Ed Mylett - The Keys to #MaxingOut

The keys to #MaxingOut and performing to your peak! Listen to Ed this week as he addresses eliminating the things that hold us back... Why our associations are so important The power of keeping things simple The concept of earning respect over recognition The destructive power of discouragement how to overcome it Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 P.M. And my third day, 6:00 P.M. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it. Waiting weeks on a big bank for capital? Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  This podcast is for those who want to do more, see more, and be more. Lead, compete, and kick some ass.

• 1:42Ed Mylett?

  Let's talk today about you maxing out, about you performing to your peak. And I want to approach the conversation from a different perspective today than you're used to hearing. I'm going to make some assumptions in the beginning about you, that I assume you're relatively driven, and you read some books here and there. You're a personal development type person, that you've got some goals written down that you read, that you've got a relatively decent schedule that you run. Those are the basic things. Without those, you can't win. Without those, you can't become successful. All the things you read in self-help books, personal development books, business books, leadership books, that you've mastered some of those things. You know, that's, that just gets you into the arena. I think many people think, well, I read my goals out loud. You know, I've got pretty good time discipline. I work relatively hard. You know, and then why am I still not winning?

• 2:28Ed Mylett?

  Because in my life, you know, I'm coming to you today, you could probably even hear the waves as I'm talking, one big one just crashed, but I'm on my balcony here in Laguna Beach. It's an overcast morning, beautiful time. How do I find myself living oceanfront here in Laguna Beach or the other places that I'm blessed enough to live in my life? How did my life get here? Because there was a point in my life where I wasn't here. But I was doing things like you do. I was reading the books. I did have goals written down. I was a highly motivated person. I was improving my skills. Why wasn't I progressing? Because it was not just the things I was doing well that was going to get me successful. It was eliminating my blind spots. It was eliminating the two or three, four things I was doing that were a hindrance, that were obstacles to me getting to where I want, that made the difference. In other words, if you're going to get to the elite at something, you've got to have your A game.

• 3:12Ed Mylett?

  That means you've got to be doing all the right things and you need to eliminate the majority of the wrong things. And I think most personal development is mainly about, this is what you need to focus on. This is what you need to think about, and that's important. Heck, it's what I talk about most of the time. Because if you don't have those things, you can't even get into the arena. But once you're in the arena, and now you're a part of that 10% that's competing to live extraordinary lives, it's not just doing the right things. It's also beginning to eliminate these things that get in our way, that they're unconscious and subconscious. And we go, gosh, I'm doing all these things, why aren't I getting ahead? So I think some of you can relate to that. You're listening to this going, I'm doing pretty well. You know, I'm a lot better than I used to be, but yet the results aren't matching up with where I think my game is. And I'm going to tell you that it's probably one of two or three, four things that are

• 3:56Ed Mylett?

  holding you back, that are blind spots, that are hindrances, that you maybe have heard about before, but no one's explained in any depth. So I'm going to take you through what some of them were for me, okay? So let's start out with a few of them. The number one thing I think holds us back is our identity. You've heard me talk about that before, but what shapes identity by a mile, by the most, is our associations, who we hang around. In fact, the four or five people we hang around the most. How do we know that's true? Any of you that have children or grandchildren, you know, one of your great obsessions in their life is, what crowd are they running in? Who do they hang around? You want their friends to come over so that you can meet them. Are they good boys, or bad girls, or ethical, or moral? Are they good students, bad students? Do they do drugs? Do they drink? Do they use bad language? How do they treat their parents? How do they treat other children?

• 4:41Ed Mylett?

  So you're constantly analyzing who they're around because you know who your children hang around will literally sculpt and shape who they become to a large extent. For some reason, as we get a little bit older, we begin to lose sight of how much influence other people have on us. It's really interesting. God didn't put all these other people in your life for them not to influence you. Right? And we lose sight of that. And I think we begin to think, well, as an adult, I'm founded in my belief systems. I've got my morals, my ethicals, my ethics. I know what I think about. I know what I'm, I know who I am, so other people don't influence me. Total fallacy. What happens actually as you get older is you begin to select and hire around friends who confirm your beliefs, who validate them, and who have similar ones. Similar thoughts, similar beliefs to yours.

• 5:26Ed Mylett?

  So it's not that they don't shape you. It's that you just attract and begin to hang around people who make you comfortable, who share those same values and beliefs. So if you were to look at the five people you spend the majority of your time with, this is where it's going to get difficult. Because really winning can be difficult. Really making a change isn't just as easy. It's easy to write down your goals. It's easy to dream. It's even easy to work hard. Isn't it? It's not that hard. Right? Some of these things are difficult. They require some pain to change through. So if we looked at the last 90 days of your life, if this is such a big influence, and I'm telling you, it's a huge influence, who you're around, in subtle ways and in not subtle ways. So let's look at the last 90 days of your life.

• 6:10Ed Mylett?

  Aside from your children, who are the five people that you spend the most of your time with? Just, you know who they are. Some of them are people you've probably known for decades, in some cases, listening to this. And I'm going to make a prediction to you. I have an opinion. I think your life within the areas that matter most to you are very similar to theirs. Within about a 25% range. In other words, if there's five of those people, here's my guess, three or four of them, their life, let's say financially, is about 25% the same as yours in a given range. What's that mean? That means if you make $100,000 a year, of those five people, three or four of them make between 75 and 125,000. If you've got $100,000 cash saved,

• 6:51Ed Mylett?

  of those five people, at least three or four of them have 50, 60, 70, 80, 100, 150,000 saved. Same little world, right? Same basic scope of life. And I'm going to tell you something. Five years from now, if it's the same five people, it's going to look exactly the same. And five years after that, your life will look like, within a 25% range, the five people you spend the most time with. 25 years from now, your life will resemble very closely the five people you spend the most time with, within a 25% range in the areas that matter most to you. That's how important it is. I knew 15 years ago, when I had changed me, and I was working harder, and I had my goals, and I was a little bit more driven.

• 7:33Ed Mylett?

  I learned to talk a little bit better. I got a little bit more focused. I started to believe in myself a little bit more. What was holding me back was I was still hanging around, the same four or five people, and by the way, who love me, believe in me, just like you, see you through the dark times, the tough times. They're loyal to you, and they have value in your life, and I'm not saying drop all your friends. But if there are five of them, you may need to drop one or two of them. And if you can't do that, you have to add one or two new people to your world, or your world's going to look exactly like the world of those five people. And so I started to seek out places. Everybody that knows me will tell you this. I started to seek out new friends, new people to hang around, people that made me uncomfortable. And you know what? Five years later, my life looked with about a 25% range of that group.

• 8:16Ed Mylett?

  And I'm conscious all the time, every five years or so, I'm always looking for new, great friends, people who can stretch me, who I enjoy their company, who are better than me in certain areas, who make me uncomfortable. Now, I also have to enjoy their time and share the same values as them. But I know one of the governors on my life is who I hang around. I know it, I know it, I know it. Now, look at you. Have you changed much of who you hang around the last five years? So really, think about this. These five people, they love you, they believe in you, right? But they make you damn comfortable. See, I think, you know, guys, I could say this to you guys, but you guys, you know, if you're kind of a little bit out of shape and, you know, and your buddies all look about the same, you guys all hang out, but all of a sudden, there's a new guy, a new couple hanging out with you and the other couples. This dude shredded.

• 8:59Ed Mylett?

  He's buff, he's ripped, and he starts hanging around you and all your buddies and the wives and everything. Don't you become a little bit more conscious of your belly? Of your gut? You know exactly what I'm talking about. You do. Ladies, same thing. You know exactly what I'm talking about. They at least make you more aware of you. At a minimum, when you add people to your group who are better than you at something, they make you more aware, more conscious of you. You begin to observe things about them that are different. They make you uncomfortable. If all of your friends, before they come over your house, you don't feel the need to clean up, you're too comfortable with them. You ought to have that one friend where you go, hey, let's pick up around here, let's put out the good china. You know? Let's serve the good drinks. Let's make some good food.

• 9:38Ed Mylett?

  You gotta have somebody makes, because if your friends are just always validating you, just always making you comfortable, just always telling stories about the old days, which is what you do when you get together with them. Remember this, remember that, remember this? You're never looking forward. If you're not having conversations with these people about the future, and it's always only about the present and the past, you're not around the right people all the time. Huh? Isn't that interesting? My bet is the five people you hang around, most of the conversations are about right now or the past. Their life is about 25% the same as yours, and you're very comfortable around them. You should have people in your life, by the way, who love you, who accept you as you are. Isn't that what you always want from people?

• 10:20Ed Mylett?

  Love me, accept me who I, as I am, believe in me, care about me. You should have those people. They should never exit your life. That's dangerous. But you better have some people in your life who see better for you, who expect more of you, who don't see you as you are, but see you as you could be. And these are the people that make you uncomfortable. Their conversations don't flow real well. They're not real interested in the past. They don't care what you did in high school. They're not real interested in that. They're interested in the future. Those are the people that you want to be around. You gotta pick up before they come over. Yeah, you know, guys, you kinda wanna suck your gut in a little bit when he's around. You know what I'm talking about? You gotta have people like that in your life, or your life's gonna look like that. People say all the time, as we get older, people get more set in their ways, it's harder to make change. Not true. Here's what happens.

• 11:04Ed Mylett?

  As you get older, your friendships get older. They become more cemented, smaller group. See, when you're 30 years old, your longest friends, some of them might be five, 10 years. You could add new people to your group, there's a vibrance to it, there's a validity to it, there's a vibration to it. It's different, and you're adding new people all the time, and you can change. That's why it's easier to change. You change the people around you. But when you're 50 years old, 60 years old, it's not that you're set in your ways, it's that your group is set. If you're listening to this in your 50s and 60s, here's my bet. You're hanging around the same people you were five years ago, maybe 10 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, maybe 30 years ago, and that's why life at 55 looks so much, pretty much like it did at 45. Because it's the same people validating the same stuff, talking about the same old things, not making anybody uncomfortable, not challenging you.

• 11:49Ed Mylett?

  That's why as you get older, you have to be more conscious of adding new people to your group. If you're a golfer, golf with someone new. Have someone new to dinner, meet new people, get involved in new groups, add new people. Think about this. That's the most uncomfortable thing you can do, is meet new people, isn't it? Add a new person to your group. That's why it's so valuable to you. See, nothing grows in comfort. Nothing grows in the path of least resistance. Yet we won't always hang around people who make us comfortable all the time. And you should have that group. You ought to be able to let your hair down and be yourself. But there also ought to be an element to your associations that you can't do that. I have people in my life who regularly have conversations with me I can't stand when I'm having them. I think they're rude, they're obnoxious, they're assumptive, they're wrong, sometimes.

• 12:33Ed Mylett?

  And you know inevitably, three, four, five days, a week later, two weeks later, sometimes a year down the road, I reflect back on that conversation, I go, they were right. It just made me so damn uncomfortable to face myself, I didn't want to do it at the time. Thank God for them in my life. That doesn't mean I'm not grateful for the person I've known 30 years. I am. But I know that person that I am 30 years. Let me tell you one thing. People say to me, "Man, as I make progress, I have these sort of detractors, these haters," you know, whether it be social media, or people around you, or people saying negative things about you. Let me tell you a secret that's- You're not gonna believe this, but the people that have won that are listening to this are about to nod their head. Let me tell you. That little group of five people that you hang around? The minute you actually do begin to break away, I'm talking the friend from high school, the person from kindergarten.

• 13:18Ed Mylett?

  That minute you do begin to break away, you do begin to change your life, you do begin to pull away from that group, not as a friend, but in this lifestyle or the way you think. They'll be your haters. If there's five of them, one or two of them will be your Judas. One or two of them will be the ones who will turn on you. And when you're not around, start saying things like, "Oh, she's so money motivated. She's never around anymore. What about her children? She's changing." Because they're like that crabs in the bucket analogy. If you ever, you can Google it, the crabs, you put them all in a bucket. If one starts to climb out, the whole pack begins to pull the other one back down. They don't want anybody to get out of the bucket. It's an actual law of nature. And that's what will happen. You know you're really winning when the people around you are the ones hating on you a little bit. If they're always at a distance, if they're always on social media, if they're just some random person at your office or your business, you're not really winning yet.

• 14:02Ed Mylett?

  You're starting, but you haven't really, you'll really be winning when someone close to you is your detractor. So I know you love these people and I know they love you, but they love you as long as you stay the way you are. People say, "My friends love me unconditionally." Actually, that's usually not true. Your friends love you on the condition you don't change too much. On the condition you don't become too much more successful than them, too much more confident than them. You don't do too well. Most friends, there is a condition on their friendship, and that is that your success better not start to make me uncomfortable, because if it does, I will turn on you. So I'm just gonna tell you something. I know you love them, and I'm sure that wouldn't happen to you, is what you think, right? And for, and a few of them won't do that.

• 14:44Ed Mylett?

  But the most valuable thing you have is your own life, is your own family, is your own success, is your own destiny, your own soul, your own legacy. And in coming upon you, making that change, that you add people to that group that make you uncomfortable, that challenge you. It's been one of the great changes I made many years ago that I know has everything to do, because everybody else was writing their goals down. Everybody else was working hard. I started to change who I hung around. How do you do that? Well, in my business, you can win different contests and different things to find a mentor or somebody like that. But you can start going to places where people that are more successful than you associate. You know who they are. You know how to find them. You just slowly begin to add people to your group. Get to know different people, you befriend people. In the short term, one way to do it is to read. When I read books, I don't just read, I, I love, when I get a book, I'll give you a key.

• 15:29Ed Mylett?

  When I read a book by an author, take John Maxwell, the, the guy who writes all the leadership books, Christian author, whom I love, has spoken to my company before. I think he's a wonderful man, wonderful communicator. I recommend almost all of his books. But when I read a book by an author, I, I try to pretend that person I have become best friends for the week I'm reading that book. That there, he's literally talking to me. So what I do when I get a book, any book, just so you know, I just, I read the flap of the book about the background of the author, but I always Google the author and try to get as much information on that person's life and background as I can, so that I have more rapport and we're closer friends. So that as I'm reading the books, he's literally, or she is literally talking to me as a friend. Cause the highest form of influence is friend. People think, well, association's one level, mentors another, but friend, friend?

• 16:14Ed Mylett?

  That's a huge level of influence. And so, just when I read, I do that. I've tried to work myself into different winning groups in my company to get to know different people. I've tried to find people in my company whom don't even have an incentive in me, but I like what they do and how successful they are, not 20 levels ahead of me. If you're making $50,000 a year, you don't need a mentor making 10 million. They can't even influence you. You need a mentor making 200 grand. If you're making 200 grand, you need a mentor who makes a million dollars a year. Do you follow what I'm saying? They should be in some proximity to you, so there's some magnetism and pull power. Not so, everyone always wants to pick the best person at something to get mentored. That's not, Michael Jordan should be mentoring the elite NBA players, not some high school basketball player. Right? There's a gap there, but it's too broad.

• 16:58Ed Mylett?

  There's too much gap between their game for him to influence them. And so focus on that, focus on changing that group, adding to that group. And if you don't add to the group or change the group, I'm telling you five years from now, you can do everything else, your life's gonna look exactly the same. Number two, complexity. We complicate things. Remember this, complexity is the enemy of execution. Your brain wants you to win. Your brain wants to help you succeed. Your brain loves to operate on simplicity. It can only process simple items, especially a small brain like mine. It also wants to process specific items. So the more specific and simple your processes, thoughts, and actions are, the more likely you are to win. The more I meet mega-successful people that I think have a high IQs or are super-smart people, in many cases they are, many cases they aren't.

• 17:42Ed Mylett?

  But when I find out what their formula is for winning, it's always more simple than I would have imagined it was. See, there's a lot of people invested in making you think success is complicated. Think about that for a second, because success is actually simple. If it really comes down to it, here's the deal. Bottom line, people dabble. And the people who win are in total immersion, total obsession, with whatever their business is, if we're talking business. Total obsession, total immersion, and they just flat-out work everybody. At the end of the day, long-term, the person who wins flat-out works everybody. That's how simple it is. There's no other keys to success. The key to success is there's no key. But there are a lot of people invested in making you think there's these secrets or these keys. There's a key word.

• 18:27Ed Mylett?

  A lot of people think if I could just get this one person to coach me, or there's this one sentence, or this one thought, or this one idea, or I'm missing this one strategy. It's never that. It's never that. It's always the work. It's always you avoiding the work. If you're not where you want to be right now, it's because you have become a professional at avoiding the work and getting complex and busy. At the end of days, you've not done the amount of work required to win. Ask Kobe Bryant, ask Tom Brady, ask Michael Jordan, ask Steve Jobs, ask Barack Obama, ask Donald Trump, ask Bill Gates, ask Warren Buffett, ask the top person at your company, they outwork everybody. That's it. And by the way, the harder you work, the more you're totally in immersion in something,

• 19:10Ed Mylett?

  the more successful keys are revealed to you through activity and experience, not through learning, reading, and writing. We learn very little by listening to other people. We learn everything through experience, and that's why the work is so important. There's a lot of people invested in making you think it's complicated. Let's think about that for a second. Who has an investment? Who has an incentive in making you think success is complicated? The entire world, that's all. There's thousands of books out there on self-help, personal improvement, leadership, sales, you name it, and they have to convince you it's complicated, and they have the answer because then it's that that's causing you not to win, not your lack of work. You gotta buy my book, you gotta go to my seminar. And there are, I'm the king of reading books and going to seminars and picking up keys and tips, but I've never thought that was the difference.

• 19:54Ed Mylett?

  I thought it was an added incentive. I thought I could go from a level nine to a level 10 if I knew a little bit better. Perfect example is my fitness podcast. People say, "My gosh, I'm getting in shape, I'm getting all these emails and letters and tweets and..." Yeah, I meet people who say, "My gosh, I've lost eight pounds, I'm getting ripped, my body fat's this, I've done that, I'm more awake, I got more energy." And they go, "Your podcast was the key." And I'm like, "Really? Really, really? The podcast was the key?" I mean, you didn't know before my podcast, like, if you put a little bit less food in your mouth and you worked out a little bit, you might lose a little weight. Of course you knew that. You got some specifics, but it was you who chose. My podcast didn't get you in shape, you got you in shape because you started to eat less, you started to go to the gym, you started to walk, you started to work out.

• 20:37Ed Mylett?

  Your action did, and as you took action, I revealed to you a couple little tips that took it from a nine to a 10. But come on, you already knew that. What was causing you to get in shape is the action you took, not my podcast. And so, there's a lot of people invested. Your mentors are invested. Even in my company, we have these mentors. "I'm the king, I built this person, I developed them, I did this. If you listen to what I do, you can do it, there's no other way." Total BS. People build themselves. You can create an environment, you can develop people, you can believe in them, but the bottom line is, people build themselves. And so, they gotta convince you. So, books and authors and all that, mentors gotta convince you there are these keys. And you know who has the most incentive in making you think success is complicated? You. Because as long as it's complicated, it's not your fault. You just, right?

• 21:21Ed Mylett?

  It's I, I'm losing because I'm missing a key. Not because I'm lazy. Not because I professionally avoid making phone calls. Not because I professionally avoid busting my tail. It's a key. See, it wouldn't it be easy? It would be, wouldn't it be funny if someone said, I'm totally out of shape? Right? Think about this in the fitness sense. I'm totally out of shape. I'm 40 pounds overweight. I've got no energy. I'm sore all the time. And you know what the key is? I just don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do. If someone would give me the keys, then I know. You'd look at them and go, come on, man. You know what to do? Get it going. Now, could they refine their diet like I have the ratios of how many calories? How much protein? Sure, that makes it from a nine to a 10. But you'd never look at someone who's out of shape and let them convince you in the world today,

• 22:04Ed Mylett?

  the reason they're out of shape is they don't know what to do. You know, that's not true. It's that they're unwilling to do it if that's the case. And the same is true for someone who's won in business. I never believe that someone's not winning because they're missing information. I'm going to be honest with you. College professors, universities, which I think are wonderful places, have created a culture in this country where people think education is the key. You listen to a debate for the presidency or the Miss America contest. I think education is the key. Education is the key. Education is the key. I don't know any mega successful person who thinks education is the key to anything. I'm just telling you that. I don't know one person. You could interview them, they go, the key was my education. The key was my learning. Nobody I know that's really successful thinks that's a really commonly said thing. It's socially acceptable to say. It sounds really good.

• 22:49Ed Mylett?

  It's like, it's like the children are the key to our future. Everybody says it and everyone, yay, that's great. Right? Well, the truth is, education isn't the key. Doing is the key. The best education is through experience. And the truth is, education is important. It's an added benefit. But the, the fact of the matter is, nobody's won in their life because of their education. I do not believe that for a minute. Can you learn? Can you get better? Absolutely. Is it the difference? Absolutely not. The difference is the work you put in. So you know who's invested in making it complicated? You. But you need to analyze this, and I needed to analyze it. At the end of a day, how many things did I do to avoid the hard work? The path of most resistance. The world today is obsessed with least resistance. Right? Least resistance. That's why these friends you have around you. They gotta give you a little resistance.

• 23:32Ed Mylett?

  If they don't give you any resistance, they're just valuable to confirm you. And same within the business. If what you did during the day didn't create resistance, if I'm in the gym and I want to build a muscle, it's not the lightest weights, it's the heaviest weights. It's not the least amount of reps, it's the most amount of reps. The thing that builds the muscle is the most resistance, not the least resistance. That's what builds a business, that's what builds character. I'm not saying you shouldn't learn things. I'm not saying education isn't important. You're listening to me to learn something. There's value in learning. But if learning is a level three or four activity, doing is a level 10. And that's the difference. And so, I had to analyze first my associations and really get a grip on that. Two, I had to learn I was making things too complicated. And I wasn't making things too complicated because I really thought they needed to be. It was an excuse. It was an excuse. It was a deferment mechanism. It was a pain easing

• 24:17Ed Mylett?

  mechanism. It couldn't be my fault, it was that I was missing a key. If I could just get the mentor, read the book, go to the seminar, learn the script, then I'd win. And that's total BS and you know it. Okay, next thing is this. People seeking recognition over respect. The world today is addicted to getting recognized. Selfies, likes, all these different things. If I could just get an award, get recognized. Kids are all about the awards and the ribbons and the plaques and we're raised with it today. So that now, most people's focus in life is to get recognized, not earn respect. So they'll do things in their business, short term, that'll get them recognition, but may hurt them long term getting respect. They'll cut corners. Right? Or they'll do something, they'll cut corners. They'll cheat. They'll try to do the minimum to get somewhere, to get recognized me, recognize me.

• 25:01Ed Mylett?

  I learned pretty early, frankly, that the recognition thing was overrated. I wanted respect. When I go to the bank right now and I walk in, I have a lot of respect there, quite frankly. And none of them ask me for any of my old plaques, awards, or ribbons from Little League baseball or my business. They respect my balance. They respect what I've done. People need to respect you, not recognize you. If you're constantly seeking recognition from others, it will always be empty. It'll always be short term too. So that's a killer in business. So I'll see people say, "You better do this." And they'll do it for 90 days. In my business, you gotta recruit people. So they'll recruit people for say 90 days. And they'll get a bunch of recognition and then stop because they got what they wanted. They weren't really after building a company. They weren't really after getting wealthy. They weren't really after financial independence. They were after recognition.

• 25:44Ed Mylett?

  So they got some recognition, we gave them a trophy, we gave them an award, we gave them a title, whatever, maybe gave them some money. And then they stopped doing the thing that got them the recognition because that's all they were really after. If you were really for respect, you would continue the process over and over and over again for your life. Early in my career, I figured out, oh my gosh, all these people do it and then stop. They do it and then they stop. They get some recruits and stop. They get some clients and stop. They get a promotion and stop. I get it, they're all about this recognition. I'm not doing all this work for recognition, I'm doing all this work to get wealthy. I'm doing all this work to change my family tree forever. I'm doing all this work to get respect, to change my life. And so, I'll let them do it for recognition, short term. I'm just gonna keep doing it, and I decided young, this is what I'll do forever.

• 26:27Ed Mylett?

  For example, I think I'm gonna go to the gym until I die, someday. It's not like I'm just trying to get in a little bit of better shape, so that people think I look good, and then I stop. I'm doing it because it's my lifestyle. I want respect, but part of that respect is, recognition is something you get from other people, respect is something you give yourself. I wanna feel good about me. I wanna feel healthy, I wanna feel well, I wanna think I look good, but I also wanna deliver on the promise I make to myself and build confidence. And so, in business, you gotta make this decision, I'm after respect, which means I'm gonna develop processes that are simple, that I do forever. That I intend to do forever. The rest of my life, I'll recruit people, the rest of my life, I'll encourage people, the rest of my life,

• 27:10Ed Mylett?

  I'll persuade people, the rest of my life, I'll inspire people, whatever that thing is. Long after I got a lot of money, I kept recruiting people. I just recruited somebody last week. Dan Charley and I, together recruited somebody, just last week, friend of mine Dan Charley in my business. Right? I still encourage people, I still speak, I still inspire. This is not something I was doing to just get some recognition. It's who I am, because I wanna get respect, and I wanna give respect to people. And then the last thing is this.

• 27:38Ed Mylett?

  You know, you gotta be aware of how busy you are. See, being busy is valuable. See, to the degree that something is scarce is how valuable it is. So if I had a foot tall stack of paper, that's worth a certain amount of money. But if next to it I had a foot tall stack of gold, which is worth more? They're both a foot tall, they both look exactly the same, right? In terms of size. The difference is the gold is worth far more money because it's more scarce. You need to be a person who's busy because busy equals valuable. You gotta look busy, act busy, and actually really, truly have lots of appointments. Because when you're really, really busy, I can have an appointment with somebody and I've got eight appointments that day, you can have an appointment with somebody and you have two appointments that day. We say the exact same words to the exact same person.

• 28:20Ed Mylett?

  Nine times out of ten, the person who had ten appointments a day will get a result and the person who has two will not. Because there's a value, there's an embedded command in there that says, "I'm important, I'm valuable, this matters because of how busy you are because your time's scarce." And so you gotta get busier and busier and busier because that creates value. For too long, early in my career, I wasn't busy enough in a given day and people sensed I had time to talk to them. My time wasn't as valuable, my words weren't as important. But when I say, "Hey, I got five minutes, I got twenty minutes, I got forty minutes." You put a deadline on the time and they know there's somebody else coming, all of a sudden, yes. It's almost like, you ever gone to the doctor's office and you'll sit there for flipping four hours? You know? And the doctor walks in, you know you got five minutes, you're like glued to them, aren't you?

• 29:05Ed Mylett?

  You're glued to them because you know how scarce that time is. That's how your appointments need to be in business. Same exact thing, people need to feel like the doctor's in session. And what's the last stealer of dreams that holds us back from doing our max? Let me tell you what I want you to ponder is the concept of discouragement and watching it in yourself and watching it in others. This discouragement is a concept that the adversary uses to steal dreams. Discouragement is like an anesthetic. The adversary uses it to just use this anesthesia right before he carves your heart out and takes away your life and your dreams. Discouragement is the number one killer of maxing out and peak performance in the world today. Really what it does is if you think of that word, discourage, it's to remove someone's courage.

• 29:48Ed Mylett?

  And if I can get you discouraged, if I can get you down, I got you, you're not gonna win. You've got to fight discouragement. You've got to observe it in the people around you and your teammates if you're building a business. Discouragement is a killer. It's what he uses to steal the dream. It's the number one killer of dreams in the world today. It's the antithesis of faith and I watch it on people's faces and in their lives all the time. Discouragement almost got me many times. In fact, I'll be candid with you, discouragement's got me recently. I'm not immune to it. In different businesses or endeavors I've been involved in, I'll call an enterprise recently, something I loved very, very much and my partner loved very, very much. And just things happened over time that discouraged me and my partner.

• 30:33Ed Mylett?

  And I quit it. And what got me to quit was discouragement. That's what got me. I just eventually lost my courage for it. It was something I probably, to be honest with you, I don't know if I've ever wanted anything more in my life. But I succumbed to discouragement. And people do it every second of every day and everything. Businesses, relationships, school. See, when someone's discouraged, think about the opposite of it. If someone's in school, you've never heard a kid say, "I got straight A's. I'm doing so well in school. I'm going to drop out." Never happens. It's the reverse. Only discouragement precedes quitting. Discouragement always precedes quitting. The way we inoculate quitting is

• 31:17Ed Mylett?

  we need to acknowledge discouragement when it's there and change the pattern. It's a killer. It kills us in our businesses. It kills us in our lives. And you need to watch it. The antithesis of that is feeding yourself good people around you and being challenged and being, having people believe in you and not giving into this power of discouragement because it ruins, ruins dreams. Watch it in your people. You've got to always be overdosing people with love and praise and affection and belief. Because when, the minute they leave you, the world is going to try to discourage them. They're going to have their haters. They're going to have detractors. They're going to have rejection. They're going to have people put them down. They're not going to get results. They're always going to be behind plan. They're always going to be thinking, "I'm not where I should be. I thought I'd be further along." They're always in a valuation of discouragement. The adversary in life is constantly trying

• 32:02Ed Mylett?

  to always discourage great things. From happening if you look at any great thing that's happening you look at the Patriots just won the Super Bowl about a month ago the greatest Super Bowl ever they go into the they were down 28 to 3 can you imagine the level of discouragement that team had to overcome in order to win that game what makes you so emotional and so shocked and so amazed and so inspired by what they did is how much discouragement they had to overcome the amount of discouragement you can handle at any given time and shift probably has everything to do with the level of victory you're about to achieve and so notice it in people fight it it's the number one killer of dreams in the world is discouragement and the only anecdote to that is in completely the reverse giving people courage giving people belief feeding

• 32:44Ed Mylett?

  yourself your dreams focusing on the future the future is so important you need to act in the now but you need to think in the future if your thoughts if your actions aren't now and your thoughts aren't in the future you're likely to lose you must act now because if you don't act now you're just repeating the past okay but if your thoughts aren't on the future because for most people their current conditions aren't where they thought they'd be or where they'd like to be and the way you discourage somebody is by flashing a mirror on right now look at right now look how bad you're doing and they magnify the now when the now is magnified discouragement increases when the future is magnified discouragement

• 33:25Ed Mylett?

  gets minimized too often when someone's getting discouraged what's happening right now influences them too much it's the light is shined on it they're obsessed with right now and it gets magnified to an extent that's not even real and what are you constantly doing if you think about the times you've been discouraged I thought I'd be further along I can't believe I just had this failure I can't believe this person just quit I can't believe I missed that phone call I can't believe nobody showed up and you magnify the now you magnify the now and when you focus on the now and you magnify the now that's the that is the fertile ground for discouragement to grow the other fertile ground for discouragement to grow is to not act now if you don't act now discouragement grows so the key thing to fight it off is to be praising recognizing believing in people and to fight it off on

• 34:10Ed Mylett?

  yourself is act now move now exercise now call now bust it now and think about the future I'm a dreamer I'm constantly thinking about the future this enterprise that just didn't work out I got too caught up in the now I got too caught up in what I was doing I wasn't taking the right actions now It's always the formula. Wrong actions now, not focused on the future. The way we keep it off, act now, focus on the future. You should be dreaming and thinking and projecting in the future and crushing it right now. And here's the reason why. At the end of the day, at the end of your life, you know what you really want? You gotta have great associations, right? You gotta keep your life simple, don't you? You gotta earn respect in your life. You gotta fight off discouragement, you gotta act now, and you gotta be someone who thinks about the future all the time.

• 34:55Ed Mylett?

  Really, how awesome is it, that formula? Think about even your faith. Isn't your faith really based in those two things? Act correctly now and dream about your future. If you're a Christian like me, it's treat people right now, act as Christ-like as you can now, and dream about a future and eternity in heaven. It's always the formula of faith. It's always... So if that's true in faith, it's true in family, it's true in business. We must act correctly now, do the right, simple things now. If you think about it, living a great life is pretty simple. Treat people well, try to avoid the sins of the world, right? Do the things that your scriptures tell you to. Those are simple things, none of them are complicated. And focus and dream about the future and how great it's gonna be. There's a promise, there's a payoff. So if you're gonna make a business work, a body work, a relationship work,

• 35:38Ed Mylett?

  it's do the right things now and dream about the future. That's how you do it. Because at the end of your life, ultimately, what I want you thinking about now is this. The dream life, I have this belief at the end of your life, if you're a Christian, you believe that you face the Lord, and your prayer is that he tells you, you go through your life as well-done, good and faithful servant, right? But I don't care what your faith is, what you believe. I have this belief at the end of your life, you do look at your life. And what if on the last day of your life, the last minute of your life, you were introduced to the man or woman you could have been? Your highest self. Think about this, what if in the last minute of your life, you got to meet the man or woman you were capable of becoming? You got to see the life you were capable of happening, the places, the people, the things, the memories,

• 36:23Ed Mylett?

  and the man or woman you were capable of becoming? A great life lived is very simple, that when you meet them, you're like identical twins. When you meet them, you're long-lost souls who have been friends forever. A terrible end of your life would be to be complete strangers. To look at that person you could have been, that woman or that man, and their life and what they became and what they saw and what they did and meet them and not know them at all. Because there's all these little decisions along the way that shape whether we ultimately become that man or woman. My prayer for you is at the end of your life, that when you meet that man or woman you were capable of becoming and the life you were capable of having, it's like identical twins. It's like best friends. It's like soulmates meeting. And that you're not total strangers. Too many people because of discouragement, because of hanging around the wrong people,

• 37:08Ed Mylett?

  because they complicate things, because they kept going after recognition instead of respect in their lives. When they take all those wrong turns at the end of their life, they meet that person they're capable of becoming and they're total strangers. My prayer for you, my inspiration, my belief is that right now you could change everything and the decisions you start to make and you start marching because God wants you to get back on path. You could be 20 years the wrong path, 15 years, 50 years the wrong path. And I know God wants you to meet that man or woman and be familiar with them. You could start right now down that path, start shifting things, start changing things, and on that last day, you're going to meet him and be best friends. And in my faith, someone's going to tell you, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've lived a great life." That's all you want. So let's start to do that together. I hope today helped you. God bless you.

• 37:53Ed Mylett?

  Let's get something great done. Let's max it out. Take care.

• 37:56Speaker 03

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