200 – Antion Success Method: Tom talks Success Principles

Episode 200 – Success Principles
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with episode two hundred of Screw the Commute podcast. This is a special edition we have a major 50 percent give away today and we're just so thrilled to reach this milestone in Screw the Commute podcast. So this is gonna be Antion Success and Leadership Skills special edition of Screw the Commute podcast. Hope you did miss episode one ninety nine. That's setting up an in-house video studio. All kinds of tips in the show. Notes are just packed full of pictures to show you how to do it. Now our podcast app's in the app store. You can do lots of cool stuff conveniently right from your mobile device and you can download from the app store, but you can also go to screwthecommute.com/app, where you can get the instructions and it shows you we got pictures and screen captures to show you how to use all the fancy features. And while you're at it, make sure you go to screwthecommute.com/automatefree. That's the $27 e-book we give away that's helped me save over seven and a half million keystrokes over the years with just one of the tips in the book. And while you're at the download page, make sure you grab a copy of our podcast whitepaper. People are charging you four five and six thousand bucks for the information that's in that document. All right. Our sponsor is the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia. It's a distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own business or both. You can check it out at IMTCVA.org. And of course, everything we talk about will be in the show notes. This is episode. What is it? Two hundredth episode. Yay! And to get to those directly, you go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number for this case. It's two hundred.

[00:02:36] All right. Let's get to the main event. Today's topic success and leadership principles that you need to be able to tell the boss to take this job and shove it. If you already have your own business, I'll tell you how to take it to a much higher level. Also, these principles will also help you in any aspect of your life, not just business. Now, the last time I did this success thing, it was about I think 10 I don't know, maybe 15 years ago. And it was a little bit hard core, in fact, we gave it an R rating for harsh language. OK. But you're not gonna have to worry about that this time. It's going to stay G-rated for the whole time so that we don't have to mark this as explicit in iTunes. But that being said, I may get a little excited on some of these points that I want to tell you about. This episode is loosely based on a eulogy I wrote for my father in the year 2000 where I wrote down 10 leadership tips. I learned from him since I was a little boy. And I'll be throwing in some other ones and some spin offs as we go along. But what I'm going to do is pop back and forth from that eulogy to my commentary and make sure you get some learning points on things that you can do to really be much more successful in your life and in business.

[00:04:04] Now, dad passed away at the ripe old age of 94. That was from the physical world, but I can assure you he's with us here on this episode. And I can tell you right now that some of you are going to say, well, Tom, you're a little old fashioned, aren't you, when you tell us some of these simple principles? Well, maybe I am, but most of the people that have money in the world are a little older and they appreciate what I'm going to tell you. Now, it's going to be a long time and a pretty sad day when this stuff that I tell you goes out of style. So you can be assured that the people that have money will appreciate these things. And I'm going to try to also attempt to burst some myths that I'll get into in a second. But what I'm going to tell you is not some government funded study. It's not some big scientific thing. I mean, of course, the government, you know, spends millions on stuff that us kids from small towns do just normally with common sense.

[00:05:13] Now, I don't know if you ever heard about one of the studies they did that the National Gambling Impact Study Commission spent seven million dollars to study gambling. And then they threw this study away. They never finished it. They should have just gone and gambled with the money. It could have been further ahead. So what I'm doing is not any kind of technical study. It's going to be a report on some of the things I've seen in the world and that I've experienced. And I'm going to rag a little bit on parents, even though I'm not one. I'm going to act as a reporter to tell you some of the things I've seen from children out there nowadays and over the years. And that I don't like. And that's as an employer. Also, don't forget. And I'm hoping that the things we talk about today can help fix things a little bit, so.

[00:06:11] So here's one of the myths I'm going to attempt to bust in this episode. Here it is. Positive reinforcement is good. I don't think it is. And the next one is that you should only do what you're good at. And you should delegate things you're not good at. That's the biggest bunch of B.S. I've heard in a long time. And another myth is we are a hardworking society. I don't believe that. I don't believe that you must have balance in your life. I'm going to cover all these in depth during the episode, folks. That's a that's another one's kind of a crock.

[00:06:50] Here's one. It's gonna be tough for parents to hear this. You know, you shouldn't support your kids. That sounds a little outrageous, don't you think? You mean you shouldn't support your kids? Will bear with me. I'll explain what I mean by that later. Now you're going to learn how you may be sabotaging yourself by believing any of the above myths. And most people are average by definition. Now, if you you'd use the word most like I just did. Most people. That, by definition means that that's average. That's what everybody is. Now, if you want to be extraordinary, you must be willing to do what average people aren't willing to do. And if you can pass that on to your kids, you're going to have a nice, ripe old age.

[00:07:43] Now, you also learn the pursuit of excellence will make you feel and look like a superstar. You're going to learn how to make your own breaks and you're going to learn. And this is another harsh thing and I promise to keep things G-rated. But you may just be creating the next round of human losers. I know that's harsh, but I will expand on that a little later. You'll also learn how to build credibility and how to turn it into big bucks in your business.

[00:08:15] All right. The title of the eulogy I did for my dad was speaking leadership skills from a man who came to America in a dung filled cattle boat. Now, I would like you to project a little bit into the future before I go through with this. And I want you to ask yourself the following question. And also, folks. This is coming from when I did this way years and years ago and most of the people on my list were professional speakers. So that's why you'll hear me talking about speaking a lot. But I want you to project a little bit into the future. And I want you to ask yourself the following question. What will my children say about me when they're in their 50s and 60s? What will my children say about me when they're in their 50s and 60s? I want you to ponder that. And for those of you out there that didn't have good parents and some of you may even hate your parents. I hope you get something out of this, too. See, I was fortunate, but maybe you weren't. So I'm hoping that from today on, you can help break the chain in your family and do whatever it takes so that your children will feel as strongly about you as I still do about my dad.

[00:09:33] So I'm going to read a little bit from the eulogy and then I throw in commentary, that's how this thing's gonna roll today. And I'm also going to give you that super 50 percent discount code that's only good today. So keep keep your ears peeled for that.

[00:09:51] So I want you to meet my dad, Sam Antion. And let me take you back to July 3rd, 2000, when I wrote the following words for my great speaking easy. She had been bragging about my dad ever since 1973 when I did my graduation speech. I've even done professional speeches about one of the techniques. He used to make me tough when I was just a baby. Until I was and I'm reading from what I wrote in folks right now, until I was preparing his eulogy last week or this past week, I have never actually written down all the leadership skills he taught me. As I was working on them, I thought that they would be a good example that anyone could use in their life. And from the platform, so please. Like I said, bear with me, because a lot of my people were public speakers. Now, I only saw Dad speak in public once, and that was that, his 50th wedding anniversary. But I witnessed the leadership skills I'm going to talk about my entire life.

[00:10:57] All right. Let's go to number one. This is a top 10 list of building strong leadership skills, so number one dad would always build things more sturdy than they needed to be so that he would never have to worry when an extraordinary force was applied. He knew that whatever he built would stand up to the test, and this applied to both character traits and real hammer and nail construction. In fact, without his insistence on this leadership trait, I would not be here today. When I was 16 years old, a drunk driver doing nearly a hundred miles an hour, and that's 161 kilometers per hour. For those of you outside the US, it ran off the road and smashed into the corner of my living room. I was the only one in the room when my whole living room exploded around me. Had this been a normally build house, the car would have burst through the wall and killed me. My dad at the time put extra heavy, heavy duty reinforcements in the corners of the house and planted big, heavy shrubs so that if a car ran off the road because we were right near a road, it wouldn't hurt his family. All right. That was in the eulogy. Now, here's my commentary. The modern day cliche for this would be give 110 percent. All right. And I was in a company once. They had a big sign that said we give 110 percent, 5 percent on Monday, 50 percent Tuesday, 25 percent on Wednesday. So that's not what I'm talking about here but I do want to take a little sidebar here. Tell you about when the car hit the house. I mean, I'm 16 years old. I had just gone through a first aid course in high school and I'm flipping out. I mean, this car by her living room exploded. I got plaster all over me. Lamps fly in by our front front windows blown out, our front doors blown out. And I turn on the outside lights. I go, this is late at night. I think I was watching what's my line on TV and I turn on the lights, go outside. There's a guy on the ground screaming and his ankles all twisted. And he's screaming to me to get my buddy, get my buddy. And I look over. There's a car sticking in the corner of the house and there's blood everywhere I go in the passenger side and this guy's got scalp is pulled back on his head. Blood everywhere. And this was before they invented AIDS. So I wasn't worried about that at the time. And and so I'm like thinking about my first aid. Like breathing. Bleeding. Broken bones. So they just drummed that into our head. All right. Breathing. He's breathing. OK. Bleeding. Oh, yeah, he's bleeding. Okay. And so. Okay. How do you stop bleeding? Hey. Huh? I see a direct pressure. Indirect pressure. And we go through all these in my mind in milliseconds. And so I somehow and my 16 year old youthful mind, I decided on indirect pressure. He's bleeding out his forehead. So I grabbed them around his neck and I started squeezing. My brother runs out of the house, says, don't kill him. He didn't mean to hit the house. There was more blood than damage in here. And ended up okay. But, you know, you got to stay calm under pressure. I didn't do too good that time. So anyway, tip one is build it strong.

[00:14:28] Now, I think I been in business for nearly forty three years, and one of my biggest complaints that I have is that people half-ass things and and then they wonder why they didn't work. In fact, I figured out, you know, I had a lot of students in my Internet program and I get calls sometimes. And hey, Tom, I've been working really hard, like, you know, a couple of days on the Internet and I'm not rich. So I sat down and figured this out. I've put in and this is up to modern day sixty one thousand six hundred and eleven hours, probably 12 after I get that recording this podcast in the past 25 years working on Internet stuff. Now, if you just did a conservative figure how hard I work on this, it is probably more than that because I just kind of figured forty six hour weeks and you know, so and it's sometimes it's like 80 hours or more. So trust me, folks, you're not working that hard. And if you wonder why you're not successful. Think about that. Sixty one thousand hours. In fact, let me know when you hit your first 5000 hours in any field that you're trying to break, break into and then we'll talk about it.

[00:15:46] All right. So whose fault is it if if you're not successful, is that your fault or your parents fault? Were you patted on the back for poor performance when you were a kid? Now, no, I'm not saying not to encourage people. I'm. I'm trying to explain the consequences of their actions. You need to explain that to your kids, what's the consequences of their actions, explain to your kids? Or was it explained to you that there's no guarantees of success? Explain to them that if they choose to play a worthless video game, instead of studying their math, that's why they got a poor grade explained to them. That's that's why they aren't allowed to play video games or anything else until they've done their homework and their scores improve. Explain to them why this is important to them and how those dumb games are not. And what about you? Did you choose to go out to dinner or out with the guys or girls instead of working on your business or your weight loss or whatever goals you set for yourself? Well, there's consequences to what choices you make. I mean, every time you make a blatantly wrong choice, then you're hurting yourself and those around you. And and no, I'm not talking about trying something and failing. I mean, that's really great because you at least tried and you can learn from your mistakes. I'm talking about not trying that hard in the first place. And I got to tell you, I just recently interviewed on Screw the Commute, a guy named Noble Gibbens and his 8 year old daughter has to fail at something every day. And I guess she gets in trouble if she doesn't. And then he teaches her to embrace failure and figure out what she learned from at least you tried to do something and now he can do it better. Now that. And so they. Every day she has to tell him the things she failed at. That's just so beautiful. I wish everybody would do that. So here's a success tip that I've been using my entire life. Announce your plans and then you'll be too embarrassed to fail. I've done this over and over my whole life. I bought a hotel before I graduate from college and I announced it that everybody that I was going to do it and people laughed at me and told me I was crazy and darned if I didn't do it. I started a practical joke entertainment company long before punkd and jackass and all those were cool. People told me I was crazy. I opened a nightclub and a place where you shouldn't be able to open a nightclub and it was very successful for a long time. People told me I was crazy. See if they tell you you're crazy. That's when you know you're doing 10 right? Something, because if you just do average things, that's what you're gonna be an average person. And the place I'm sitting in right now. I told I was gonna get a no money down loan on this million dollar house, which is now where two million people, including mortgage experts, told me, you're crazy. You can't do that. The best mortgage brokers in town told me I couldn't do it. Well, we'll see. Here's the way I look at things, folks. If somebody tells you you can't do something, here's what that means. That means they can't do. It has nothing to do with you at all. They're the worthless slugs and they don't do the things it takes to be successful. That's not you. That's them. And so listening to these people was one of the worst things you can ever do. So build it strong, and that's a leadership tip for you.

[00:19:25] All right. Leadership number two. Don't take shortcuts. Let's get back to the eulogy. Dad was an electrician by trade when doing his wiring. He would always route the flat wires he worked with in a nice, symmetrical and evenly spaced pattern. He would never just cut across the shortest distance to save wire and make his cost a little cheaper. I remember as a child watching him and asking him why he did this, when it would be a lot shorter to just run the wires directly between the two points. Oh boy, I remember this the day I die. He looked at me with daggers in his eyes. He said, When someone looks at this job years from now, they will know a professional did it. And also, if they ever have trouble, they'll be able to track down the problem easier because I did a nice, neat job, he said, and he looked at me right in the eye. He said, Don't you ever sacrifice the quality of your work to save a little money. I can't remember Dad ever being out of work one day in my whole life when everyone else was laid off. He was always in demand. All right. Let's go to the commentary. You see great people take pride in their work. Not like a bunch of scab laborers. And for those of you young folks out there, scab labor is somebody that doesn't care what they do when they build something and they just slop it together. I had I had four sets of these scabs come to fix something on my house and I had to throw every one of them out. Nobody cared if they did it right. And so I just gave up. I mean, that's scab labor, so I don't want you to be like that. Now, I'm not talking about being a perfectionist. Because you do have to balance functionality, cost and time. But I've found that taking the time to do things correctly can be a great reputation and credibility builder. So if you're known for the fact that people can give you a task and it'll be done on time and right the first time, you will become a very valuable person in a very short order and your company will thrive because your customers have had trouble with everybody else and they won't want to deal with anybody but you.

[00:21:43] Your reputation will be, hey, this person gets the job done on time and on budget. That's how I stayed in business all these years without getting a job. I build up to the point where a lot of people on this earth trust me and I'm never going to let them down. So that's the kind of attitude you want to have. Be proud of your work. I've used this my entire life. I use it now all the time when someone tells me or a student tells me that something's good enough. I say it's not good enough. Let's make it better. And after all the whining, they can see that I was right. And now they have something they can be proud of. And I use this concept with all my products. I take the time to make them better in the beginning and I take the time to add value to the product so that I know their much better value than what the customer bargained for. And these things are reputation builders. Now the success step, please, please learn this. I admit it's gonna be hard in today's society to learn what the heck hard work is. Most people don't have a clue what hard work is. They they talk about working smart, not hard. And from what I see, they aren't working at all. They perform at about 10 percent capacity and they think they're working too hard. Well, I got to tell you, I grew up with sports and I went to college on a football scholarship. And the one good thing about sports is that you learn how to work.

[00:23:13] Another bad thing is you're surrounded by a bunch of morons because there's lots of me out there with their IQ is smaller than their Nike shoe size. You see a lot of modern TV running their mouths nowadays too. Anyway, sports is good for character building, learning how to work. And if you don't think so, try to run a mile uphill and then put on football clothes in 90 degree weather and workout all morning. And these are called two-a-days. Then get your brains beat out by people. Six feet, nine. They can run at four point four. Second 40 yard dash. And I've been against those guys. And then do it again in the afternoon and see if you can handle it. And that's a little bit of work, folks. So. So don't tell me you're working too hard. I don't want to hear it.

[00:24:02] All right. Number three, leadership skill. Back to the eulogy. Don't waste things or people. Think a rock isn't worth much well, listen up, at the age of 73. Dad was purchasing some used lumber that someone had advertised in the paper when he went to pick it up. He saw a large number of boulders in the front yard of the place where he bought the lumber and he asked, what are they going to do with the boulders? And the man said, I just want to get him out of here. Dad spent two weeks hauling them back to our house and another two months cutting them up with a chisel and hammer. He then built a beautiful stone fireplace and chimney for one of our rental properties. Also, I can't tell you the number of nails I removed from used lumber that dad made me straighten out and use them over again. I still do it to this day. See a bent nail with a little help can be very useful again. Sometimes people also need a little help to do the job they were meant to do. All right. My commentary's yeah, I see people today with no respect for anything, they waste time. They waste resources like water, for instance. How many of you out there hold your hand Hold your hands up and admit it. Let the water run when you're brushing your teeth. All right. I see you all out there. My dad would roll over in his grave if he ever saw me doing this. I simply cannot do it. To this day, I don't care if I'm at the Ritz. The Four Seasons and all these hotels I've been in around the world. I cannot let the water. I cannot waste resources. I'm hearing my dad say, don't waste water. We had 13 wells on our property. I remember digging wells my whole childhood. And I'm not any kind of tree hugger, but I just can't stand waste for waste sakes. And yes, I believe there's a balance between waste and quality of life. Certainly I don't live in a tent, but you just don't squander your resource. In fact, the shoes I'm wearing right now, I've put shoe goo on him six times. I got this biggest estate. I got protection dogs. I'm not going to ruin a 70, 80 hundred dollar pair of shoes every week playing with the dogs when nobody's around. Yes. So the employees see me gluing my shoes back together. Well, guess what? That's why I have money in the bank. All right. So anyway, what would you say is your most important resource, not the squander? Well, I say it's time. So here's your success tip. Use your throwaway time to improve your business and improve your life. See, in the past, I've spent a lot of time at airports, so I used to fly around, speaking all over the place. And my entire 1042 page e-book, click. The Ultimate Guide to electronic marketing was written while waiting around at airports. And I teach my public speaking students to practice small chunks of their speeches, whether they're in the shower or washing the car, you know, in your throwaway time. Hey, one of the books I wrote in four hours at a layover at McCarran Airport has brought in three point six million dollars as of like yesterday and still brings in five to fifteen thousand dollars a month. All right. It was written in four hours where I could have been watching stupid TV or playing video games. So study on the go. I mean, you have something in your hand every day, your cell phone that has access to virtually all the knowledge in the world. Use it. Make your car a travelling university. You'll be much further ahead. You'll be able to learn and improve your business and your life.

[00:27:39] All right. Leadership skill number four, back to the eulogy. Be self-reliant. Working as a team is great, but when the team isn't there, you just don't sit down and wait for help, dad built pretty much every building and rental property we own. I remember being so busy with football and other activities that I didn't get to help him too much and I probably would've slowed him down anyway. One day while he was working on remodeling one of our buildings, he asked me to go to the automotive parts store to get him about 20 feet of clear gas tubing and several bottles of Coca-Cola. And I wondered what he was up to because he never drank Coke and our car was working fine. So when I came back with the tubing in the coke and I stood back and watched as he did his thing, he plugged one end of the tubing and started pouring coke in the other end. I was certain he had lost his mind. After spending three months, chiseling those boulders. But he said, when you boys aren't around, it's hard for me to make things level because I can't be at both ends of these long two by fours. And of course, this is long before laser levels and all that stuff, so. So I'm going to nail one end of this tubing on one end where I'm working and take the other end of the tubing with me to the other end of the board. He knew from his self-taught physics studies that liquids seek their own level. He could see through the clear tubing to the Coca-Cola inside of the level of the coke. On one end of the tubing would be exactly the same as the other end of the tubing, and that's where he would nail his board. And it was always perfectly level. Right, here's my commentary. See, this is what molded me into believing my entire life, that delegation is a bunch of crap. See what great person wants to always wait for something else somebody else has to do for him. All great people have a sense of urgency about them. They're not willing to wait. And I don't know who said that originally. If someone knows, please let me know. But all great people have a sense of urgency about them. Yes. Delegation makes sense after you are highly successful, but many people overplay their importance to mask their laziness. Let me repeat that. They overplay their importance to mask their laziness. They don't have two nickels to rub together and they're getting their nails done and their hair blown and throwing parties and buying fancy cars and blowing all their money. Delegating, making everybody else do the work for them so that they can play big shot. And then how do you, as Mr. Miss Big Shots, supervise this stuff being delegated if you haven't done it yourself? You're probably just getting taken for a ride. Most of the time because you don't know any better. People could tell you anything and you wouldn't know the difference. Now, I'm not saying go through your own brain surgery, although I wish some of you would, but. Or work on your own teeth. But I'm talking about many of the things that your business needs. You could do yourself quickly and inexpensively and your business would thrive if it got done really fast. And on the low or zero budget. But if you blow all your money delegating. I mean, God help you. So, yeah, I believe there are things that would take too long to learn and you'd never get the skill to do it right. But most things aren't like that. Most of the time the delegate word comes up when it's something you don't like doing. So this is just another instance of lack of discipline, probably stemming from your parents. And and I know many of you love your parents. And I'm just trying to tell you like it is as a reporter, what I see. I mean, did your parents tell you to pick up your room and then do it for you if you didn't? Were there consequences if you didn't do it? Did your mom or dad say it 20 times, then it didn't matter if you ignored them. Do you have to tell your children more than once to do something? Let me give you a scenario here, something in my life. It was a Friday afternoon and I had to get a postcard mailing out the first thing on Monday. And because of a sick employee and another one with a family emergency, I got stuck with the mailing with no help. The cards already had postage on them, but I had 2000 labels to attach over a weekend so the mailing could go on a Monday or all the postage and printing would have been wasted. I called my girlfriend at the time to help me, and I want to note here that I had done numerous things for her and just about whenever she needed them, I'd drop everything and help her. So it wasn't coming out of the clear blue asking for help. I called her Friday at work and told her my problem. I ask for her help and told her that we could probably knock it out in about six hours on Saturday or Sunday. She said no. With nothing but, you know, I feel like relaxing this weekend as a reason. huh. All right. Well, the mailing went out and so did she. I never spoke to her again after that moment. I put on all two thousand labels and I was happy that I did it because I didn't fold under pressure and cry because I didn't have any help. My training took over and I buckled down and slammed all the labels on while listening to guess what? Success tapes. So here's a quote from me. I hope you put it up on your wall or something. You're not too good to do the work that will make you great. If you think you are, the chances of you becoming great are slim. All right. I made that up all of my little pea brain. Let me repeat it. You're not too good to do the work that will make you great. And if you think you are, the chances of you becoming great are slim. So buckle down and get some of these skills so that you don't feel like you have to delegate everything until it makes sense. Excuse me. Do them until you're making so much money where it doesn't make sense for you to do them anymore. That's when you start delegating. The reason I have money in the bank is that I don't blow it all delegating things as I was coming up when times were tough. I mean, I can do things that would cost a hundred times what it costs me to do by myself. So you need those kinds of skills in your business and in your life. They're not that hard. Buckle down and get them.

[00:34:24] All right. Let's go to leadership skill number five study. I think we're back to the eulogy here. Dad only went to the fifth grade and that was after skipping to grade. So he really only had three years of formal education at 10 years old, the oldest boy with father deceased. He was head of household and shining shoes to support the family. He saved part of his tips and ordered an electrical engineering course from the American school. At 13, he had his own electrical contracting company and he installed the first electric light in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. He also bought his younger sister, the first electric washing tub in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. He would read, read, read and read some more. Every time he wanted to learn how to do something. Hey, it's too bad he didn't have YouTube is a better when he retired around the age of 73. I bet you don't know anybody did this. He sat down and read the entire World Book Encyclopedia for those young people out there. That's like twenty six inch to two inch thick volumes. Thousands and thousands of pages. This is where I'm coming from. That's a lot of reading. And still at 94 and being legally blind, he listened to hours and hours of biographies and books on tape. The newspapers on tape provided by the long Library of Congress for blind people. He knew more about current events than anybody. So if you want to learn how to do something. Study. Try it out until you get it right. Here's my commentary. This is one the biggest ones in my entire life, and it cause major shifts in my emphasis in my business life because when I was coming out of the entertainment field into the speaking arena, I didn't really know about microphones and hotel rooms and professional presentations. And I was good at parties, but I didn't really know how to be a speaker. So what did I do? I fell back on the skills that I'd seen my dad do over and over again. I started studying. I bought every book I could on presentation skills. I remember riding my bike to a used bookstore and I almost couldn't get home. It was full of books on speaking in public and public speakers that were famous. And I studied them all. And I have them here in my library. If you ever visit my house, hundreds of books on speaking that helped mold my speaking career. And after I started studying and practicing these things, I started getting pretty good at it. Well, guess what? When you start getting good at something, in other words, when you start pursuing excellence, people start asking you to help them and teach them what you know. So that's when I was helping them so much I couldn't get my own work done. And that's when I wrote the wake of my business presentations book and created the Wake Him Up video professional speaking system that are still selling today. That's where I made my fortune on the Internet and selling stuff that people hate. Most people hate public speaking. So I studied and I studied for it in the. And then around 1994 is when the commercial internet came along. And for two years I tried everything possible. I didn't make a nickel in the first two years. And then I finally got good training from a guy named Corey Rudl. He was my first really good teacher. He was like the 31 year old grandfather of Internet marketing is making like five million dollars a year and in nineteen ninety four from his apartment. I mean this guy knew his stuff. So as soon as I get good training, I start making money and I kept after it and kept after it, and then I started making lots of money. And guess what happened in my pursuit of excellence and selling on the Internet, people started begging me to teach them. I never planned on being any kind of Internet guru guy. People begged me to be where I'm at today and they said, please teach us what you learned. And that's where butt camp started, where you learn how to make money sitting on your rear end. That's one of the top three longest ever running Internet seminars, and I think the other two are defunct. So it's the longest running Internet seminar. See I come from a comic background, so I'm not going to call it boot camp like everybody else. And so I called it butt camp and I've done them all over the world except in England. In London, they made me call it bum camp.

[00:39:04] All right. So now this is where I start to get a little excited. This kind of freaked me out. This is where I came home. I used to live up in Maryland and I came home and the school bus was letting kids off at 2:00. And I asked the neighbor, is this a holiday or something? Because I don't have kids. He said, what? He means a holiday. I said, well, the school bus is letting the kids off at two o'clock. He said, well, they do it every day. Well, I couldn't believe it is. No wonder they're such morons and there's no wonder they can't spell and there's no wonder they can't fill out a job application. You know, folks, I had a graduate student here for 90 days. I put everybody on a 90 day probation. I tried to find something she could do right. She was bragging about she's the only kid her family ever went to graduate school. She could not spell. She could not put a paragraph together. Graduate student. And I'll tell you what. You know, this is anonymous. Everybody listen. I have no idea who's listen this. But if you've ever gone to your school and complained about too much homework for your kids, I would you just quit listening right now and get lost because I think you're a freakin idiot. All right. Actually, not freaking a total idiot. What do you mean, too much homework? What do you think we're ever. Why do you think everybody around the world's beaten our pants off in education? Why do you think that is? So I got some figures here. This was from Daniel Goleman on an emotional intelligence test. He said that high achievers study an average of 27 hours a week compared to lower achievers, that that's only fifteen hours a week. And these are old figures, folks. Remember, I did this originally 15 years ago, ten or fifteen years ago. But guess what the current figures are? College students are only putting in eight hours total in both class and preparation for class. The rest is eating, partying and shopping. How do you like that? No wonder and you're mortgaging your house to pay for this. Is that a good idea? Do you think that's bright? Just that they can have a college education that makes them compete for jobs at Starbucks? No, I don't think it's that smart. And then here's another thing. And this is what I originally did this. I thought the phone was ringing off the hook because I'm ragging on parents and I'm not one. Remember, I'm a reporter here, folks. I'm telling you what I see coming out of your wombs. Okay. Coming applying for jobs and and so forth and calling me on the phone about stuff. Here's the thing. American mothers want their kids to be happy. Oh, isn't that nice? We want our baby to be happy. We don't care if he's on welfare and drugs and going to the therapist every week. But Asian mothers and I'm not the biggest fan of certain things in in the eastern part of the world. But they want their kids to be successful. And that's why they make them study and go to class and do things you're supposed to do. I told you I was gonna get excited here, folks. And let's see what else is. One study showed this. The international test scores said that the U.S. kids by the fourth grade and I'm not up to the current numbers on this, but up to the fourth grade. The latest research is kids were in the middle of the world in how much they knew. By the eighth grade, they were near the bottom. And by graduation, they were dead last in the world on education. You know, this this is pitiful. And the guy's name was John Leo did that study, U.S. News and World Report did a little study. It's not a scientific study, but it was good enough for the U.S. News and World Report. They ask a bunch of college graduates to figure out the following problem. Remember, this is maybe 10, 15 years old. How much change should you get back after putting down three dollars to pay for a 60 cent cup of coffee? I don't know where you get that anymore. And a dollar ninety five sandwich. Listen to this. Hope you're sitting down. Fifty six point three percent of American college graduates were unable to figure this out. Now, how pitiful is that? What do you expect? You expect success when you can't even do simple math. Make your kids see the value of studying. I mean, it's opened up my life to such riches and greatness and meeting wonderful people. I can't tell you because I study, make them see the value of studying as soon as possible. And then you dig in and study yourself to improve your business and your life.

[00:43:49] All right. I'm getting fired up now, folks. All right. Leadership skill number six, also, we're going to come up with a discount code here pretty soon for our 200th episode, though you don't want to miss it. All right. Number six, you can have whatever you want if you're willing to work for it. We're going back to the eulogy. Well, this was the 1910 version of Just Do It. Now, I don't want you to think I wasn't given tons of things by my parents because I was. But the most valuable thing was that I was conditioned from a very young age that the world did not owe me a living. I had to earn it. I got a serious work ethic that I will always carry with me. See if I want something. I go after it now. Now I won't step on people or cheat anybody but the last time last time I did this, I made a note to myself. I got all fired up about this and I said, no, I won't sleep with people. I'm thinking, oh, man, I probably wouldn't get too far if I went that route. I won't step on people to get whatever it is and I won't cheat or steal, but I will work until I get it or don't want it anymore. Now, this would be foreign language to most of today's youth. I mean, here's the commentary. Here's where I was talking about the next generation of human losers. And that's extremely harsh. And if you want to hang up and don't listen, well, go ahead, bury your head in the sand. But this is happening all around us. Even worse in the last couple years, they're just human losers everywhere. They're flooding college campuses. See, I see so many people that can't cope with just normal pressures of daily life. These are the people that turn to drugs and alcohol and therapy in those freakin safe spaces. I mean, there's something seriously wrong with you or if you're a young person, listen to this. You probably hung up a lot. Or if your kids are like this, that they can't hear somebody's name and they gotta go crying and hiding and hugging teddy bears. I mean, this is this kid is going to be a loser. This kid is not going anywhere but down because when they get in the real world, guess what? You're going to get punched in the face and punched in the face and kicked in the nuts and knocked every which way but loose. And then if you can't handle even miniscule pressure, how are you gonna handle the real pressures? Now I'm really getting fired up. These people never experience the joy of accomplishment. Everything's been given to them, and I remember vividly this. There's probably folks about 40 years ago when I had a nightclub in Morgantown, West Virginia, was also a family restaurant during the week. It was like a pizza shop. And I remember hearing two kids from Mount Lebanon area of Pittsburgh. That's a fancy area of Pittsburgh. They were down at the lake. They're talking this is 40 years ago. One kid was crying to the other kid. His mother only games sixty dollars for a pair of jeans. I want to smack that kid into next week. That poor kid probably never earns 60 cents in his whole life. All right. He never worked. He never earned. He never found the value of things. Where's the parents teaching the value of life and work. I don't know. Boy was I remember that vividly. If it was up to me. Every kid on earth, no matter how rich, would be working at a fast food restaurant or some service business to respect, to learn, to respect people, and to learn how to treat people right and to value what they have. Most of them don't. Most of them think the world owes them a living. And this doesn't get too far with guys like me because I can hire you if I want to. But guess what? I don't want to because I don't want to have to sit here 10 and 12 hours a day and hear you cry because you work five minutes overtime. I mean, I've had people come in here that accept the job months in advance and then didn't show up. I had them accept job weeks in advance, didn't show up. I had this one girl show up for work. And these aren't all girls, by the way, folks. And they're just examples that come to mind. And she was here for four hours. She was the biggest dunce I had ever seen in my life except for me because I hired her. That's probably worse. And she wanted to know where her bonus was for hours of the dumbest girl I ever saw in my life. And she wants to know where her bonus was. She went to lunch and never came back, and I was thrilled to death about it. So these are the kinds of people I run into. They can't spell. They can't fill out an application. One lady. I mean, this this lady. I would really have some choice words for her. She never disciplined her child. Always positive, always defending him, all that kind of crap. And he cost her a fortune. He told her she joined my study program and he told her and she had joined my mentor program. And he told her that he knew everything that I knew and that she wasted her money. So she came and got her money back for me. And I pointed out to her 50 different things on her Web site. That means this kid is clueless. He doesn't know anything. She said, well, he went to Microsoft certification. Well, so did a billion other people that never made a nickel selling things on the Internet. Well, she didn't want to hear it. She's defending her good little boy. I want to smack both of them. And then the dumb lady goes to some other guru who just pats her on the back and tells her everything's fine. She spends a fortune, never, never gets anything. She got taken for the ride of her life because her dumb ass sticking up for her kid. All right. So now that's got me by blood pressure up thinking about that situation.

[00:49:49] So now is it time to give you something great. Here's the coupon code. I'm going to say it now. And one more time. And it's good for today. The coupon code is Sam 50. SAM 50. That's my dad's name and the number 50. Sam 50. Get your 50 percent off. Anything I have. You better you better get on it because it'll be good for today. And anybody listening to the replay, it won't be good, so you missed it.

[00:50:18] All right, let's get back to it. So there's another great example. This is a little bit old, but there was this show on TV who is called the Filthy Rich Trail Ride. I think it was called it was called where they had these reality TV show, where they had a bunch of rich kids trying to drive cattle. And it was it was comical because every one of these rich kids was a total loser by any decent standard on earth, had nothing to do with cattle other than they had a lot of money, but they were just clueless. They couldn't hardly cross the street without somebody pointing the direction to them. The only kid that was any good was Anthony Quinn's son. Anthony Quinn's a famous actor, probably one of the richest ones in the world in his day. And they interviewed this kid and they said, well, how come you could do all this stuff so easily? He said, because my dad, even he's rich, but he wouldn't. He gave us a good work ethic. He told us the world does not owe us a living and we had to work and be competent and be good people. And that was and that was the only kid that was worth a crap on the whole show. All these other rich kids were worthless morons. And some of you, you know, kid huggers out there are going to say you shouldn't call a kid a worthless moron. No, I tell things like it is that kids those kids are worthless morons. They don't know anything. They've been given everything. They crumble. They're on drugs and. And therapy and can't do anything on their own. So to me, they're worthless morons, whether you like it or not. Ok. Oh, another one, Paris Hilton, there's another one. That's a great role model. Right, folks, don't you want your girls to be like her follow in her steps? You know, her claim to fame is she's got a Hilton name. She's got a smoking hot body, which she's perfectly happy to give to anybody with a video camera. And and, you know, she could at their prime could get one hundred thousand dollars to walk in and out of a nightclub for 20 minutes. So those are what you want for your child. I'd take the hundred grand, but nobody is gonna give me that for walking in a nightclub. So teach your kids how to work for what they get and your success tip is put pressure on yourself. Push yourself a little. It's just like a weight lift in folks. Weight lifting. You don't lift 400 pounds all at once. You lift a little bit more than you could last week and then you start adapting. Then next week you start a little bit more and maybe the week after you fall back a little bit. But you keep trying and eventually you become a very strong person physically. And the same thing would happen to you mentally if you put a little pressure on yourself. And one of the things my dad did for me was really unique for someone with no education came on a boat from Syria when he was a little boy. Kind of reminds me of there's a guy named Johnny Cash. I'm sure all of you older folks know him. And he had a song called A Boy named Sue. And it was about this old drunk cowboy that knew he wouldn't be around for his kids. So he gave the kid the name Sue. So he'd have to scrap and fight and get tough. That's the gist of the song. So. And I have to add this, actually, a picture of this is online at antion.com/baby.htm and my dad only with a second grade education was 50 when he had me and I'm the baby of the family. And he figured he wouldn't be around to help me grow up. So he would put pillows in front of me when I was just crawling as a baby and put my toys on the other side to teach me to overcome obstacles. I mean, brilliant thing. And to this day, I'm totally unstoppable. I mean, you know, like I said, I won't sleep with anybody. I won't step on anybody and I won't cheat anybody. But if you tell me I can't do something, I'm gonna blow by you doing it. And this was you know, I'm unstoppable. This is long before Cynthia Kersey wrote the book Unstoppable. I was unstoppable and was doing speeches about the topic. So bottom line is, if you're willing to work for it, put challenges on yourself and get stronger mentally and physically and go for it and give those same traits to your children.

[00:54:47] All right. Let's get the leadership skill number seven give before you get. All right. Back to the eulogy during the Depression, work was more than scarce, more like nonexistent. Me, my dad was out of work and he told me, he said to himself, you know, I'm a really valuable worker and I'm not going to sit around here and do nothing when our country needs things done. So he knew there was a fruit shipping warehouse not too far from where he lives. So he went down there to the loading docks dressed for work and just started helping the men load apples. In fact, he was loading more than three guys put together. Eventually, the foreman noticed him and asked who he was. And then he said, We don't know. He's just loading apples like a fiend. So the guy hired my dad right on the spot. He gave before he got in the. My dad taught this to his cousins, this idea. And they all got hired because the foreman knew they're gonna be really hard workers see. And I didn't know was being influenced my dad when I heard about this story. But I used the same thing when my landlord in college would work on our house. I'd go out and help him and I'd say, hey, Frank, you know, I want to help you put these gutters up and you teach me what you're doing, right. So I know. And he came to me one day and he said in 20 years he had been I think he was 20, 25 years. He had been renting in their college town, renting to students. He said not once ever had a kid actually asked to help him, let alone one to learn something about it. So basically, I gave before I got so he came to me at the end of the semester. He said, Tom, I want to retire to Florida. And I have a hotel about 20 minutes from here in Fairmont, West Virginia, and I want you to have it. He says if you can come up with the first mortgage, I'll hold back the second mortgage. Teach you how to run it, and then you can pay me off from the rents. And I'm like, so I went to 50 different landing places, folks. They were shooing me away like I and I had already bought a couple small apartments at that time. But they're saying, yeah, that's nice. You little kids just shoo me away. And that's like making me mad. And remember, I'm unstoppable because of what my dad taught me. 50 different places. And then, of course, the I stopped when they actually went through with it. I bought the hotel. I paid him off. I paid the hotel off. I made about sixty five thousand dollars a year off of it, only went down once a week, ended up selling it to the city for another hundred thousand. And. And there we go. I gave before I got he didn't. Out of thousands. The kids he rented, too. He picked me because I had proven myself. I gave before I got. So I teach this to my speaking students. Everybody's crying. It's hard to get speaking job. So I say go do fundraisers. I've done over 100 of them in my career where I put myself out there. And then we split the money and there's hardly any competition in it. But I make it so that I'm giving. And then we both get. That's even better than give before you give first. And then both of you get it. You're always welcome back. In fact, one place that I spoke at would only have a speaker one time. That was their mandate because they didn't want. They want different speaker. Every time I was there five times, I made money for him every time I went with a fundraiser. So they said, heck, with that mandate, this guy makes us money. I gave before I got. Another way, I proved this concept. I was bored because I just had rental income coming in after I graduated. And so I thought, you know, I've always wanted to get my pilot's license. So I went got my private pilot's license and that was relatively inexpensive for at the time. But to fly the bigger planes and I'm not talking about airliners, I'm talking about twin engine business class 6 8 seats, air conditioning, bar, all that stuff. Those were a lot of money to to learn in those. So what I do, I hung around the airport and I took every crappy flight that that they needed. If they needed parts picked up in Dubuque, Iowa, I'd take the rat trap plane and I'd fly out there and get the parts and bring him back all for free and all the time. I'm logging time and experience for free instead of paying for it. And then it's funny, I would pick up planes in those days. You picked up brand new cessnas in Wichita, Kansas, where the Cessna plant is, but they didn't have any navigation or communication radios in. You had those put in at your local place radio shop. So I would pick up a brand new plane in Wichita with no navigation radio and no communication radio. And I'd fly back to Pittsburgh. That's how I would fly down Interstate 7 reading the road signs to get back to Pittsburgh. That's the truth. But I mean, I did all of these kind of crappy jobs. I flew over Lake Michigan in a single engine and this was stupid with a thousand pounds of steel in the dead of winter to get these mine back up and running. So I did all this crap work. And so they ended up hiring me for 30 bucks an hour in the 70s, whether I was flying or sitting and I made a fortune as a freelance charter pilot because I gave before I got and I still have all my ratings, commercial multi engine instrument part 135, which is a higher level charter pilot. I'm just not current because I haven't flown for a while. But they got all that because I gave before I got. All right. So who are you going to impress by refusing to put in any extra effort? I mean, you can't even impress yourself. I mean, no wonder there's so much depression in the world. How can you be happy with yourself knowing you're operating at a really low level? And I'm not saying you personally are. I'm just saying I want you to think about this. And let's say you had a company or you probably do have a company. If you listen to this, who would impress you more? The clock watcher. You can't wait to run out the door or the person who couldn't get enough and doesn't want to leave and who takes manual's home to study at home and who came in early because they couldn't wait to get back to their project from yesterday. Well, of course that person would impress you. See, that's the person who gets the raises and the responsibility. And then if they have their own company or if they want to start their own company, they can tell their bosses to take this job and shove it. Because people will hire them as an on contract work, because they don't want the losers. They want the people that are doing great and that they're gung ho and want to do things. They want people that will make their life easier and they can trust that the person gets the job done. So. I'm not saying being used by your employer and I'm not saying let them take advantage of you. I'm saying listen to this one. You use others by helping them. That's another quote that you can put my name on. Use others by helping them. You know why? Because you'll help yourself even more. Give before you get.

[01:02:12] All right. Leadership skill number eight. You can overcome obstacles, so this is the one of my favorites I told you about the visual where my I was a baby and my dad made me crawl over the pillows and stuff and and all that. And I'll tell you right out of the chute, it's if you have this feeling that you can't be held back no matter what happens to you. That's a very powerful feeling to have. It gives you an unbridled confidence in both. And both my parents align to make me feel this way. And most of you don't know about this about me, but 34 years ago, I lost everything and I was totally broke. The drinking age went from 18 to 21 in that nightclub and I had lost $400000. I was supposed to be a millionaire before I turned 30. I lost everything. I then tore my Achilles tendon with no health insurance. So 34 years ago, I was actually sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a vacant house. Injured, unable to walk. I was living off what little credit I had left. But that powerful feeling burned inside of me to overcome this obstacle, which I did. By coming up with an idea for a unique entertainment company that in turn helped launch my speaking career. I did that by keeping humor and I know this sounds cliche, but but I kept humor books around me. I watch Candid Camera on TV, which was the stimulus for my Prank Masters Entertainment Company that really got me worldwide publicity and kicked off my speaking career. So staying up, beat in the face of adversity, I will tell me I know it's tough, but you got to do it because it's further downhill for you if you don't. Let me ask you this question. This is the commentary. Are you forcing your children to learn to overcome obstacles? Or are you making yourself look good by buying obstacles out of their way? Ask Felicity Huffman, the one that just got out of jail. She spent eleven days of her 14 day sentence, I guess, for good behavior. This is the the actress that paid for her kid's S.A.T.'s to be fixed. Oh, that's really send them a great message. Right. And then the other one spent half a million. And she's fighting in a court and face and, I don't know, 20 years in jail. So do you want to be that person? That's a hard to hit a parent with. I tell you, because a lot of them say, why want to give the child the things I didn't have. So my question to you is, are you doing them a favor by doing that? Are you? I mean, did you have to work for spending money as a child or was it given to you? Did you have to work your way through college or was it paid for you? I mean, if you had everything handed to you, maybe you don't have these skills yourself. Maybe you need to get them, because I can tell you, you're not doing a child a favor by giving them everything, because that's the one that can't handle the normal pressures of life. That's the one kid that can't handle the normal pressures of life that I mentioned earlier, that go to drugs and therapy and drinking and eating disorders and cutting themselves and all this stuff that didn't exist, or at least we didn't know about it much when I was a kid. But we had to work for what we got. We appreciated things, we appreciated accomplishment, and I think every child should have to to work in. And here's an idea, I think. Have your kids do your neighbors chores and vice versa because it'll make you so darn embarrassed if they screw up. She'll start teaching him to do things right. So success tip is pick something that's an obstacle in your life or your business life and put a laser focus on the problem. Make it your waking thought and think about it during the day. Think about it when you get home. Think about several hours before you go to bed and then take action to keep trying options until something works. And you can overcome obstacles, and if you have kids, find out what they perceive as an obstacle and help them brainstorm ways to overcome it and then encourage them to take action. And if they fail, say that's okay. That's at least you tried. What did you learn from it? You can overcome obstacles.

[01:06:42] All right. Leadership skill number 10. Risk everything for something really worth while. Back to the eulogy. Did you ever wonder why many people don't achieve their goals? Well, could it be because they never were really willing to commit fully to them? And we're back to the eulogy reminder there. They always gave themselves easy out so that the going got tough, they could bail out easily. Well, around 1946 with a houseful of kids and more on the way, my dad took every nickel he had went 50 miles out of the city and bought one hundred and fifty six acres of land. A bulldozer and enough fuel to run it. He didn't want his kids being raised in the filthy air and tough streets of Pittsburgh, Pa. He built a truck stop and motel and eventually warehouses, rental colleges and our house on National Route forty one mile east of Claysville, Pennsylvania. His work can still be seen there today. All the kids grew up healthy and strong, and not one ever got into any trouble except the time I ran away from home and ate grass soup and hot dogs two hours before I gave up and returned home. All right. Commentary now, I'm not telling you to be irresponsible, but when there is no turning back, fear is a really great motivator. You'll hear other people tell you this, but I've heard this for years. People say getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to them in their entire life. And of course, they don't think that at the time. But when they look back, that's what forced them to have no turning back. They had to excel. And when you have that behind you, you can really accomplish things folks that you never dreamed you could accomplish. So when it's appropriate, risk everything and you'll do all right. And I'm going to throw in some other sidebars here before I do the final part of the eulogy. And one has to do with balance. And I I just. I just interviewed another guy named Joshua Lee, said balances B.S. and I agreed with him for a little different reasons. But, yeah. I just don't see how you can be extraordinary and balanced at the same time. And the people that that promote that are usually seriously broke. I just think is anybody that you know and admire as a super high achiever. It could be an Olympic athlete or could be a sports figure entertainer. Do you think they're balanced? If you want to achieve really great things, you can't be balanced. It just can't happen. You have to do extraordinary things. Now, I'm not saying to ruin one area or your life to make another area better. I'm just saying that if you have laser focus and you have a successful environment around you and you work hard, that's what it takes to be a superstar. Now, if you're happy with mediocrity, OK? I can't fight with you about that. That's what's you're shooting for. But if you want to be excellent and achieve highs and big stuff and this is according to Dr. Sidney Lecter. He's a psychiatry professor at Yale. And it's about the eight qualities of high achievers. I'm not going to give you can read look him up if you want to see all of them. But but laser focused, successful environment and clear vision and other things. That's what he says. But one thing that he said that I really resonated with, as you know, people call me a workaholic because I'm very interested in my business and doing a good job. Yeah, I play some tennis and I play with the dogs and and so forth. But I say, if you want to call me a workaholic, just shut up. Just shut your mouth. What do you know about me? I call it with Dr. Lecter, calls it a winning pace. This is my pace. This is where I excel. You have to find your pace. And maybe it's not as tough as mine. I've met I'm kind of an oddball. I went to the doctors and yeah, I'm overweight. But the doctor actually said, and I quote, You should have been a Clydesdale horse. He said. He says, I got people half your age falling apart and you're doing twice as much as them and you accomplished more. And you don't even feel bad. You're not even tired and you're not taking any pills at all. So, you know, so that's my winning pace because of how I'm made. But you still have to find a winning pace for yourself that pushes yourself, that exceeds where you're at now, if you're not achieving the things you want, you've got to go further. Believe me, you can. Most people, like I said, are using 10 percent of their brainpower and 10 percent of their action to get things done. Well, you've got 90 percent you could improve on right there. And it's great if you have a spouse or partner that's on the same page as you too, because, you know, opposites sometimes don't attract too after when when the work needs to be done like that one girl that you know, I want to relax now. I'm not going to help you out. OK, great. You know, it didn't make sense for me to be with a person like that. I would've lost all that money from that mailing. Had I said, OK, well, let's just watch that. Well, there was no Netflix at that time. Let's go to a movie. Yeah. No, it doesn't work that way. So balance, I don't think is the greatest idea if you want to really excel and be highly successful.

[01:12:16] All right. Here's another pet peeve of mine. How about being on time? Is that gone, by the way? The window, I mean, is it because we don't have watches anymore because our cell phones keep time for us? Is that what it is? Listen, nobody respects you if you're late. Nobody. So if you want to be a high achiever in your business and in life, don't be late all the time. It's not cool. It might be cool for a celebrity to show up late at a party. But if you're in business, people have to depend on you. And I have no respect for people that are chronically late. It's a lack of discipline. There's just no reason for it. And it's hurting you. And again, like I said, there's there's no reason for it. If you're chronically late, you just need to chronically back up and add 15 or 30 minutes to do whatever you're doing because there can't be anything holding you back. Every single day from being late. So get over that.

[01:13:16] All right, now I'm going to run through a success checklist and some of this is from my dad and some of my ideas. But here's a recap. Build it strong. Don't take shortcuts. Don't waste your time or resources. Be self-reliant, study, work for things, give before you get overcome obstacles and risk everything. Now, here's some extras I throw in as my version hang around with better people. I mean, there's been plenty of people said that your average income is based on the average of your five friends. We'll look around you and see if that's true. I mean, invest in yourself. I bought so many training programs, I could probably build a skyscraper with the amount of money I've been investing in myself. And then I get people want to sell me stuff. And I said, well, how many different training programs have you purchased? Oh, well, I just work on my own stuff. I don't need it. I'm thinking. All right, here's here's what I'm thinking. You want me to invest in you, but you won't invest in you. Huh. Fat chance of that, you jerk. Get lost. You know, if you're not out there hustling and learning and learning and learning. What do I need from you? I can go learn it myself. I don't need you. All right. So learn. Invest in yourself and create value for people. You know, if you really want to be in demand, create value that they can't get anywhere else or they can't get it any better. They can't get it any cheaper or whatever, however you want to position it. You gotta create value for yourself or for for other people. There's no reason for them to give you money if you don't create value for them and do something no one else has done. Just like my retreat center, that's the only place in the world. I mean, somebody else tried to claim theirs was, but they were three years behind me. And I'm doing this 18 years and and still nobody else has done what I'm doing here. You actually live in the house with me. People use their homes, but they send you to a hotel. Well, we have some training programs like that. But the main retreat and mentor program, you actually live in the House for an immersion weekend. Nobody's done that. Another thing. Control your image. I actually canceled out of a major speaking engagement that would have earned me at least fifty thousand, probably one hundred thousand. How many of you out there would be willing to do that? I probably not too many. Right. But the rest of the program was populated with a bunch of scammers and loud mouth B.S.ers that are not credible. I don't want that to rub off on me just because I'm there. Makes me want to take a shower just to be around them. So I cancel. I mean, I didn't. I didn't cancel. I didn't accept the engagement because I've only cancelled once in my entire life. And that's another story. And it was because of a scam by the way.

[01:16:09] All right. Here's some of these are miscellaneous tips I've been giving you. Here now here's some words you can use. Only, biggest, best. If you can use those to describe the things you're doing, you'll have a much better chance to be successful in your business. The longest like I have the longest running Internet seminar, I have the the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. I have the only Internet marketing retreat center where you live in the house for an immersion weekend. And it just goes on and on and on. I have the biggest email list in the professional speaking industry, see so those are superlatives. And if you can't start, you know, at the biggest in the world, you've got the biggest in your block start and build it up. But use those terms. Learn how to get publicity. I built my whole career before the Internet with publicity. Remember, these are success tips, folks. So learn how to do publicity. Joan Stewart's was a student of mine for Internet, but she is the bomb on publicity. So we even wrote a book together How to be a kick butt publicity hound. Because, you know, that lends to your credibility. And a sign I have hanging at my school is the only way to exceed the normal. The average cost in your or fees in your industry is to be better known. Publicity makes you better know.

[01:17:37] Let's see, I told you about announcing things if you're too embarrassed. If you don't do them, so get yourself laser focused. Use your throwaway time. And here's another really big one. Be consistent. In fact, when I'm interviewed on podcast, they said, well, why? How do you get so successful? I'm consistent and persistent. People know what to expect out of me. They know if I say something that's going to happen, even if there's a nuclear attack. And if it doesn't, I'm going to tell you why. And I'm gonna make it up to you. So consistency equals credibility. Consistency equals trust. If you're not consistent, no one knows what the heck to expect that of you. What do you expect them to do? Come back to you when you're there one minute and gone the next. No. Be consistent. Be on time. Be tough, but be fair. That's one overriding principle. In all my business dealings. I'm fair doesn't mean I give away the farm if somebody is an idiot, but I'm always fair and consistent. And so I don't have to worry about sleeping at night. And I don't have to worry about people writing rotten things about me, because everything I do is fair. And another thing I do is I laugh at failure because I learn something from it that keeps you loose and you're able to laugh at your failures. You. You're able to easily or much more easily come up with the solutions to make it better the next time. So if you're all tense and crack up and cry and start drinking and taking drugs, what are the chances that it's gonna be better the next time around? Very slim. And take responsibility for yourself and be a good role model for your kids. And don't pat yourself or anybody on the back for poor performance. I'm getting fired up again because I know I'm going to talk about these stupid given trophies to everybody. This is the most stupid thing I've ever heard. The people that invent this kind of stuff are what I call highly educated idiots. Morons. No common sense, just stupid book worms that haven't lived in the real world. They're idiots. There they're pervasive in your school boards all around the country. You see him on the news all the time, just doing stupid crap and your kids are suffering for it. You're letting it happen. That's why homeschooling and private schools that have good values or are necessary now because all of the public schools are, you know, at least I know on the ones that make the news, you know, are are just crazy idiots, morons running them, giving trophies out. How do you possibly think that that child is going to try harder next time if you tell them, hey, it doesn't matter if you try harder, here's your reward. How stupid is that? What kind of moron? I wish these moron superintendents were sitting right in front of me because I can tell them what idiots they are. Of course they won't hear it. No, they're highly educated. I'm highly educated. You're just the guy that went to West Virginia University. What do you know? I know stuff. I see what you're producing, you jerk. I'm looking at my couch to pretend in one of these idiots is sitting there. Just like to slap him into oblivion. How can you let this happen? How did these people get on school boards are just morons. And I hope you pass this on to some of those morons because it's just everywhere. They're making a stupid rules that are hurting your kids. And I can't stand it because it ends up they come. They work for me. And I got to put up with them. So get that trophy crap out of there. Reward people for good performance. Encourage them to do better. Help him. Teach him. Show them the way. But don't reward poor performance. All you're going to get is more poor performance. How smart do you have to be to understand a simple concept like that? Or how stupid do you have to be not to understand that? I mean, my blood pressure's going up. It's a good thing I'm a Clydesdale. OK. No, it just doesn't surprise me. These kids are incapable of achievement and they're going to grow up thinking, oh, well, you know, I don't need to do anything. I get the rewards. You know, that's called the entitlement stuff that we're seeing so much of. All right. So I'm starting to sweat over here because I'm getting mad.

[01:22:11] All right. So let's finish up here in the next few minutes. So if you'll like what you heard about this eulogy. Maybe you want to write one for your parents. How about that? See, a lot of people e-mailed me after this came out that said, hey, we did one of these for our parents. And it was this is before they were dead as an even nicer thing to do. Don't tell them it's a eulogy. That's not really nice. And it was really, really made them think of the nice things their parents did for them. And if your parents didn't do you know, this is another thing I run into a lot and it's a beautiful thing. I didn't think this up, but people turned out really great that had really rotten parents and they made a decision in their life that their parents were a good role model of what not to do. And so these people that had brought in parents decide, I'm going to go the opposite and be a great parent. So hopefully you've I know I know how hard it is when your formative years you were dumped on by people. They're supposed to love you. But I hope that you this will help you climb out of it and you'll do the things necessary. But anyway, a lot of people e-mail me about this is doing one for their parents. And you could, even if you hated your parents, do on what they taught you. They taught you not to be a drunk, not to be an alcoholic, not to smoke and get lung cancer or not to beat you to death for for smiling at the dinner table or whatever the bad things they did to you, you could do the same thing. And it just would be a different angle you'd take on it. I hope it's cathartic for you and you could leave yours around your child's bedroom and maybe they'll get the hint to do one for you. How about that.

[01:23:55] All right, so here's the end of the eulogy here and then I'll give you the coupon code again then. Little sponsor message and then we'll be on our way. And I hope you enjoy this 200th episode or you hate me even worse than you did before I started. All right, here we go.

[01:24:12] Even though dad was only on stage once that I know of, his leadership principles are influencing tens of thousands of people through me. And because of all the people he touched over the years, I spent the Fourth of July this week at a funeral home viewing, which, to be honest, I thought was going to be pretty barren because especially at his age of 94, all his friends had died off. Well, I couldn't believe it. People were everywhere, people that I'd never seen before or even heard of were telling me stories of when they were down and out. 60 or 70 years ago, my dad was the one that helped them or gave them a chance or encouraged him. I just about fell on the floor when someone told me that around 1923, my dad took on the responsibility of an entire family of kids who had an old drunk for a father. Dad worked all week for 50 cents to buy a big sack of potatoes to feed the kids and himself for the week. I was told that dad taught the boys of the family trade so they could go out and find work and that these people thought the sun rose and set on my dad. I've never heard a word about them. Before my dad's viewing on July 4th of this year, 2000, so. So that's one more or less of them maybe I didn't learn too well from dad, don't boast, just do good things. So what's this got to do with great speaking Tom? Well, I'm hoping if you if you listen this far or read this far that you saw some value in my dad's leadership teachings. I'm hoping that when you take the stage that you walk up there as a good example for the many people you will touch in your career. My dad didn't have the stage in the conventional sense like we do every time we speak. He lived the stage. I'm sorry I haven't ever been able to go through this without breaking up a little bit. In fact, he was the stage that good leadership stands on. Your living example, both onstage and off, will be what ultimately makes you a great speaker. Or we could throw in now great business person. I can teach you the techniques, but what you must provide the good example, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Not just when you're on the platform or maybe in your store. Thanks, Dad. You'll crack up with his dumb nickname of mine. I was heap. So love your little heappie.

[01:26:54] So that's that's it, folks. Leadership principles from my dad and. And he would have said, go ahead and given your sponsor message. I don't know. It seems just seems a little like I think I'll skip it for now. I think, you know, you can see where I'm made of and you know, the things that I offer. If I can help you, I'd be glad to. The coupon code again is Sam 50. Sam 50. And let's see if I have anything else here. The next episode is Jen Groover, a prolific entrepreneur and wait till you hear all the things she's done. And I'm just a little, you know, going through this is quite emotional for me, folks. So I'm just gonna say I hope this helps some of you and I'll catch you on the next episode.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com