Eric Edmeades: How to achieve personal and professional freedom

your happiness is an internally created thing and is not controlled by the external world live each day without all the fear there are no problems there are only opportunities I think success is most easily measured by the number of days that you're truly happy my normal advice like when I meet somebody who's thinking of starting their first company as I tell them not to if I take that mistake out then I don't move to Northern California if I don't move to Northern California I don't become friends with jet homes mm-hm if I don't become friends with chat homes I don't end up working with Tony also I became very good friends with John and Bonnie gray John gray wrote the Mars Venus books because of my friendship with John Gray I got invited to join an organization with him and Jack Canfield and others that has connected me the people around the world so if I take out that one mistake I take out all this other stuff too [Music] I feel the biggest pain when I see people who cannot find their place under the Sun unmotivated sad and desperate people business owners entrepreneurs suffering from burnout stress and boredom and no time for their family my biggest goal is to help them realize that this world provides enough opportunities for everybody I manage to help thousands of people but I strongly believe that we can do so much more if we unite our knowledge and skills and this is the reason I started doing interviews with the best visionaries and world changers their inspiring personal and success stories are a proof that everything is possible all you have to do is listen and learn together we can change our lives and the future of this world hello my friends from warrior family today I have a special guest eric admits he is a serial entrepreneur international business speaker author husband father and kitesurfer his philosophy is that life is very important and he is dedicated to working with entrepreneurs like you business owners to help them achieve their full potential and create truly exceptional lives for themselves their families and employees so welcome Eric to my show thanks for having me I am so happy to have you here you flew all the way from Dominican Republic this is where you live right now I know I actually it was complicated it was in Norway and then I flew to the United States for some meetings and then I flew to Ottawa Canada then I flew to New York then I flew here it was a very quick week oh my god so this is the first time for you and I no no no Italian no we've been running workshops I've maybe run 12 events in Thailand over the last for years okay so you like Europe I do I do I mean most of the most of the speaking consulting in workshops that I've done over the last five years have been in northern Europe Scandinavia the Baltics so how you got into this market do you know just by accident um when I made the decision to to get really involved in business speaking I was invited to do some events here and the first events went so well that I just kept getting invited to come back and you know it's funny my clients will often say to me I'm ready for international expansion and I always say well why have you like completely saturated your own market you know sometimes like somebody has a business say in England and they just so desperately want to be doing business other places I'm like well what if you grew your business to full potential in England and then expand and so that's what happened to me in Europe is my first events were in Scandinavia and I just kept getting invited to be there so why spread myself out and try and expand into South Africa Australia Canada the US when I'm doing very well in that market now that we've done so well in that market now it's you know it now it makes sense for us to start looking at other countries yeah so I'm looking forward to attend one of your business freedom academies seminar so how do I call it if seminar workshop camp so it's a five-day event yes and you teach business owners and entrepreneurs there how to create a business that run itself also that they are not present every day so I think that when we start a business why we start a business just to get rid of the job or to create more personal freedom and then yeah what we do then we build a personal prison around our self that's about right yeah most business owners we are maybe not free from the business to do whatever we want so how what is your number one advice for somebody that is getting in the business right now with the big hope like I want to have more freedom well more time for family my normal advice like when I meet somebody who's thinking of starting their first company as I tell them not to I say don't do it it's too hard it's too scary it's too difficult and and and I and I'm serious and but the thing is is that you know if somebody will not do it because I said don't do it yeah they shouldn't be doing it right like it is gonna take a lot of hard work it is gonna take commitment and so I've done seminars all over the world and somebody says well I'm thinking of starting a business and I said don't and and and they're like what do you mean and and what I'm trying to it's a little bit of a joke but I'm saying if my advice don't is enough to scare them away then they don't have what it takes okay you see okay so easing them yeah like I'll tell you I was in Bali many in 2004 and there was a very big earthquake in jugg Jakarta and I wanted to go and help so I I got a car and our truck and I filled it with food and water and medical supplies and then I phoned a friend of mine to get advice and and the reason I phoned him is that he was a very he did two tours of duty in an act of war he understood those dangerous situations and now he was doing relief work and I called him and I said have you heard about the earthquake he said yes and I said I'm going over to help do you have any advice he says don't go and I said why not because this is dangerous it's dangerous to go mm-hm and and then I said well I'm going there's nothing you can say I'm going you go go he goes okay now I'll give you the advice all right like okay and and I think that entrepreneurship is tough and you need a thick skin and and very often what happens is people are so optimistic hmm let me think about it what 80% of businesses fail before they get to the fifth year so you have to be a bit crazy optimistic to start a business and so if I can say to you don't do it and then you and that scares you you have no business doing it you know it's like and and so now I joke I say don't do it and then they go I'm gonna do it no matter what well now I can give them advice okay and and then the advice I have is be clear about the end result you know and I don't mean they have to know every detail of the end result but here's an example we talked about two different kinds of business freedom one is where you own a stand-alone business okay the business operates smoothly it grows it generates a nice profit and you don't have to be there at all a simple example might be that somebody goes and buys a dry cleaner and the dry cleaners you know not doing very well but with a little bit of marketing help a little bit of consulting they buy it and they turn it into a profitable enterprise but they don't know anything about dry-cleaning they're not there managing the store they own the dry cleaner and that's it they look at the financials and they own the business that's what we call type 1 business freedom when you own a company that is an asset an asset grows and it manages itself type to business freedom is when somebody creates an entrepreneurial venture or a business around their own passion this would be like a doctor or dentist or a consultant or a coach or a psychotherapist or somebody who is like an artist who is really wanting to do the work and in their case we say well that's a dangerous trap because when you start that kind of a company you so love doing the work that you sometimes won't work on the business and build a robust business so now god forbid something happens to you you know something happens to you what well what's gonna happen to your family you know the business is if you go if something happens to the owner then the business goes out of business what happens to the family and so type to business freedom is where somebody builds a company that allows them to work on their passion most of the time but doesn't require them to mm-hmm and that's a very important distinction somebody should be able to take a year off and not worry about their business and then they have an asset if they can take a year off and not worry about their business it's you know that's great if there's a family emergency or there's a great vacation or they've decided they want to educate their children for a year whatever the case may be the business is gonna keep paying them okay so what are some fundamentals that you have to have in place to be able to do that well obviously you need the right people yeah you know that's going to be yeah you've got a hire and train and support and nurture and develop the right people and I think that's massively important you also have to have really good business systems and procedures and templates so that your business is producing consistent results from the first day I started my first company I remember I still remember doing it to this day it's 20 years ago or something but I received my first purchase order first one and my thought was if I was a big company how would I respond to this well I thought if I was a big company then they would get an order confirmation this is back in the days of fax machines right but they would get an order confirmation on the fax machine that says it's a template and it says we've received your order these these are the products that you've ordered this is the address you've asked us to ship it to please confirm that these details are correct if there are any problems give us a call otherwise you can expect your shipment to arrive on you know March mean you know and and I created this really nice template with the logo and nicely designed and then I sent it off to the client and so when they received it I look like a big company but the other thing is I then saved that document in a folder called templates and so the next time when a purchase order came in I just grabbed that original document changed the details inside send it off saves me a huge amount of work makes me look very professional for my clients but also it means that when I hire somebody half the work is done for them so it makes it easier trained him so hiring systemising the business what does the biggest thing of all is get out of the way the biggest biggest obstacle the biggest obstacle for business freedom is the entrepreneur's mind and and what I mean by that is that you know look a good example is when I started my first company it was in England and and I had I owned that company for just about nine years and every single year that I own that company I took 12 to 14 weeks of vacation 12 to 14 weeks and my friend said you're crazy you're gonna lose your company if you're always away like that really and my answer was different my answer was first of all I don't want to be a business owner if it doesn't give me this kind of freedom I I don't I don't want to take all the risks of being a business owner if I'm not gonna have this kind of freedom and second my answer was is that when I'm away and by the way when I go away I go away a little differently than most people I don't just go to some resort somewhere I might be you know riding on horseback through the Okavango Delta in Botswana nowhere near a phone right so that means the company can't even reach me I might be climbing Kilimanjaro I do crazy adventure stuff so when I go away like that I'm breaking two addictions I'm breaking my addiction to my business because they'll control it yeah my desire to control it my addiction for feedback my I'm breaking my emotional addictions to my business but another addiction that I'm breaking is my business's addiction to me mm-hmm right so what happens if I'm in the office right is is an employee how our manager they have a problem yeah well then they're gonna want to bring the problem to me because why not I you know it was there right but if I'm not there they have to solve the problem and you know what sometimes they get it wrong and that cost me money or it's painful but that's how they develop experience and if I don't ever give them the opportunity to develop experience how am I ever gonna have freedom that's right but I think that the biggest problem we have it's hiring good talent how did you hire in the past and how do you hire right now do you have some hiring process in the past we use some tools when you hire people to find out if you are a good fit what do you do the first thing is I think I pay a lot of attention to where I'm hiring from so for example when I was hiring salespeople for my company um you know this is a little silly but I would hardly ever hire a salesperson who was unemployed if I run an ad I'm getting all these unemployed salespeople well if they're unemployed and their sales person that makes me wonder how good a salesperson there are now I know that's not totally fair because sometimes circumstances change but the fact is sales people should be unemployed the least amount of time because they should be good at selling themselves and so very rarely would I hire a sales person who is unemployed I would go out into the world and find sales people that I really respected that I like that I thought did a great job and then I would recruit them so for a good example in in the UK we had a chain called I think it was Office Depot and so I would when I was getting ready 20 did sales people I would go shopping I'd walk out the office door my assistant would say where are you going I'd say shopping and she goes what are you shopping for I would say a printer and a salesperson well so I would go to the store I would find out all about the printers and then I would meet the salesperson and I would if I found out I liked him or her if I found out that they were committed that I found out that they were honest if I doubt that they were good at what they were doing then I would begin the recruiting process look they're working in retail they're earning minimum Ani they're working terrible hours I have a professional office they're gonna earn five times as much money they're gonna work nice hours it's not gonna be difficult to recruit them and my belief is it's way better to hire for attitude and take somebody who I know has a great attitude because I've been working with them and then teach them the technical knowledge they need to have I'm happy to do that and that always worked better than when I hired salespeople from inside the industry that already had the technical knowledge sometimes I would go meet a salesperson and a me and he or she had all the great technical knowledge and I think they'd be fantastic I hire them turns out that they have all these bad habits from the industry go hire young aggressive new positive energy sure they don't know anything about our stuff but they but they understand technology because I've hired them from a retail company than selling electronics they have a good attitude good hire and that worked for me really really well the other thing that's really important is the way interviewing is done in our business freedom Academy we teach some interviewing techniques that are designed to prevent one of the biggest mistakes of business I think and that mistake is hiring nice ineffective people you know we sit and have an interview and how does the average interview work if I'm interviewing you you sit down you're feeling nervous so I'm not even meeting you I'm meeting the nervous you I don't want to meet the nervous you I want to meet the relaxed you because they relaxed you is the one that I want my office right so immediately the interview is wrong now I'm interviewing the nervous you and what do I do I ask you a bunch of questions that you were expecting right like you know what I'm gonna have us come in ask why did you leave your last job training so there yeah exactly that you that when they go for their interview they go to Google and say what kind of questions are they gonna ask me so and then they go practice in the bathroom right so that means you're first of all interviewing the nervous version and secondly you're you're interviewing an actor because they're just practicing lines so my job my feeling is is that when somebody's coming in for the interview your first job is to make them feel good your first job is to make them feel relaxed it's to let their real personality come out so that means even from the point of the initial reception if you have a receptionist your receptionist is greeting that person and saying I'm so glad you're here can I make you a tea or coffee or would you like a glass of water we've been looking forward to your interview so this puts them at ease they're like wow you're excited to meet me they relax a little bit now you're gonna meet the real version of them not this stressed-out one and then one of the things that we suggest is that you you have a nice conversation and you ask questions that they're not expecting like like here's a silly one so the example I was used yeah I asked them where they'd like to go for their favorite vacation I mean you're gonna learn that they're not used to this and if they go oh my favorite vacation I'd love to go camping with my family I'd love to sit around the fire and go fishing and blah blah blah you're you're learning something about them on the other hand if they say oh my favorite vacation Las Vegas oh my love going to Las yes last time I went to Las Vegas I woke up in Bangkok yeah he though you've learned something clearly I'm exaggerating but the fact is is that asking you know asking questions like that that they're not expecting really will help you to learn who they are there's more steps that we cover in the Academy but I'll give you one more okay give them a chance to sell themselves you know mostly these days what an interview is is look at the resume look at the CV see if you like the details in it bring them in for the interview find out if you like them and maybe make them do some kind of test and then that's that no again let's say I'm hiring a salesperson I'm gonna have a nice interview with them I'm gonna ask them question I'm gonna help them relax and there's gonna come and point the interview where I'm gonna say wow thank you so much for coming in for this interview it's really been a nice it's nice been meeting you and and I think you maybe could fit in here with our team the trouble is we have a very competitive environment here and I'm just not picking up that competitive spirit from you how do you feel about that and so what I've done is I've rejected him softly or I've rejected or softly and then I'm opening the door for them to come back oh no well I'm very competitive I'll definitely work hard and and you can do that rejection on any trait that you want them to have so if you're interviewing accountant you're interviewing the accountant relax them ask them a bunch of questions then hey listen I've really enjoyed our interview I think maybe you could fit in on our team the challenges that our company is very precise we like all of our accounts to be exactly on time and frankly like we like to be up-to-date on all the latest tax laws like really like like we want to be up to date with everything and I'm just not getting that detail-oriented attitude from you well and then you're gonna get one of three reactions after the rejection the one I'm not kidding you I've had this they go oh yeah okay great up to that point maybe you were gonna hire them now you're not gonna hire them and you're gonna save yourself three months of salary plenty and a lawsuit maybe right on the other hand here's another reaction they might have they might get angry mm-hmm they might get angry and have some kind of meltdown or temper tantrum thank God you found out today that they were a nutbag they were gonna fight with them yeah otherwise you're gonna have a lawsuit and they're gonna disrupt your company but the reaction you want is where they go well I'm not sure why you're feeling that way maybe it's because in this interview I'm a little bit relaxed but the fact is I'm very competitive or I'm extremely detail-oriented and you know absolutely and have them fight for the position have them commit to it and then you're gonna achieve two things one you're gonna find out a lot more about them and second one is you're gonna get them to verbally commit to the values that you're hiring for mmm this is so powerful it really is I never did this and I will do it next time for sure we have a really nice surprise what would you say to some sales people like I own insurance agents and good salespeople so how would you approach it I'm like just like I just described bring them in for the interview relax them right now you know like for example if you show up at the interview and you're wearing a perfect suit and the office is perfect and they come in perfect and everything is perfect then they're feeling tense absolutely they're nervous it's their first interview they're they're nervous what you want to do the first step is have a whole procedure for making them relax making them relaxed making them feel wanted making them feel appreciated making them feel like you're grateful that they are there because then they're gonna slip into their own personality and that's how you're really gonna meet them so once you've done that then you're asking them the different questions and then at some point you just you just say listen I'm so glad you came in for the interview but here at the agency we are it's a pretty high-pressure situation you know we expect a lot from our people they they don't they don't you know our office opens at 9:00 people don't show up here at 9:00 they show up at 8:30 they hang up their coat they do their little conversation and the in the at the coffee machine and then by nine o'clock they're sitting down and they're working it's a very you know and I'm just not getting that kind of energy from you how do you feel about that oh no they would say oh I'm totally committed I work really hard I'll show up early you see you're getting them to commit to the standard that you want how would you call that like fighting for the position your make rejection question yeah you're rejecting them and you're making them fight for the position and you need to especially with salespeople look if you reject him if you reject her and you say I just don't think you have what it takes and they go okay okay well then I think you probably shouldn't hire them yeah of the three sales calls or appointments they're out of this you're out anyway and you've cost money and time and effort in training them so save yourself all that time give them the rejection in the interview let them earn the right let them earn the job let them convince you if they can't sell themselves to you how are they going to sell your insurance to somebody else I agree so business freedom Academy is it only for traditional types of businesses owners or is it also for speakers coaches healers teachers authors it's it's for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit at the end of the day if somebody who has an entrepreneurial spirit that wants to go out and create value free people in the world has the capacity to create a business that will let them flourish that will let them be themselves I really believe that entrepreneurship is the greatest expression of personal freedom as long as it's practiced correctly otherwise like you said it's just a personal jail yeah how long you are into speaking in business right now how many years maybe five years I mean I've been speaking longer okay um like I've spoken for work sometimes and and then after I sold my first company in I don't know whatever it was 2000 six I suppose I I did about two years of speaking around the world but just for fun I wasn't running a business I was just traveling I sort of semi-retired and was just traveling around the world speaking and then about five six years ago I was invited to teach business and marketing at Anthony Robbins business mastery programs and I did that for about a year and a half and I loved it so much that I and yeah I just may find about you know that's kind of a funny story Tony and I had a mutual friend named Chet Holmes and books yeah that's right and Chad was a great guy and he was a very good friend of mine and the funny side of it is that Chet was not he was not a very good judge of whether somebody was a good speaker so if he saw somebody up on the stage and there was an audience he thought they're a great speaker so he had a few times recommended people to tony that didn't do so very well and so then he recommended and recommended me to Tony and Tony's like no because nice enough like I have you a bed floor seven 3-up 3-down no and then so I was never gonna get the invitation but then sadly Chet passed away and he was scheduled he had been sick for some time and it looked like he was recovering and as I understand it he was then scheduled to speak at this event in in Fiji business mastery and in Fiji and but of course you know he passed away that made it difficult for him to be there and so then I got this phone call you know they would like you to come out and teach and the truth is I actually thought it was a joke you know I had yeah I hadn't been doing any speaking for three years so why would they call me I didn't why would don't even know who I was you know I I was out of the blue and so the guy who said it he goes no no Tony really wants you to come he really wants you to come and I was like no no I know what's going on here I'm thinking what's happened is is that when when Chet passed away it left so little time that you can't find anybody you've called everybody and nobody can go and now you're calling me is your last chance yeah and if I say yes you're gonna go beg Tony to let me do it because Tony doesn't want me and and and I said that's what's really going on and he was just quiet on the phone and he goes yeah but I know I can convince him and so I said I'll tell you in one hour I said I'll tell you in one hour and I put the phone down and I stopped and I breathed and I went to my wife and I said wow this is a big opportunity what do you think she goes cold I said nope 1 hour and 59 minutes she made me phone and I called and I said yes I'll do it and 11 days later I was on a plane flying to Fiji and I thought I knew that it was one of those moments that if I did it right it could be big it wasn't just one thing in fact here's a good example as we were flying into Fiji I thought to myself you know if I really do this well and this is a this is a thought I've been having for like a week if I do this really well maybe they'll call me again you know if I do it well but then as the plane was landing in Fiji I thought something different I don't want to just get on the list I want to become the list in other words if I don't just do really well but if I am outstanding mm-hmm then maybe I become the preferred speaker not just the backup speaker and when I changed my goal it changed my energy and it changed the presentation that I was going to do and I ended up taking some risks with the presentation but I did such a good presentation that Toni stayed for the entire presentation three and a half hours and half in Chinese right so that was quite something and then we had lunch he him in my wife Elise and say Jimmy then four of us had lunch and then he asked me if I would do business mastery for the next year and it was a very big turning point as a speaker well so what what would you change if you had to start all over again with speaking business nothing nothing I I don't really live like that you know I I've made some really big mistakes but the way I look at it as a speaker as a business owner I've made mistakes but the way I look at it is that if you make a mistake in your first year as a speaker it costs you something something yeah if you make that same mistake 10 years later it costs you a lot more and so I look at it and I think I you know if if if I changed anything I would change everything and I I'm not interested in that I don't have a sense of regret I you know I'll give you a good example I bought a movie studio in California one day and it was a big mistake the guys who sold it to me one of them was like a convicted felon it turned out the guy was facing at one point I almost 500 years in prison for investment fraud and there are something similar to that and and I and I only found that out after I bought the company I lost huge amounts of money I lost huge amounts of time but if I try and go back and take that mistake out let me tell you what happens if i take that mistake out then i don't move to Northern California if I don't move to Northern California I don't become friends with Chet Holmes mm-hm if I don't become friends with Chet Holmes I don't end up working with toning also I became very good friends with John and Bonnie Gray John Gray wrote the Mars Venus books because of my friendship with John Gray I got invited to join an organization with him and Jack Canfield and others that is connected many people around the world so if I take out that one mistake I take out all this other stuff too so I just I don't know mistakes there everything is happening for you already I'm even the tough stuff well inception marketing you're talking about inception marketing in your business Freedom Academy yeah what is inception well inception marketing the English word inception means the beginning so if you talk about the inception of a business it's the day the business started in this case we're talking about the inception of an idea if you've ever had a conversation with somebody where they say something like wow I've always wanted one of those or I've always wanted to do that they're not really telling you the truth you know like they haven't always but the fact is is that or it seems to me that if they feel like it was their own idea then they say I always wanted to do that right like it's a it's a powerful thing it's different than if you convinced them but if they come to the idea on their own then they have ownership of the idea and then they're more likely to take action on it huh so the idea of Inception marketing is to create marketing campaigns that are so effective and so and so valuable that the prospect wants to interact with the marketing in other words they don't is marketing they see it as valuable and that as a result of interacting with the marketing they arrive at the conclusion on their own that they want to buy your product or your service rather than you trying to convince them okay that's what inception marketing is about right being a business owner running a business having a life running a family life being a husband having two years old daughter and 20 years old son it's a wide gap what did you did you do in between I always had this idea that you know if I was ever gonna have a daughter I wanted her I wanted her to have an older brother who could protect her he needed to be oh and now he's old enough to have a car and a gun if that's necessary no way that you thought that no no like this he would he would carry older brother no it was just a matter of circumstance oh yeah you know I I my my first wife and I had our child together and after that we had a divorce and after our divorce we had a good friendship and and then friends were very good friends and and then I met my my present wife we've been together now for 12 years and one day she just arrived at the you know was just saying wow I think I want to have a child and and I was so funny I mean I that journey was so long ago for me it was so like wow okay let's do that again and it has been magical no it wasn't I I mean it really was a difficult thing for me because you see what people who don't have children I mean people sit around and fantasize oh it would be really nice to be a parent they have no idea what they're talking about like they don't know they don't understand how difficult it is they don't understand what it's like to go for months without sleep you know they don't understand what it's like to fly with a two-year-old like they fantasize it'll be so much fun okay yes there will be moments but the fact is it's tough and I knew that but my wife didn't and so we had some very interesting conversations but I am very very glad we have a gorgeous amazing charismatic witty little girl and she's so much fun to spend I'm glad that I you know I she doesn't often travel with me but she's here in Thailand and it's so nice that and when I I come out and I speak at events and I go back to the house that we've rented and there and my family's here it's really special this is yeah right now my kids are seven and eight years old and it's not it's not that easy to travel around you know yeah I miss them I miss them how do you fight with that you know it's um it's interesting you know it's not that easy to I was talking about this with some I was sort of forced into that with my son because when his mother and I had our divorce we lived in different countries and so that made it impossible for me to be around my son very much and so I had kind of been through a much harder version where I would go months without seeing my son oh my god and so you know with Zoey I do find it very difficult to leave the house you know also at this age they change so much in a week you know I leave and she's saying these words and I come back and she's saying more words you know I leave and she's walking around like stumbly and I come back and she's walking fast and you you know but I think the other thing is is that frankly the way I am in my head I'm not sure I'm a very good father when I'm at home all the time because when I'm at home all the time then I just I'm working and I'm focused and but if I'm traveling to work when I come home I'm more off and so I think I'm a more attentive father by going and working in a concentrated way going and doing workshops and then I come home and I don't have as much work to do and so I think that I'm better able to be a father that way so I do I mean I miss her terribly when I'm away but we also you know we have squishy away she now understands Skype calls you know when you connect with her yeah and so we talk and we play peek-a-boo on the on the Skype call and stuff and and I think the hard part is that right now she's okay when you walk out the room yeah but I know there's gonna be a moment where and it's not long I mean she's speaking a lot now and I think tell you from my experience yeah it's going to happen at five six I don't think so I think it's gonna happen at three I think I feel it happening this close already is gonna say one day I'm gonna be I'm going to my suitcases and she's gonna walk up to me she's gonna say daddy please don't go am i to my kids like when I went out from home and they were two and three they would usually sit into the in a suitcase she does it ace yeah she does that dad told me a lot didn't articulate they couldn't but they were sitting in the suit yeah and when I come home it brought tears to my eyes when I come home sometimes she's a little like yeah just just for a minute not not even 10 minutes but then the other thing is is that when I come home there's a certain hug that she gives me and she would never give it to anyone else he was not very cuddly she's now very cuddly but when she was like 18 months she wasn't very like cuddly affectionate you know unless she was very tired but I would come home from a trip and I'd pick her up and she put her cheek on my chest and she would just and it doesn't matter she could be running around the house with all this energy all this energy and then I walk in the door and she'd come up and put her cheek on my chest and for 20 minutes she would just breathe with me and it was the most beautiful whelming synchronising yeah it was really gorgeous now she gives her mom those hugs too like she's like but it was funny even in the house we called him daddy hugs because for the longest time she would only ever do it for me it was strange yeah yeah so they started when I when they were five me not five six she can be very clear now like you have to go again I'm missing you know before they didn't they didn't spoke they didn't speak so so so openly about that but yeah well you know my wife and I have traditionally traveled a lot my wife wasn't very much into travel even before we got together she was a professional tennis player and and she enjoyed traveling and and so I think we've been just waiting for Zoey to get to about this age so that she can travel with us more so for example we're now here in Thailand for almost a month I'm here for a month and they are here for three weeks then we're going to Montreal all together so I think that now we'll probably she'll probably come with me more and and these days I think you know having a like for example the the concept of mind Valley University I think it's really fascinating I think how amazing is it for her if every year for the next ten year she spends one month in mine Valley University you know interesting is that yeah great stuff yeah and she can learn and grow yeah and meet people and people here friends yeah well so entrepreneurs what are their biggest challenges that you see is it having free time time for kids family struggling for more profits well I mean you're talking about the symptoms yeah I think the challenge is mostly it's the entrepreneur themselves it's it's understanding their own psychology I mean one of the things that amazes me is that you know entrepreneurs are generally good problem solvers and generally fairly creative in the way they think and generally pretty optimistic people if they weren't those things they probably wouldn't have started their business in the first place the challenge now is is that I think a lot of these entrepreneurs are using their optimism their creativity and their problem-solving to solve problems that have already been solved by other people you know they're worrying about marketing they're worried about hiring practices they're worried about how to do systems and procedures like all that stuff's already been solved you know there there's people like me that are out there teaching it like varnish like Michael Gerber like there are a variety of people that are teaching what people really need to know to build robust businesses and yet they're trying to solve the problems themselves and I think one of the reasons is that most countries have a school system that values solo effort in most countries if you collaborate with somebody else it's called cheating cheating yeah and so you know so entrepreneurs are very often having this oh and then the other thing is even if you put kids on a project together the way the school system works is it's almost like they're competing for a you know who really did the most work right so throw it exactly so now entrepreneurs it's like well I have to do it myself then it's my victory and I'm thinking Richard Branson is making some pretty cool victories by inspiring other people to make things happen and so I think that that's one of the biggest problems for entrepreneurs is this crazy idea even if it's unconscious this crazy notion that they should do it them else that they shouldn't be asking for help that they shouldn't have a coach or a mentor okay like think about this I've been I'm a big fan of tennis I mean I'm watching Roger Federer again and think about this I mean Roger Federer is arguably the greatest tennis player to ever play I think Nadal is gonna give him a good run but yeah but here's your Federer and Nadal and they have coaches yeah not one who coaches them I mean how do you if you're Federer how do you find somebody who can coach you I mean there's nobody that's done anything even close to what he can do on the tennis court and here's the crazy thing you know what's supposed to happen is a tennis player gets older they're supposed to lose power on their serve I mean he's very old now I think he's 37 he's old man yeah I hate when those guys in the sports say that kind of stuff right but but the fact is is that I was just the other day looking at his surf statistics and he is winning more of his first serves now than he was in his career this year he's winning more of his second serves now than he was in his Kurt Ennis in the rest of his career why you know why yeah he has good coaching and he has a huge commitment to result in a huge commitment to winning now here's here's a funny thing people say well of course he has a coach you know because the opportunity for him is so big I mean you know I think I was reading Nadal has overall prize money so far of and how old is he thirty four or something and his overall prize money so far has been almost 100 million dollars and Federer's probably made more than that of course so so of course they should have a coach because the opportunity is so big but wait a second hold on a minute Federer is the number one the number one him say he and Nadal number one they sharing together maybe a little bit but in terms of earnings they have hit the highest potential they can in their sport compare that to the highest potential in entrepreneurship hmm it's a different thing in in sport if you can make a hundred million dollars over ten years that's the top that's as far as it goes in entrepreneurship the number one in entrepreneurship is worth a hundred billion dollars and number two is worth ninety billion dollars the number three is worth eighty seven billion dollars at number four is worth fifty six billion dollars you have a list of people that are in double-digit billions and then you have a massive list people that are in triple digit Millions the opportunity in entrepreneurship is infinitely bigger than it is in sports and yet people think oh well the sports person should have a coach because the opportunity is so big and you know I want to have a coaching in sport yeah business if you don't have a coaching business the things you're missing out on are incredible and one of my favorite examples I went hunting with the hodza Bushmen in East Africa one day mm-hmm first time I went hunting with them they hand me a bow and an arrow and and I have the bow and the arrow and and I've got the boat and I'm trying to pull the string back and I can't they're their bows are so stiff I can't do it I mean I think of myself a pretty strong guy yeah I can't pull it back so the chief he comes over to me and he takes both my hands and he moves my arms in like this uh and he says now push and I push and the string stays and I just lived in 1-3-1 little distinction yeah and I know from working with my clients that many times I can give them that one little distinction and it can save them more money than they're paying me for a year and I can do that in five minutes and I can do another one in another five minutes because very often the problems that entrepreneurs are trying to solve have already been solved they just require different perspective sometimes you know we have a we've a client we have a number of really great success clients here in Estonia um you know one of the clients sets here he was actually based in Sweden when I first met him but he says Tony nguy and when we first started doing business when he first came to our workshops I think his company was doing like I want to say it was about I want to say it was about twenty five thousand dollars a month in revenue and eighteen months later he was doing $250,000 month in revenue and Zdenek bigger staff this is in eighteen months but that's all fascinating but when one of the things that really I loved is one day he wrote me an email and he says Eric thank you you saved my life today this is years later I go how did I save your life and he says well there was one exercise that we did during the weekend and that exercise I didn't think was very valuable but on Friday something happened in my business and if we didn't do that exercise I would have gone out of business that day but because we did that exercise I already knew what to do and so I was able to save the company and because of that all everybody still has their jobs my family still has a house and he says thank you so much and you know like one little shift one so I think personal development is very well connected with the business development and growth like if they're not connected then it's um I mean look if you want to make some money work on your business if you want to create an incredible life and make an incredible amount of money work on yourself well so you have also the event the retreat Isaiah Messiah this is more the personal development you talk about beliefs habits it's more of a life planning event really the okay the background is that many many years ago over ten years ago a friend of mine came up and he said you know Eric you seem to be living a very full life you know you're a cheating man listen to your legs like he says how do you do it all and I said I don't know I get up in the morning and I do things and he says yeah but you're doing things different than me it's like you have more time than I do and I don't know 24 hours a day 365 day we have the same time and he says so you must have a system and I said well once a year I take two days and I look at my year and I look at what was working and I look at what wasn't working and then I look at the euro ahead that I want to happen and I get clear about that and I set a very strong intention Isaiah is a Sanskrit word no means intention and so you set this powerful intention but now we have to do is examine the difference between what you had this year and what you want next year and so that means like for example looking at the habits that are getting in the way and breaking them and looking at the habits and rituals that will help you it means looking at the beliefs that are blocking you and creating beliefs that will push you forward and it means looking at your values and determining where your values are in conflict that are going to prevent you from achieving what you really want and so I describe the system to him and he asked me if I could teach it to other people so we started running workshops back then it was like two hundred people for two days very fun very powerful but I sat down with my wife maybe more than five years ago and I just said I don't I don't want to do that anymore I feel like I want to spend more time with them and I don't want 200 people I want to spend more intimate time and really help people more deeply and I also don't want to travel so much and so we came up with the solution and the solution was to create a week-long program that was limited to like 20 people and that we do teach like at our house or as you know or and you have a that day and and that's how a zaiah was born and it is we only do it once a year and for a very you know a private group of people but it is really really important work and one of the reasons I like doing is it reminds me to work on me yeah beliefs what are some common beliefs of successful people that you know well let's take a step back I have a way of describing beliefs that I think you might like and that is that I think of beliefs as like little organisms mm-hmm you know and and they're very hungry and they can only eat one thing evidence that's all they can do they can just eat evidence and the more evidence they eat the bigger they get and the stronger they get and so if you have a negative belief say somebody has a belief like all the great opportunities are already going on then that what that belief is sitting in there and it's looking around for evidence evidence that all the opportunities are gone and then they go oh look there's liver oh look there's lift I should have thought of that I didn't the opportunity's gone and it eats that evidence and then it gets stronger and then it eats another bit of evidence and and the more it the bigger it gets the hungrier it gets and it starts getting harder and harder to change that belief on the other hand if somebody has a belief that there's a ton of opportunity around them all the time then what happens is they are constantly seeing sometimes the very same events but they're seeing them differently they're seeing them as proof that there are opportunities all the time and so now they're growing a more positive belief so I think that's the first thing is it's just the way I think about both beliefs and then if you examine the kind of beliefs that you know really successful entrepreneurs have you know the one that I that I like a lot is they they have a book very often they have a belief that there is opportunity all around them all the time and what that means is is that they don't have to jump at every opportunity because there's opportunity all the time and it means that they don't ever feel desperate because they know that the next opportunities can look at Warren Buffett how transactions does he do in a year three you know he doesn't he he sits there patiently waiting for the opportunities but he knows they're coming he knows they're coming and so I think that's one of the beliefs that entrepreneurs have here's another one it's it's a I think it's a belief of if it a belief of personal responsibility now I don't mean that they have to do everything but that ultimately they're responsible for everything you know so that like one of the one of the things that my friendship Connelly says that I love so much is that CEO shouldn't be chief executive officer it should be chief emotions officer and that's because the CEO should be walking in and providing emotional certainty should be providing the right emotional strength for the company a CEO walks in in a bad mood one day everybody's gonna wonder about that bad mood and it's gonna act like cancer in the business and then I think another big one that's really important is that there are no problems there are only opportunities I think that's a really big belief of successful entrepreneurs that stuff happens and while they might not like it in that moment they immediately look at it as an opportunity to grow as an opportunity to achieve in customer service for example I'm always saying the problem is not when something goes wrong the problem is how it is how it gets dealt with mm-hm you know so I'll give you a really great example I have for many years I've been a very big fan of Apple not so much lately they've become so arrogant that their customer service is starting to get really bad we would call it hubris and recently I bought a hard drive $2,000 raid maybe it was $2,700 raid harder I seriously big hard drive got it to my house I live in the Caribbean side to take it with me it's not working so I don't have an Apple store near me so I I have it shipped to my assistant in the in America and I asked her to take you to the Apple store they go we won't handle it you have to take it to the original manufacturer original manufacturer says we need to see a video of you testing it all the ways that it's supposed to be worked well the cables are back at my house so Apple says we won't fix it they won't fix it they don't care and they know there's a point at which my time is worth more than the $2,000 and now I'm gonna get they know that and so it's the issue there is not that there was a problem with the hard drive the issue is the bad attitude and resolving it now a great attitude would be wow let's take care of that let's figure it out and then that means in the future when something goes wrong you go oh it's such a drag this went wrong but I trust them to fix it now when something goes wrong with my phone or my Mac I'm I go oh man I just I'm sorry I have I'm sorry I have an Apple product right now I'm happy to have it when it's working but the minute it's not working I'm like oh I'm sorry I have it there back there follow-up has become so bad so it's not what happens it's how you deal with it I think right what about the hair is like productive habits that you have you know III I think delegating you know delegate this is a good habit it really is a good habit and I think entrepreneurs are sometimes it's even a matter that because they're basically nice people you know a lot of times there's a job that they don't want to do you know let's say accounting I don't want to do it I consider it a yucky job so I don't ask you to do it cuz I you know and maybe I don't trust you to do it or whatever and I think that that's one of the big things that entrepreneurs can overcome is recognizing that even you see a lot of times entrepreneurs they're under the illusion that they're smarter than everybody else right like they because they started the company or something I'm like wow if you have created a company where you're the smartest person in the room I can tell you there's gonna be problems like you need to have people around you they're smarter than you at least about specific things right and so I think that that when you like here's one of the illusions is that the entrepreneur goes while I'm gonna do it myself because I can do it better than that person that may even be true but the fact is is the entrepreneur it's getting so busy that they're gonna rush it well when you rush it do you do as well as the other person though no so better hand it over to the other person let them do it 80% as good as you can because that's probably just as good as you were gonna do but the other thing is that once you've seen that they only did it 80% now you can give them feedback on how to get it to 90% and feedback on how to get it 100% and so by delegating and by letting people fail you you you help them build experience and as a result of their experience they're going to have better judgment and they're going to do a better job I'm I'm still thinking about you living in Dominican Republic you know when did you move there I'm coming for well in the business traveling in Europe speaking around the world and lived in Dominican Republic we lived in Turin and Caicos for about six years and and we decided we wanted to leave Turks and Caicos and a friend of mine called me one day and he says I'm at a conference in in a kite boarding conference in Turkey or in Dominican Republic and why don't you come for a visit and so we'd like I'm sure it's just 150 miles away from where we live so so we went and the minute we got there the people and the trees and the beaches and the water and the wind and the kite surfing and the economy and all these things just lined up and we were there for three days and by the end of the three days we extended for three more days and by the end of the six days we put our house on the market and sold it where I had it ready for selling and we leased an apartment like that that fast that is that quick and that was about six years ago now maybe five and a half years ago yeah we love it there it's really beautiful yeah I met Richard Branson a couple of years ago yes Ireland and I asked him the question what is the difference between him and me and he said that he made many more decisions probably and I did yeah you know really fast decision like I'm going deaf just to check out something and then I sell the house back home and I move unbelievable yeah it's some I think here's an important thing to think about is like I remember hearing this speaker say this once he's like imagine that Richard Branson woke up in your life tomorrow mm-hmm so tomorrow morning you wake up but you're not you you're Richard Branson so you you you have your rent money you have your current businesses you have your current contacts but you have Richards values in this mind and it's decision making process how different is your year how different is your life one year two years three years later it's gonna be pretty different and so then the question is what's the difference well not the money not the businesses not the contacts it's the decision-making it's the the risk-taking it's the it's the incremental adjustments that then you're making and I think that that's a really important point and it's one of the reasons that I think people should have really powerful peers around them and they should have good coaches and mentors around them because it allows them to take advantage of that kind of thinking kitesurfing how many years ago mm five five yeah I started probably also like three four five probably I didn't do it for last two years but it's crazy sport like I love it yeah do you see some connections between entrepreneurship and completely completely you know kiteboarding is one of the most free sports you know I the way I describe it for people who have done wakeboarding is I describe it like this it's like wakeboarding only you're in control of the boat and the boat can fly yeah well and that's how I describe you and it's like you know when I'm at home I can go anywhere it's like I just have this incredible amount of freedom when I'm kiting and and it's also from quite introverted so you know when I'm out in the world and I'm speaking and I have to be in this sort of extroverted energy but then all of a sudden when I get you know all of a sudden when I get there and I get out on the water it's just me and the water yeah I call kitesurfing active meditation it is very active meditations I injured my shoulder and I hope I will be able to write self again well if you come to karate I know a guy he's a he came and spoke at our wild fest conference that we had earlier this year and he's I think if I remember correctly he's a five-time Olympian with and with medals he's an incredibly interesting guy but he now does some really great work around really fast shove realignment and and I would be very surprised if he couldn't give you a lot of help oh so yeah if you come to karate I'll hook you up I did some kite surfing and I did some kinds of thinking very Punta Cana hmm there's not great vein but it was no Cabarete at water I had my first lessons of kite surfing in Cape Verde you know K word it yeah yeah it's two big waves so it was not great experience well Kaveri I take July August July August I mean it's wind all year really except me in October but July August you're talking you know like 15 to 25 knots every day pretty much oh that's nice I have another question about the school system you mentioned the the school system now you have two years old daughter I have six seven you are here in Tallinn with MindValley you like their concept of learning in different environment and everything so how do you see yourself in 14 maybe years your daughter will be 16 and she has to decide I think I think the traditional school system there's very little point in thinking about it yeah the pace of change is happening so quickly today that we have no idea what school is gonna look like in five years we just don't know if even if I said I look the same I hoped I hope but they won't they already don't you know they're already changing it my son did some home schooling when he was very small and then he did more home schooling later and the change in home schooling was at first it was books then it was like a website then it was group classes on the Internet how far is it before it's a hologram you know I who knows but at this point my view is that my job is to my job is to raise a confident independent woman that's my job my job is to do my best to facilitate the growth of a confident independent woman and and so what does that mean it means preparing her for what's coming in the challenges none of us know what's coming we don't know how about this my son owns a car my daughter might never have a driver's license yeah by the time she's old enough we know he might not be driving cars anymore in fact we might be flying private vehicles in many cases I mean you know so at this stage guess what she needs to train for the job she might do in the future probably doesn't even exist so how do I educator you know what common sense life skills communication capacity creativity self-expression those are the skills that I want her to have and frankly those are the skills that they destroy in school so I'm not really that big fan of her going to a traditional school moneda you are a very big into the nutritional nutrition so what do you eat what what diet yeah what what kind of food you eat like do we have any special diet like now it's popular ketogenic diet no no keep it yeah like look like we can have we could spend hours on this I'm gonna put this in the simplest sense of all and that is that you know the the diet fad world is just about as dangerous as the pharmaceutical world hey they're there they're neither one of them is really serving people and you know for example the ketogenic diet well there are some health benefits to being in a ketogenic state but it's a seasonal state it's a state that our ancestors would go into for periods of time but they wouldn't live like that and they wouldn't live like that all the time and so what happens in the diet world is these fads of oh this thing works so I'm going to live like that forever my view is that every species on earth evolved an optimal diet for its existence every species elephants eat you know 200 kilograms of grass bark and fruit every day on some seasonal rotation they drink 70 liters of water every day that's their diet that's what they're supposed to do and if you let them do that they're healthy if you don't lie if you take them out of nature and put them in a zoo and feed them hay they die in seven years like a they need to be on their diet and the leafcutter ant you'd be surprised but it doesn't eat leaves it goes in collects leaves it brings them home it compost them it forms a federa culture list they have a very specific and calculated diet and my belief is that humans are the same and that you know fundamentally there is a homo sapien diet and we know what it is there's no question about this we know that humans have for millions of years baby eating a seasonal rotation of plants that fruits and vegetables and and and and nuts and so on and an acetal rotational of meats and eggs and and and and fish and that sort of stuff we know that and and we have not for hundreds of thousands of years been eating refined sugar or dairy products or wheat or pesticides or glyphosate or any of those things and so to the degree that we eat the things that we're supposed to eat we're gonna be healthier to the degree that we avoid the things that are damaging our body we're gonna be healthier and my view is is that it's not about living forever sure I think we have some real capacity to send our lives by eating properly and exercising properly but what I'm more concerned with in extending my life is making sure that every year counts and I watched my grandparents they were old when I met them and they were old when they passed away and they were old every year in the middle and you know why because they were moving slowly they were constrained they were aging in the way that now it doesn't have to be that way you know they they say that 70 is the new 50 hell no I think 60 is the new 30 you know III move around today in a way that III feel physically more powerful and stronger than I did in my 30s and and I I'm not saying it'll be like that forever but I'm saying my quality of life is important to me and that though that feeling strong feeling healthy feeling flexible kid no food no junk food could taste good enough to make me want to give that up so yes I'm into nutrition right what is the wide feet wild fit is a company that I created exactly with this in mind and that was that III I think these days one of the best paths innovation is having a diverse set of interests the education system as it works today takes children that had children are born with a diverse sense of interests and then we send them to school and go now you should focus on math and English and physics and this and history and whatever and then we take them to university and we go now well you weren't so good at math so only focus on literature or only focus on the arts are only focused on medicine or whatever and we the education system is all about narrowing people's focus and and I think that that's a shame because some of the greatest innovations ever have come when somebody said two divergent interests that have intersected and so in my case that came along where I because my grandfather had been a quite famous zoologist archaeologists who had discovered a very old at the time the oldest Homo sapiens skull in history almost three hundred thousand years old I was very fascinated by middle Stone Age southern african archaeology I was interested in that I didn't know that that would matter I was just interested in and the way kids are interested in something and you know I was also really fascinated by why I could spend almost ten years visiting doctors to solve some major health problems I had and none of it helped none of the pills helped none of the injections helped none of the creams helped none of the inhalers helped everything they gave me and yet I would hear I was still sick and one day I changed my food and 30 days later all my symptoms were gone so now I became really puzzled about the medical industry I asked my doctor how long did you go to medical school he says six years and I said and how much time did you spend sweating food none that blew my mind I mean I'm twenty-one years old I couldn't imagine that you could go to school for six years studying medicine medicine that's the key and not studying food and so that became now I became really curious about the food industry and the medical industry so again I've got this powerful curiosity about archaeology anthropology then I've got this really strong curiosity about food and what we really should be eating and the way the medical industry works and then one more thing happened and that was that I went to my first Tony Robbins seminar and I noticed that it was different what I mean is is that I've been in sales before and I'd seen motivational speakers and inspirational speakers but you know what you'd feel good but the next day you'd be the same person you were before you went to the seminar they didn't it didn't even change it but I went to see Tony and the next Monday I was different I was making more sales calls I was making them more effectively I was making different decisions it was like he had spoken in a way that helped me to make permanent and change decisions without effort and so I became really fascinated with behavioral change psychology like how do you stimulate actual changes in behavior people and then one day about five years ago all three of these interests crashed together and that gave birth to wild fit and that's why wild fit is so incredibly effective I mean look there are a lot of great diet programs I think frankly I think Loren Cordain who created the Paleo diet has done more to improve the health of humans than anybody else on earth I think he should get a prize from the Nobel Committee for what he created there the challenge is is that most people don't have the willpower to follow a program even if it is fantastic so they can come along with the South Beach diet or their this diet or the bulletproof diet or they can come along with all kinds of different diets and all of them have something about them that's interesting but the fact is that if people don't if they're relying on willpower they're gonna give up and so we had to do is find out how to get people to not have to use willpower to actually change their behavior to make it so that by the time the program was done they didn't want to eat the dysfunctional food anymore and that they wanted to eat the healthy foods that they never used to think they liked and by changing that we create permanent change for them instead of changing for this season hmm yeah for a couple of a month or they said they'd lose some weight and then they're back for the right back on yeah how many people are have on the team right now your are your coaching your coaching speaking I actually don't know I don't manage the company myself okay I would say about twenty twenty-five or something like that I don't even know all of them because they're all over the planet uh-huh so you are outsourcing everything no we we have a core team in Canada in Calgary and they work from the core central office but then we've got you know we've got some we've got at least one person and no we have two people in London we have some people in the United States you know an outsourcer in the Philippines so we have a group you know there's a variety of people around the world and then of course we've got the fully external people like the various promoters we work with like my favorite promoter that I work with is edu academia actually funny enough based here in Thailand I've worked with many promoters around the world and Ed you're academia runs the best events the most organized takes the best care of me you know mine Valley is my by far my favorite poacher I you know they've done more to help us spread the word of wildfin around the planet than anybody has and they do everything at a very high level and and so our team is kind of comprised of our internal team and then our external partners what advice would you give to me right now I'm at the point that I want to grow internationally I'm well known speaker in Balkan area cildren Eastern Europe russian-speaking countries I own the market but what about international market like english-speaking market like I would do very much the same things you did in your market you know a lot of times I am you know I I do a lot of training of people in communication public speaking and that sort of thing and what happens a lot of times is that people will feel like they because maybe they their English isn't as good as they want it to be or their accent is too strong or whatever that they think that's going to hurt them but what I want to remind you is that human beings are very inclined to look for novel information to come from far away you know I think that in the Christian Bible there's some reference about Jesus where they say that the Prophet is rarely recognized at home in other words when Jesus was at home people just treated him like oh it's Jesus again but then when he left home he was Jesus and and I think there's something very powerful in that idea the other thing to consider is that in a much earlier version of society if you traveled more than thirty miles away from your village you were in danger of being killed by the other people like their people were very very tribal unfortunately I feel like the world is going more tribal again now now Britain is going to leave and we're gonna have Donald Trump doing this ad and we're going to go back to this more tribal thinking but back then it was so tribal that if you even walked if you even walked fifty kilometers away from your home area you were in danger of another tribe killing you now we live in a world where I can land in this previously Soviet area I mean I'm in Estonia right and now I can walk in with a little booklet that has my picture in it and just show the picture and I can walk in and nobody tries to kill me and they let me walk around freely so we live in a different world between those two worlds there was this that very primitive and now this between them there was a world where people took a risk and they traveled when it was dangerous but they took knowledge with them Marco Polo you know they they go and they travel to far lands and they pick up new information and then they bring that information to this new place and I think that's if you really consider that some of the biggest technological sociological changes have come about because somebody from afar brought them and so I think humans still have a very strong inclination or instinct toward wanting to learn from somebody who's from far away because they're gonna bring ideas that haven't already been discussed where they are and so I would look at it from your perspective that there are gonna be things that you understand there's gonna be experiences that you've had there's going to be ideas that you've addressed that people in in some of the english-speaking market so you might want to go to haven't had those experiences and so instead of thinking like wow maybe it's a bad thing that I that I have an accent from far away you know that's part of my brand it's it's sexy it makes me unique it makes me interesting that's right metaphor a new belief great I think it is I you know this is a silly example I don't know are you familiar with Yakov Smirnoff he was a he immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union in very long ago and he came to America and became a stand-up comedian and he has a very strong Russian accent you know when he talks English and and he turned it into his brand and and and he delivered value any any did business well and he became very very famous and many other comedians were said Oh with that accent you know it's not gonna really work no it worked very very very well he's in by the way he's a friend of mine he's a very very good guy as well I think that helps yeah that helps for sure what advice would you give to somebody that is now 20 years old like your son what advice no it's not maybe it's it's not easy to give the advice to your boy but somebody I think there's two big ones the one I think I finally have my son on this one it's taken some years but the first one is your happiness is an internally created thing and is not controlled by the external world and I remember saying this tomb because one day he goes dad you're making me angry and I said actually no I'm not I'm saying things you don't like what I'm saying you're creating a meaning and then you are making yourself angry about what I said that just makes me more angry and so but I think that over time he's begun to appreciate or understand what I really mean by that and that is that you know we really are responsible for our state of mind we really are responsible for our emotions and the external world isn't and I remember at one point after I bought that movie studio I told you about it was the most difficult time it looked like I was gonna lose everything it looked like everybody's gonna lose their jobs and I was constantly afraid I said to my wife one day I can't live like this anymore we're not happy we're waiting for something else to make us happy I said that's it we're done now we're happy I don't care what happens anymore we're happy first thing we have to understand is how bad can this really get so we played it out we said wow it can only get this bad I mean that's bad but we're still five you know Wayne Dyer used to say worst case scenario you go to the grocery store and you can steal grapes you're gonna be okay and I said well you know we're gonna be okay and then from there I said that's it let's be happy well we decided we made a decision and we started being happy we started laughing and playing and and and and and you know about six weeks later we landed a contract to do Pirates of the Caribbean and then we landed a contract to do Elysium when we landed in another contract to do I think it was Iron Man 2 and you know what's fascinating about all that what I'm so grateful for is that we found happiness before the movie contracts mm-hmm because if we had been depressed or upset or worried and then the movie contracts came in then the contracts would have come in and we like yeah now we can be happy no because then you're gonna then your happiness is always going to be controlled by somebody else so that would be the first thing I'd want to teach to any 20 year old at this point and then the second thing is which is quite related is that live each day without all the fear like there's this really beautiful movie I can't think of the name of an hour it had Bill Nighy in it and the idea of the movie was that the the men in the in the movie had a genetic ability to travel through time it was like not it was more of a romantic comedy but with a little bit of this time travel from toys to it but there was a really important moment in the movie where he says you know what I would I what I do is I go back and I live the day and I see that I survived and then I go back and live the day properly without the fear without the anxiety I think that's a very important thing you know we walk around with all this social anxiety and economic society and health anxiety and government anxiety and what if instead you just woke up in the morning and said hey I have faith and I don't mean faith in some spirit in the sky if people can have that faith that's fine too but I think every major religion in the world talks about faith and I think what those religions have done is co-opted faith and said now you should have faith in this God and I'm saying that I think any God would tell you yeah you can have faith in me if you like but the first thing you have to do is have faith in yourself and your life in general and if you wake up in the morning with a sense of faith if you wake up in the morning you go even the even the Yaqui stuff of today serves me then I think that sets you up for a better day so you're convinced that happiness become it comes before success I think happiness becomes I mean look success without happiness is not successful I think there was there was something I wrote in a magazine I used to publish many years ago and one day I saw it circulating around the internet it was like it was my definition of success and it was like my I think the way I defined it was that I think success is most easily measured by the number of days that you're truly happy hmm it's not the car you drive it's not the money you have it's not the anything else it's if you have two people and one is broke and the other one's a billionaire but the one who's broke is happy 300 days of the year and the other one is happy ten days of the year I'm going with the broke guy is the successful one so I don't think it's that if you're happy then you can be successful I'd say if you're happy then you are successful now hmm great one Eric thank you very much I wish you many happy days with your two-year-old daughter and your wife and your boy and I hope to meet you soon I'm sure we will thank you very much for having me Cheers thank you you

Channel: Smillion Mori - Warrior family

Views: 47,560

Rating: 4.8964143 out of 5

Keywords: Smillion Mori, Eric Edmeades, Live each day without fear, Eric Edmeades interview, how to be a better coach, how to get more clients, how to achieve success in life, how to be a coach, love, positive energy, will, hope, How to achieve personal and professional freedom

Id: InOkkfOeX_o

Length: 75min 25sec (4525 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 23 2018