65 – He’s a professional investor: Tom interviews Joel Block

Episode 065 – Joel Block
[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 Tom here with episode 65 of screw the commute podcast we've got Joel Block here. I've known this guy for a long time and this guy I can't wait to hear what he's got to say because he covers all kinds of stuff that I am clueless about and I'm really excited to hear from him now. Hope you didn't miss episode 64 which I covered in one of my Monday trainings for those of you are new here. Every Monday I do an in-depth training on something that is either made me a lot of money or save me a lot of money in business and in that episode on excellence I showed you how examples of how the pursuit of excellence in whatever you do open doors that I didn't even know were there or existed. So make sure you go back later and listen to that episode 64 now a real quick announcement our podcast app should be ready by the time you hear this. You can check it out at the App Store at Screw the commute podcast and you'll be able to do a lot of cool stuff right on your mobile device with our screw the commute podcast app. Our sponsor is the internet marketing Training Center of Virginia distance learning school which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living either working for someone else or starting your own line online business or both. You can check it out at IMTCVA.org. And also while you're over at the screwthecommute.com checking out some of our other stuff. I don't want you to get robbed and you or your family's higher education pursuits. So be sure to watch the Higher Education webinar at screwthecommute.com and you are going to be mad when you watch it because there's a lot of things that these institutions are doing to you and your children and your nephews and your nieces. That's not so swift and causing enormous amounts of debt. So check out that at screwthecomputer.com and just click on free webinars.

[00:02:33] All right let's get to the main event. Joel Block is the money business insider. Joe's a longtime venture capitalist and hedge fund manager. He says that's that's gobbledygook for a professional investor. So when you hear a hedge fund it's I always wonder exactly what that was. So it's a professional investor. He lives in a shark tank world just like on TV since selling his publishing company to a Fortune 500 company. Joel keynotes conferences worldwide delivering business strategies and the inside track for money and success to business executives and their teams. Joel are you ready to screw the commute.

[00:03:17] I was born ready.

[00:03:23] Good crossing paths with you again. Our good friend Carolyn De Posada put us back together after many years I don't know how long it's been since we met. Absolutely and now you and I have a thing in common. We've both been in successful businesses but our paths are totally different. So tell them a little bit about what you do and how you how you got there.

[00:03:51] Well you know our pasts are different but they're sort of parallel in a funny way. So I started you know for two years out of college. I was I'm a CPA by my training. I worked for PriceWaterhouse. I did a lot of really cool things for Pricewaterhouse I counted ballots for the Academy Awards in 1986. I did tax work for giant real estate investment company which is how I learned the business that I'm in now. All those years ago and I hated the tax work but I just loved reading the partnership agreements and I said you know I knew I wanted to be a deal maker. I knew that that's what I wanted to do. So I quit the firm and I've been self-employed ever since. Which is more than 30 years so you know I just went out there and did it and I have a feeling what you and I have in common probably as far as a skill is we're both salesmen as much as I'm a CPA I really am a salesman. I get that that's that's the skill I value the most.

[00:04:45] And you don't see that very often.

[00:04:47] No not not in not in financial people but I wasn't well placed that I really wasn't. Listen if I didn't quit Price Waterhouse I'd have been fired for sure 100 percent because I really my handwriting was terrible I didn't get the dimes and pennies in the write columns I was argumentative I was rebellious I just I wasn't a soldier and they needed a soldier there and that just wasn't me. So.

[00:05:11] Well let's let's go back to that time because I see a lot of the people that listen to this or are thinking about going into business and they're stuck in that cubicle they probably hate what they're doing even if they kind of know it's OK it's that dream of getting out of there and doing the kinds of stuff that we do. So do you remember that time in which you were feeling like and do you actually plan to go out on your own or was it like a demarcation I quit and walk out the door. What was that like.

[00:05:40] It was closer to the second. It wasn't exactly either one of those but you know the the the junior guy on the team which was me the senior guy who is a two year guy who bosses the one you're gonna right. He came to me and said hey listen Joel you're not working hard enough. I said What do you mean I'm working. You know I don't know 50 hours six or whatever 10 hours a day whatever it was. And the guy said the other guys are working twelve and I said this work is boring. All you get is ten hours if I can't do other work. I mean if all I want to do is this. That's all I can give you. And he goes if you don't give us more time if you don't work more overtime we're taking you off the job. And if you take me off the job I'm quitting the firm and two weeks later I didn't work there anymore. And so in my exit interview you know the partner said to me you know what are you gonna do. And I said well I said I really don't know. I said I don't make a lot of money here so it doesn't matter I could sell shoes at Nordstrom so the point being for listeners is that as a very young man I didn't have any responsibility I didn't have any overhead I didn't have a family I didn't have anything at that early time and it was very easy for me to make that decision. It was very very easy. The more you know the farther along you go the more overhead you accumulate the bigger your responsibilities get the harder it is to make this decision. That doesn't mean you shouldn't make the decision but it you know it just gets it gets a little bit harder as you go.

[00:07:10] Well with all your financial expertise how would you tell somebody now that you look back that if they did if they were in a little bit deeper than you were at the time and they've got to keep all their lifestyle up and they've got a family to worry about how would they plan for this exit now.

[00:07:30] Number one I would not jump into the entrepreneur business cold turkey you know as much as nobody advocates for the entrepreneur business more than me I love this business. I think it is the great business. It's a colorblind business. That means that anybody from any background any race religion creed culture can be successful. If you are crystal clear about what you do if you solve problems people will pay to make their problems go away no matter what you look like. And that's the beauty. That's the real beauty of America. It now corporate and corporate America. Maybe it's a little different maybe some other places is a little different. But the entrepreneur business there really is a place for everyone.

[00:08:10] Even convicted felons.

[00:08:12] Well even even convicted maybe especially especially convicted felons.

[00:08:17] They have nowhere else to go.

[00:08:19] You know actually that that kind of brings up an end it's all interesting thing that the real problem the reason they can they can never really come back into society is they they stay in kind of the criminal world is because they can't ever come back in. There's no way for them to get back into society. So anyway what I would tell people is that you have to kind of build a little bit of a safety net not only a savings account but yet maybe maybe you kind of start you're 100 percent working for your job maybe you go 90 10 that year 10 percent on the side and then 80 percent you're at the company and then 20 percent on the side and you're kind of weaning it down eventually 30 40 50 percent 50 50 now you're doing entrepreneur work and you're working at the company. So maybe there's a way for you to kind of bleed out that way. The other thing is you try to have to try to get a handle on your responsibilities. You have to make sure that the family the spouse everybody's in sync with what you're doing because if you want to go out and make money in a different way and they're going to spend the same old way that could cause you some problems see really that the ducks that you have to get in order are not just your financial ducks you really have to get some emotional stuff under control and there's a little bit of a rollercoaster. I mean depending on what business you're in you could sell a lot one month and next to nothing the next month and that could be painful. So you really have to get your ducks in a row and be clear about those things.

[00:09:43] Now from that enormous amount of financial expertise I mean I'm good at bringing the money in but what to do with it when I do it is nothing fancy at all. But what kind of finances should people have set up and what kind of mechanisms financial mechanisms should they have set up when they start a business.

[00:10:04] Well you know listen you got to do some basic bookkeeping. I mean you have to keep track of your money. You have to know where your money's going. You know and one of the things that people do is OK. I'm not good at this I'm just going to turn over to somebody else. And if they don't pay any attention those are the people that they get a shock of their life. At some point the future money is missing money is gone. They didn't they didn't accumulate as much as they thought it evaporated somehow and I'm not talking entirely about dishonesty you know just things are not always in reality the same as you perceive them in your mind. And if you're not paying attention whether you like it or not you must pay attention because money is really the score. The way we keep score it's the scorekeeping mechanism in business. And if you don't pay attention you're really getting yourself in line for some trouble. So really important to get your bookkeeping under control whether you do it internally or you have a helper but you must stay involved at all times you must look at reports you must look at bank balances and you know and if we didn't learn anything else from Bernie Madoff and I mean this is all accountants know this. This is not rocket science for accountants but for everybody else just because a paper like a report says 500 dollars doesn't mean that it's true or real. You know it can really be negative five hundred dollars and money's a very confusing thing and it just it's very very complicated because what appears is not always so and I'll give you a quick example of that. You know Tom if you took a hundred dollar bill out of your pocket you went to the bank and you open a new bank account. What would the bank account statement say right at that moment.

[00:11:47] Well probably. Twenty eight dollars after they take all the fees out.

[00:11:53] You're too realistic too cynical. So let's say it said a hundred bucks. Okay let's see. All right. Okay. Let's say now. The next day you go open another account. I give you one hundred dollars and you go to the bank and you open another bank account. What is that bank say.

[00:12:07] Well it should be a hundred dollars.

[00:12:08] But one I loaned you the money. The other one is your own money so. But both them say you have a hundred dollars one of them is not even real. So it's not any different. You ever see these guys take pictures of themselves in front of big fancy cars and I mean you have no idea if they really own these things or if it's just for show. I mean I mean that's just me asking the question other people you know and on Google and all the other stuff they're all getting all googly eyed to me you know I'm not impressed by that sort of thing because you don't even know if it's real. And that's how money is you don't money. It's very hard to tell what's real in money. So for your own business you need to pay a lot of attention. One of the things we learned in accounting school you know when I was a youngster and I haven't done accounting in 30 years. But the training was very good for me is that every employee is the best auditor of his own paycheck that people know how to read their own paycheck. They don't know how to read other people's paycheck and they don't know how to read other things but they can read their own paycheck and they know when they've gotten too much taken out or they have a sense about these things.

[00:13:13] And so you have to learn how to read your your reports and you got to get an accountant or a bookkeeper to show you how it works and you've got to get your taxes right. I mean there's some responsibility to owning the business.

[00:13:24] Yeah. You've got to keep your eye on accounts receivable too because you might do the job and we all do a great job at something you expect someone else to follow up and collect the money and if they don't do it you know well you're in trouble.

[00:13:37] Hopefully with all the internet subscription revenue and all the other things that we all do nowadays hopefully accounts receivable is minimized. You know one of the things about you know about these subscription businesses they don't have accounts receivable.

[00:13:51] Right. Exactly. And even even the government kind of dummy it up a little bit in allowing people to pay a certain amount up to a certain amount with credit cards because you used to be wait you know for the rest of your life to get paid. So now they can pay up to a certain amount with credit card and that's worth checking out if you're going to have any business with the government.

[00:14:12] Right. Right. I think they can pay twenty five thousand or something right on the spot and you know it's absolutely worth the three points you pay to your your credit card company because you know they Hey listen. Otherwise you got to collect the money. Got to wait for the money. You just just take the money and not worry about the discount.

[00:14:30] Yeah. But he's given just stellar advice because there's been plenty of people on this show that have not paid attention. And that was their biggest trouble in business bankruptcy. I mean one guy the other day just moved to cross country and his partner turned a nonrecourse loan into a recourse loan and stuck him with seven million dollars in personal debt. Well that's not paying attention. That ruined your whole day. Have you ever gotten screwed in business And if so what did you do about it.

[00:15:07] You can't be in business without having gotten screwed. I'll tell you the lessons for me the only times that it's ever happened is when I let my guard down I got too comfortable I got too trusting I got to something and I let my guard down and I wasn't paying attention. And one of the ways you can let your guard down is not just getting too trusting but getting too arrogant and you know thinking that you're so smart thinking that nope nobody else is as smart as you. When you go down that path and I you know I've kind of gone down that path a little. Not not overly but a little. And I've really learned that that's that's when you find yourself in some trouble. So I really try to be more humble I really try to you know try to keep my feet on the ground and then I try to stay grounded because that's how I know and when that happens it sort of depends. You know what what the magnitude of the problem is it the magnitude is big. You have to call an attorney and get help. You know if the problem is not so big then you may just have to take it as a tuition payment against your education.

[00:16:24] That's a Good way to say it. I actually have a little offbeat method one time I didn't get the e-mail that one of my my main web site Antion.com was expiring and then somebody else grabbed it up and and so I just threatened to kill him. He gave it back to me. I don't know that they teach that in CPA school.

[00:16:47] Yeah. That's probably not the. That's probably not the best technique to go on the radio and say out loud.

[00:16:59] So anything funny or bizarre happened to you in the course of your business.

[00:17:04] You know a guy you know in 30 years a lot of bizarre stuff and a lot of funny stuff I can't it might. My file system my my electronic file system in my brain doesn't work so generally it's just pick a story but you going give me a little more parameter I guarantee I can think of some funny things that have happened along the way.

[00:17:24] Well what do you like. What do you like best about working for yourself and what's the worst thing.

[00:17:29] Well you know listen I've got a great boss. Yeah very very smart very very handsome very polite. Everything. I don't have a bad thing to say about the boss but you know. But that's also the the downside. You know I was saying to my to my son recently was complaining about a job I should you know listen if you don't like your job you can. You can do it the way I do it you know and it looks so easy. I mean it's like God you know dad it's like you don't have to like going to work that much. And although I do I work a lot and I do a lot of creative stuff I'm thinking all the time about ideas and then come up with new ideas. But I see I said listen but here's the thing.

[00:18:16] You know you have to put up with a lot of crap but the one main thing is you know you're going to get a paycheck at the end of the week I don't have to put up with a lot of a lot of the same stuff but I don't know that I'm going to get a paycheck at the end of the week. So that's the tradeoff. The tradeoff is you know are you willing to bet on yourself to get the job done. And I am always willing to bet on myself that's that. That's the thing is you have to ask yourself when you're going to go in business are you willing to bet on yourself. Because if you're not then maybe going to business is not the right answer for you and you have to really think. Is this the right thing for you to do. And for me it is because I'm always willing and able to bet on myself. That doesn't mean that I do everything perfectly. Like like I can't do any of the Internet marketing stuff you do I think you're so talented in your marketing just the way your mind works is so different than mine. But that kind of makes us a good team too is that we're different. So I'm very clear about what I'm what I'm good at.

[00:19:18] I've gotten very clear I'd say until I was 35 or 40 I just I tried a lot of different things and I wasn't clear about what I was good at but as as I started to get 40 42 I started to get more and more clear about what my lane was going to be and what my skills were going to be. And I focus only on those skills and that's a really important thing for somebody who's just a little bit older is you've got to pick a lane and you've got to focus on it and you've got to get really good at it. One of things I always say is that money follows expertise and you have to really know what you're doing because you know nobody wants a generalist. Nobody wants you practicing on them. Doctors Hey listen there's a reason the doctors practice on cadavers. You know they're low value targets right. I mean they it's okay they never complain. But in business you know there's real consequences. And so you you want to be very careful that you're really good at what you do and if you don't know how to do something instead of practicing on somebody else work on somebody else's account that's already doing this sort of thing kind of learn from them as an apprentice or as as a helper in some capacity and that'll that'll also prevent you from you know stepping in a pile of trouble.

[00:20:44] Yeah and I agree with your statement of being a good team because I don't agree with the. No paycheck at the end of the week because if I had a hold of your son I'd be having a residual affiliate programs and membership sites that the money just keeps coming.

[00:21:00] Well I mean I mean that's. Listen if he decided to go out on his own I would probably make him come learn that he can give himself up and running.

[00:21:08] Yeah. There you go. So. So tell us tell us what you're doing and do speaking you're selling stuff. What are you doing.

[00:21:16] Well I. I'm doing I'm doing a handful of things. You know there was I've really always been the same. But you know I've been in the venture capital and the hedge fund businesses for for my whole career. I mean that really that's the main thing I learned in nineteen ninety started a publishing company which I raised a lot of money for went to Wall Street sold the services all over Wall Street and then sold that company to a Fortune 500 in 1995 and then I bought and sold companies. You know that's kind of been my main thing. And then in the last in about 2010 started a real estate hedge fund where we were buying distressed notes and things from banks and buying properties fixing about FIX AND FLIP like you see on TV and then I you know over the last you know many years companies asked me to come speak to them you know and one of the things I talk about is how to businesses get the inside track on things.

[00:22:15] I mean people in the money business tend to have the inside track I mean actually all of us have the inside track and there are things that we know how to do there are people who run great restaurants. What's the inside track on running a great restaurant what's the inside track on being a great Internet marketer like you are. What's the inside track on being successful and fixing and flipping homes. I mean every business there's insiders and there's outsiders and you want to learn from the people who are on the inside that know what they're doing. And so I speak on those kinds of topics. I will tell you if I can make a little announcement about something that is new. So it's not it's not my thing. It's just it's a new thing that people have never heard of I promise. The government has just released a new tax shelter. It's probably the biggest tax shelter in the history of the United States. And these things are called Opportunity Zones. This is part of the Trump job cut act. I think it's called the TCJA tax cuts and jobs act of 2017 and they put in there. They really want to move money into lower income minority type communities but the government never does a good job of this sort of thing never they never get it right. So they want to give private citizens generally wealthier people an incentive to move money into these lower income areas. And before all sorts of people start getting all bent out of shape that rich people get all sorts of benefits. You got to think about how many jobs are going to be created and how much value and how much good where good worth is going to come into these communities right now are just languishing and they're starving. And so cities all over the country are doing badly. So what happened is that they the government said to the governors of all 50 states actually I think 51. They said send us the areas that you want money moved into. And so the governors all set a list to the IRS.

[00:24:10] The IRS then compared it to the census and then they they approved eighty seven hundred opportunity zones so they've given basically wealthier people the incentive to move money into these opportunity zones and that the tax benefit it's outside the scope of our discussion to go into why it's a really big deal and everything. But let me just promise you you're going to start hearing about these opportunity zones. It is a huge huge opportunity. I'm just finishing up a little a little mini book on this topic to kind of introduce people to it. I mean we mostly work with the investors the people that want to move money in because they're not going to go into these opportunity areas themselves. They're going to go through a fund. So we'll set up a fund and then people will give money to us and then we'll take the pool of money and go into those zones. So we take a bunch of people at one hundred thousand apiece or whatever the number is and then we can put 20 million into a certain place. That's that's the way it generally works and that's what a fund manager does. I coordinate the fund and go in and put the money in. But you're going to start hearing about these opportunity zones and they are really gonna be magical. They're going to be good for low income communities they're going gonna be good for wealthier people. It's going to be highly stimulating to the economy. And you know and there you go.

[00:25:28] So that's the inside track. They'd never heard something like that for me.

[00:25:33] But believe me that that that's the inside track that stuff. It's not secret it's not like illegal that I just told you this. But let me promise you people aren't going to be hearing about this for a couple of years a couple of years from now. How is it going to happen. They're going to go. I think I heard something about this on Tom Antion's show a couple of years ago and there to go back into your archives. And you're going to say that's why you need to listen to my show and then bring you the inside track.

[00:25:57] Well you know you tell me about your show. You also bring them the inside track.

[00:26:00] Yeah. Yeah well my show is called profit from the inside and profit from the insider. Just I invite guests that have the inside track that know how to do things that bring these kinds of industry insights to business leaders all over the country and even beyond. So it's on iTunes Stitcher you know profit from the inside by Joel Block and it's it's a cool show. I mean we've got celebrities athletes. I mean people that are that really get to the highest level of their game and you know like I'd like to ask these these high level athletes you know what does it take to get to your level and you know what's interesting is there's no secret.

[00:26:43] It's not like you know like some secret Einstein formula. It's they work extra hard. They're clear about what they want to do. They don't fool around that I'll lose focus. They don't get distracted. You know they just they just do the work and they don't complain and they just they just do it. They all the things that we all do whine moan complain Yeah don't do that stuff you know it's just it's just like oh I don't have enough money and things are going my way. They don't sit around doing that because while you're sitting around doing that they're practicing getting better honing their craft. And so let's just hone our craft and get really good entrepreneurs don't have time to sit around and whine and moan. We have time to work hard and do the things we do and get clear and get other people to like our ideas so that we can move forward and monetize them.

[00:27:33] Absolutely. Super great advice that improve our skills too that's for sure. That's how those people reach the highest levels. I just thought of something that would be great for. I mean you're the only guest so far that I would even trust with this with this question. So if people were out there trying to build their business up but with the idea of selling it. Because you said you bought a lot of businesses. So what should they do to prepare if they want to build a business up and sell it in the future what kind of things should they pay attention to.

[00:28:06] That's a complicated question. It's a it's a whole show really it's a bigger question than you realize but put it let's put it like this First there are some businesses that you built to own and there's some businesses that you build to sell and build to sell you want to build. You want to build the business to own because if you can't sell it then you're stuck with it. You don't want to own a business that was built to sell and you get stuck with it because that that's kind of a short lived lived kind of a deal. So here's what you want to do. Number one is you want to make sure that the business is really a solid business. You know you want to try to keep a lot of the expenses. A lot of the junk expenses out of it. So like when a lot of times people will do is they'll they'll put their whole house like they'll buy the family clothing and they'll do all the family dinners and they'll do you know I mean they'll put everything inside the business. And that really is not a good idea. I mean number one it's a it's a problem for tax reasons. You know my accountant said to me even though I'm a CPA I go outside and get my work done.

[00:29:11] My accountant said to me one time he said here's the rule of thumb with General Motors put this on there on their books and records if the No. Neither should you. And that may be a little bit harsh but I think that the principle is pretty sound. So you want to keep a lot of the junk outside of your company and that's kind of important because you've got to remember what an investor buys. If you want to sell your company is there at the end of the day they're buying. The bottom line. How many dollars are falling to the bottom. And of course here's the big dichotomy it is that we don't want a lot of dollars to fall to the bottom because then the governments can get their hands on our money. So we pump all sorts of junk into our businesses that cause very little money to come to the bottom. And then an investor comes along and looks and says well gee nothing came to the bottom. Oh yeah well that's not really true. That's just what I tell the government what's really true is this. You don't want to be in that situation. And so you know you can listen if you're going to run your business for 20 years running however you want for 20 years.

[00:30:14] But if you know you're going to sell it a couple of years from now it's going to take a couple of years to kind of lean out and clean out your books and records and get them straightened out the way that they need to be so that you can show to an investor you have to pay some tax you're going to have to do it correctly as you should be anyway. But you know if you haven't been doing it you need to get corrected. When you're ready to sell. So that's the thing. And there are business brokers and investment bankers that do this kind of thing. I never I never broker anything. I'm not a broker. I'm a principle which means that I actually have the money and I actually buy things I've bought and sold companies. But but I don't represent other people as a broker so. But you know listen most accountants know a lot about this not bookkeeper so much but accountants CPAs investment bankers and business brokers. Those are the people you go to for help.

[00:31:04] Perfect. All right we've got to take a brief break for our sponsor. But when we come back we're going to ask Joel what a typical day looks like for him and and how he stays motivated. So folks look I'm down on my knees begging you to check out a particular webinar or pass it on to someone who could use it. I'm so far down on my knees the dogs think I'm trying to play with them all right. Probably hear them barking in the background. But it has to do with higher education. If you're considering getting retrained because you hate what you're doing or you want a better life for yourself and your family or if you have kids nephews nieces or neighbors who are wondering if they should burn up hundreds of thousands of dollars and then end up broke with mountains of debt no marketable skills. You just gotta watch this webinar. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from taking a little time out and visiting screwthecommute.com and click on webinars and watch the one on higher education. I'm telling you it might make you mad when you see some of the things these colleges and universities are doing to these kids. So. So check that out at Screwthecommute.com/webinars. Now let's get back to our great guest Joel Block as the money business insider and professional investor and keynote speaker. And we want to know Joe what's a typical day look like for an investor. You just sit back with cigars with your feet up looking at the ocean.

[00:32:40] Well you know I I do spend a good amount of time every week doing what you just said no because I do have a man cave and I do invite a lot of guys over and I do go to the club and you know. But that's because that's how I think is that's how I relax and I think I spend a lot of my time thinking. And that's that may sound like a funny thing to be like What do you think about I mean I'm thinking about new ideas new ways to do things better ways to do things new people I could talk to new approaches that I could think of and like yesterday I was in a situation I couldn't think of the answer but today I overnight I sleep on it. I wake up with the answer. And so you know I spent a lot of time doing that. What I don't spend a lot of time do I don't spend a lot of time working per se like writing papers. You know I've tried to organize my day. I do spend time on the phone and when I'm on the phone you can only do one thing at a time. So I do spend a good amount of time on the phone but in between phone calls. I like all the other dictate some ideas or I'll write some ideas. And I really try to spend at least half my time during my day at least half of it is thinking time and creative time.

[00:33:54] And what makes that possible is that my my hourly income is high enough that that it pays for the other hours that I'm not creating or the residual money like you would say Tom is you know there's enough other money that allows that to happen. And so when you're first getting started you know the way you make that happen is you know you have a certain rate that you make like if you divide your whole year by the number of the number of dollars you made for the whole year divide by let's say two thousand hours which is about the number of hours in a year that your hourly rate. That's your. That's kind of what I call the yield on your time. OK. And the goal is to keep getting that number to go higher and higher and higher. And you know years ago I remember hearing Jay Abraham say he made five thousand dollars an hour and I was kind of how's that possible. Well you know no company gives him five thousand hours an hour. That's not really what happens. What happens is you get to a point where you say listen I'm really really good at solving certain kinds of problems. So you know give me I'm not even going to take an hourly rate anymore just give me a percentage of the savings or a percentage of the gain I help you create. And and because it doesn't take a lot of time for to do that when you divide that the amount of dollars he gets by the amount of energy put in the yield on that is five thousand dollars an hour and it can be higher than five thousand dollars an hour believe me. So that's how I that's how I do it too is a very similar kind of way to that. And so you know you don't get that number of dollars every minute of your day but when you get that kind of money it allows you to have the flexibility to be creative and think of more ideas.

[00:35:34] And so you know as you're thinking about going in business you think about leaving one opportunity into another opportunity you're going to ease out like I talked about earlier. You really have to think how can you increase your yield. That's the overall number of dollars that you make per hour and it's not from working more hours. It's from being smarter. And That's really the trick and you know keep listening to Tom Antion and some other guys and learn how to be smarter because that's the name of the game.

[00:36:03] Well yeah. And the advice is spot on because I got a guy think he's the billionaire. Does is very low key behind the scenes guy buys and sells companies and he was at his house one time having dinner and he said Tom you should just be sitting at the pool thinking you know I'm pretty blue collar and have got my hands in everything and learn that this and he said you've got to back off of that you've got to. To think more just think. And so I am doing my best to wean away from that.

[00:36:38] Well I'll tell you what I got an idea for you then. You need to get away from the ranch or whatever the place you call your place. I need to come out to my place to sit around and needed to think together we have some cigars we'll sit at the club we'll just think think think and spend a whole day. I mean I have guys come out all the time. I've got a guy coming for the Midwest later this week and we're just gonna sit and spend a couple hours the first half today. We'll brainstorm and then I'll invite a group of other guys to come out. I got I got many guys would put a lot of guys who were masterminding we're kind of different guys from different perspectives. And believe me you don't. You can't leave a session like that without lots and lots of ideas and we should do that with you. You got to come out one of these days.

[00:37:21] So how do you stay motivated.

[00:37:25] You know first of all you know what choice do you have. I mean I'm just a positive person. I just I don't I don't worry. It's not to say I don't have concerns but worry is not a positive action like nothing good ever came out of worry. So I don't surround and worry I don't sit around and complain because those are not positive actions that are moving me in the direction that I want to go. How do I stay motivated. I just I just I love what I do. That that keeps me motivated. I just really enjoy what I do. I dedicate you know probably two thirds of my time to my business and maybe you know 25 percent or a third of my time is to you know not for profit activities. I mean service. You know we just lost you know President George Bush was a big big service provider. I mean he just he donated his time to different causes and he believed in service. And I think I saw something this morning that said that you can't be a successful person if you don't do service. And I believe that I really I wouldn't say it as eloquently as him but I really do believe that It's fulfilling personally it makes you feel better about yourself that makes you more interesting person. It makes you a person that people respect. And I think it just it makes you somebody that other people want to work with. I was the chairman of the board of the Los Angeles Boys and Girls Club for several years and the L.A. Boys and Girls Club. It's a big club here in Los Angeles. And you know it's it just it was good for me. It was good for me to do that and it makes people feel good about me in general just knowing that I did that.

[00:39:08] It was good for all the boys and girls that needed it.

[00:39:12] You know what. One hundred percent it was and it just all the way around it was good for everyone in fact I just had breakfast the other day with the executive director who was you know she ran the day to day affairs of the club and as the chairman my job was to raise money and you know and we had some pretty high level powwows a lot of political people and attorneys and accounts on our board and you know and so our job was to bring money into the clubs so she could run a good program and we were sort of like partners. You know I ran the outside she ran the inside and that's the way it worked. And it was it was a great great concept.

[00:39:47] Wow this has been quite eye opening and quite a different episode for all the listeners that there's been a really really great. You have any parting thoughts for we call them our screwballs. People listen to this episode that want to take their business to the next level or get started.

[00:40:07] The entrepreneur business is a great business and they're all part of part of what I do. There's a lot of tools that I use and you know what Tom. I'll send you my resource guide if you want to publish the resource guide I think people would really enjoy it. I don't really take commissions on things there may be a couple places where there's like an affiliate thing but I don't really like to do that sort of thing. I'd just like to kind of purely recommend things and these are my favorite tools. You know I recorded this electronic voice recording assistant that transcribes all my meetings and all my activities creates highlights word clouds and stuff. I mean I have this thing that auto populates phrases and things that I like that just saved me a lot of time. I mean so I mean I think that entrepreneurs we have to operate at 20 times productivity compared to our corporate counterparts. You know in fact one of the things that that I say when I speak to audiences is that you know the entrepreneur business does not have room for schaum schlagers.

[00:41:11] And I'll talk about schaum schlagers for a few minutes and then somebody will eventually raise their hand and say well what is a schaum schlager well you know the word schaum in German means foam and schlager means to beat.

[00:41:23] And so what it means is it's the story a client of mine told me the story it was the funniest thing he says a little old guy is in the bathtub and he starts flailing his arms is flapping his arms as fast as he can and the bubbles start going up. Next thing you know you know there's 12 inches 14 16 20 inches of bubbles all around in fact you could barely see his head there's so much bubbles in the bathtub. He's all proud of himself. He gets out of the bathtub he dries himself off five minutes later he turns around looks at the bathtub and what's left in the bathtub nothing there's nothing left in the bathtub and that's a schaum schlager.

[00:41:57] It's somebody that work work works all day long. At the end of the day what they accomplish nothing and the entrepreneur business does not have room for schaum schlagers. I mean we have to really produce because our family is counting on us. And then I've said to some of these corporate you know companies where I speak and I'll say you guys have any schaum schlagers here and one time this guy raise his hand and said we're the training and breeding ground for schaum schlagers everywhere. So you know that's the thing is that you have to learn to be productive and so a lot of these tools and resources I'm sure you have plenty of them. I have plenty of them. You know we need to operate at incredible productivity because we have so much to do in order to you know make it happen for our families. And so I'm happy to share this all. I'll send it to you by e-mail and you can just put it in the show notes.

[00:42:50] And I totally agree with the productivity thing. I wrote a book on how to automate your business and it's just one of the little tools that save me like we figured out nine million keystrokes over the year. These are the things you got to put into play and they're inventing new stuff every day that this is the greatest time in the world to be in a small business.

[00:43:10] It's it's unbelievable. We're so lucky to be alive at this time. What a great time. So you know these tools are awesome in fact there's one company called Text Expander. They they're a great company they. Any repetitive phrases and other things that you need to do. They handle it for you. And I got a report from them at the end of every month. You used our service five hundred times this month which saved you six and a half hours. And it's like I mean it's here and it's real it really is real because otherwise I would've been copying pasting. Going back this to a word document to pull out a phrase or a paragraph and drop it in and now it's just done and it happened so fast and it really frees me up so that I can sit in the back yard or go to the club and I can think and do the things that are really productive and that's my my highest level activity is thinking you know I'm not writing letters I'm just I'm thinking about ideas and I'm relaxing and everything's Oh Joel just be relaxing vacation so much and no you know what. That's true I do. I do have a really good life and that's great but I'm thinking I'm busy thinking about how I can solve problems that people have.

[00:44:24] And that's what we all do to make to make our businesses thrive. So Joel thanks so much man for coming on and this has been a unique episode. Folks go back and listen to this over and over and over again and we'll have you on again one of these days for sure. And for those of you new here please subscribe give us a review over at iTunes that'd be great if you don't know how to do it. We have instructions for you over at screwthecommute.com. We'll have Joel's fantastic resource list in the show notes. This is episode 65. So it would be screwthecommute.com/65. We'll take you directly to all his stuff if you need a keynote speaker or if you're in a company that does make sure you contact JoelBlock.com. Probably the best place to start and everything is there. So thanks again and I'll catch y'all on the next episode.
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