Owning all responsibility for your outcomes is the most important trait of a Great Leader.  When you choose this lonely life, you raise your hand and say, “Okay, I’m the leader. I’m the one to follow.  We rise together now, or I’ll take the fall.”

Once you decide you’re the leader and you raise your hand, now everything’s your fault.  Everybody and everything that happens below you is yours–the good, the bad–it’s yours alone.

Maybe, that was your destiny.  Or maybe, you learned that’s what it would take to get everything you always wanted…

So here I am, with Jayme Foxx and BigMike, the owner and founder of Advanced Nutrients.  In case it isn’t already obvious, BigMike smokes weed.

There may even be a budtender on hand.  Let’s call him “Screwy Louie.”

We’re having one of our usual chats.  And in case you couldn’t guess, our “usual chats” are pretty heavy.

I’m Chris Collins, founder of Syndicate X–a place where business leaders meet, and share secrets–both their pains and their successes.

Today, we’re sitting around, just talking about leadership.  And we’re digging in about the qualities of Great Leaders.

BigMike thinks Great Leaders smoke weed.  BigMike is also single. And if you would like to date him…

All right, I digress.  I wanna know what BigMike really thinks about leadership.

So I give him a quick quiz.  I wanna know if he knows: how much of leadership is born within you, and how much of leadership is learned?  I want him to guess a percentage.

BigMike guesses–almost correctly–that leadership skills are mostly acquired.  He guesses, by about 80%.

I tell him, according to Psychology Today: ⅓ of leadership is born, but ⅔ of leadership is made.

BigMike is very optimistic.  And single!

I digress…Still, it’s true that Great Leaders can be created, developed.  It starts with a little seed called seeing the world differently…the rest is shaped–and can be shaped continually–by what you’re willing to learn.

So here’s the lesson plan:

1. Leaders are Born Solo Seeds (with Unusual Growers)

BigMike shares that as a kid, from the getgo, he knew he was a little different.  Other kids didn’t understand and see the world the same way that he did. And he naturally understood human nature pretty well, for whatever reason.

Later, he came to find out that he must be wired a little differently, but he also figured out that his father had taught and encouraged him to see things in this unusual way.

Every solo seed needs a little–special–water.

For me, I never thought that I was smarter…actually, I knew I wasn’t smarter than anybody else. But I did always think that people’s priorities were mixed up, and that they weren’t paying attention to what was important.  And I’m sure being raised mostly by mom, and going through what we went through in my early years, encouraged along that different way of seeing things.

However strange we were to start, BigMike and I both–we were always listening and learning.

When Jayme was younger, she thought people were just not as creative as she was. She was always making up things or fixing things, and other kids were just like, “Oh, really?”

If you have a real strong, unique ability, you feel alone when you’re younger.  But you develop this internal dialogue. And if you’ve got a kind parent or teacher–hell, anyone–they’ll edge you into that conversation, and down your internal, individual path.

BigMike remembers having a stuffed bear he liked so damn much that it got old and ratty.  His mother worked with him on it–she bought a new one, cut it open, stuck the old one inside the new one (like a heart? Or an alien baby?), and sewed it shut. Then, he couldn’t let go of the new one–but at least it was sanitary, for a minute or two.

So what am I really saying? That leaders have to have fucked up childhoods?

No bro.  It just is what it is.  And if you’re gonna blossom into a leader, it’s probably all right.

2.   From Odd Duck to Captain–Decision Time

I got this job when I was 17 and a half, as a lot attendant in a car dealership, just to pay band rent and buy symbols and drum sticks–’cause you go through a lot of drum sticks when you hit as hard as I did on the drums.  And I came from a background where showing up on time and working hard and giving people more than they paid you for was essential. So even though I was in a band, and I had long hair, and if you saw me from across the street, you might think I didn’t have a work ethic–I worked very hard, as that lot attendant.

So, in spite of my weirdness, it didn’t take long before I was in charge of all the other lot attendants.  And then, I was anointed manager of the detailers, too. And then, they started coming to me and asking me if they could leave early.  I didn’t know how to be a mean boss yet, so all of a sudden, somehow, in my great calculation of how this was gonna work out, I was the only one there, with all these cars to pull up for the customers…

So I learned quickly I’d need to be more demanding.  Everybody in the wash rack was my friend before all this–and now, all of a sudden, I was a friend, but I was also a boss.  And I remember, very distinctly, a couple weeks in, deciding that I was gonna be the boss and do the right thing by the company, not by my friends, because it was affecting me the most.  If there wasn’t order and I didn’t have rules and I didn’t make people show up on time and stay all day and do what they were supposed to do, it made my life miserable, and it wasn’t scalable or effective.

Now, all of sudden, there was this juggle to do–I was their peer one day, and their boss the next.

That’s my first memory of understanding what leadership really was, ’cause I had to go against all of my friends and make a decision to be in charge.

So what was BigMike’s first memory of understanding leadership?

Weird bear love evolved into Cub Scouts–doing projects and having teams.

But when he was 19, he started a business called Turf Pro. He fertilized grass, like ChemLawn did, and made the grass green, killed the weeds, and killed all the fungus at the same time.  He had some friends from high school who wanted sales jobs, so BigMike gave some jobs to them.

And just like me, he quickly realized that he was now in charge–the relationships had to change.

So even though we were natural leaders, leadership was ultimately a decision.  And it was a HUGE decision, because we were betraying our friends in order to reinvent ourselves.

So you can’t really blame the people below you, or the people that are reporting to you.  Once you choose to be a leader, the ultimate outcome is your responsibility.  You have to take ownership, once and for all.

One of the things that you must do to be a Great Leader is completely own that role.  Whatever you’re leading, it’s your baby, your house.

Choosing to lead is serious business.  Like our chats, there’ nothing light about it.

3.  Dead Serious

I highly recommend Jocko’s book Extreme Ownership.  The biggest takeaway is that, in business, people die if you don’t take it seriously.  And, as a leader, owning the end result is all up to you.  So that result better be life for your business, and your people.

That’s the Navy Seal way.  But it applies to anything you might do.

Guys who are ex-athletes or in the military are often the best leaders.  They understand leadership at such a high level, because for them, life and death were truly at stake.

I was married for 13 years.  And in the end–I didn’t die, but it was almost as bad.

Satan, my ex-wife, cheated on me, and filed for divorce without me knowing–here I was, doing funny stuff with money on my end, and all kinds of crazy stuff was happening to me.

And the moral of the story isn’t, “Oh, what a bitch.”  It’s actually that the narrative I allowed would never get any better if I didn’t change it.  I would carry the same B.S. to my next relationship. And so, after I went through some pain, I said, “You know what? This is 100% my fault.” And then, things started coming to me that I had done wrong.  And in the end, I can make a pretty good case for you right now that that divorce was 100% my fault, and it wasn’t hers–as much as I like to call her “Satan.” ‘Cause I did things that contributed to her behavior–I allowed it to happen.

It’s very easy to take the path of “It’s everybody else, and I’m the victim,” but you will never be a Great Leader, and you will never become better, personally, if you don’t own the result of whatever you’re doing.  There’s very few people out there today who will own their results completely, but the key to being a GREAT entrepreneur is that everything is 100% your fault.

“Responsibility,” BigMike corrects.  I like his optimism.

He’s single, ladies.

4.   Forge the Feelings They Should Talk About

So great leaders focus intently on the outcome and the result, not the feelings and the politics of being “Right.” Politics and feelings are gonna lead you to complacency, to being average.  If you want to really achieve something, it’s the result you need to look at–not how you feel about having been wrong.

A couple years ago, I had the challenge of fixing a company that was losing about $80,000 per month. And I went in there, and I was doing my research–for over a month.  How many people do you think were talking about profit and performance in that period of time?

Well–they were all bitching at each other about who’s doing what, and complaining, and not wanting to take responsibility, because it hurt.  Their egos were in the way, and they couldn’t get to the fucking goal. Nobody was even talking about it.

They were all surprised that they were losing money.  They were all sad about it. And it’s wasn’t like the people there were stupid, or untalented.  It was that the leader there hadn’t enlisted them to move past their feelings and on to the mission at hand.

What’s everyone on your team focused on?  That’s what you have to look at, because you want people to focus on whatever is actually important.  And that comes directly from you! If you’re waking up every day, and you’re telling yourself nothing, then your whole business is probably gonna be average, or nothing.  If you’re telling yourself, “I can accomplish great things,” and you’re visualizing great things, you’ll create a culture where people are talking how they can improve the customer experience, how they can improve the bottom line–that’s the dialogue you really want.  A great leader creates an environment where you’re talking about performance, and talking about the customer experience–and not playing blame games or being bewildered or downtrodden about past results.

Let them focus on what is important, and shift that focus.  Leadership is also understanding your own brain, what motivates you.  You’re the guy, or girl, who has to get all that head-trash out of the way, clear it out, and be able to move the team forward.  You have to be sold first on anything before you can have your team sold on it. So you have to go through a process of being able to sell yourself, and understand that you have a great product or service that will help society.

It’s hard to lead yourself, lead people, and lead a business.  But to be a great leader, you need to lead all three into a winning mindset, which will become a winning strategy.

5.  Little Stuff Matters

As a leader, you’ve got to exaggerate the little details to create a winning experience.

As BigMike points out, the large strokes are expected.  But it’s the littlest things that make people go, “Wow, they thought of that!”

That’s where you’ve got them good.  Then, they go back, and they tell their friends, and they talk about you.  And that’s what you want them to do.

You want to give people such a great experience, they cannot help but share what you’ve done.

Disney World’s number one marketing strategy is word-of-mouth.  Betty from Nebraska goes there with her family and has a fantastic experience: “Wow, the streets were so clean, and everything was perfect, and the food tasted so good!” because of every little detail the park people thought of.

They keep track if someone moves a stand on a shop counter–2-3 hours after the fact, they’ll know by the change in sales traffic that the thing was moved.  And the leaders go back in, they look at the counter, and they put it back in the exact spot where business was prime. Everything is tested for maximum profitability, and the Disney Experience is run in a foolproof, replicable way.

They even have a school called the Disney Institute.  Anyone can go to it and learn the magic of paying attention to every detail.  Very few people and companies on this planet operate at that level.  But that’s what the Greatest Leaders want to achieve.

You have to embrace the challenge of that level of complexity if you want to be just that good.

As a Great Leader, you have to create a company culture that’s about outcomes.  Then, you’re a people collector, because you’re gathering the workforce who is up for that challenge.  And who’s willing to learn just as much as you are–and never to stop.

And if you’re not learning something new every day, you’re probably not paying close enough attention.

When Giuliani fixed New York, neighborhoods were able to bounce back, because they started fixing all the broken windows.

And they even started writing jaywalking tickets.  You might think, “Man, that’s anal. It’s not like those people were murdering anyone…”

But guess what?  Murders went down in Manhattan when they started writing jaywalking tickets.  I guess, in a city where they messed with jaywalkers, less people were willing to challenge the cops to a murder.

People start feeling better about the environment they’re in, and treating it with more respect.

They can see when the details are being tended to.  It shows you’re attentive to the big stuff, too.

So the littlest things do matter to a Great Leader…

You’re born a Solo Seed, and you’re watered by those willing to let you fly your freak flag.  But at some point, you’ve got to CHOOSE to be a leader. And guess what? Once you do, you don’t get to stop feeling weird and lonely.  Quite the opposite.

Then, you’ve got to get really serious.  And you have to change your own mind and feelings before you’ll change anyone else’s.  For that, it’s all in the details. Every little thing you do will have an impact on the experience of your employees and your customers, and ultimately, on your legacy.

Welcome back to Business Outlaws. A circle of winners. We’re business at large.

We’ve got BigMike and our host, Jayme Foxx. And we have a new guest behind our doors—Jason Fladlian, Marketing Maven and Sales Machine. He’s very European—at least, Jayme thinks so while butchering his last name—and over the last ten years, he’s made hundreds of millions of dollars.

And then there’s me, Business Performance Expert, cigar enthusiast, and tequila aficionado—Chris Collins. Here we are. And here’s the inside scoop.

Reincarnation

Jason has died a thousand times. And I love the idea of rebirth in your business. Jason’s been a hip-hop artist, a monk, a marketer, and a millionaire. Today he makes and pitches webinar products, and better—he makes a lot of money.

Jason will be the first to tell you that money hasn’t bought him happiness. But even more oddly, he’ll also tell you that being a monk was one of his biggest secret business weapons.

Jason used to have panic attacks. He couldn’t go outside. He was absolutely miserable and depressed as a result. At 17 years old, he felt like a failure. He knew he should be killing it, but he couldn’t even stay focused on writing his rap songs.

But as a monk, Jason chanted two hours a day at least—some days, four, maybe six. I myself do TM, where you have a mantra and you’re chanting words without any personal meaning…

And when he did, Jason got this energy to perform, and thought, “Now, I have the focus to do something big.” When he wasn’t doing music he was meditating, and when he wasn’t meditating, he was doing music. And he learned all he could to get his music off the ground.

While marketing music wasn’t so easy, he thought, “Why market music when I can market anything?” And so, he transformed from a monk to a marketer. The first dollar he ever made online was in 2007, and a decade later, he’s a hundred million plus.

He just started chanting, and began to feel good. Didn’t have to believe in it, just repeated it. That’s how you come to believe in things—hearing them enough times. People want to believe it before they do it. But Jason learned to do it, and create belief. Break a pattern, you can shift identities.

As a marketer, Jason’s biggest launch was an information product he hyped to the moon. It’s usually about $2,000 to make—then you sell it, you onboard affiliates, and then, blast off. This time, the product was called the Amazing Selling Machine. It taught people how to do their Amazon sales.

And ASM launched their program eight times, which brought 25 million dollars in from cart open to cart close—in only a seven-day period of time. And that 25 million had never been done before. Prior to that, it was 10 or 12 million max earned in that info. space.

Jason’s company was their number one affiliate, and did over 10 of that 25 million themselves. How did he accomplish that? A lot of engineering, and some brazen negotiation. By the time ASM got to their sixth launch, Jason said, “Listen, take us off the leader board. Just give us the hundred thousand and then let us recruit new guys and get them to first place instead.” And ASM said, “Okay, here you go—here’s a hundred grand.”

Booty

Amazon is the biggest eCommerce platform in the world. Something like 22 percent of every dollar spent online flows through it. So Jason’s other big launches were at the same time and place in internet history. In 2013, his company sold over 40 million dollars worth of Amazon product launches and trainings. And that was only on the frontend.

Most of the guys he affiliated with made less on their launches than the guys they paid to help them. What these guys didn’t do, and what nobody seemed to, is build in a backend—coaching programs, technology. 40 million was chump change when you look at what Jason did on the backend after the initial frontend bang.

The thing about business backend, unlike human backend is—it’s all invisible. It’s not mass marketed, it’s not in anyone’s faces. It takes advantage of what comes through the frontend, but it’s very hush-hush.

All the money’s made in the backend, and people don’t realize it. Jason put together a continuity program—300 bucks a month for all the frontend customers—and then, added mega, ultra-exclusive software…for $12,000 per year. Between those two extra, invisible products, they did 6.7 million dollars. Every so often, Jason had to sell again, but the lead flow and pitch were pretty simple: someone else takes half of six million dollars, let’s say, and everyone walks away happy.

And after the launch is done? By strategically sizing up backend opportunities, you can leave competitors in the dust.

“There’s a difference between being number one and being so far ahead of number two that they think they’re number one,” Jason said. “That’s the philosophy in our company.”

Here’s a thing, too: You gotta know your numbers. They’re important because when you know your numbers, and you also know the lifetime value of your client, wow, you can now go negative to acquire while your competition goes broke trying to keep up. You’ll burn them right out of business.

This especially works if your secret sauce is on the backend. Because your competitors don’t even know it exists, and they’re trying to chase your frontend…and they’re wondering, “How the hell are they doing this?”

Simple Stories and Steps

Direct response copywriting is salesmanship in print. You can tell a story a certain way that’s more compelling and easier to understand and break down the concepts so people understand them, and then nurture them along to an immediate sale. Great copy moves people through your sales process. So you have to have great copy—which communicates simply and clearly who you are and what problem you solve. A lot of people get this part wrong.

Whether you’re selling or delivering, there’s going to be a series of events that should always make it easy for them. Make it digestible. At my company, we want to make sure that if they buy it, they’ll get it…We’re careful not to overload them.

There’s a balance. Your customers can’t do it all. You have to take them through steps. You want them to get a little success in the beginning, and to be primed right through the end.

Look at something like Coca-Cola, versus the supreme, nutritious drink, V8. Well sure, Coca-Cola tastes better. But it’s really a totally inferior product. A lot of mediocre products rise to the top. A lot of really terrible products with no real value hit the shelves and they take up all the space, and then the really good products never get seen. The fallacy is a lot of people assume that just because your product is superior, things will therefore be easier for you. But it’s actually the opposite. Superior products are way more sophisticated. They require explanation, like V8. “Let me explain why my soft drink is healthier for you, and if you’re not brainwashed, actually tastes better.” All Coke has to say is, “Here. You know us.” It’s a simple sales pitch that’s ingrained in the culture, and tradition will always be easier than breaking ground.

A superior product requires more understanding; a superior solution requires education. Superior things cost more to develop. The science allows people to be happy they bought, but you still need to know how to engage people simply.

Scaredy Cat, Copycat

Sure, you might give V8 a chance…but without knowledge distilled, you’re afraid to spend the extra buck and not see results. “Is it healthy? Am I going to feel better? Eh, I’ll just get Coke.”

As Jason explained, the customer is absolutely afraid to take a chance on a non-traditional solution. In their comfort zone, they can pay less and keep striding, so ultimately, they do get some benefit. But let’s say they tried the superior solution. When Jason’s company enters a market, they dominate whatever it is by being better. They get to be not just number one by a net, but to be so far ahead that it’s really scary.

But if you look around at the marketing playing field, it’s one big joke. You know why?

Everybody’s copying everybody else. They say the same thing that the last 15 guys before them said. And if you wanna leave your competition in the dust…you’re gonna have to do something really different.

Everybody’s so scared to take a chance that hundred millionaires, up to billionaires, even have this issue.

Jason was working with a super high-profile guy who raised over six billion dollars. He was worldwide famous, at the top of the top…But these guys—sometimes they want the magic shortcuts. They hire you ‘cause they wanna lose weight, and then say, “No, I’m not gonna work out. No—I’m gonna keep eating éclairs!”

So Jason would give the guy a position to take in the market, and he would be too scared to attempt it. He’d say, “Well, so-and-so doesn’t do it that way.” And Jason would say, “How come you didn’t cut them a big gigantic check, then, and just keep doing what they do?” In Jason’s mind—they’re both millionaires—if they screw this thing up, who really cares? They’re still sleeping on a nice four-thousand thread count. (Not that many threads, really—just his example.) Even though this guy was super successful—way more successful than even Jason—he was scared.

If you wanna live in the past, you can continue to do things the way they’ve always been done. But Jason called out his client for his fear. He said, “Here’s the deal, you’ve done 25K for 10 years now, and the first three years were extremely hard, and you took some bruises, you screwed some stuff up—people got mad at you for asking ’em for money. But it’s seven years later and everybody loves you and you’re great and you’re comfortable and you know psychologically that when you launch this new program, all that same stuff you went through when you started—you might have to do it all over again.”

Jason said, “But here’s what pisses me off. Guys like me, we’re upset that we can’t give you a hundred thousand dollars right now, because you’re robbing me of the opportunity to make a lot more money, simply because you’re not man enough to take my money today.”

A big successful guy, nobody pushes. Everybody loves them, they’re surrounded by “yes” men. They start to believe their own PR, so they get risk averse, terrified of mistakes. They buy into the bull that they have more to lose. Their branding, which they’ve spent ten years building, might be unwound in ten minutes if they fail. Their success almost becomes their failure.

But Jason repositions their stuck wheels. “I’m absolutely pissed that you won’t take my money to make a change I believe in.” And when you shift the narrative like that on a successful guy, he tends to do what you’ve told him to do. This guy did what Jason pushed him into…and they both profited.

When your current identity is, “I am this traditional thing,” it is the main thing that will hold you back.

The lamest way ever to create a new identity, said Jason, is to keep on copying each other. Then, when you fail, it’s someone else’s fault. And when you succeed, you go only as far as the previous bar.

Controlling the Narrative

Since clarity is king, one of the best narrative structures Jason ever created was…to tell ’em what his sales narrative is.

For years, he’s gone into his sales situations for a webinar or video training launch, and he’s said, “Hey listen, I have two goals here today. My first goal is to give you information so you can now do X when previously you couldn’t do X. My second goal is to then show you an opportunity that you can invest in to get to do X even better, or faster, quicker, stronger…” He literally says, “I have an objective to sell you this product at the end of this training today, but before I do that I’m first going to attempt to convince you that you should buy it. Now, if I accomplish this, is it okay if I then show you my offer at the end?” And they always say, “That’s fine with me, Jason.”

Now, there’s an implicit contract. If he can make good on his promise—and it’s a big, bold promise—they’ve already said, “Yeah, Jason, prove it to me…and if you do, I’ll absolutely be eager to see what you have to sell me.” Can’t get much more straightforward than that!

That’s a controlled narrative. It’s literally a path from A-Z that compels and obligates them to buy. You make yourself an absolute authority of “This is what’s gonna happen and you’re gonna go along with it.” Since the sale is assumed at the outset, there’s also no big pitch at the end—Jason’s just like “Well, okay, I did what I said, now it’s time to buy.”

Nobody likes to be hard sold, until they say, “Sure, okay hard sell me.” Then, you’re like, “All right,” and now, you’re not hard selling anymore. You gotta have guts to do this—and Jason clearly does.

And if you really wanna control the narrative and get absolutely incredibly good at it, position competitors in addition to selling to the customer. When you bring up a competitor in your sell, not only are you showing them the superiority of your solution, you’re also minimizing any other possible alternative.

One of the narratives that Jason uses with his clients is to tell them it’s their fault they’re not doing better. And they’re like, “What do you mean, Jason?” And he says, “Let me explain this to you: Because it’s all in your control, and you can now leverage that.”

Jason gains rapport because he says something to them that they haven’t heard from anyone else. He controls the narrative by calibrating what other speakers are saying to them, and he builds that into how he talks, so there’s always competitor positioning in his communication.

So there’s you, there’s your customer, and there’s everything else circling around their heads that you have to swat away, or redefine. This helps them into their rebirth as your loyal customer…putty in your hands.

Cream of the Crop

BigMike was once 19 years old and broke, in a cockroach-infested studio apartment with his entire life in five garbage bags. No furniture, no prospects—ladies or business or otherwise.

I was once a broke kid growing up in Mexico who was teased for my pale skin and golden hair. My stepdad abandoned us in the middle of the night with a 21-year-old mistress when I was 13, cleaning out Mom’s bank account, and leaving us nothing but our ragged clothing, homeless then in Washington State.

And now—we’re nothing like that. BigMike is a problem solver with countless clients, and I turn dealerships all the way around. Our lives are good, and as Jason points out—we don’t have to pretend we’re still broke and struggling.

What you do can set trends. You can be inspirational. One of Jason and my favorite books is Winning Through Intimidation by Robert Ringer. In it, Ringer talks about posturing and positioning, which also leads to controlling the narrative. It’s all right to put yourself in a top position.

Most people’s narrative out there is, “Hey, I’m the same as you.” But in a recent training of millionaires, Jason looked around the room. “Look at you,” he said. “You can’t relate to the common person. I can’t relate to the common person. I have a bad day if one of our three maids calls in sick—Oh, my God, what a travesty!” So Jason could attempt to spin off some narrative that he’s just like you even though he’s not—or, he could spin a truer, more powerful narrative:

“Because I’ve come so very far, I can give you insights you can’t get anywhere else.”

Now, customers are inspired to rise to the occasion. While everyone else tries to lower to that customer, pandering to their pain and all that crap, you can build them up. A better narrative is: “You’re far smarter at this, and far better off, than everybody says you’re doomed to be. And I’m going to prove it to you by the way that I talk to you.” If you talk to a kid like she’s stupid, Jason pointed out, she’s going to end up stupid. When you talk to people like they’re capable, they’re going to rise to the top.

The human being is the greatest invention in existence. Think about it. You have a body that is self-regulated, that beats its heart, blinks its eyes.

It’s self-healing.

You get a cut here, next week you don’t have it anymore. The body is amazing…but then, the mind? The things that people can think of and create and do are astoundingly incredible.

All this comes from us. And if you believe that, it influences your behavior, and that behavior influences others. So once you actually take that position, Jason said, all you actually have to do is tell your customers.

It’s never crowded on the road to the top. Have you ever heard that saying? These guys are creating the traffic jams racing to the bottom, making it harder just by the fact that there’s more players, period.

Jason’s biggest product launch he ever did with Amazon was the traditional model by his friend Jeff Walker—it was supposed to cap at $2,000. But the product they made the most money on, on the frontend, was actually $5,000. They broke all the rules, because they didn’t accept the norms.

Once you quit listening to all of these people who say it won’t work, they quit telling you it won’t work anymore. A defining moment in Jason’s life was back when his music business was failing. He was living with his dad in a two-room apartment in Muscatine, Iowa. His dad says to him, “You shouldn’t do this business stuff, Jason. It’ll probably fail.” And here was Jason’s answer to him: “Dad, you’re probably right. It probably will fail, but I’m going to find out anyway.”

Anybody reading, take a query from Jason: What is conventional wisdom in your industry, the “this is just how things are done,” and how can you break that wide open? Even if it doesn’t work, the fact that you have done something different is going to unlock way more creative energy to get to the next potential breakthrough. Then, it’ll be game over.

Recap
1. Meditate, Repeat. Just get the words or mantras in your head. They don’t have to mean anything to you yet. Rebirth is a regularity for the successful.
2. Don’t neglect the backend. Most of your booty is acquired there.
3. Simplify your message. If your product is superior, educating others will require finesse.
4. Don’t do what everyone else does. Break new ground, and you’ll leave them in the dust.
5. You’re in charge of sending them through the funnel. So do it with authority, not apology.
6. You’re allowed to rise to the top. Create inspiration, and others will follow.

Damn, it feels good to be a Business Outlaw.

Welcome to Business Outlaws. So it’s me, and it’s Big Mike of Advanced Nutrients…and our host, the infamous Jayme Fox. Each week, we invite the audience to listen in on our business strategy conversations with the bigwigs—with self-made leaders who are breaking the norms of average performance in business and in life.

You get to be the fly on the wall, behind closed doors.

We recently sat down with world-class boxing trainer Matt Baiamonte (his last name’s Italian, apparently). His mentor was Angelo Dundee, who trained Muhammad Ali. Angelo always told Matt that you have to treat everybody differently. Every fighter’s different, because every person’s different. So you really have to get inside their heads and see what makes them tick.

Matt and I met because, for at least six months, my pal Big Mike was like, “You gotta go, you gotta go meet this guy.”

Boxing is the best high-interval intensity training in the world. 13 rounds, one minute of rest, and three minutes of go time. And let me tell you, when you’re throwing punches and dancing around the floor, it burns calories. Besides swimming, it has to be the toughest sport to condition for. And, as Matt will tell you, boxing has been the number one sport for the last 50 years. Nothing will beat it.

I’d been boxing. Training. And listen: It was already one of the best things I’d ever taken up. Just doing the pads and the heavy bag…

But Mike kept telling me, “Chris, you gotta go meet this Matt guy—Trainer to the Stars.”

And Mike was right. I texted, and “Matt, Trainer to the Stars” came down to see me one day at last. When we were done, I was completely drained—just a pool of sweat. Because you have to use your mind and your body. Your concentration level is crazy—you’re slipping punches, blocking punches, trying to figure out where you have to hit…Until working with Matt, I had no idea the sheer level of concentration it takes to box well. It’s really…intense.

Matt has trained so many successful people. And that’s why he knows a lot about performance and leadership. He had amazing stories and insights to share with us on the show. There was so much he had seen and trained—both the good and the bad.

He wouldn’t comment on whether Mike and I were good, or bad, but that was polite of him.

Instead, we focused on dedication and determination.

We coined him “Big Daddy Matt” to match up with Big Mike, and we dug into what makes a fighter truly dedicated and determined. Turns out, Big Daddy told us, there are basically three commonalities he sees:
1) Leadership Mindset
2) Questioning Everything
3) WWW – A Willingness to Work on Weaknesses.

Matt has trained LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Brandon Albert…

Antonio Brown, Mike Wallace. Even Dan Auerbacher, from the Black Keys…

He trained Matt Damon for Bourne Identity. He’s apparently not good and not bad—but great.
Matt and Matt have actually trained six movies together.

Big Daddy’s also trained IndyCar driver Carmen Jorda and MMA fighter Erin Toughill, who was on Mike Tyson’s last fight. They were the co-main event in Washington, DC.

So, enough of the bragging—but with this guy’s resume, having worked with world champions in all walks of life, I wanted to know what makes them champions. And first, to Matt’s point about treating everybody a little bit differently in order to get inside their heads: I wanted to know if top performers are supposed to get special privileges. I mean, everybody’s got their things, their little quirks. Should people who do more or sell more get away with more?

1) LEADERSHIP MINDSET

There’s a place in Florida Matt used to go to get clients called Bommarito Performance Systems. Three to four hundred future NFL players would pass through there every year. One guy who Matt ended up training was a great running back. But he would literally go in to the club and just stir shit up—he’d show up late, be boisterous. And the owner was like, “You can’t come in here anymore.” No matter how good you are, you’ve got to have a sense of leadership.

Big Mike agreed. He recently got rid of one of his top sales guys, just because he was a shit-stirrer. There was no room for it. And those people, no matter how good they are…They’re not going to be a Jerry Rice. A Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan would try to get his teammates to perform. And even boxers in the gym—even though it’s not a team sport, there’s a way to behave. There’s a mindset and attitude that rubs off on the younger fighters. There’s how you should behave and how you shouldn’t behave.

So I asked Big Daddy Matt more about the Michael Jordans of the world—LeBron James, or even Dan from the Black Keys. What’s their work ethic like? Can you see the killer instinct in them?

There are obvious marks of dedication, Matt told us. LeBron trains seven days a week, and Dan finds a boxing gym in every city he travels to. And Dan even trains on the days of his concert—he leaves the gym, goes straight to the concert after, and performs.

Those are the types of people who are successful. Those who want to put in the seven days, who don’t mind doing a workout before a concert performance in a stadium of 40,000 people. They’re on stage giving everything they’ve got, and they still come in for an exhausting workout. So determination is obviously part tenacity—an unwillingness to give up.

And dedication comes from that determined mindset. Our best fighters lead the way with dedication, which turns into discipline. Muhammad Ali’s discipline was second to none, Matt told us. First guy in the gym, Ali—last guy out of the gym. And he lived in Overtown. So the ride from Overtown to the Fifth Street Gym was three or four miles. Ali would run to the gym, do his workout, and then run home.

Discipline is part of a leadership mindset. Mike Tyson, bless his ear-biting soul, was also a leader in the boxing world. He would learn his combinations from his coach, and then he’d pick one particular combination that he wanted to work on. And he would literally sit there for 30 minutes, maybe longer, after he was done with his overall training and work on that one combination, over and over and over.

A leadership mindset is what separates a champion from a contender. And the same goes for the president or CEO of a company, versus someone who is just an employee their whole life long.

2) QUESTIONING EVERYTHING

But there are less obvious qualities of being a champion. Things that might not scream “warrior mindset.”

Matt pointed out that most of his most dedicated and determined fighters, from all career paths, ask a lot of questions.

They don’t just sit there and take instructions. They don’t say, “Okay.” They question their coaches, they question their bosses to see how everything works. They even question Big Daddy Matt.

Even if you’re a genius, like Big Mike, you should ask a lot of questions with the intention to understand. In fact, I find that Big Mike swears by this. While most people ask questions with some kind of agenda in mind, Big Mike’s only agenda is to understand the answer before he has an opinion. This aspect of dedication is a gift—for everyone around you, and for your own progress.

Mike is constantly questioning Matt, like “What punch? Why should we do this? Why should we do that?” And according to Matt, that’s the sign of a person who is, or is going to be, a champion. Because if you don’t ask questions and you’re not afraid to get outside of your comfort zone and look foolish, you’re never going to get anywhere.

Matt was kind enough to say I’m like this, too.

It all circles back to the ego. It can help to have a little bit of one. The place where you have to have it is in knowing what you do best—what your thing is. Like when it comes to cannabis, Mike has a pretty healthy ego. All right, he has a really big one, because he’s Big Mike. He knows how good he is in that sector.

But about things other than cannabis—when it comes to learning something new—Mike puts that ego on the shelf. There’s no room for it in Learn Mode. You have to know the difference—when to apply it, and when not to apply it.

So it can also help a lot to put your fucking ego away. Ego really, really just gets in the way of your learning.

Mike said he realized this later in life. After he died on the operating table.
Yeah.

You can realize this and work on asking more questions before you’re on your deathbed.

3) WWW – A WILLINGNESS TO WORK ON WEAKNESSES

Matt talked more about how his fighters let go of their egos by using me and Mike as an example: Say Mike and I are fighting, and Matt is in Mike’s corner. Mike goes out there for the three minutes. He does his thing. But for that one minute when he comes back to the corner, he’s got to lose the ego and listen to what Big Daddy Matt has to tell him. And he’s got to have faith in him—because if he doesn’t have faith in his coach, he’s not going to be successful.

Even if it’s with your president or your employees, you’ve got to know when to let go of the reins and when to grab hold. And this has everything to do with being aware of your weaknesses.

If you have a weakness, admit to the weakness, and then, get help to fix it.

When we talk about working on weaknesses, I think about the importance of figuring out ways to hijack the skills and knowledge of other people. You need to surround yourself with people who will compensate for your shortcomings.

I asked Matt if Muhammad Ali had a weakness.

Matt replied: “His ego.”

“So how did he counteract that?” I asked.

And Matt explained that Ali didn’t really want to be taught. Muhammad thought that he knew everything. So Matt’s mentor Angelo had a little mind hack he figured out for Ali’s jab. Angelo kept telling Ali to snap the punch. “You need to roll the thumb over, and turn the hand,” he’d say. But Ali wouldn’t do it. He just wouldn’t listen to Angelo.

But Angelo knew that everyone thinks differently. And so, you have to be able to teach differently.

So one day Angelo comes into the gym, and he comes up with this brilliant idea. He tells Muhammad: “Man, your jab is so great. The way you roll that thumb over and snap that hand. Can you just show me how to do that?”

“Yeah,” Muhammad says, “I’ve been doing this since I was a kid.” And Angelo’s like, “Bullshit. Fucking told you last week to do it. You wouldn’t listen!”

So Angelo started training Ali by maximizing on his biggest weakness: his ego. When he wanted to get him to do something, Angelo would make Ali think that he was teaching it—and that was it.

In this case, we’re not applying the notion of being self-aware, but Ali’s mentor used the same access point we can use on ourselves: weakness. Weaknesses are strengths if you can harness and master them…and if, in one way or another, you can accept the help you need to improve your skill.

In Matt’s experience, female fighters have a little more patience for improving their weak spots. And because of that, they seem to learn a lot more quickly. Us males—you tell us to build something, give us the instructions, and we’ll throw the instructions in the trash.

Meanwhile, women will sit there and read every single thing, and then put it together within five minutes. And the guys will still be sitting there drinking beers like, “We’ll get it in an hour. We’ll get it, we’ll get it.” Then afterwards, there’s 20 forgotten screws left over.

But champions—of either sex—will take their time. And actually, Matt told us, that’s how Angelo first got Ali as a client. Angelo was underpaid and overworked, and when he interviewed for the job, they said to him, “How quickly can you get Muhammad to be a champion?” Angelo paused and said, “I’m not going to guarantee you guys a time. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes patience.” They hired Angelo on the spot.

So what did we learn today? Other than that Big Daddy Matt is the Trainer to the Stars?

We learned that everyone thinks differently, so you need to be able to teach differently.

We learned that dedication means doing sit-ups until it hurts, then going to perform your concert. That a Leadership Mindset makes way for that kind of discipline.

We learned that Asking Questions shows your work ethic, not your inferiority. Not to be afraid.

Ego. We learned that you need it, but sometimes, you need to put it away.

And by getting in touch with your WWW—a Willingness to Work on Weaknesses—you can develop the patience you need to achieve success. That is, if you’re willing to get the help.

For more of this and other insider convos, make sure you subscribe to the Business Outlaws podcast. We’re not going anywhere…so listen in.