Welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs, the podcast where we speak with business owners and entrepreneurs from around the world, and from all walks of life in the hope that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. We’re your co-hosts Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, supporting entrepreneurs as they launch their new business or product, and we love doing it, and we're good at it. And it's important to us that every new business launches well, with a sound strategy and brand—giving them the greatest chance of success. We do not want to see any entrepreneur quit! If you love this show please help us out and subscribe on whichever platform you're listening or watching on now, and you'll be notified of the next great episode.
Who are we talking to today? It's Max Lewis. Who is Max Lewis? We're about to find out. He's one of America's ultra high net worth individuals by the age of 36 and he's now written a book, “Who is Max Lewis?” So 37 chapters, 37 lessons, 37 million, we're intrigued. Max, welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs.
Thank you, Vicki, and pleasure meeting both of you, Laura. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here. Glad to be with you guys. Thank you for sacrificing and getting up so early to have this interview with me.
Well, it's our favourite thing to do, talk to amazing guests like you. So thank you, Max, for joining us. So let's start right at the beginning. I'm really curious, entrepreneurs generally tend to start fairly early. Were you a bit of an entrepreneurial kid? Tell us a little bit about growing up and what your first early money making experiences were?
Sure, absolutely. So I started, I would say extremely early, my father taught me as a very young boy, how to make money by selling mangos off the mango tree in our backyard. So he taught me how to pick the ripe mangos, the ones that were ripe that hadn't been eaten by birds or ants, and then to put those in a bag and walk the neighbourhood and knock on people's doors, and then offer my mangos for sale. Then as I started selling these mangos and having these interactions, obviously, I got a little better and I started making some money, and I actually started having him convert the money that I made - because you know after a little while of doing that, I had let's say $40 but if it's in $10 bills or $5 or $20 bill, it looks like nothing. So I actually had him change the money into all singles because it looked like a lot of money. And made it like a fun game and started, I had this cookie tin, it's called Dansk, I don't know if you've seen those Dansk cookies, those blue cookie tins. So it became a fun game and my goal and objective was to fill the tin with money. So I'd go out and get these mangos and sell them and try to fill up the tin with money, and that was my introduction to being an entrepreneur. A little later on in seventh grade, I started selling candy and then it changed a little bit there, then I was buying goods to sell them so I had to start working on profit margins and things like that. It wasn't just a mango being sold by a kid and I could get some sales because people would be sympathetic, but in school you actually had to sell candy that the kids liked. So I had to do research and I learned about not giving people terms because you give your friends some candy and they say they'll pay you tomorrow and then they never pay you. So I quickly made my little business a COD business. So that was my introduction early on, and those lessons really helped me later on in life when I got into the big leagues.
So after that, in my high school years, I decided I wanted to be a chef. So my goal was to be a chef. I'd come home every day and cook all these dishes. I'd watch the Food Network and say I'm gonna replicate these dishes and I got a partial scholarship at a culinary school called Johnson & Wales and that was my dream, I was going to be a chef.
During that time, I was working at a carwash and I was making $70 a day. My father had a little propane business and he asked me if I would like to come work for him filling these propane tanks and he’d pay me the same amount of money I was working for in the car wash, which was obviously a lot harder work than just filling propane tanks. It was brutal work, honestly. So I took him up on the offer and I actually ran into this guy that needed a very unique service, which was he had a hotel, and he needed these barbecue tanks, are you familiar with barbecue tanks? Okay. So he needed 10 of them filled on a regular basis, which is a lot; I don't know anyone who needs 10 barbecue tanks. So he kept bringing the barbecue tanks to the shop and I was refilling them for him. And he asked, “Hey, will you deliver them?” And I kind of chuckled at him and I said, “Nobody delivers them, because there's no margin, you can't make enough money”. It's like, if I asked you to deliver a pack of gum to me 20 years ago, you'd laugh and you'd say “yeah, how is that gonna work, I'm not gonna make any money.” So the guy keeps coming back week after week and eventually, we make a deal that I'm going to overcharge him $5 per tank, and he's going to take 10 tanks, so I'm gonna make 50 bucks if I deliver him the gas. So we do the deal, and after I do the deal, I come back and I pay my dad for the gas that I bought from his company, and I keep my 50 bucks. Well, when I did that my father decided that he was going to reward me and say, “Keep the money”, to which I responded “Absolutely not, I'm not gonna get that, that was your customer, it's your money, I’m just making money from doing the delivery.” And he says, “It was a good idea you really should keep all the money” and I said, “How about we do this? How about you pay me a certain amount of money over my costs, which I sell to commercial clients? That way, I'll still make some money, and you'll make more money, and I'll treat you like a commercial client.” And I said, “You know what deal”. So after that, the gears started turning, because I went from making 50 bucks, I made $100. And I said, “Hold on a second, I work all day long for 70 bucks. I just did a delivery, It took me two hours, I made 100. That's more than I make in a day. What if more people need the service? Right?” Like the lightbulb went off. Oh my god, I have to find more people. So I thought about it for a while, I had a folder similar to this one. Had my Do Notes, “1399 plus tax’. I drew a little tank on wheels like this is gonna be my logo, and eventually made a business card, and nothing happened. I tell people of the service, nobody wants the service, I ask my friends if they want to be partners, nobody wants to be a partner. Three months in, I go to South Beach and it's wintertime, December. And there's these tall space heaters. Are you guys familiar with them? They're like, they look like they have a mushroom shape to them on the top?
Yes.
So I feel the heat, and I'm like, “What does this thing run off off?” I picked up the shroud and I see there's the barbecue tank and I'm like, Oh my God, I need to get this account. So long story short, I talked to the manager and asked him, how many of these do you use a day? My goal was, if I can sell 10 tanks a day, I'm making 500 bucks a week, which was more than I was currently making, and I think even more than what my mom was making at that time as a travel agent. So it was good money in my opinion. The guy tells me he's using 70 tanks a day. One account, I struck gold! I freaked out, I gave him a cheaper price than I needed to give him because I panicked. I was like “Oh my god. Yes”. So the next day on Christmas Eve, I made a delivery for him. He tells me “Just bring me 25, because I want to test your service”. And I made 200 something bucks, and after that it was game on. I started making $3,000 a day, every day for quite a while and then it transitioned into more opportunities, I identified more and more opportunities and eventually built up the largest independent propane cylinder exchange operation in the state of Florida and sold it for $37 million at 36 years old.
Nah, I love that story, man.
A lot of stuff happened between that other part though.
We're getting into that for sure. So, wow. Was there ever time? And I'm imagining the answer is yes, where you just felt like you needed to quit, like it wasn't working.
Absolutely, and not just because I was losing the drive or something it was, I mean, it's basically all emotional - times where I was making the most money, the most money I had made up until those points, I literally actually did quit. I did quit. So a big part of the story is my parents convinced me to do a partnership with my brother, and it didn't work out. It was really just a very bad decision for me. They put me in a very bad position and it led to a lot of fighting and a lot of arguments, and I got to the point where I felt like, I'm doing all the work and I have to split the money now with my partner, and it got old man, it got really old. I was doing 100% of the work and distributing profits and keeping a third of my money, and after a lot of battles and struggles and arguments, I just said, “I don't want to do this anymore”. So I kind of quit and you'll read it in the book, I kind of quit. It was important for me to take a stand because I felt I wasn't being valued, I wasn't being treated with respect, I wasn't being considered, there wasn't a lot of consideration for me, and I knew what I had done for my family and for everyone that I employed. It was never about the money, I started the business, I was having fun, and I tell people this all the time, it was never about the money, I was doing it because I was happy. I like to make people happy, I like progressing. Tony Robbins says “Progress equals happiness.” And even when I was making $3 million a year running my business, I lived in a 1200 square foot house, I had a modest pickup truck, and if anybody in my neighbourhood knew I was making 3 million a year, they might have attacked me! My house costs $107,000 and I was making 3 million bucks a year. I’ve since moved from that house but I was there for seven years. Even after I sold my business, I was there for four years after I sold my business for $37 million. Because it wasn't about the money. I was just having fun and I enjoyed what I was doing. So there was a time that I quit, and I took a sabbatical, and I travelled. I got in great shape, I got baptised in the Jordan River, an amazing experience, one of the top experiences of my life and I then came back to it, I said I'm not done. I'm not gonna give up on my business because other people are upsetting me or influencing me. And I said, “I want this back, I want what's mine back”, and I fought for it, and I got it back and I turned it around. It wasn't pretty. There's some not so pretty things that happened in the book, but at the end of the day, I persevered. And there's a saying, ‘The worst day of your life often ends up being the best day of your life.” And in my book, there's things that happened to me that were, several days that felt like this is the worst day, and ultimately it leads to “Hey if it wasn't for that I wouldn't be where I am today.” So that is an example of me giving up and then coming back realising I shouldn't let anyone influence me to give up, I can't give them that much power, and thank God, it wasn't a final, it was more of a pause than it was like I closed the door.
Yeah, that sounds like it was really good for you, too. My question is, have you been able to reconcile since, with your family?
Yeah, so I didn't talk to my brother for three years from the things that happened, that I detail in the book that he did, I was like, I couldn't get over. But after a while I just wanted to see my nephews and I'm a very forgiving person. People often tell me that I forgive too much, which I think is silly, I don't think there is such a thing. You're supposed to forgive, and when you forgive you also unpack, you unload that for yourself, if you don't you're carrying it around. So I think it's wonderful to forgive.
Failure is information, this is what shapes us if something happened or someone did something to you, and it didn't work out that well or didn't feel good; take those experiences, learn from them, and move forward, you can't just stay stuck. That's what I have to say about that.
Yeah. So much I think of what we learned is in hindsight, right, we get so many lessons when we look back on our experiences.
Yes ma’am.
And is your brother forgiving you for sharing all this juicy stuff in your book?
I don't think he needs to forgive me. I don't write anything that's not true. It all happened, and our relationship is good. He actually got the first copy of my book. I gave him the very first copy and said, “Here is a book that I wrote”. And we can talk about any of the things that happened in this book.
That's beautiful honesty, too, right? We have to be authentic in business and in life, and like you said, it's about having fun and being honest. And I love that you're sitting in this fabulous chair, can we just talk about their chair for a quick second? You were living in a house that was very modest, whilst you were very much a multimillionaire and now you've moved into, I don't know what your house is like, but the chair is beautiful.
The house is amazing, it’s a compound!
I want to talk about the fun you can have with money. Can we talk a bit about that? Okay, it's not about the money but here's the fun you can have with money. Let's go with that.
Yeah. So let's talk about that. That's actually a really cool subject. So here's what happened. When I started my business, I was living in an efficiency, which is like a studio, a very small studio, maybe 250-300 square feet. And what I would do with my money is I'd invest the money and buy properties and try to pay those properties off, that's what I was doing with my money. So it didn't matter how much money I earned. It could have been $5, it could have been 50,000, it could have been 500,000. I got every single penny and invested that money. I bought properties, I invested into my business, that's it. I didn't really have any frivolous spending, it was all investment. So by the time I moved out of that efficiency, I was already a multimillionaire. I was a young man still; I was probably only worth like 5 or 6 million bucks at that time but a guy who is worth 5 or 6 million bucks, living in an efficiency is insane. So then I moved to this other very modest house, actually moved to one before this 1200 square foot one and it was actually bigger, maybe by a couple 100 square feet, no big deal.
What happened was this, I made all this money. I'm operating as this guy, this guy, he makes money, he invests, he makes money, he invests, this is what I know. This is what I know how to do, I know how to make money, I know how to invest. Well, after I sold my business and during operating my business, I was this guy. And I had not realised, I had gotten so used to, so accustomed to just Okay, I got money, I invest it, that I never enjoyed it, and I never realised how far I had come because the money almost didn't have a utility to me, it was this is for investing, this is not for buying a Ferrari, this is not for buying anything, you know what I'm saying, this is investing, get to work, don't mess around, don't spend $2,000 on dinner, eat McDonald's or mac and cheese or something cheap, get every extra dollar and invest it, and it served me very well. But the issue was, I never stopped to realise that I’d won. And yeah, maybe I don't have to go out and buy 10 Ferraris, but if you want a Ferrari and you can afford one easily, at least go get one. Well, I didn't do that. I didn't really enjoy the journey. I did very small little flickers, little tiny flickers, but for the most part, I didn't dress that nice, I drove an old pickup truck, it didn't matter. I didn't realise how far I had come, and that's actually a question that I answered yesterday on a podcast that I did, they asked me if I would have done anything differently and I said, I would have celebrated my wins along the way.
So if my goal was I want to make $10 million, okay, when I make my first dollar, I'm gonna give myself a pat on the back, when I get to 500 I'm gonna give myself another pat on the back, when I get to 1000 maybe I'm gonna go have an ice cream, we're gonna acknowledge that I'm making progress and have some fun with it rather than just work, work, work, stack all your money and have no fun. Because that sucks, you want money in order for you to spend it and you can enjoy things and experiences. So you have to, at some point, balance that out. I don't think you should be irresponsible, but you don't have to be irresponsible just to acknowledge the fact that you're doing good and you're headed in the right direction.
How does it feel to have 37 million plus dollars Max?
It felt like nothing, nothing at all. The day that they wired me the money, the day I sold my business and they called me and they said, “Hey,” - there was a bunch of stuff happening, people everywhere scrambling, I had 70 employees at that time, about 25 representatives from the new company had shown up, they’re in the office running around, people were hearing about the sale and I told them two things.
Number one, I'm going to tithe to every single employee that I have, so I'm going to need a few hours. I had my 70 employees line up in front of my office and one at a time, have them walk in and hand them a check, and thank them and hug them and cry with them and celebrate the victory with them, and that was the one thing. But before that happened before that was able to take place, I had to receive the money, and when I received the money, I was just like, check my account. “Yeah, the money's there”. Nothing. It was not about the money. It was not about the money. How do you think I went four years after selling my business still living in that house? Not about the money. If it was about the money, I would have bought all kinds of extravagant things, you know what I'm saying, I just never did that. I never did that, and only when I was writing this book, about the first third of the book is when it snapped and hit me. And I said, “When did I stop being an overly aggressive investor?”, which I was, I had a lot of fun with it, and then I pinpointed a certain day and I said, “Why haven't I spent any money?”, I was like, I have a lot of money, like a lot more than I ever would need and I haven't spent any of it, haven't done anything. And at that moment I slowly started having some fun, I bought this house, I bought boats and other things, cars and stuff like that. That's kind of what the turning point was for me. It took a while for me to identify as, “Hey, you're not the guy who has to work and kill himself every day and invest so aggressively. You're the guy that's already done it, and you should continue to do those things, but you should also enjoy yourself.”
So you're not even 40 yet Max, why did you decide to sell your company?
I sold my company because I wasn't having fun anymore. It's the only reason. I wrote a book, I do a lot of investing, I own nine restaurants. I have houses, apartments, townhouses, land, apartment buildings, and stocks. I invest into just about anything that catches my attention. Today, I just did a deal with aviation, I bought an aircraft landing gear, all kinds of funky stuff that is interesting that you can make money off of. So I just keep myself entertained with that, I give a lot of my time, I coach people for free, I give a lot of my time to helping people. I spend a lot of time now with book signings and things like that, which is fun. And I do a lot of fishing. I fish a lot, and I catch a lot of fish.
Are you going to start selling that fish Max?
Oh, no, my girlfriend would kill me. She's a pescatarian so that's why I have to catch so much fish.
Your girlfriend is?
Yeah, Pescatarian, only eats fish.
Great.
So that's what I'm up to.
That's good, tell us a little bit more about coaching. So how do you help people and what types of people come to you for coaching and what kind of coaching do you do?
Sure. So people come to me from all walks of life with all types of different challenges and I just provide guidance and solutions, a lot of them are obviously business oriented issues and challenges, sometimes they're not. I just use my skill-set to try to get them unstuck and headed in the right direction. And I'm very happy to say that I've been able to really help a lot of people, which in most cases, honestly feels like more of a blessing for me than it is for them. Because there's nothing more gratifying than seeing someone who's stuck in a problem and being able to set them free so they can keep going in life, very rewarding. Now, that doesn't mean I have time for everyone. Actually, one of my rules is if I give someone advice, and they don't take it, I'm not coaching anymore. I'm not going to waste my time. So, I coach and I help whoever God sends me, God sends me people all the time, they pop up. I had a guy the other day, said, “Hey, I have an issue, and I've called two people, and both people told me to call you, would you mind giving me some of your time?” I said, Absolutely. And I'm happy to say I was able to help that gentleman. I feel like I coach someone almost every single day. Sure, there's some days that I don't, but some days, there's also two or three people that I might help out with challenges.
Is it a particular group of people, is there someone that's dear to your heart that you serve more than others? Like, is it young people? Or is it just people who are known to your inner circle? How is that?
Just people, people that know me, I've had people message me directly. There's a kid from Pakistan, emailed me the other day, and I gave him some advice. I do donate some time to juvenile detention centres, kids who have been in prison - every other Thursday I try to go out there and speak to the kids, it's really fun, very rewarding. Trying to get these kids that have made poor decisions in their life and can get them to turn that around, make better decisions, hang out with quality people, and just fix their lives. Give them something to look forward to, show them and let them know there's a compelling future for you if you start making better quality decisions.
Yeah. What's the most important piece of advice you think somebody listening today might be needing if they're stuck as an entrepreneur or a young person in a bad situation even?
Well, I'll give you a combo. So one is asking the right people for advice. I think a lot of people, unfortunately, ask the wrong person for advice, and what do I mean by that? Well, the wrong person could be your mom, it could be your dad, it could be your brother. And we don't associate people that we love as the wrong person to get advice from. So and I was just in the Joe Dispenza retreat in Cancun, I was talking to a young lady, she asked me for some advice, and she tells me, I have this business, I want to do this business, boom, boom, boom, boom, I've been wanting to do it forever. I told my mom, she says, I'm stupid, it's not gonna work.
And I said, Holy crap, hold on a second. I said, “If you learn nothing else from this entire retreat, you have to understand energy is real, so your mom is putting the worst energy in the world into your idea, into your heart and soul, because you're saying you're so passionate about this and your own mother is telling you it's a dumb idea, she doesn't want you to do it, so you cannot share this with her again. And if you're going to do that, I would suggest you have a sit down talk with her and need to tell her Hey, Mom, listen. I can't afford to have you disempowering me, I want to share my heart and my dreams with you. I need you to be my biggest cheerleader, you need to help me, you need to promote me. I need to be able to know that I could come for support, you're gonna make me want to go harder and faster and bigger. But if I share my dream with you and you tell me I'm stupid, it's not going to work, how is that? How's that gonna feel for me?” And I explained to her so listen, you have to understand something. Your mother probably does not mean bad for you, that's just her life experience. Maybe she's been a janitor her whole life and she doesn't understand or comprehend how she could make millions of dollars, which is why she didn't do it. In her world, maybe she failed a few times, and it's just not going to work. So she's not trying to hurt you. She just says it didn't work for me, it's not gonna work for you.
So it starts with asking the right person for advice and it translates into everything. It could be business, it could be relationship advice. Your friend who's been single for 50 years, don't ask him, if you get in a fight with your husband, don't ask him for relationship advice. It's the wrong guy. In my book I have a line that says you don't ask the janitor for expert banking advice, and you don't ask the banker for expert advice on mopping the floor. Okay, you got it backwards. So get the right source, get the right person that has the knowledge and also is going to motivate you and encourage you to get that thing done or someone who's going to be a safe space. If I shared an idea with you right now, and you told me it was stupid, I would never share an idea with you again. Right, I would protect myself and that's one of the first and maybe most important things for me in business.
And then second is, take action. Take action, you would not believe how many people I talk to, they pretty much have it figured out, they don't do shit. “I can call this guy, I know I can do this, and I know what's gonna work, but you know, we'll see.” Like, do it right now. “What do you mean right now? No, I can't. I have to pick up my kids.” Bullshit.
“Pick up your phone, do something right now, before we end this conversation, call someone or call that guy, call him. We're not ending this conversation until you call that guy right now or send an email right now. I want to see you do something, have the wheel start to move, even if it's slow and next thing you know it's going at 80 miles an hour down the expressway, but it starts with moving it and that's what I see a lot of is those two things - that combo, they're talking to the wrong person, disempowering, not helping them, doesn't have the right advice, and be the deer in the headlights, they're just frozen, and they start talking to themselves and then they start disempowering themselves. “I have this amazing idea, but it's not gonna work because of you know, blah, blah, blah, or he'll never want to do business with me, or she'll never want to…” and you talk yourself out of it before you gave it a shot at coming to reality, bringing your idea or your dream to fruition.
You have to break through that wall and just do it. Don't think about it, just do it. Have you ever seen someone try to get into a really cold pool, and they dip their toe? And they say, oh my god, it's so cold, and they do another toe, oh my goodness no way, and they walk away and they come back. Or they get in, they’re halfway and every time the water touches they’re oh, oh… because oh my god it's freezing, and then you see another guy come in and jump in the deep end and he's like, ”Oh, actually, it's not that bad.” Because your body gets used to it immediately, right?
So just jump in and stop overthinking it, and it's painless. It's like ripping the bandaid off, and you're in, you're done. But you can see someone at the edge of the pool for 20 minutes, just inch by inch getting in and agonising over how cold it is, like, dude, just go for it. Just go for it, and something's gonna happen. There's another line in my book, "If you make a move, God will make a way.” But you have to make a move. If you're a mannequin nothing happens. You have to move, something has to happen. So that's my combo advice for that.
That’s so solid. I think that's exactly the things that we see most often too, and people say the most to us as well when it comes to being stuck and the advice thing I think is so key because I actually just listened to a podcast with Busta Rhymes, and he told the story about how his dad told him that he would never succeed in hip hop, he needs to quit immediately, he's wasting his time, come work doing electrical engineering with me, Busta Rhymes! It kind of makes you go wow, his own dad, right? And it happens over and over, over and over. I was very lucky, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, I think that helped. I had a lot of that personal support because they're like, “Oh, yeah, you can do it. We did it, you could do it.” And people who love you want to keep you safe so they're not going to tell you to take the risk and if what you're saying sounds risky, they're gonna tell you hang on, maybe there's a better way, maybe there's something safe you can do, but we all know that isn't the case.
Let me tell you something. My father early in my journey, he put me on the tracks and he really helped me head in that direction. Later on, he became Busta Rhymes’s dad, he was that, not everybody knows that, not everybody would maybe even gather that from the story. But he did become that guy and it's the same thing, there's a certain level that some people get to and then they say, “Okay, that's it. This is the ceiling.” And the reality is there's no ceiling. Right? There's people who've made billions of dollars. They've invented Bluetooth, how the hell does Bluetooth work? I have no clue and I also don't know how this thing (phone) which is made of rocks and miracles, I can press a couple of buttons and talk to someone in China, I do not know how that works. Well, there's several people who have been involved in this but along the way of the journey of this phone, I guarantee “You're crazy. you're ridiculous.” How many times do you think that was said? And here it is, here it is, right? And how many things can a cell phone do now? Oh my god, it's insane. So when I hear that negativity, when I hear that lack of confidence, I'm like, wall, we're not talking anymore, I'm not talking to this person anymore. And my father, whom I love to death, he's my role model, I love him, in this area of life. When it comes to this subject over here, don't share, don't share, give light information, hey I got this thing going on, it's really good. Nothing, I'll share that with you guys, or with someone else, because I just don't want that energy to influence the energy of my idea or myself, because then if you put doubt in my mind, now I'm doubting and I didn't have that doubt before I started speaking to you. You could kill the idea with negative energy. So I gotta protect that, and that's something that I had to realise and it was a very, a crazy moment for me to realise that and admit that to myself that “This is my dad who loves me more than anyone in the world, but he's also the biggest poison when I talk to him about these particular subjects. I can’t ever talk to him about this again.” It was a hard moment for me to get it, but when I got it my life became better. Because what I noticed, what I realised was, I'd have conversations with him about particular subjects and I’d leave his house feeling drained and ugly, Oh, God, this, it just sucked. And you don't want to feel that with anyone at any time. So I had to have that radar on and I realised, this is an issue for me, this is not good, and I tried to talk to him about it and it just didn't work so I just said, we're not talking about that. So if he ever brings up a subject based on something that I don't want to discuss, I will simply say - this is in my toolbox for many people - “Let's talk about something else.” Simple. “Let's talk about something else.” It's a very effective tool, someone starts saying something that I don't want to talk about, “Let's talk about something else.” “No but I...” - “I prefer to talk about something else. How's your day going?” Whatever, just redirect the conversation, very simple.
Simple, but powerful Max, Really powerful, because it's not so confronting, it's just having a really healthy boundary. And like that you said, I really appreciate the way you said, you weren't having doubts about it until you spoke to that person, and now you're starting to doubt yourself. That's exactly how it works. That's exactly how it works.
So I have a fun exercise that I did. I did this at one point in my life, now it's second nature but around that time when I was trying to figure out who is on my cheerleading squad and who should not be, I did this fun exercise. So I got my notes page on my phone and I said to myself, everyone that I talk to, when I'm done speaking to them, I'm gonna write their name and how I felt after the conversation. Okay, so I did this for two weeks. And it's like, whoa, you will start to learn some things about the people that you interact with and you will never guess sometimes how people that are very close to you affect your energy and your ideas and who is empowering or disempowering you. And I eliminated a lot of people in my life based on that little exercise, and now it's second nature. Now I feel that from a mile away, I’m gonna know that person's done and not in a bad way, just hey, I don't want to associate with that person, you're not in my circle, and they can invite me to a barbecue 100 times or Christmas or whatever and I'm obviously never gonna have time because I don't want to put myself in that energy. So that was a very fun and interesting exercise for me. And I felt very relieved after I accomplished it. I did it for two weeks. Every person that called me, hung up the phone, open the notes page, Sara, “Sara was so nice. She was cheerful. She congratulated me”, boom, boom, boom, checkmark. Bobby. “Oh, Bobby called me. He complained about all kinds of crap and had all these missions and really didn't say anything of value and the conversation was a little bit dumb actually.” X. That's as simple as it was.
That's brilliant. I think in your book, you also talk about the power of mental roleplay. Is that right?
Yep.
How does that work?
Mental role playing and physical role playing, I think are phenomenal tools, especially for sales for something that you are nervous about. So mental role playing and physical, is really about putting yourself in the environment before you're in the environment. So let's say that this was a job interview and I was interviewing with Vicki, and I'm going to apply for the position of Head Chef at your restaurant. And I'm feeling, Oh, my God, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what she's going to ask me or how she's going to ask me, or what questions she might ask. And I agonise over this and I'm nervous, and I'm jittery and whatever. Then I'm gonna ask my friend Laura. “Hey, Laura, do me a favour. I got this interview, I'm interviewing to be Head Chef, I don't know what she's gonna say. Can we play with this for a second? I want you to be the interviewer, and I'll be the interviewee. Ask me your best questions, throw some stuff at me that I may or may not be prepared for. But we're going to start a scene here. It's like a movie, and let's see what happens.” Okay, cool. Action. Go ahead. Laura starts asking me a question. Maybe she wants to Google some chef interview questions or something if she felt like she needed that, we're gonna go into the scene, and we're gonna test it. And Laura being my friend, if she's qualified, which I'm going to say in this case she is, she'll tell me, “You know what? Question number three, you didn't really answer that much, try not to scratch your ear. So many times I saw you fidgeting. Don't say that you don't know how to make a soup, say that you're learning how to perfect it”, give me advice on how I did it and then what I also like to do is flip it. Now I'm gonna ask Laura, I'm interviewing, she's applying for the job and let's just have fun with it, get comfortable with it. So that by the time I go interview with Vicki, let's say she's gonna throw some things at me that I wasn't prepared for, absolutely a potential possibility, but there's also a lot of things that I might already be prepared for, and I already have felt like I did it, if we're taking the exercise seriously, already felt like I've done this. And if Laura and I practise four, five, six times this is no big deal. What's going on? What are you gonna ask me? I've already done this a bunch of times.
Isn’t that a universal law that once you've already built it into your neural pathways, then that releases the fear or any angst around?
You make synaptic connections in your brain, there's synaptic connections that get formed in your brain, and your neurons, and your brain thinks you've done it. If I do this exercise with Laura, and we're having fun, your brain thinks you've done it. It's a phenomenal way to bring people down, get them comfortable, and they have a better chance of success. And me as the owner of my business, when I had a large sales team, it was a phenomenal way for me to see what they might say in the field. Sometimes they said some things, “Dude, you cannot say that to a customer!” Or I can help sharpen their skills and say look, instead of saying this, you need to present yourself this way or stop fidgeting, don't have your hands in your pockets the whole time, it was a phenomenal way for me to see what they were doing when I was not around. Right. So if I had 10 salesmen all in the field, I don't know what they're doing, I don't know what they're saying, I don't know how they're acting, but if I get them in my controlled environment and test them and put them in this situation in the simulator, now I have a pretty good idea of what they're doing, what they're saying, how they're acting, and I can coach them and guide them. You get in a situation, this is how you're gonna get yourself out of it, etc. Is it perfect? No. Does it increase their effectiveness by a whole heck of a lot? Absolutely. Absolutely, and it's good for anything, not just business.
As an introvert I think I do that all the time. I’m naturally in my brain I'm constantly having conversations that I know are coming up with other people and I'm mentally rehearsing the conversation. I thought that was a little crazy but I guess it's okay, that's a good thing. It's gonna help set me up for success, and sometimes I do that before a podcast, I get the questions rolling first.
You know, that's really good. I think what I would add to that, the important part of that exercise when you're doing it alone is, “Am I pushing myself, am I asking myself, am I steering this in the right direction?”, because if I'm coaching you or you're coaching me, we're both going to want to help each other. But when you do it to yourself, sometimes you can take that side street and “Well, maybe he's going to say no.” If he says no, what are we going to do to get him back to yes? You have to make sure you're constantly going towards your objective. If you want a raise, and I say no, then, okay, this is a great point in the exercise. What are some of the things that I can say to get him to Yes, right? Not just oh, he's gonna say, No, it's not gonna go good. Oh, my God. No.
Right, because you don't want to create those pathways. We don't want to create that.
You want to course correct. So you’ve got to monitor your own self-talk, and make sure that you're constantly readjusting so that you're going in the right direction where you want to end up.
Yeah. And it's that feedback I think, is really key too. So when you are role playing with another person, that feedback that you're talking about, somebody notices your body language, notices the way you maybe didn't answer a question fully, I think that really does make a huge difference and that's why having coaches and consultants that work with you really are super helpful. Just because that's a more objective person, right?
Yeah, absolutely. It's massive, it's critical, it's critical.
To follow on from this Max, you talk also about negotiation, what's the secret to getting what you want in a negotiation?
Knowing what the other person wants, knowing what I want. Those are the two biggest pieces of information that I need. If you can implement the right leverage in any negotiation, I'll give you an example - one of my tenants has an office, they called me today, he represents famous artists, world famous artists, I literally just got off the phone with him right before this interview. He says, “Hey, I want to paint my entire office” and I said, “Okay, knock yourself out.” He's like, “No, I want you to pay for it.” And I said, "I'm not painting your office.” We have a good relationship. I was like, “I'm not painting your office.” He says, “How about backstage passes to any artist that you want?” And I said, “Any artist?”, he says, “Any artist you could think of I’ll get you the backstage passes”. And I gave him a name, and he said, “Done”.
Done. So he used a really good leverage, because he was like, well, if I give him this he might get it - he asked first, how about backstage passes? If I would have said, No, I don't want backstage passes, but I know who he is, and what he does for a living. He knows who I am, he figures okay, there's a good chance that I could offer him this, and he's gonna say yes, I said, “The guy will be there Monday”. All right.
So knowing what someone wants, and what's important to them, and every situation is different. So for example, if I'm trying to sell you something based off of price, maybe you don't care about price, maybe you care about quality service, maybe you care about a delivery time, maybe you care about if you can return it, money back guarantee, there's so many things and you can only find that out by doing what? Asking the person, and then listening, and then responding to that. There's been moments in my career where, I don't know if I write about them but there's moments in my career that I've gone in gung ho, “I'm gonna lower your price, I'm gonna give you the best price and blah, blah, blah, blah”, and literally left tons of money on the table, and there was a particular situation I'm thinking about right now and when I was done talking, the guy said to me, “I didn't care about the price. You never even asked me.” I was a kid, I was very young. He says, “What I wanted was my equipment to be painted.” Which would have cost me like nothing. He said, “You came in here and you dropped your pants, and you gave me this crazy discount, and you haven't heard anything that I said, and all I wanted was the stuff and you just were price, price, price dropping, price. You know what, as a matter of fact, it made me feel like you were taking advantage of me because you've lowered the price so much that I felt like you were price gouging me.” And I was like, “Dude, trust me, I'm not price gouging you I just didn't want to lose your business. I'm actually not making any money.” And listen to this, what the guy does, an unbelievable person, he says, “I know that, to be true. So I'm actually going to pay you more than you already offered me.” So for example, I told him, "I'll give you the deal at $10." And he said, "I'll pay you $12." He voluntarily raised his own price, but he taught me a lesson, a very valuable lesson because that stuck with me forever. And again, if you have the right leverage, if you know what someone wants, it’s a very easy, very quick negotiation. If there's something that they want, finding out what they want may not always be that easy, but that's on you to figure out. Maybe they say, I don't want anything, but you gotta do some research, you got to test some things and see. But once you find that thing, negotiation, getting what you want, incredibly easy.
I like that. That's solid advice. When you're talking to a new client, listen more than you speak, ask the questions and sit back and listen, they'll tell you what they want, and it's often not about price. Yeah, it's not.
I use that example. I have these Lululemon shirts, these things cost $120 - $130. Is that a good price? No, it's expensive, I could get a shirt for $10, but I buy it because I perceive it as quality, I like the return policy, I like the material, it's not about price. It's about other things that are important to me. So I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on their product because that's important to me. Now, if they raise their price from $120 a t-shirt to $130, am I still gonna buy it? Absolutely, they could make $150 and I'm gonna buy it. Because it's not the price that I'm focused on, you don't always have to go in and drop your price. On the contrary, people who charge cheaper prices often don't give as good a service or give you as good of a product, so I might not want to deal with a cheap company at all, and I think astute investors and business people usually can gather them and understand them. I could go with the cheaper guy, but he's not going to be as consistent or give me quality products as this guy over here who's charging a reasonable price, and meeting all my needs. So, that's a very important lesson for a lot of young people who think it's just the price, everything is price. It's not, it's not.
I'm with you, Max, I am with you. And my mum has a fabulous saying that “Long after the price is forgot, the quality remains.”
There you go, I like it.
I'm definitely quality over price every time. You mentioned that you were doing some work with Joe Dispenza, what other kinds of cool things do you do as it relates to personal development, and helping people in that space?
As far as personal development is concerned, I don't do much more these days as far as continuing education. At this stage of my life, I'm surrounding myself with people that I perceive to be on my level or higher, and I learn a lot. There are different levels of social environments and people that you're going to spend your time with and that's pretty much the way I sharpen my skills the most these days, just putting myself in those environments and learning from each other, being part of big groups and not very large groups, but the right groups, I should say. And then every once in a while I'll read a book or I’ll study a lot. If there's a subject or something that I'm not familiar with, I will look it up, definitions, terms, things like that. I like to learn. So that's a quality that I have that really helps me because every time I think of something, for example, we were wanting to know about the King Lion chair, I wrote it here in my notebook. As soon as we finish this, I'm gonna look up the origin of the King Lion chair, I'm gonna look up the history and just have that, I don't need it, but I want to have it and I might forget it tomorrow, but I'm gonna look it up.
Alrighty, for the purpose of our viewers and listeners, the King Lion chair is the incredibly gorgeous throne that Max is sitting on right now, we were asking him about it before we started the episode. Yeah, it's gorgeous.
So Max, of course we are Resilient Entrepreneurs, and we've spoken a lot about resilience throughout this conversation, but not specifically based on the word. I'd love to know what your definition of resilience is, and how you think one can become resilient in their life.
Resilience, I think it has to become part of your personality, it's not something that you do, it's someone that you are, and you have to embody that. I'm not going to give up or I'm going to find a solution regardless of what happens or what someone tells me, that's not going to affect my agenda or what I'm trying to accomplish. That's what it means to me, and it's not always easy. But if you come back to who you are over and over, and you see yourself as that person a Resilient Entrepreneur, you'll keep getting back on track and you'll ultimately become successful and achieve the things you want to achieve.
I think that's exactly a great way to sum it all up, all the amazing things we talked about today, and the great ways to become resilient, surrounding yourself with really good, strong people who will give you that advice, do those role plays with you, I love that as advice for entrepreneurs, especially when you're starting out, especially when you're trying to figure out how to have a conversation with a new client about pricing, because that's sometimes the hardest things and the things we get stuck on. And it's our mission here to make sure entrepreneurs don't quit, but we're also bringing you amazing stories like this from Max, who has an incredible book that you got to go read to learn more in depth, he's obviously just given us a little dusting on the top of all the detail that's in there. So I'm sure there's a lot more inspiration to gather. So Max, thank you so much. It's been an awesome conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
You're very welcome. Thank you, ladies, for having me on. It's been a wonderful time, I really appreciate you. And anyone who gets the book, please leave a review. That's something that, I get hundreds of emails and texts and LinkedIn messages, I'm like, guys leave the review on Amazon or Barnes & Nobles or whatever, because it helps the book a lot. Sending it to me directly is beautiful and I really appreciate it, but it's better to leave it out in the public so that the book can continue to grow and go out to other people and help other people.
Yes, reviews, likes, and subscribes, all these things help us creators out there to keep creating more amazing things and showing up to help with our knowledge and networks and all these great things. So absolutely, please leave your reviews. Thanks so much Max. We'll link everything in the descriptions below so people can get the links and go on and get your copy. So thanks, everybody. Thanks, Max. And we'll see you soon.
All right. Thank you
