Lee Milteer: Time Integrity for the Martial Arts School Entrepreneur

I’ve authored a number of books, a lot of audio and video programs. And started the Millionaire Mindset Coaching Program about three years ago. And it’s just been this very exciting program because I’ve allowed myself to take all these 25 years worth of experience and study and knowledge and share it with people such as your members, but also I get to interview some of the top people in our industries who focus on entrepreneurial success and pick their brains and see how I can get them to share to our members tips and skills and strategies and resources and anything to shorten the learning curve for our folks. And of course that’s the great thing, as you know, about being a coach is that we get to watch our members really thrive and prosper because of the research that we do that they don’t have to do.

Absolutely, and we get that opportunity. Walt Disney was particularly fascinating because when you go to work for Walt Disney, it was kind of humorous. I had to fly to Florida and I met with 15 people for like a day just to determine if they even wanted to hire me. And then when they did hire me, they hired me on a contract basis where I would go to Florida like a week every quarter and I would start off the week and I would work through every different division of their company. We would start with the housekeepers and then we would go to the hotel managers and then we would go to the sales staff and then every different group would get the same material but upgraded for their particular position at the time. And I learned all of their terminology and I actually wrote different programs that I have to sell today because they requested those programs from me because they said, we love you, but you know, you only come every quarter and we actually have so many new people, we want you to record this information so we can give it to them as they start to work here.

[04:31] And the NASA was an interesting experience because as an entrepreneur, working in a very structured environment was a challenge for me but it gave me a lot of knowledge about how other people think. And that’s one of the great things that I’ve learned from all my different clients is to be very curious on what is your process, what is your system, how do you think, and how can I learn from you, maybe I won’t do it the same way you do it, but that I can take the wisdom that you have and integrate it into my own system. And so I’m exposed to literally hundreds of different companies and of course as you know, I prefer the entrepreneurial person because that’s who I am. But the NASA people were very interested and I worked for them for 15 straight years under contract, going there so many times a year.

And again, one day working for engineers, one day working for managers, so it was a different group every day. And then I went to the Disney University courses where they take you behind the scenes and you do the orientation class. It is. And anybody who would have an opportunity to go through the process you did should take it because the learning curve is great. Yeah, their whole terminology of all the on stage, off stage, and then for me when you went and then you go downstairs or behind the stage. Absolutely. And they’re very clear about only using their terminology. They had when I was there, they had this. Right. I mean they’re even very persnickety about the fact that your earrings can only be a certain size. Yeah. And what you can wear. And one of the things, Stephen, that I really liked about them that has been helpful to me as an entrepreneur is the system.

Yes. You know, interacting and putting systems in place in your life and the way that you train people, that has been very beneficial in my own company and in companies that I consult with. Yeah. And there’s so much about Disney. It’s applicable. In the first one, they went to New York. You know, Eisner basically took over Times Square, but he had to comply with a Disney dress code. Exactly. Which meant no visible tattoo. They even, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, and they show the guy that without a car and the show guy. That’s not Disney. But it works. I mean they’re looking for Boy or Girl Next Door, Hometown Disney, and for every family to feel comfortable in the environment, which of course is very similar to what we’re doing. Well, and I think it’s a great point that you’re making here, Stephen, because for all your members who are listening to this call, when you’re hiring your own people, sometimes as a self-employed person, I know that you feel like you’re in a corner.

[08:21] You can’t find good people. And sometimes out of desperation, you hire people, but they’re not who you really want, and they don’t look like the people you want to represent you. And that will always be a huge mistake. And in our case, a lot of our employees have bubbled up from within with students, and then suddenly we’re afraid to kind of tell them, hey, you know, I know that haircut. Absolutely. Since I’m a minute ago, and I think it’s very important, the millionaire mindset is a very entrepreneurial-like focus.

What was finding this, is I was finding a couple of the technical skills and the marketing and sales skills and everything else that you give people, didn’t make a whole lot of difference because they couldn’t get their arms around moving to the next level in their business. You know, an awful lot of what. Talk about how you’ve translated the entrepreneurial process.

Part 2

Well, first let me just tell you that I am a farmer’s daughter. When I was growing up, one of the things that I really learned from being a farmer’s daughter is that we had to do whatever it took, whenever it took, that we were the original entrepreneurs. Starting up in an environment where lots of livestock and huge land and lots of people working for you and a million problems with the weather and just a million things that you could not control, is that I learned in life that the whole mindset of being an entrepreneur is that you are always scanning the landscape of your life, looking for opportunities, looking for ways to save money, to save time, to be more effective, and to be more efficient. Now, that is not how the corporate world thinks for the most part.

Many people in the corporate world are given a job title and a position and there’s a list of responsibilities they’re supposed to do. After they get integrated into that mindset of these are the things that I’m supposed to do, unconsciously, often, they will shut down that creative part of themselves on looking for ways to save money, looking for ways to save time because they get the pats on the back for doing what they were told to do. I know I’m taking a long time to answer your question, but the truth is the way that business owners can think like entrepreneurs is, the truth is you’ve got to start labeling yourself an entrepreneur. You are an entrepreneur. Be very excited about that because to me, being an entrepreneur, it means there are no limits. There are no glass ceilings that you can create anything that you’re willing to pay the price for.

There’s always a price for success. To think like an entrepreneur basically means that you’re always a lifetime learner. You’re going to people like yourself. You’re going to classes that I offer. You’re always learning. You’re always polishing the diamond. Every day, you’re looking for a better way to promote your business, to improve your reputation, to balance your life. Just doing everything to make your business a more rewarding one, not only for yourself, but anyone and everyone that you touch in that business. You said something which is thinking like a technician, thinking like a true entrepreneur. How do you coach people to do that?

Move out of the focus on the technical side and move into stand opportunity mentality?

One of the first things that I tell everybody, for instance, I have a lot of people who come to me on one-on-one coaching. They want to be a speaker or they want to be a writer. I always say, you can be the best speaker or you can be the best writer on the face of the earth, just like you could be the best martial artist in the world. If people don’t know about you and you’re not putting yourself out there, then all that talent gets wasted. Every business person or people who are starting schools, is that what you’re saying?

Yes. Starting schools. The first thing you have to understand is that your real business is marketing. You already know how to be good at what you do. To continue to be better at what you do is something you’ll do naturally. That marketing and that learning about the whole business process, learning about how to capture your market, how to get customers. At the end of the day, the truth is, and I think this was a recent program I just did for you, Sales as a State of Mind. Exactly. Every day, if we haven’t sold anything, then we’re really not in business. No. All people who are just starting have to understand that no matter how good you are, your talents are there, but you’ve got to learn how to do the business aspect of things where your name gets out there, where in your town, when they think of martial arts, they think of you.

[04:46] Exactly. Important. In a martial arts school, as the dual risk goes, it can be very entertaining. You can sit there all evening and there’s lots of people coming in and they’re all telling you how great you are and they’re having a lot of fun. At the end of the day, if you haven’t added a new student or renewed an existing student, you haven’t done anything to move your business forward. You’re losing money. Exactly. It’s like developing muscles. It’s like exercising. It’s like if you don’t exercise every day, then your body starts to deteriorate. After like what, three days?

Just in three days, your body deteriorates? Yeah. Well, the truth is business is the same way. If you’re not collecting names, promoting yourself, if you’re not getting students, if you’re not getting people to give you a credit card or a check or something every single day, then business isn’t… How can I put this?

It isn’t something you do as a hobby. It’s just your livelihood. It’s creating your security. It’s creating your future. It’s going to pay for your mortgage payment. It’s going to pay for your kids to go to college. It’s going to create security for yourself. When you give yourself 100% permission that you will do whatever it takes to learn, whatever you need to learn. Flexibility is power, meaning when you’re first starting in business, be very open-minded and curious and very flexible about how you do things. Only train with the best, such as Stephen. You’ve obviously been very successful in getting other people to be very successful. If I go to learn how to ski, I really want the best ski instructor I can find. I don’t want to go down that hill without taking lessons because I don’t want to create bad habits.

Business is exactly the same way. Or Lee, run into a tree. Run into a tree, yes. We all do those even on the best days sometimes. That’s right. Thank you for that. Let’s talk about the coaching process and the process with which people go through to become successful. I do believe that even those who are now really trying to grow their business often get the wrong idea about how the process is. As you and I both know, there’s the point at which most people are ignorant about their business and they never change that. Then there’s the next level, which is to accumulate lots of knowledge and don’t do anything with it. It takes a special environment and a special opportunity to then move to the next level and not only get the knowledge, get the knowledge of specific accountability and the capability of growing the business.

Part 3

What have you seen the process be with that?

Well, the first process that when I deal with people trying to move forward is that I try to get them to know that right now they’re only using 5% to 15% of their natural potential. And many people think, oh, well, I’m really capped out. I’ve used all my potential. I’m doing everything I can. But the truth is the human brain and the human spirit is an amazing thing. And that even the best of the best people are only using 10% to 15% of their potential. So when you’re first getting started out, you just got to realize you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s a very important statement. You don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s why it’s so important when you’re in the beginning of things, as I said earlier about the ski example, you want to connect yourself with absolutely the people who are successful.

People who are in your industry are who’s successful. People who understand what you do and that they can lead you and cut down on your learning curve and keep you from making those run into the tree mistakes. I know years ago when I met Dan Kennedy and I had to borrow money on a credit card to pay him to go to a coaching, if I hadn’t done that, Dan Kennedy’s the marketing guru, I honestly wouldn’t have been here today because I would have made so many costly mistakes because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I always share with people how important as a coach you understand is that what a coach is going to do for you is they’re literally going to take you and show you information that you just didn’t know was even there.

You didn’t have any references in your brain about it. And so if you understand that you have the potential and most people I’m assuming that are working with you, Stephen, are willing to work hard. Now let me just say something about working hard. Everybody has different definitions of working hard. You can’t think as an entrepreneur that working hard is some nine to five things. Because that is just not reality. Being self-employed really is for many of us in the beginning it’s almost a seven day a week, many hours a day. But the way that I look at work, and I know this about you, Stephen, is that it’s my life. I love it. I do it not because I have to do it, but because I choose to do it. I choose to have my mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial energy tied up into my contribution to life, my service to the world.

And so when you’re self-employed you’ve got to always thinking about how am I being of the best service?

And I know that what you folks do is you teach information and lessons to people. And I know you’re giving lessons, but you’re teaching philosophy and you’re teaching morals and values and you’re teaching things that kids and adults often are not getting anywhere else in the world. So you’re absolutely fantastic providers of good information into the world. Oh, absolutely. And stepping back just a minute, the whole idea of being self-employed is then to pick and turn you on, get you up out of bed in the morning and get you excited about working late into the evening. And the nice thing about what we’ve chosen to do, unlike many, unity is not just about the money and at some point enough money that it has to be about contribution. And we have now the opportunity to start to maximize our income.

Part 4

And that’s one of the things that I do admire about your particular world is the fact that you are giving a great contribution to the world. And you know, most people don’t really think of their work as being a provider or actually offering a contribution, but that’s where passion comes from. And like I look forward to come, you know, there are days, you know, everybody has days that are like, oh man, I have to go to work. But for the most part, I, you know, I love what I do. And I know that I am making a difference. And when you love what you do, and by the way, there’s a little secret to loving what you do, and that is constantly reminding yourself of what are the positive points on it, you know, what you focus on expands.

So if you focus on that you love what you do and how you’re contributing and you love dealing with people and you love teaching kids and you just love what you do, it’s going to just ooze out of you. And there’s a universal law called like attracts like. And when you are in that kind of passionate state of mind, what you do is you attract people to you. When you’re in the, oh wow, we don’t have enough clients and, you know, my classes aren’t filled up and I’m not sure how we’re going to pay the rent and you start woeing yourself, you actually repel potential people signing up, you repel the prosperity that could come to you. Oh, that’s exactly right. And people don’t realize how powerful that is, that that attitude determines that things are going to get worse, not better.

Right, well everything is physics in life. If you really get down to it, everything is physics. And that whole thing about like attracts like. So what you focus on expands. So on an average day, a person has to ask themselves two or three times a day, what am I focusing on?

And the reason for doing that is because you’ll find yourself occasionally hanging around people who are focusing on the wrong thing. They’re watching the news. They’re focusing on, you know, the war overseas, which by the way, we can’t do anything about other than, you know, support and some love and blessings and things like that. But to spend your day worried about stuff like that, whenever you take your mind off your business and focus on the wrong things, it’ll take money out of your pocketbook and it’ll also hurt your chance for marketing in your own business. Well in all businesses and all careers, and as soon as you start hanging around the guys who are all failing, and now spending your time masterminding with other failures. Exactly. Which is what most people do. You know, it’s the classic ad work hanging around the crowd fishing at the water cooler, but in martial arts it’s hanging around all the other guys who had a month.

The more you hang out with that, the more social proof you have that failure is okay and that that’s the norm. Well that’s very well put. The more social proof that you have that failure is okay. I really like that. I’m writing that down. There you go. And that’s true. And it’s an unconscious thing. And we all want to be liked, so often what we do is we lower our standards with the people that we’re around just to be accepted by them. And I don’t know about you Stephen, but when I was really poor I had more friends because people liked you being poor. And when I became very successful I noticed that some people dropped off, but that was really a blessing because those people weren’t really my friends. Those people were just acquaintances. And even within family circles, an awful lot of the people who never have figured out and are unwilling to make a good living, attributed to all types of things other than your hard work and quest for knowledge.

And while we’re talking about it, and I know you can probably appreciate this even though you and I haven’t had this conversation, please do not expect your relatives and your families to understand you as an entrepreneur. No, or to support you. Exactly. Because they just don’t, and here’s the secret why, they don’t have the references in their brain. They’ve never had to live by their wits and their intelligence and their marketing. They’ve had jobs that have supported them. So they haven’t even developed that part of their brain or their spirit. And so when they see you and you becoming more and more successful, they’ll say, oh you were very lucky. And you know, look, the truth is we create our own luck. And that is created by how open minded we are and how much we invest in ourselves.

[04:46] And one of the things that I always tell business owners, the difference between corporate people and entrepreneurs, is corporate people will rarely buy a book for themselves or an educational CD or DVD and sit down and take the time to learn anything. They don’t feel pressure to do that. No, no. But you know, going back to what you just said, two true stories. When I started my education in DC, spent a year at the Library of Congress and put in a bit of research and put in my martial arts instructor, I guess you can go play. And I had no money and moved to Denver with $10,000 and built a million dollar company in two years. And all the support I could get from anybody else who were my martial arts teachers and mentors were, well, you can go play with that for a while and then you can get a career.

I remember the interview Gene Landermri. I remember the story about his mother. Right. In his mother’s restaurant. Yeah, when are you going to get a real job?

He had like 15 books and made millions of dollars and it’s like when are you going to go get a real job?

Oh yeah, yeah. She’s sitting in Chuck E. Cheese going, oh yeah, this is fun. But when are you going to go get a real job?

Just amazing. Well, I know I just finished two books and I just recently a holiday and I remember it didn’t even occur to me until after I left the holiday that nobody even asked me about the books or anything because it’s sort of like, well, that’s what Lee does. Yeah. You know, we’re the family. We don’t quite understand her and what she does and you know, so they don’t even ask. Oh yeah. And I think it’s hilarious. Oh yeah, absolutely. But it just shows how out of touch most people are with that. And it’s the feedback that karate school owners get is they get the wife and the parents and everybody’s fans. Why are you playing with this?

You know, when are you going to get a real job?

And you know, and the net income on one of these things, even on a single location, can be a heck of 500, 600, 700,000 a year, more than probably everybody else in the family put together is making, but they’ll never see it that way.

Part 5

And you know, I don’t even try to educate my family because now if they think you’re doing really well, they then expect you to pay for everything. Exactly. So I just, when people always ask me how I’m doing in my family, I always go, same old, same old. And that’s the end of that. Yeah. Off they go. Now I do, I want to jump off a point you just made here about how much money you can earn. Oftentimes when I’m doing coaching with a one-on-one brand new person who’s an entrepreneur, you know, they’ll go through some little bad spot in the road and they’ll hit a few bumps and they’ll say occasionally to me, well, maybe, you know, maybe I should go get a real job. And you know, I just want to like shake them and say, wake up.

A real job means that you have to go work on somebody else’s time. You have to do what they want you to do and then they’re going to pay you. And just because it looks a little attractive right now because you’re going through a little bit of a rough spot that the real job may be security. There is no such thing in life as security other than the security you make for yourself. And especially in the last few years when all these big companies, Enron and all those, and people have spent their whole life, you know, putting their 401s and they thought they were secure for the rest of life and ended up with nothing. And we as entrepreneurs, we don’t have to worry about what those big companies do because it’s our mental energy, physical energy, emotional, spiritual, and financial energy.

We are building our own empire. And we don’t have to think that somebody else could give us security. Security comes from within yourself. That’s exactly right. As you know, I’m now got both feet in the franchising arena. And in that arena, there’s never been a better time in history for franchising because that’s exactly what’s happening. You have people who’ve been in the corporate world for 10, 12, 15 years and they’re just now tired of it because they know there, one, there is no security there. And two is they, you know, they’ve been working on it for somebody else and for somebody else’s bottom line for years and now it’s time to do something for themselves. And I totally believe in franchising because what you’ve done is you’ve created all the systems. You’ve worked out all the bugs.

Exactly. And you supply someone with a recipe, a roadmap, you know, the whole thing of, this is how you do everything. This is every problem or that you’re going, pretty much every problem you will, you know, deal with and this is how you deal with it.

Part 6

No, absolutely. And anyone on the call can become a millionaire from running a single martial arts school. Absolutely. Or then a chain of martial arts schools that they desire. And oftentimes don’t realize that. There has been such a poverty mentality in our industry. And to most small business owners. I mean, it’s not just martial artists, but such a poverty mentality that oftentimes people even realize how easy that is. Well, and that’s the other thing I wanted to do is I really wanted to use everybody wants to be part of something that’s bigger than themselves. To be part of the millionaire mindset program. You’re part of a very exclusive club. You’re part of people who fly with the eagle. We think alike. But, you know, the experience has been is that the guys who will, as you mentioned several times, who will follow the system, who will drop preconceived notions and just jump in with both feet. It’s been, and I don’t know how many it is, but it’s a bunch of them have started out in the 12 to $17,000 range and are now all in the 45 to 55,000 a month range. And we’ve got several who started out in the 35 or, and these are for single locations, who started out in the 35 or $40,000 range, are now in the 80 to

$100,000 range. And with the Marshall, our school, unlike many businesses, I mean, we don’t have a cost to save. We increased the marketing budget a little bit. We may add an employee here and there. But in general, a lot of these schools are running as much as 50% net. So the, you know, the bottom line difference is just dramatic. You know, you’re running a business with maybe a couple thousand a month net. You know, you haven’t doubled your income. You’ve added 10,000. So, you know, what’s even more important, I think, is an awful lot of schools are sitting out,

Banging their head against the wall and are frustrated with the results. And all of a sudden they plug into this deal. And not only does their income improve, but there is now they’re able to manage their time better. They’re not sitting around frustrated. They may be working hard, but they’re working, you know, the emotional comp.

When you think of these schools are, that they’re doing so well, are they in big city areas and rich suburbs or what kind of this kind of result?

You know, it’s all across the board. I mean, and then what you just said is the misperception. You can do that if you’re in Manningham. I mean, we’ve got, you know, one of my most successful coaching clients in the last six months is in Terre Haute, Indiana. That’s Scott Manning. And we got another one who’s out in suburban Illinois and out in the six. So, board, anywhere from two communities with 25,000, 30,000 people. And in almost all cases, they underestimate what they can expect from their student body and also underestimate, you know, just what kind of volume they can get into the school once they get the marketing apparatus in place. You know, one of the things I’m always fascinated is that small business owners often underestimate how much money is in the world. Yeah. And how much available there for your plucking. If you just have the mindset, you want it and that you’re, you know, you’ll do what it takes to get it. But there is no lack of money. I mean, there’s, I know, I don’t know about you, but every restaurant in the area where I live in Virginia Beach, Virginia, regardless of the time of the year, there’s a waiting line.

[04:13] Oh, absolutely. And the more expensive restaurant, the longer the line. And this keeper who’s 23 years old, who’s from a foreign country, she’s driving a Jaguar. I mean, you know, I really got, I mean, when she pulled up in my driveway a few weeks ago in this Jaguar, it finally hit me how much money is in the world. Oh, absolutely. I just did a little mini boot cannon. I’ve been going down there for years. You mentioned it when you were interviewing Dan in Renegade Millionaire. Good to go to places where you see how much money there is out there. You go to Lauderdale and I was having dinner with a friend of mine who was trying to buy a $1.9 million dollar yacht. And small, a small one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn’t in this case, it was a $10 million dollar yacht that was seized and now was at auction. So he was trying to pay $2 million for $9 million boat. And but you go down there and everywhere you look, you know, you sit on the intercoastal. And there aren’t one of those boats that are cost less than a quarter million. And a whole bunch of them are upwards into the tens of millions. And there’s just an incredible amount of wealth in the United States. And it’s amazing to me, people who

Think, well, if I could just get my income to 40,000 a year, I’d be tickled to death. And they miss the fact that there’s people, you know, making 400 and people making 4 million who aren’t necessarily working more hours, they just have associated with other people know what the knowledge is behind that and are at that level, and can then help them make the transition. And the other thing is giving yourself as a small business owner permission to be wealthy permission to earn the top dollar, that there’s, we have all kinds of programming in our heads, from childhood and schools and churches and all kinds of different places that, you know, working hard is how you get ahead. And everybody’s an entrepreneur has to work hard. But the truth is, like years ago, when I first went to Dan, the first thing he said to me was you need to double your the price of your business. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I can’t do that. And I was so insecure about Oh, if I, you know, if I double my price, oh, you know, business will fall apart, well, business doubled, because people have some weird psychological thing that the more things cost, the better they are. Yeah, yeah. The I was at my little seminar

In influence science and practice. The very first story and it is about the gift shop owner, she goes on vacation and tells the mistake is made. And instead of marketing in half, they double the price. And by the time the business owner gets back there, in fact sold out. But and if you’re cheap, people, you know, people don’t want cheap people want the highest quality thing that they can afford. Absolutely. You know, I mean, you and I don’t want the cheapest martial arts school, we want the one that’s going to provide the highest quality service and then figure out if it into the budget. And everybody wants to feel special. In a sense, as a business owner, our real job is that we’re sales people. First person you have to really sell is yourself. You have to sell you have to sell yourself on the fact that if you need to spend a certain amount of your day educating yourself a certain amount of your day marketing a certain amount of your day, you know, doing different things, but you’ve got to sell yourself on that you’re worth it. And that the service that you are offering is worth it. And you will always lose one or two because of price. But when you when you’re the most exclusive, the

[08:16] Best where you know, people are fighting to get into where you are. That’s when you get into serious money. We have people on the call who have been hesitant about not seeing the light on why being plugged into a coaching program and being plugged into a process like obviously the one that helps them make a decision.

Part 7

Well, I actually say a lot, so I’ll just sort of give me a minute or so. But I always say to people, I want you to imagine what your life would look like in the future if you make just some minor changes. For example, what would your life look like if you identified and learned to build on your strengths, talents, and experience?

What would your life look like if you identified your own personal blind spots and obstacles and had ways to overcome them?

And what would your life look like if you developed better time management skills and better effective and usable stress management skills?

And what would your income look like if you started developing problem solving and decision making abilities that you could tap into your potential and improve performance?

That you could overcome your own anxieties and fears about your future?

And here’s an important one. What would your life look like and your income look like if you could create habits that improved your own productivity?

That you could successfully bring closure and completion to existing projects?

What would your life look like if you implemented new projects and created action plans?

What would your life look like if you learned to adapt and capitalize and change just the change of the world to your own advantage?

And that you could create balance and harmony between your personal and professional life. So with those questions, what would your life look like when all those things are answered when you have a successful coach helping you?

Because what your coach does is assist you in using your potential, your talents, and your abilities. They create systems for you so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You don’t have to think, well, how do I solve this problem?

Because time in our world today is the most precious commodity that we have as business owners. And all I want is people to bring me solutions. So if anybody is on the fence, some of the questions that I just asked you, and you could view into the future, so you could see yourself as more effective and efficient, that you used your talents and abilities in ways that made you more money, that your life was balanced, that’s easier and easier, and you had less worry, and you weren’t fretting about things, and that you weren’t misstepping, meaning going in the wrong direction, using your mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, or financial resources in an ineffective way. And I did want to ask you, what is the difference between what you do and what otherwise other available martial arts schools do?

Because I think sometimes when people are trying to make a difference, should I work with this person or this other person, they don’t know the differences. Yeah. And there’s been a wave of people trying to work with martial arts schools in the last couple of years, and I guess I’d have to, without being critical, categorize them into a couple of different categories. Money is kind of quick hit sales formulas, so that you have people who are good at closing a sale, sucking cash out of a prospect pretty quickly, but aren’t really looking to build a solid impact on the community and a solid long term career. And as you know, Lee, I mean, anybody can go out and make a lot of money for 60, 80, 90 days, but if you’re going to have, especially in a smaller community, but in any community, if you’re going to be there 22, 23, 25, 30 years later, you know, in your profession, if you were just sucking up every dime and not providing the service, you know, you would have been found out by all the industry leaders by now.

Oh, definitely. And a martial arts school is the same way. It’s easy to make a lot of money for a few months, and a lot more important, in my view, to be a pillar of the community for 20 years ends. And so I think a lot of the training in the martial arts community right now, unfortunately, has centered on less suckers or whether even we’re going to be financially viable long term. So there’s a lot of- You know, reputation is one of the most important things of our financial health. Exactly. And, you know, I really appreciate you saying that because I have turned down clients, I have turned down speaking presentations, I’ve turned down things that I knew that wasn’t my best. I mean, I could have done it and gone in and got the money, but it wasn’t- I knew that there were other people who did that better than me, and I would rather turn something down and say, no, I, you know, there’s someone else who can do that.

[05:03] And so I know that my reputation is always pristine. And I’m so concerned with that with not only with what I’m doing with the coaching, but with each of our schools, is to make sure that 20 years from now, we’re going to be highly regarded in the community. And frankly, well, what our mission is, is to create a relationship with a family who’s going to be with us in 10 years. Right. Most of the instructors now, they started when they were 7 and they’re 25 years old now and they’ve been with us for whatever that is, a long time, makes me feel old. But that’s really the mission of what we want to do. And honestly, all businesses should be like that. If you’re a realtor, you should be now selling to the, you know, the first sale, you should be selling to their grandkids, right?

Exactly. And if you’re in car sales, you should be selling to all their friends. And unfortunately, when you take- and I mean this in the worst sense of the life, you take a look like and not the long because once people figure you out, you now have to go to a different place. And you know, the habit of many people is in a social conversation, oftentimes they enjoy telling you the horror stories. And you know, someone will tell a horror story about a bad service or a bad experience 10 or 15 times. But the word of mouth advertising for good stuff is 10 times better or 100 times better than any ads that you can buy in a newspaper. Oh, absolutely. And in the same case, it doesn’t matter how good your copywriting skill is. Create the most perfectly crafted ad that the word of mouth and the community about you is the same way.

It’s a small amount of advertising expertise. I think one of the important things for me to screen to bring somebody into the coaching program, they’re now there to learn marketing and learn effective integrity-based selling. But they’re also there to provide the service along the strong impacts for the community and also create a lifestyle for themselves. They’re $30,000 a month in the revenue for a couple of months. Then they go buy a new Corvette and buy a new condo and then they run out of money and it’s not sustainable because it’s just less than. Well, I always tell entrepreneurs that when you start making money, certainly don’t be running out buying that Corvette and don’t get in debt. Save for a rainy day, have money. The reason you want to have money in the bank is it gives you confidence.

[08:36] If something goes wrong, for instance in my business when 9-11 happened, the banking business pretty much folded for a short time. But because I had always been a saver and because I have many eggs and many baskets and I had ways of earning a living, I was fine. But a lot of speakers went out of business. So it’s very important that as an entrepreneur, you’re not only saving for a rainy day, but you’re also saving to reinvest in your own company. One is you start recognizing opportunities around you. And then if you have the integrity and the desire that when the opportunities pop up, you have the… Exactly. For instance, correct me if I’m wrong, wouldn’t one of the goals for your folks being is to owning your own building?

It can either be now, I have a number of my coaching clients who are going to now move with me to the ongoing years, owning their own property.

Part 8

And it’s, you know, what I call a wise entrepreneur. You don’t just go, you know, spend all your profits. No. You actually should take most, you should take at least a percentage of those profits to always reinvest in your own success. Not already, but the most important way you can reinvest in yourself is by expanding your mind. Exactly. It was a Ben Franklin. Exactly. You know what I did. Your mind will fill the purse. I had a background of very humble beginnings. And I just made a decision that, you know, I could continue to live like that or I could break the chain of pain, so to speak, and I could decide that if I wanted to do something, nothing and no one could stop me from being it but myself. And most entrepreneurs biggest enemy is their own mind because it’s all the caliber of information that goes into your mind.

On an average day, there’s between three and four thousand worth of subliminal messages that happen to you when you listen to the news or you read the newspaper or you watch television. Just everything is really designed to make you feel inferior. So you will, you know, buy the teeth whitener and stuff like that. And as an entrepreneur, you, on your way to work, on your way home, you always should be listening to educational materials. You should be, you know, carving out a certain amount of time every day, reading information that is pertinent to your success. Somebody who doesn’t do that will always lack in their bank accounts because of the mind is the empire builder. What is it?

Well, business said if you can dream it, you can have it. That’s right. And I think it’s one of the great things about him. He’s had such great success. He understands that there is a process and then he can give you references and ways to see that success because once you can see it appears easy. It’s just when you don’t know how the picture, you know, it’s all over the table, it looks hard, but you can put that puzzle together. And the truth is, at least I think success is really not that hard. I mean, I know a lot of people who’ve become very successful because they follow systems and they follow the rules of success. You know, Dwayne Bremen, he asked him, we said, well, why have you had such success?

At his all-time record, results before he joined was $19,000. At that point, he thought he was deeply in debt and had all kinds of financial problems. In the meantime, he’s paid off all of his debt. Nice to livestock for himself, obviously. And he said, I thought he said the impact was one of several things. One is having somebody who had been there, done that, tell him that he can do it because now it was believable for him that he could just go do it. Number two, it was having a system in place that he didn’t have to, you know, go read a marketing book off the shelf and now try to figure out how to apply it to a karate school. And he said, number three is, if he didn’t do it and everybody else in the group was doing it, he was going to feel like an idiot, so he figured he might as well catch up.

And I thought that last point was pretty interesting because now, I know I feel this way many times when I’m hanging around Dan’s group, is you’ve got a whole bunch of other people and you’re looking at them saying, he’s no smarter than I am. And if they’re making a million a year, you go, well, why aren’t I?

[04:12] And it’s really hard to externalize failure in that kind of environment. I know you’re hammered on your time and I’ve got to go try to get a new location open in Parker, Colorado. But anything to wrap up on, Lee?

We’re about out of time. Well, I guess the thing I would wrap up with is just to remind everybody that, you know, life is 1,440 minutes of every single day. And that this simple act of the skill of awareness of how am I using my resources, my time, who do I talk to, what am I allowing in my brain?

Because that’s influencing me. In fact, the biggest question you can always ask yourself, who and what are influencing me?

And the people, the good influences, you just need to crank that up a lot more. The bad influences, you need to just start eliminating out of your life. And once you do that, once you really get very clear, and I may say this, you have to get selfish in the sense of that if you do not take care of yourself, you will not have the resources and abilities to take care of other people. And the truth about self-employed people is we have to say no to a lot of things, because people will stretch us and pull us. And I always have to stay on focus. So if somebody requests something from me that, you know, I know is going to, you know, not take care of my needs first, my business needs first, my family’s needs first, I have to be willing to say no.

I can say no with love and kindness. But I have to create boundaries of what is the right thing for myself, because I know this is true for you too, Stephen, if we accepted every invitation that came to us, we would have no time for our own business. That’s exactly right. You know, something you said a minute ago where you remind me of my favorite Tom Hoffman’s quote, which is, never take advice from somebody more screwed up than you are. That’s the never listen to the idiot. Exactly. They’re doing, they got a job. God bless them. And the, you know, the other thing that goes exactly with what you said is, is everyone has to at some point take a leap of faith and just do what’s going to be best for them to grow their own environment and their business and their lifestyle.

And if I may say this before you go, I have learned this pretty much the hard way. You never regret your mistakes in life. You always regret missed opportunities. And so the whole thing about being an entrepreneur and a successful business person, because there’s a lot of unsuccessful business people out there, the successful business person is there, it has real clarity about what they need to do and clarity about where to get information and clarity about who to listen to and how to use their time and how to use their resources. And you don’t let people pull you off your own inner knowing, because we all have a lot of intuition. And when I’m trying to make a decision about something, I just, I listen to my gut, because it feels right, I know to do it.

If it feels wrong to me, then I don’t make, I don’t go forward. And I, you know, one of the great things about hanging around people like Dan Kennedy, I’ve really learned to not pay attention to the money, but to pay attention to what the long-term benefit is going to be for me, because I invest in a project or I invest in a program or invest in something. Oh, absolutely. And the outcome will probably be worth millions of dollars to me. So it just is a matter of getting that in perspective. Yes, and in the long run, you know, what something costs really doesn’t mean as much as, what is the benefits that I can reap from that investment?

[08:37] Because some people are what are penny-wise and pound-foolish. Yeah. They save their pennies too much, but then they don’t really invest in the things that would really actually make them wealthy. They invest in things that they see as a short-term. As a very successful business owner, you always have to be looking at the long-term. And so if I go to a seminar or if I do anything, buy a book, buy a CD program, invest in any kind of educational program, I’m looking for little gems of information because that changes my reference point to my brain, which makes me think bigger. And therefore, once you think bigger, you automatically attract bigger. If you think you’re going to be a millionaire, we are self-fulfilling prophecies. So you have to associate yourself and integrate yourself with the whole process of, I’m a millionaire now, not I will become one.

Because as a self-fulfilling prophecy, we automatically go towards those things that will help us become successful. Yeah, and we have to start associating with and in all ways acting as if we’re in that point that we’re targeting. Exactly. So for anybody who’s actually not a millionaire right now, you need to be associating with yourself and put yourself in an environment that will not only assist you to be there, but that makes you feel that way now. Because that’s really the secret, it’s the feeling. Because by the way, just so you know this, it’s physics again. We’re all made of electricity. And so when you feel good, you have a certain electrical charge. And when you feel bad, you have electrical charge. And we attract what we feel. And I know that’s physics, but that’s how success works.

So you associate yourself with successful people. You feel successful. You attract more success. What’s the old saying?

The rich get richer? Oh, absolutely. Poor get poor.

Part 9

Yeah, and that has nothing to do except with expectation and with the environment they surround themselves with. Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Well, thank you, Lee. I hope that you get the hatches battened down so you don’t end up with a hurricane, and I hope that Denver breaks out of the minus seven degree coles that we’re having, and we’ll both be happy. Well, what’s the old saying, if we all put our problems on the table, we’d all walk back with our own problem?

That’s exactly right. Well, as you and I were talking about yesterday, that’s just a normal course of life, so it doesn’t make much difference. You just got to accomplish all your goals regardless of anything else going on around you. Right, and before we leave, we will just end with that thought. You know, the truth is, no matter how successful you are, no matter where you live, no matter how rich you are, how intelligent you are, life is always throwing you curve balls. Oh, yeah. The whole secret is that you are in a mental state of mind that you can deal with it, and it’s like dealing with chaos, and if you have enough tools and strategies that no matter what life throws at you just deal with it and move on. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we all have the pipes break, the car breaks down, the fight with the spouse, the weather.

Everybody has that for it, you and me. We all have the same things. It just doesn’t make any difference in the scheme of things if you’re focused properly. And if you’re in the right state of mind, it just seems just like part of life. You don’t even let it bother you that much. You almost think it’s funny after a while because it’s so many things go wrong, but somehow you always end up dealing with it, and you learn things from every experience that you have that gives you a stronger reference point and enables you to deal with things in the future with more ease. So, listen, I appreciate the time with you and all you folks, and thank you.