all of it. It's you leveling up your character, which therefore then allows you to have more opportunities, which allows you to be luckier.

Because if I dude, if I have a thousand people sending me an opportunity and someone else has one, I'm probably a lot luckier than he is, right? But I should have a thousand opportunities >> and and it's not and even if there was just one opportunity, let's say the opportunity, you know, is is like a level 10 boss in a video game. Nobody's going to want to go play with a weak player. If this is a multiplayer game to beat the boss, you won't you want to play with the best guys.

The best guys play with the best guys in the best lobbies, right? If you're not with the best guys, it's because you're not the best guy. >> Yeah. >> Like if you're not getting $10 million deals, $100 million deals, if somebody's not taking care of you, if you don't have a business, if you don't have infrastructure, it's just because you're not a good player. That's okay. You just become a better player. And better players will want to play with you.

So if opportunity is not coming your way and you have to go chase opportunity, right? We're talking about chasing versus attracting. You chase things that run away from you. You attract things that are in your nature that magnetize towards who you are as a person. As long as you can attract things by becoming a better player, opportunities will flourish. So, it's by positioning which creates opportunity and luck. And it's by becoming a better player, increasing your XP points so that other people can observe you and do what?

Realize that their self-preservation, which is what we all fundamentally want as creatures, is in safe hands. Cuz I could trust you. You could trust me. We know this. Why? Because we've put each other to test and you know the other players skills. If you couldn't trust me, I wouldn't be around. It's very simple. So, if you're not in the room, it's merely your fault. Become a better player. Show up, be present, and you'll increase increase your chances.

It's inevitable. >> So, uh, what are the best ways, if I become a better player in today's world, you think, to make money? >> I think number one is you need mentors. You need to find people in your life that have gone to places where you want to go and you need to emulate these behaviors. Not emulate them like the church teaches, which is mindless robotic repetition, but understand the nature of why somebody inhibits certain characteristics and traits.

I was meeting with with a good friend of mine, you know him Jee Jim Burough, who does Google ads or whatever it is, and he's he makes money, and I see it with you as well. For some reason, it's it's it's you agency guys. You work so hard. >> We work way too hard. [laughter] >> You work so hard. >> It's a great business model when you don't have money, but when you start making money and having skills and opportunities, it definitely >> So, like I see you guys and I'm like, "Wow, these guys, I know why they're successful because they put in the hours.

It's like it's evident. I travel with you guys. I see how you work. I'm like, it's evident that these guys make money. Why? Because they just work better, stronger." >> Like, the outcome has to be >> it has to be winning. There's no other outcome. So I think the first one is you need mentors. And I think mentors don't come from paying somebody for a consultation phone call. It comes from this idea of synergy and symbiosis.

Like I could come and spend two weeks in your office and I would learn so much. That would be a mentorship experience for me. So unless you find mentors in your life, you're not going to know where to go. They don't need to be alive, right? But they need to be a guiding beacon for you because you are clueless. Clueless doesn't mean you're an idiot. It just means you don't have the clues to solve the puzzle. So go find somebody that does.

The mentor is kind of like the when you have that that puzzle deck, the mentor is kind of like the finished image in the front. He doesn't do anything. >> You just know what the out the puzzle needs to look like. >> Correct. So find those mentors. >> Great analogy. Find those mentors in your life. The second is you need mentees. Even if you're just beginning, you need somebody that you can pour yourself into. Whether it's a spouse, a younger sibling, an employee, somebody that can keep you accountable to growth because that person that is leveling up, you have to always be on top ahead of them whether it's one step, two steps, three steps, but you're able to polish them and bring them up.

Therefore, also then creating, which is the next step, time freedom, which is what we all need. We need time freedom and able to think. When was the last time you spent one hour, two hours intentionally thinking about what is the best course of action for your life? >> Sunday. >> Yeah, you do. The average individual, they don't stop and think. They don't stop and evaluate, is this job that I'm holding the best opportunity?

Is the current way that I'm operating my business the most profitable? And people just continue to do the same exact thing. So, one, you need mentors. Two, you need mentees. And then three, you need to break the patterns of current operating system, how you're currently doing things to evaluate if there's ways to optimize. And you do that by I do it through scientific method, which is a process of developing a a thought, criteria, evaluating if something is legit or not, and finding a hypothesis and a conclusion, determining if something is true.

That's a method of thinking that that I utilize. But when I spend time listening to podcasts and I spend time listening to creators, their advice is always do do in order to get and I used to subscribe to that philosophy until I started behaving in a different way. And that philosophy was no longer the only way that I could level up. And I realized that it wasn't about working hard. It was about becoming a new person.

And the Bible says be transformed by the renewal of your mind and the renewal of your mind by the word of God. So if you want to live a different life, you have to perceive the world differently. So when you said, you know, yesterday we were talking about $100 million deals, our perception 10 years ago wasn't developed. We hadn't put on the lens of reality, right? Where it was only it's only framing. It's only framing, right?

That difference in conversation from $1 million to $100 million is just how we frame reality. And framing comes from renewing our mind. And renewing our mind comes from getting rid of the lies and the program programming that we've been told on how life is supposed to be. 401k retirement, you know, you have to live in the white picket fence and you're you have to drive that Camry and you have to shut the [ __ ] up and pay your taxes and don't bother anybody and never make a noise, never never offend anybody, stay within the rules and that's it and die peacefully.

If you don't subscribe to that and you want to live an outgoing life, a life where you set your rules, you have to you have to have a renewed mind. Why? Because every single one of us have been programmed to lose. The last 18 years, I hate to break it to you, of education. We're designed to make you what? A slave, a working person, a 9to-ive individual, which is fine. Most people find their security in their job. I don't.

I find my security in my skills and in my relationship with God. So if you position yourself as an individual that wants to find mentors aka I have a student's mindset. I have a leadership mindset which is I'm willing to pour into other people. I position myself to identify opportunity and then I have a mindset whereby I'm not looking at doing doing but becoming a person to which opportunities come then I set myself up for success.

And what is success? Success is being able to achieve your end result. Most people will never live successful lives because they never have decided a port of destination. They don't know where they're going. They don't have an end goal. They're just like running around. They don't know. Well, you're making money. Why? My my dad asked me the other day. He was like, I need I just need 10 million in the bank. And I said, why?

If I gave you 10 million, Dad, you wouldn't even know what to do with it. You just have found the security in the digits on the screen that are just imaginary pixels because you haven't found your confidence somewhere else. And I think if you find your confidence in your self-development, in your skills, you find your confidence in your relationship with God, find have enough faith to not work and just create right to honor him, he will provide.

And I think we've created this work culture where everything is about building in this temporary world and not really focusing on the things that matter. When you tell me, you know, I go back to Lebanon, I go back to my home country and 4,000 people show up and their lives become better, that to me is like, okay, this guy gets it. This guy understands cuz he goes back to where it matters and he creates the change and he doesn't keep it for himself.

He doesn't kind of like hoard it. The value kind of spills over. And I think that's the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is service, right? Serving people, taking care of people, taking care of your clan, taking care of your people group, giving yourself up for them. But you can't give out of an empty place. So people feel that frustration. I want to give to my parents. I I listen to people's dreams. And most people's dreams are benevolent.

They're good-hearted people. I want to take care of my family. I want to take care of my friends. But you can't take care of anybody out of an empty place. You can't pour out of an empty place. You have to be full. So sometimes you have to be selfish. You have to go through that journey, develop yourself, and then from a place of leadership and a place of strength, then you can take care of others. And I think that most people when they sit in the luxury car, they realize that it's an illusion. you know where they sit in sit in the big house but they're sick they're not healthy they realize that they don't live in the big house they live here that when their parents aren't talking to them or their family is unhappy that it doesn't matter how much money you have success has to be redefined cool what cool is has to be redetermined I think money has given me and you the freedom to take a step back and to be like how do I want to play the next part of my game and it's not about hustle hustle hustle hustle hustle doing it's about positioning oursel becoming better and life will naturally flow >> I agree