They just are like, you shared so much great stuff.
Let's do this.
There you are.
So you did radio in 2010, but you also
did a couple of TV interviews or so back in 1998.
Awesome.
And then your first podcast experience,
you remember what it was?
I'm just curious.
I don't.
I mean, I really don't because I've
done so many over the years.
I mean, for me, the funny thing was
that the radio show was in Denver and I lived in Phoenix.
So I called in.
It was kind of like a podcast experience,
except for they were over the air.
And so it was just, and after that, I was like, this is fun.
I like doing it.
And so I just kind of kept going.
And whenever an opportunity came up, I was like, hey,
I'd love to be able to share some cool stuff.
That's awesome.
It's fun to dive in with people who
have the experience across the multi-generational platforms,
I'll call them.
There's so many different spheres to this
and different opportunities.
And there's strengths in each one of those industries
still that each medium can learn from and learn about
to help with growth.
So it's a lot of fun.
Well, let's dive in.
What are the three resources that you
recommend for other visionaries or leaders out there?
So right out of the gate, this question is one of those ones
is like, OK, which three?
Because you have to really narrow it down.
I'm going to give you two books that were massively
impactful for me.
One of the first ones was the myth of multitasking,
Dave Crenshaw.
And when I read that book, it was like,
this is how my brain works.
I never understood that because we always
think we take pride in multitasking as many projects
as we can and how many plates can we put in the air
and all that kind of stuff.
And the reality is it doesn't work.
It just doesn't.
And we actually hurt ourselves by doing that,
and we are less productive by that.
And when I read that book and I had the opportunity
to meet Dave, I was like, this is it.
This makes sense to me.
So it impacted everything that I did.
Moving forward, even with my business now,
it's a foundation of what I teach my clients as well.
Second resource.
That's funny.
We're opposite in that regard.
OK.
I was like, I was with my fingers,
and I was like, no, no, and I'm just teasing.
But no, I love the one thing that Gary Keller wrote as well.
And I get told myself often by people, Jackson,
why don't you just focus and do.
I do remember a reporter telling LeBron James,
why don't you just shut up and dribble?
And that ruined that reporter's career,
made them a very infamous person probably for the rest of life,
unless you're in the hate LeBron bandwagon.
But Richard Branson over there with his 200 companies
has his right to look at Gary Keller's book and say,
I appreciate the book.
I appreciate what it stands for.
But I breathe and poop and talk at the same time.
My body has incredible capabilities
for multitasking that are very hard to, well,
I would never ignore them.
But I'm sure there's another side
to the coin of what you're talking about.
I'd love to explore real quick before we
go into the two resources.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Anytime there's a point of debate regarding
a perspective, for those of you who are listening,
this is for you.
Eli and I already know this.
We've been leading long enough to know
that it's so helpful to see the other perspectives
and paradigms because it broadens your horizons.
So Eli, what would you say to that?
So I think that I'm a firm believer multitasking is a myth.
I believe that it's switch tasking is what it really is.
And that's what the term really is for it
because our brain is not capable of actually doing
multiple things at the same time.
It is just switching quickly between those things.
And I'm going to say 95% of the people out there,
when they try to do all these things at once
and juggle so many things, they are actually
hurting themselves.
There is a small percentage that actually their brain
is wired to handle that better.
They're still switch tasking.
It's still a thing.
But that's if you're looking at the raw science of it.
And I don't think the raw science helps a lot of people
as much as we like to believe it does.
It's like if you think Bolt didn't learn
to run by reading a book, he learned to run by doing it.
But as I play the trumpet, if I blow air out of my mouth,
I'm literally breathing.
But simultaneously at the same time,
the trumpet is making noise.
And so it's not switch tasking.
It's actually there's a cause and a ripple effect associated
with that cause.
But if we get too into the idea of control
and controlling all the factors that go into it,
we do end up kind of feeling overwhelmed and useless
by it.
So I'm going to continue to play devil's advocate on both sides
of this.
But that is fine.
And I'll rebuttal back on this one.
Because if you think about it playing the trumpet,
you are blowing out.
That's an action.
But once the action is done, it's in motion.
So then you're using the fingers.
But at that time, the motion is already happening.
So that's a separate task.
But it's blowing at the same time you're using the finger.
But as the sound coming out, the sound is not you.
The sound is the instrument.
That's a different.
That's not you.
That's the instrument.
But if the air flow stops.
Your actions caused it.
Yes.
Your actions caused it.
But they're two separate creatures.
See, that's the nuance of it.
And when you look at, you think of people like Branson,
who's a genius.
But if you think of, yeah, he has 200 and some companies.
But he's not running all those companies.
He's hired people.
They're the ones that are doing most of the actions.
His job is to go through and say, OK,
is there anything I need to deal with over here?
Or do I want to do some fun publicity stunt?
Because that's what he does best, is having fun and doing
cool stuff.
And so that's his action.
But there's a thousand other actions going on.
But they're not him doing them.
Right.
But I see too many people trying to oversimplify their lives.
I see people also trying to complicate.
But most are falling into this get rich quick bandwagon.
I don't call that.
They call it, oh, I'm just going to do one thing.
Or if I just could do this.
Or if my funnel were that simple.
And they try to narrow it down.
But again, I love the trumpet analogy.
Thank you.
There's three fingers.
So if I play a note with two simultaneous fingers
at the same time, then I am technically
taking two different actions in addition to that breath of air
that I'm continuing to blow.
So it's not that important.
But this visionaries, having people to mastermind with
and just being willing to engage in the debate
and keep learning.
This is how centrifugal force changed to centripetal force.
That's a law of science.
It was not supposed to change.
But it did because people kept exploring and exploring
and exploring and saying, you know what?
I can find something new and dynamic out of this.
And believe it or not, that law of physics
has made tremendous impact on our lives
and on the way we develop future technologies.
So thank you for being willing to entertain the silly debate.
And let's talk about the debate concept for a minute.
One of the things I learned this forever ago,
it was at a, do you know Harvecker?
T Harvecker?
Yeah, T Harvecker.
The Harvecker.
Inform, actually.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's hilarious because most people,
they think T is actually part of his name.
And it actually is the Harvecker because he
wrote that name, that word there himself.
But I was at an event early on, millionaire mastermind thing,
whatever it was that, I don't remember the name of it,
that he does, the three day event.
And one of the things that I learned right out of the gate,
and this was so, I think, so impactful.
And I teach this one.
I'm speaking with people as well.
We're going to go through a lot of stuff.
We're going to have stuff.
And we're going to have stuff we agree on.
We're going to have stuff we disagree on.
And guess what?
If you're listening to this and it resonates with you,
take it, run with it.
If it doesn't, that's OK.
Toss it.
Don't worry about it.
And don't waste any time on it.
That's the thing most people make the mistake of is,
they want to either grab onto it,
and that's the only thing in the world,
or they have to argue about it.
And I'm like, don't argue about it.
If you don't like it, don't agree with me.
That's cool.
I don't care.
It's not going to lose any sleep for me.
I know what works for me.
And I know what's worked for the clients
that I've worked with that have gotten the best results.
And if it doesn't work for you, cool.
That's OK.
Find something else.
That's how we do it.
I would challenge, though.
Again, I'll come back to argue.
Why?
Because one of my top five strengths is self-assured.
And most entrepreneurs have a very, very high dose
of self-assuredness within them.
The challenge with a self-assured individual
is, when they're younger and less confident,
they often get blamed for being argumentative.
When in reality, the only way that somebody
who is self-assured can learn is by debating,
is by asking questions, is by coming
to understand how to see the world in a different way
than their current paradigm is.
So in other words, we need that ability to debate.
And we need people in our lives who
surround us who are willing to debate with us.
Otherwise, what you have happen is
you have people like Elon Musk saying, launch now.
Put all the AI cars out there.
It doesn't matter who dies.
And it happens because he doesn't have leaders around him
to keep him in check.
So he has built leaders around him that keep him in check.
And I need those same types of leaders.
So if you find yourselves visionaries
being accused of being argumentative,
or you find yourselves in a group of people
who are arguing back with you, one, welcome home.
Well, with those who are arguing with you,
they're trying to help you see something
you can't see yourself.
And two, it's not unhealthy until it becomes toxic.
At which point, I would agree, if somebody is condescending
at you or somebody is telling you,
hey, your theory is trash or garbage, that person,
you might want to find the thick skin
to learn to listen a little bit.
But at the same time, most of those
can be avoided because you have plenty of people around you
who will argue with you in a constructive form that
can help you move your life forward.
Resources two and three.
Hit it, Eli.
I love this.
OK, resources two, Me, Inc. by Gene Simmons.
A lot of people don't even realize that book exists.
Gene Simmons, if you don't know, he
was the bass player for Kiss.
He was actually the mastermind behind the whole Kiss brand
that became intensely phenomenal over the years.
A lot of people even argue they weren't even actually
that good of musicians.
I like their music, but that's OK.
But at the end of the day, if you come from the 70s, 80s,
or 90s, you know who Kiss is.
Absolutely.
And you probably went to at least one Kiss concert.
But that was a very big, that was a great book
on the idea of personal responsibility
and doing whatever it takes to get
what you need, what you want, what you're going for,
your goals.
And sometimes what that looks like is not always pretty.
Sometimes that isn't.
It's like we live in this world now where everything,
everybody wants everybody to be accepted just as they are.
But the reality is human beings judge, period.
That's just a fact.
And for him, he was an immigrant.
He had an accent.
And he ended up, he watched old Western TV shows
to break himself of the accent.
You listen to him today, you have no clue he was an immigrant.
But he got that out of his system.
Now he's very strong in his faith, in his background,
his history.
But he doesn't make that about his front line persona.
He has learned to get perfect English.
He sounded like anybody that was,
he sounded like an old Western, OK?
He sounded like John Wayne.
He also changed his name to Gene because it
was a very common male's name back in that era.
And he did all these different things
that helped him get ahead.
He's like, I can do all these things I don't want to do.
And but I can get ahead or I can just be myself the way I want.
And I'm never going to get anywhere
because that's just people are going to judge.
And one of the things I loved about that book
was the fact that he just put it up in the front.
He goes, if you have an asset, you
have something you are really good at,
you take advantage of any way you can morally and ethically.
That's an important piece.
You take every advantage you possibly
can to get ahead in this world as long
as it's moral and ethical.
And things like that where he went through,
he dressed differently.
He changed his name in order to be more American.
And he got rid of his accent.
He did all these things.
And now, I mean, the dude makes a ton of money
even now on Kiss merchandise when they weren't,
they haven't been quote unquote popular for 20 years.
But he still does this amazing stuff.
He had a reality TV show.
He's got a great family, all these different things.
And it was all because he was like,
I have to do this thing because it will help get me ahead.
And I'm willing to make that sacrifice for it.
And so that book was a huge game changer for me.
I love that.
And all these concepts are about buying back our time as well,
following those who've pioneered the path
and paved the way before us.
One of the, I guess, the controversial backlashes
that I could hear if this was a CNN or Fox interview,
where we've got millions of people, they would say,
well, it sounds like he's sacrificing his identity.
But I would argue that actually, he's
setting aside his ego while maintaining his identity
and seeing that none of those dynamics that you suggested,
even a name change, have to do with identity
and its true nature.
But the things that he was able and willing to do,
I love that you included morally and ethically.
Thank you for that.
Did he mention that in the book or are you adding that?
I'm pretty sure he did.
It's been a long time since I read it
because I mean, it's been probably 20 years since I read it.
It was an awesome book.
It's an easy read.
And then he had another one afterwards,
and I don't remember the name off the top of my head.
What's the third resource?
You know, the third resource, quite honestly,
is your network, the people that you meet.
Above my head, it says meet cool people.
It's my favorite thing in the world to do.
That actually came from when I was 2019,
I'm traveling across the country speaking
at different events all over the place, having a good time.
And this event that I spoke at pretty regularly,
they kept having me come back because I
had a different audience every time.
So I had a good relationship with the host.
And they'd have the attendees all go around
with the microphone and say, okay, who are you?
How do you help your clients?
And what do you want to get out of the next three days?
And everybody do their thing.
And then they started doing it with the speakers.
And the speakers are like, well, I'm gonna do this,
and I'm gonna be teaching you about this,
and I'm gonna talk about this program I've got coming up.
And I mean, it was just, it was a pitch.
And I was like, okay, that's lame.
And when they got to me, I was like, so yeah,
tomorrow I'm gonna be speaking.
I'm gonna be teaching about follow-up
and all kinds of cool tech stuff
that's gonna really help you out, show up,
be ready to take a lot of notes.
But the reality is, I love speaking,
it's one of my favorite things to do,
but the reality is, I live at the time
I lived in Portland, Oregon.
So it's like, I live in Portland, Oregon,
we are in Miami, Florida,
that is almost as far coast to coast
as you can go across the continent.
And I come over here all the time
for the purpose of being able to just to meet cool people
because it's so much fun.
And that took off.
The event MC started introducing me
as the guy who flies around the country to meet cool people.
And it took off, it became this whole thing.
It's a hashtag, I got these wristbands.
Now it's a podcast, you know?
But it is, the people at Meet are gonna get you
anywhere you wanna go.
And so the most powerful resource you have available
are the people on your phone,
the people that you're connected to on Facebook,
LinkedIn, or whatever, people you talk to,
people when you go in person,
which I highly recommend way more than just social,
get out and have conversations, have coffee with people,
go out to dinner with friends
and just meet as many people as you can, listen to them,
hear their stories because you will learn so much from them.
Absolutely, I'm a huge fan of the quote,
your network is your net worth.
I'm also a huge fan of the quote that I've adapted,
but the quote being, it's not what you know,
it's who you know.
And that quote I've adapted
because I hope you young people are listening in.
It's not what you know, it's who you know,
and then it's what you know.
You screw up the what after you figure out the who,
you're toast, you're burning yourself.
So it's very important to also become proficient
and to know what you're doing
and to know how you're doing things
and to be able to walk the walk.
Otherwise you're gonna end up talking yourself out
of your own network.
So make sure that you leverage
that greatest resources that you have
with tremendous respect
and you will do some amazing things.
Those are fantastic resources.
Thanks for that Eli.
Way to start the show off strong.
We'll be right back after this break
and we'll dive into Eli Delaney's vision.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
And we'll be back in a minute.
Hey, what's up Vision Pros?
Welcome in to another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have Eli Delaney on.
He's a local to my great state of Texas.
I'm super grateful for that.
I've gotten to meet him in person, shake his hand,
see him network at our conference
and first class networking as well.
And he's connected to the world of business
and he's connected to some very, very awesome entrepreneurs
that I'm dear friends with.
So it's awesome to now have him in my friend bucket.
He is going to help us with how to meet cool people
and how to also buy back some of our time with the tech that's
now captivated our attention to the point where tech is kind
of stealing our time away from us.
We're going to be talking about that
after we talk about how we developed this vision
and got to where he's at.
So a lot of wisdom going to be coming forward in this show.
Prior to diving in with Eli, I always
want to give some wisdom from my side,
some of the resources that I've come across
and use them and grateful for.
So we're going to start with these two sponsors right here.
One of them is Hard to Kill, the Hard to Kill podcast
specifically by Dave Morrow.
Dave is a veteran who has put together a program
to help over 100,000 veterans lose 2 million pounds
collectively.
He is a award winning podcast host
as well as been doing this for a number of years now
and he is fantastic in that space.
But what really draws my attention
is this mission to help our soldiers who
are often long forgotten.
In fact, there's this movie I watched a little bit ago called
Thank You for Your Service.
It's kind of a backhanded title because a lot of the veterans
come home, they kind of lose sight of their identity
from the skills and the trainings and routines
they were part of, and they start
to kind of fall off the map.
And we don't do a very good job in society of helping them
get integrated into our culture.
So I hope all of us step up in this process.
One great way to step up is to help them figure out
where they can go and belong to the process of integrating
the society.
Dave provides one of those types of opportunities just for them.
In fact, he's got what's called the world's easiest fitness
program as well baked into his site now.
So go ahead and check that out and see
if it's something that makes sense for you.
If you know a veteran who could benefit from that,
send them Dave's way for sure.
And he will bring them into his fold.
In addition, there's Magic Productions.
Magic Productions is run by Peyton Childers.
And Peyton Childers has an incredible setup
for video and live streaming events
and helping create super high quality content.
Where did he learn to do this?
Try the Texas Rangers.
He was part of the World Championship baseball
team's organization for audio visual and the Sam Houston
University's championship team.
He's got the rings for both of those.
I think that's amazing.
And he's this wonderful, I call him a kid, he's 25.
So he's definitely got his professional side baked in.
But I haven't met somebody of his age
that has the insanely great hospitality skills like he has
and this tenacious drive to produce excellent content
for those who host events.
You can check out the content he produced for our event
at First Class Networking on our YouTube channel.
I highly recommend including Peyton
in any strategic process you're running
for events, for getting your event out there virtually
as well.
And he's now got his own podcast as well.
So make sure to check that out.
We'll put that in the show notes.
In addition, we've got the water project on here.
The water project I don't have an affiliation with.
I just love it.
When I came across this website and this cause,
I wish I remember who led me to this.
I guess that's not always the most important thing.
When it comes to this venture, it
taught me that there's millions of people out there who do not
have access to clean drinking water.
I've never been out without water a day in my life.
So I forcibly chose to say, you know what?
I want to do something about this.
I want to keep this front and center.
Talk about it on the show.
We get back to it as often as we can.
What's really cool is when you put even $5
towards one of these projects, it's
kind of like a crowdfunding project,
they show you the outcome of that particular location.
So some of these tribes or some of these villages,
they've got 500 plus people.
When you donate to it, you get to see those lives changed.
And the generational impact of providing water
means these kids can focus on their schooling.
It means the parents can focus on getting their work done.
It means that we're stabilizing an economy that
may be far from home.
But this globe is important for all of us.
We've got 8 billion people to help in the world.
My challenge to you is if you have
a cause that's more important to you than this one,
I don't want to challenge the cause.
My challenge is share that with us so we can take a look
and we can possibly give back as well.
Those of us who are privileged enough to rock
a microphone for a living, we've got more
than we can do to help out in the world.
So please give us those links in the comments.
Allow us to help out.
And without further ado, Eli Delaney,
welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
I'm glad to hang out with you, my friend.
Absolutely.
I'm going to dive in fast because you got a lot to share.
So what is your vision, Eli, for those that you serve?
My vision for the people that I work with
is to help them buy back their time.
Buy back their time and spend more time.
I mean, reality boils down to three things
that I always talk about.
Automate what you can, delegate what you can't,
delete all the crap you shouldn't be doing anyway.
I call that entrepreneur ADD.
And we are so overwhelmed in today's world
with all the things we're supposed to do
as entrepreneurs, as business owners,
that we get sucked into doing everything manually.
We feel like we have to do it ourselves.
And a lot of it can actually be automated,
especially the right kind of follow-up.
And so that's my big thing is I'm a follow-up guy.
How do we build the systems to stay in touch,
stay in front of people on a regular basis?
Out dropping the ball because we're going to do it.
And so when I do that for my clients
and when I'm helping other people,
and it's not even my clients necessarily,
I mean, yes, my clients,
but I got other people that I'm like,
let's put this in place, go try this thing.
And now they took what normally would have taken them
10 minutes and they did it in one
because we streamlined the process.
But how many times can you do that
before you're literally buying days out of your week?
And that's my vision.
I want to give people time to have more time
to do the things that either they do best,
they love doing, or the most important thing,
one thing you cannot automate or delegate,
and you definitely shouldn't be deleting,
is your relationships.
We talked about this before, is the meet cool people.
I love doing those conversations.
If I can automate everything else in my world
and just hang out with cool people all day,
I'm in heaven, and that's what I'm looking for.
And that's what I try to help my clients with.
Dude, that is like the description epitome of heaven.
So that's really cool how you tied that together.
Do me a favor, help me get those three points again.
You named three points that were super critical.
One of them was delegate what you can't,
and my ADHD was already flying.
Okay, now we start, we start, because it's ADD.
ADD, automate what you can,
delegate what you can't, and delete all of the crap
you shouldn't be doing anyway.
Dude, that is awesome.
So yeah, no, my ADHD was going nuts.
So I didn't even catch the acronym there.
Oh, that's such a great acronym too.
Normally people are inventing these acronyms,
you know, in 2024, and you know, like it's all been done.
So now you've got these really crazy, bizarre acronyms.
That's a cool one, ADD.
The funny thing is that one literally just came to me.
It wasn't, I didn't like try to come up with it.
It was just like, I was,
I think I was actually speaking at an event.
And I was like, you know, reality is we want to get away
from all the stuff you shouldn't be doing.
You know, we need to automate everything we can,
delegate what you can,
because I'm a firm believer in having virtual assistants,
or, you know, somebody to help you out with things,
and delete all the crap you shouldn't be doing anyway.
Hey, wait a minute, that's ADD.
We're going to call that pretty rad.
And I think I pretty much did that from stage one time,
and that's how it came to be.
That's amazing. That's so awesome.
That's natural, natural gift of diligence
that comes together all at once, and man, awesome.
All right, so what's your vision for you?
Tell us about the, you know, just,
I guess some different angles of it,
because we're already in it.
Your vision is obviously to serve and help others,
and you're probably applying ADD to yourself,
but tell us more in depth about you.
My vision for myself is exactly what's right above my head,
meeting cool people.
I want to get to the point where all I do
is make, have conversations and make connections.
My, you know, all the things that I love to do,
I love to meet people, I love to go to events,
I love speaking, doing podcasts like this, things like that.
I love all that kind of stuff. It's so much fun.
But the thing that I love the most
is to play Tetris with human beings.
How can I get people to fit together
so we can all win the game?
So they disappear, just kidding.
I got it.
Well, I use another analogy too,
which is I love to collect people,
just not in a Dexter kind of way.
And you know, I get that one.
If I say that one from stage, it's always entertaining
because you'll get like half the room,
they start laughing, the other half has this glass over,
and I'm like, it's okay, go to Netflix, look up Dexter,
watch one episode, you'll get it.
And, but it really is, I mean, I am in my best zone
when I can do that, when I can go to an event
or I can just sit down, have coffee with somebody
and just get to know, hear their story, what's going on,
how did they get started and why,
what are they passionate about?
And then figure out, okay, what can I do?
Who can I connect them with?
And how can I help them get closer to their goal?
And to me, it's solving puzzles.
That's like, my brain is always looking for
where's a problem that I can help solve?
And so when I'm talking to other people
and I hear what they're doing
and what they're looking with them, it's like, okay,
how can I help them get to the next level?
Who do I need to connect them with?
And that's so much fun.
Yes, absolutely.
So in order to do that, you were either naturally born
with the gift of amazing questions
and the listening skills to do this,
or you developed that along the way.
What's the secret?
So how did you develop listening skills?
And am I wrong too?
Does that have anything to do with it?
It does, no.
No, listening skills is critical.
Listening skills is critical.
How it was developed, I honestly don't know.
I think part of it was because as a kid,
I was actually a bit of an outcast.
I was put into a school where I was not the popular kid.
By any means, I was actually an outcast
in this whole community.
And so I had to figure out how to make friends.
And I was the king of the rejects,
is a good way to describe it.
The people who were also the outcasts,
they were the nerds, they were the weird ones,
all the people who were not accepted into the mainstream,
I ended up making friends with them.
And then I got them to all talk to each other.
And I don't even know how it happened necessarily,
but that's what I did through high school
and junior high and stuff like that.
And then afterwards, as I grew up and became an adult,
I had to figure out, okay, well, like one of these things,
I started my first business,
which was a web and graphic design agency.
And I'm like, okay, I'm really great at building websites
and I'm really great at graphics.
I can do some really pretty stuff,
but if I'm gonna get clients, I have to talk to people.
And so I got out there and started joining chambers
and stuff like that.
And that was almost 30 years ago.
And from there, I ended up realizing
I have a good connection.
I have the skill of being able to listen
and just connect with people.
That's one reason why I keep advocating
for in-person meetings because Zoom is amazing.
Virtual conversations are amazing.
It's the technology we have is phenomenal.
I used to joke about the fact
I could have three different conversations
with three different people on three different continents
in the same day.
And I've done that before.
It's not the same as sitting down over a cup of coffee
and talking to somebody,
or better yet, just breaking bread,
having a meal with them
and getting to know them as a human being.
And that is really where a lot of that came into be.
Fast forward, I get into a lot of stuff.
I got studying into Bushido,
which is the code of the samurai.
And it's very much about self-control,
being aware of everything in your world.
It's all philosophy.
It's not anything more than the philosophy that they go by.
And there are two of the seven virtues
are literally my core values.
I didn't know this until after, I mean, I knew my values,
but I didn't realize that this was part of them,
which was kindness and respect.
They use compassion versus kindness,
but those are my two core values.
And it's like, okay, this is kind of cool.
And it keeps me grounded and keeps me to where
when I'm talking to somebody, I'm as present as possible.
Nine times out of 10, even more than that,
you won't see me looking at my phone
unless there's a specific reason
because I'm looking you right in the eye.
I wanna know exactly what's going on
and I'm listening to you
and nothing else matters at that point
because I am truly interested.
Awesome.
How does that work out when you got to look at a camera
and also a person at the same time?
Oh, that part sucks.
That part sucks.
I'm not gonna lie to you.
It's hard to figure out, isn't it?
You may even notice me.
I have trained myself repeatedly
to keep looking at the camera instead of looking down
because you are directly underneath the camera here.
And of course, you gotta have the banner across the top
and all that stuff so it pushes you down even further.
But that was, and it was very difficult at first.
When we went totally on Zoom
and like I was doing the virtual presentations and stuff,
that was very difficult.
It has taken hours and hours and hours
and hours and hours of practice
to look at that silly little blue dot right there
and focus on that knowing that I wanna go right here
because I wanna look you in the eye.
And that is so difficult.
But at the same time, it goes to show
what I was saying earlier.
You put me in front of real people in person.
It's a night and day different.
I mean, I do okay for this, but it's not the same.
The energy you have from being right there physically
with somebody is second to none.
Absolutely, absolutely.
It's a fun game to play with ourselves as visionaries
and as people in the podcast world.
I'll be honest and I'd love anybody's feedback on it.
I tend to look the person right in the eye
while we're on the show.
And maybe everybody's like, where the heck is he looking?
I know he's never made a comment on it, but.
People know it.
Let's go into a bigger subject.
I wanna make sure to give them some of the meat of Eli.
So what is the worst leadership experience
that you've ever had, Eli?
You know, I think the worst leadership experience
I've ever had was I was working with a company
as they were a client of mine
and there were a lot of people involved
and the owner of the company just, he was brash.
And when somebody didn't do something right,
he would degrade them.
And there's no place for that.
In my opinion, it's like, I have a rule with me.
Even back in the days with my web design agency,
we had a client that started yelling at one of my employees
and I fired him.
I was like, no.
And I got on the call and I was like, okay, no,
you're not going to act this way.
You will not act this way ever.
And he kept cutting me off and there were some choice words
and I hung up on him three times before he finally shut up
and he kept calling me back.
Good for you.
Yeah, and at the end of the conversation, I said,
okay, here's the deal.
I will continue working with you on these two rules.
Number one, if you ever speak to my employees this way,
again, you are fired.
New Edge and BathG will not have a second option
or a third chance.
Second thing, if you ever speak to me this way,
same thing, you are fired.
No options.
Third thing, I'm going to put your phone on hold.
You're going to go back with Jamie,
who is the guy he was yelling at.
And when she picks up the phone,
you're going to apologize to her.
And you're going to be calm.
You are not going to be degrading.
You are never going to raise your voice to her again.
And we will take care of you.
If you ever break those three rules, you're done.
There will not be another chance, period.
Are we clear?
And yeah, it was an interesting experience.
So that's me, that was an experience I had with a client,
but I had an employee, well, I mean,
he was a client of mine in a different sense,
but he did this with his employees.
He would like lose his mind with them
and just be rude and stuff.
And I just, and it was funny because at one point,
somebody that had worked with him came to me
and she was like, can you recommend some books
on emotional intelligence?
And I was like, well, yeah, I can, but why?
Why are you asking?
And she was like, because you always are calm
in our conversations.
And you put up with some pretty rough stuff
and we all are putting up with some pretty rough stuff.
I can't handle it like you do
and I wanna know what you're doing differently.
And for me, it was, I felt really good about the fact
that she felt that way, that she could come to me
and ask me for that advice, which was great.
And I gave her some resources
and I gave her some basic stuff that I know
in general as well.
But the reality is that if we can keep our calm,
and look at things objectively, solutions come
and everybody can be fine and nobody has to lose their
temper, nobody has to be rude, nobody gets fired.
But this particular person does not have that skill
and over time, eventually I had to leave them.
I was like, I'm sorry, I just can't keep doing this.
Is this the same one?
Are you talking about the same?
No, those were two, actually two different conversations.
So the first, so I see the protector in you
and that is valiant and awesome that you go to bat
for your team members like that.
What did the client reciprocate and calm down?
Or did they leave?
What was the outcome of that?
The first one under the design company, he did calm down.
He did get back on the phone with my gal
and she was, I was right there listening.
Like I could hear the conversation and she's like,
it's okay, thank you for the apology and I accept it.
And we wanna make this right for you.
And all it was was there was a little bit
of misunderstanding and it was minor misunderstanding
but most of it was him just not listening.
And so once he calmed down, she got back into it
and we're like, okay, let's knock this out,
let's get it go and everything worked fine after that.
He learned his lesson, he was a bully
and I could tell he does this is the type of conversation
he had with a lot of other people
and I don't put up with that.
I had zero tolerance for that kind of attitude.
And so even like this other client that I was talking about,
I mean, there were times we had group conference calls
with like 10 people and I just like, all right,
I'm gonna go now, click.
Well, I ran the Zoom.
So it's over for everybody.
Yeah, so he's like, okay then and he learned,
with me, he didn't treat me that way.
And for me, it's like to me, I had a hard time sitting there
and hearing how other people were being treated as well
and I did what I could to go to bat for him
and may at least make it lighthearted.
I'm a protector through and through.
Some could say that I'm a degrader as well
because I do like to dive into what's difficult
but it is typically the only time I get set off
is when somebody is coming at somebody else.
And sometimes I lose that calm demeanor of like,
hey, I can handle this calmly and I'm like,
no, I've got to save their life now off of your head.
And I'm learning not to be that way, but.
I'm learning not to be that way, but it's taking time.
I'm gonna go to the opposite end real quick.
We might come back to that.
You're welcome to come back to it,
but I wanna make sure we get to the two next questions.
One is what's the best leadership experience
that you've ever had?
The best leadership experience I've ever had.
That's a hard one to really think about.
You know what I've seen the best leaders
and I don't have anything specific
off the top of my head for it,
but the best leaders that I have the most respect for
are people who do go to bat for their people.
And they're the ones that a lot of times,
and this is the best part of it,
a lot of times people don't even know
what they do behind the scenes.
Like they are, these are the millionaires
that are donating insane amount of money,
but nobody knows about it.
And these are people that I've had dinner with
and I know what's going on
because it was casual conversation.
They weren't telling me to brag.
It was like, so what's new and exciting?
And they're like, you know what?
I got this project that I thought was so cool
and so I'm helping them out.
You could tell they're genuinely excited
about helping them out, right?
But publicly, nobody knows about that stuff.
And people like that and people where
I see other entrepreneurs out there,
and like I said, I can't think of any
off the top of my head directly,
but the ones that are like,
you know what, I wanna stop and take a second.
I want to acknowledge this person who's helped me out.
And that's one of the things I think that we don't,
across the board, we don't do enough.
We just, we don't stop and thank people enough.
And I make a point to try to do this whenever I can.
If somebody, you know, a friend of mine
had an event this last week
and I showed up to support them.
To me, that's just the way it should be.
Today, he publicly acknowledged me,
thanking me for showing up and being there for him.
And people just need that.
You know, people need to know that they're doing a good job
or that what they're doing is making a difference.
And the best leadership I see
are the people that are appreciative.
They think, you know, they're the ones that'll say please
and thank you all day long.
And they're the people that will acknowledge
the people around them and thank them for doing a good job.
That is, and it's so underutilized.
It's not even difficult.
Say thank you.
I mean, our parents told us that, right?
They say please and thank you.
I learned this, I learned this at like five.
Yeah.
Those who are listening,
yeah, if you think of any public figures,
anybody that's that,
whose story we can learn from on this,
there are a lot of examples that are out there like that.
You might have some better examples
than we do in this regard.
You may have examples of just personal in your life
and they're meant to be kept to yourself.
The two public figures that come to mind
as you were talking was one is Shaquille O'Neal.
I hear a lot of random stories about that man,
how he interacts with fans and does things for people.
The other one is Keanu Reeves.
I see both of them mentioning the news constantly
for things that they did not necessarily want
to be known for or to be given credit for.
They just did it.
They just showed up and did what they felt
was the right thing or worth doing in life.
So those are very powerful examples.
Speaking of powerful,
Eli, if this is the last chance you ever have
to share a powerful lesson with visionaries,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience?
Build your relationships.
It still goes back to the core of me, cool people.
It really does.
I mean, that is the thing that drives me every single day.
I've got an event tonight after we finish here.
I'm gonna give like a half hour worth of work done
and I'm gonna be heading out to go to a business mixer.
The people that you meet
will get you anywhere you wanna go.
That's an Eli original quote.
And that is because it is so, so true.
I have had amazing conversations with people
from all walks of life, from homeless people
to multimillionaires and sat down next to them,
had amazing conversations from them
and everything in between.
And the stories that you'll hear
and the opportunity to get to know another human being
is it's encouraging and it's energizing.
And so many people wanna hide behind their computers
and they want AI to do everything for them
and all these other things.
It's like they wanna be in their own little bubble.
Don't, get out there, talk to real people,
have real conversations.
I've done sales in the drive through Starbucks before.
Have those conversations, talk to people.
I mean, it's just, we've come to a place where that's,
a lot of people have lost that skill.
And we need to bring it back
because it is so, so important for,
honestly, I believe it's for our survival.
Yeah, I agree.
Community is a critical component.
There's certainly a value and a necessity
for some people to build virtually
based on your existing network.
Children who are in a toxic home,
for instance, may only have an option
for the community virtually for a time period.
So you may be given resources to a different capacity
or limitations to different capacity,
but the gravitating towards figuring out
who your community is, getting yourself into a safe place
where you belong, all of those things matter.
Entrepreneurs, we have the ability to cultivate
and visionaries too, to really incubate those types
of environments for people.
And we don't do it by doing it alone.
If everybody built their own community,
we wouldn't have any communities.
So make sure that, I hope that we all make sure
that we're inclusive in the process.
So let's dive in, let's use a few minutes,
more about buying back the time
and the tech that's captivated our attention.
Tell me about that, Eli.
Dive into as much as that as you want.
Okay, yeah, so when you're talking
about buying back your time, again, I'm a follow-up guy.
I'm involved about the relationships
and how do you follow up with the whole,
let's say you have people that you meet at events.
First and foremost, every single business owner
should have a CRM.
This is your, they call it the customer relationship manager.
I call it the client relationship manager
because customers are a dime a dozen.
It's transactional, Walmart has customers.
We have clients.
It's a whole different level.
And when you start thinking of people like clients,
that elevates them and it elevates you.
And so you've got your CRM.
Put everybody in there, track that.
Use that tool to know, I met this person at this time
and this is what we talked about
because we are human beings.
We will drop the ball.
We will forget things.
That's why technology exists.
It's there to help us out.
So, but use your CRM.
Think about the things that you're,
when you write an email to somebody,
are you writing the same email 10, 15, 20 times?
Hey, it was great meeting you at XYZ event.
Use a framework, use a template to start with
and then just customize it.
Instead of spending that five minutes writing an email,
you spend 30 to 60 seconds.
And it makes that right there.
That's a save your time kind of thing.
Putting, you know, batching your projects.
If you're going to be creating social media content,
great example, create it all at once
for the rest of the week or two weeks.
It's been a couple hours and batch it together.
If you're replying to emails,
don't reply to them as they come through,
schedule half an hour and do them all in one shot.
These are some of the things we do.
And I've got, I mean, I've got systems
and very specific frameworks,
but thinking templates and also thinking campaigns.
When we're talking about follow-up,
this is like, this is my big thing is the follow-up process.
Most people think on a very, very small scale.
Think long-term.
This is your in for the long game.
My running joke is I could go outside today,
get hit by a bus and still sell you stuff
for three more years.
Cause I have a three year campaign.
I'm not thinking about somebody that I've just met last week.
I want to be there in front of them for years to come.
And I mean, I even had a client who came to me,
he was on my list.
And of course, after the three years, a little secret,
you just live it back to the beginning.
So it starts over again,
but he'd been on my list for over 10 years.
And he came back and referred his son's business to me.
I have a client who recently enrolled
with our rockstar program, which is our flagship.
I have known her since 2008.
We met at my very first chamber of commerce meeting
that I went to.
That's how I started in all this stuff.
No, it wasn't 2008.
No, it was longer than that.
It was like 96, 95 or 96 actually.
And she just recently became a client of mine
because I've always stayed in front of her,
but you can't remember to do all these things.
So think about your CRM as a good example,
using the tools that are out there.
Use, I mean, Google Drive is an amazing thing.
You can use Google docs and take your,
the conversations you have, your proposals.
I have a client who was just like, well, you know,
I just spent all day writing these six proposals.
I'm like, no, they should have taken you
a half an hour max for each one.
Because if you have it, the template there,
use that stuff and then just customize little bits.
So many people miss the boat on these things.
And these are just the tip of the iceberg, by the way.
There's so many.
These are just the tip of the iceberg.
And I'm really glad you said that
because I'm gonna put you on a pedestal
that I think your humility is keeping you off of.
But we're talking about, yes, for the do it yourselfers,
the ones who are going to try to do it all.
Like Eli exists to help you to stop doing that stuff.
We already talked about Richard Branson as well.
He doesn't do it all by himself.
He delegates these things.
So whether it's talking to Eli about how to do this
or our business at First Class Business
or Smart Passive Income or VaynerMedia,
I mean, there are so many different brands
that are out there that are ready to help individuals
take their automations, take the systems to the next level.
It starts by willing to interview these groups.
And I will give one power secret.
The more scared you come into talking about growth,
the more scared you come in with,
well, how much does it cost Eli?
And Eli, is this really gonna work for me?
The more you're putting that person
into a trapped position of saying,
ooh, I don't even know if I wanna talk to this person.
This is not a leader.
That's not how a leader behaves in an interview process.
This is not somebody who is ready to scale
and appreciate my services.
So I wanna dive in a little bit deeper on that.
Eli, if you were to go to the advanced,
the opposite side of the spectrum,
and again, I'm sorry to those of you who are new,
but the advanced entrepreneur,
what does automation and getting their attention look like?
What can you do?
What can be done for them?
Yeah, so I had a client,
when we first came on board with them,
they were doing about 35,000 a month.
And the biggest thing was they were a mess.
They had a massive list.
They were putting on events every week actually,
every week doing these events,
but they weren't getting the numbers in the room.
And this was a real in-person type of event
that they did every week.
And so we helped build systems.
And it's like, okay, how do we build that follow-up process?
And how do we encourage the people that are there
to bring in more people?
And so we implemented the process with this.
By the time I stopped working with them,
we were at about 110,000 a month.
And it was purely in, nothing else changed.
Like his advertising,
he's spending the same money on advertising.
And honestly, the ads weren't even that great.
They could have been better.
But he was still doing, everything else was the same.
All we did was we start putting these follow-up places.
We changed the language.
And this goes back to the communication
you and I were talking about earlier.
Because everything I do is about the communication.
It's not about technology, it's about the psychology.
It's not what you have, it's how you use it that matters.
Because everybody always says,
what's the best platform for XYZ?
The one you use, the one you actually use.
It doesn't matter what it is.
So, I have my preferences, but that's really the answer.
But you get this situation where
if you can put these incremental changes in place,
where you talk differently about people
and talk to them like a real human being,
even though you're using automation
and technology behind the scenes,
but you talk to them like a real human being,
they are going to pay more attention.
Like I always have this joke, there's a big thing.
It's funny, because right now,
email marketing is back on the rise again.
Because for a long time,
there was a whole bunch of people out there saying,
well, email's dead, you need to do texting on everything.
And I was like, no, the email doesn't,
email's not dead, it's just your email suck, dude.
And we got to fix that.
And so we go through and we change the language
and the psychology behind it to where people feel
like you actually care about them.
Imagine that.
I imagine that.
And you can have these kind of results pop into place
when you do that.
I have another client who just recently started
implementing our framework.
And from that framework, they went from a 12% open rate
of their emails to a 60% open rate of their emails
to the exact same list.
Nothing changed other than how we communicated with them.
And so those are some of the bigger scale ones,
but this works on small scale too.
I've got a client now that isn't on the big side,
but she just launched her,
what we call the ultimate follow-up.
And the campaigns went live and she's like,
I don't even know what to say.
I bought into this because you said
it would do all these things,
but I wasn't entirely sure.
I really believed you as much as you said,
but I have people coming out of the Woodworks
that are like, thank you so much for your email.
I really appreciate it.
I actually need your help.
Can I get on your calendar?
And she's like, I'm finally off the hustle roller coaster
because this is happening on a regular basis
instead of rushing all the time
and then going up that up and down piece.
It just put the system in place.
And like I said, it works for people
that are just starting out,
that aren't doing big numbers
and it works massively better for the ones that do
because all we're doing is just increasing by percentages.
Percentage can add up real quick.
And in the tech world,
or if you wanna learn more about the subject outside of us,
I would look up on YouTube,
conversion rate, optimization, case studies.
As you look and learn more about that process,
you'll see how valuable this is.
Now I'm gonna give one simple example before we wrap up.
And it's a real world example that's easy for you to see
why it would change the difference.
If I walk up to somebody and I say,
hey Eli, how are you doing?
He's probably gonna reciprocate and respond.
But if I go up to Eli and I say,
hey Eli, you wanna go Netflix and chill?
My ratio of people who are going to accept that invitation
is tremendously low.
And so while that's a silly example,
how you say something, the way you say it,
the care with which you say it, the tone,
the photos utilized.
I mean, we should be very intentional with our relationships
and realize that anytime we're engaging with another person,
that engagement should matter to us.
If it doesn't, it's just a template or framework
that doesn't have thoughtfulness added to it,
then automation will backfire in your face.
So, I love what you've talked about.
I hope we talk after this.
This is actually my super authentic invitation.
Please talk to me about how we can implement these systems,
first-class business and our clients.
We can always use more minds like yours
to master processes with.
And so I'd love to do that sooner than later.
Provision Pro's listening in,
right underneath on the landing page,
you'll see a section that says action steps.
In the action steps, you'll see how you can connect
with Eli, what his resources look like,
and then down below that,
you'll see all the other resources that we recommend.
And we look forward to seeing everybody on the next show.
Eli, thanks for being here today, man.
This was awesome.
Thank you, my friend.
I appreciate it.
Absolutely.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pro's live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.