Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. Perhaps you're wondering, why be the giraffe?
[00:00:08] Speaker B: The giraffe literally evolved to be more vulnerable.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: But the truth is that giraffe gets to see things others can't and reach heights and reach food others won't. If you are looking for ways to stand out and reach higher in business, with money and in life, then you are in the right place.
Welcome to Be the Giraffe.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. This is the show where innovators share how they stood tall, broke free from the herd and reached higher in business and in life.
Today's guest is the powerhouse, Jason Sisneros. Jason literally built himself up from nothing to successfully exit 26 companies.
He shared his secret on stages, speaking to over 1.3 million people.
He created Built to Exit or B2X to empower entrepreneurs worldwide and has already helped 61 other entrepreneurs have their big exit. He's mastered the art of scaling, systematizing and setting business owners free.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Why does he do it?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: So we can continue to fund child sex trafficking, rescues, and fight domestic violence and food insecurity. If you want to unlock growth, build wealth and design a business that works for you, not the other way around and help others at the same time, then lean in for this masterclass on life. Jason Sisneros, welcome to Be the Giraffe.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: Thanks for having me, brother.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: It's so good to have you here. I'm so excited. I got up at 3 o' clock this morning like a kid on Christmas. Like, this is going to be a great day. So no pressure.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: We have unique conversations, don't we?
[00:01:47] Speaker B: We have them and now we're going to share them with an audience. So you've done so many cool things and the bio speaks for itself. But you have this goal. I want to get into your journey, but first I want people to know what a big goal you have. This goal for a lot of founders and I don't want to steal your thunder, so tell everybody what this goal is because I want them to. You did a lot, but you want to do even more. So what is this big goal you have?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Well, simply stated, and actually this is going to be the first time I've announced it publicly and we're excited about it.
You know, I think the arc right you and I have had this conversation is that you do things in your life, you want to set an objective, and as a Christian, I want to check in and make sure that I'm staying in God's will, you know. And when I sold, you mentioned that I sold those 26 businesses at the time, I was like, okay, cool, this is going to be some, I'm going to do rescues for the rest of my life. I'm going to. But you know, again, tell God your plans and watch him laugh.
It was on my heart. And it was around 2020 when I heard the phrase for the first time non essential businesses.
And around that time I had two of my friends, one close and the other one a little bit more distant. But when they shut down all of the small and mid sized businesses, I lost a couple of those friends to suicide. And I was working on other things, obviously the trafficking and everything else that we were doing. But I kept waiting for that moment for somebody to go, oh, we represent small and mid sized businesses.
That's not going to happen. You're not going to shut that down. It's small and mid sized businesses.
Historically, merchants have changed the world, small and mid sized businesses all the way back to the first goat that was traded for the first egg.
You don't have the TV that we're watching, you don't have electricity, you don't have planes, you don't have anything in modern society unless you have a merchant, a small or mid sized business that maybe became a big business.
You have, that's our class.
And so I was shocked when I saw that. And also 60% of our GDP around $17 trillion is produced by small and mid sized businesses. 60% of the hiring is done by small and mid sized businesses. 90% of the jobs people have are from small and mid sized businesses. And so in math, you're a math guy, right? The math didn't math for me to see somebody call that group of people non essential. And so I waited and I was like, I was telling my wife somebody's going to stand up for that group. And nobody did. And I looked into it and I was like, okay, there's no representation and that's in prayer. I was like, what do I do next? What do I do next? What do I do next? And I had this, this epiphany that we need to have representation at the federal, state and local level for the most influential, most impactful group, not even like the most money donated to charities. The biggest differences in their local communities, the ones that are taking care of their families, the ones that are giving to their churches and mosques and all of the things, who's standing up for these people?
Nobody. And I historically cannot stand bullies. And I feel like an entire group of people who are too busy to protest and too busy to, you know, to really get involved in politics. Why? Because they're taking care of their family and they're responsible for the feeding and care of their employees and the tax base of their town.
And they don't have time to go out and get involved.
So I thought, well, let's start there. And so we started an organization that's brand new called the Owner's Syndicate. And the whole idea behind it is to build over the next five years.
We want to help on build to exit side. We want to help 600 businesses sell between 15 and 30 million, more or less.
But that's our target and that's life changing money that then will be able to fund all of us. And in so doing we, you know, the best way to earn somebody's trust is to make them money.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Right?
[00:06:08] Speaker C: You know that. And so I want to make a bunch of people a bunch of money so that we all trust each other, we all know each other, and then we can band together under the banner of the owner syndicate and go to federal, state and local and get some representation to make sure not just that we're protected in our generation, but decentralized finance is available for our kids and our, and our grandkids and you know, that the next generations to make sure that there's financial freedom for the world.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: It's so interesting to me because as entrepreneurs, I can remember Luke Quaker at business school at UCLA was doing a whole presentation telling people not to do their own thing, go work for somebody else, learn to shave on someone else's face, learn on someone else's dime.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Which for 90% of the people is good advice completely.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: And when we were all standing around a circle at the end and Lou Quyker was a, he founded Bristol Farms. Wonderful guy, beat cancer with his own brain. Decided I was gonna go to doctors, I'm gonna will myself to this. He gives this inspiring speech. And when it's over, I just, I had already started a company. So when he asked everybody how did the talk go, he got to me and I said, yeah, yeah, I didn't care for it.
And he looked away from, you know, looked away from the people and looked at me and said, you're gonna be fine. This talk's not for you. It's for all the people who think entrepreneurship's easy. And he winked at me and I thought, damn you, Lou Quaker.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Like that was, you know, it was.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: It was just that moment I was like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: But what I also hated about business school, I had access to really cool people. But the majority of the classes were designed for big business marketing. If you're Kellogg's.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Right?
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Right. If you have infinite money and all the opportunity to try things.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: And then I was so furious when I had a friend at Goldman Sachs in the late in 2007, told me that the market was going to crash, told me that they were going to make money, a bunch of money and told me that nobody was going to jail.
And I realized when big businesses fail, they get bailed out.
[00:08:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Or but we don't get bailed out. Right. So the entrepreneur takes all the risk, does all the innovation and then has no safety net.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: People, everybody has their hand in the pocket of a small and mid sized business with no protection. It's not like there's nobody slapping the hands away from lawsuits and all of the stuff. Anybody that owns their own, they know everybody's got their hands. And by the way, people are coming for donations. And by the way, there's always somebody knocking on your door.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: And there's always the threat on the other side tomorrow that you could make a mistake that's gonna put you out of business. What you just termed on these larger organizations, I've termed unethical capitalism. Right. It's unethical because at the end of the day, Fa Hayek is my 100% the constitution of Liberty, that book everybody should read.
He is when it comes to understanding finance and understanding the greatest power that you have in decentralized finance to be able to keep away from dictatorships ever taking over and blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't want to go too deep into it, but you have an unholy alliance when you get so big that now you can afford lobbyists that go and advocate on behalf of your business and they pass laws to quell and squash innovation, that that only happens at the small and mid sized business owner level. That's where all innovation happens. They become big businesses because they solve a problem, Then they get old, they get too big and then they die and then you have somebody else coming in. That's the natural business cycle as it should operate. But when you go in and you bastardize that, when somebody has way more money and they go to an unethical corruption politician, which most of them are these days, right. That is supposed to represent the interests of the people and then the people are supposed to have the opportunity to rise up and build something in innovation. And that doesn't. And that gets interrupted, which it has now.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: You go back to 1896, this country did something unbelievable. They came up with something called the Sherman Act.
And the Sherman act was the first time in the history of the world that a centralized government stood up and said, no, we're not going to allow too much money to coagulate into the pockets of too few. Because that's the beginning of dictatorships, that's the beginning of communism, that's the beginning of mass death in China and Russia and you know, those types of things. So we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is we're going to say it was the first anti monopolistic deal that then became the FTC and all the anti monopoly laws that are on the books these days, which are being completely ignored today.
Completely ignored.
So you get that bastardization and now all of the innovation stops and there's just a predictable string of events that happens when you interrupt that process.
And so unethical capitalism gives everybody a bad name that owns businesses, right. And they're with corrupt politicians. And you just slowly stop that innovation. You slowly, you know, gain more control over here and over here. And pretty soon you're left with, I have to work for a business that I don't want to work for or I'm going to have to work for the government or the subsidies that come from that government.
That's not a way of life for freedom. Everybody talks about the first Amendment, second Amendment, great, great. But every war throughout history has been won and lost at the bank.
Every single war.
And so the war for freedom starts with people being able to create their own financial freedom, their own financial success, their own financial freedom, survival accordingly according to their ability and their willingness to overcome their demons and their mommy issues and their daddy issues. I don't know a business owner that doesn't have some kind of trauma in their background.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: We're going to go into that. So when we come back after the break, we're going to talk about you finding your financial freedom by knocking down and getting rid of your demons. So come back after the break. You're not going to want to miss it.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Hope is not a strategy. If you're ready to engineer your wealth differently, apply to have a complementary financial diagnostic done on your business. Let's discover what's currently missing and more importantly, what's possible. Once you're making millions of dollars or you're worth tens of millions of dollars, you have outgrown conventional Thinking, so stop buying off the rack and get something custom made for you that's going to help your family meet all of their goals.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Welcome back to the second Boston Tea Party with Jason Sisneros and your host, Chris Jarvis. We are talking about.
We're talking about in the first segment the way that the book is stacked, the deck is stacked against the entrepreneur. And we've talked about this and the idea that we both have this interest in helping. Helping the little guy and helping somebody who's misunderstood. And I shared with you in a call we had this week that a lesson that I learned from Brian Murphy, who had been the president of the Hartford, had given me this advice that the most important thing in life is to figure out the thing that drives you and understand that the thing that drives you will get you to a certain point, but ultimately will then hold you down. And the key to life is to figure out what drives you first and then two, figure out when to tap into it so it can drive you when necessary, but also know when to tame it so that it doesn't.
It doesn't hold you down.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: And I had shared with you that I didn't realize that my biggest childhood scar was about being misunderstood.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: And not being seen.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: And I didn't realize that was the case because my parents got divorced and then I got bullied. We shared that every day. In fifth and sixth grade, I got beat up. And you had a similar story.
And there was this whole, like, why me? People don't understand me.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: And.
And so with that, people hear you in the first segment going off on a rant, you're like, all right, this guy is some crazy.
He's some political activist or anarchist.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: Anarchist, yeah, exactly.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: But this comes from somewhere else.
This whole wanting to stand up for somebody, for you, actually comes from a place that, if you're willing to talk about it, it came from a place where people weren't standing up for you. And that's where this started. Like this. Like this passion comes from a place. And I think for people on the show, the reason why I want you to go into this, if you will, is there's people who feel like they've been dealt a bad hand and they've got some crap sandwich that they're forced to eat. And what they don't realize is that the thing that is holding you back or the thing that hurts the most is probably going to come around.
It shouldn't be held inside so that you ultimately commit suicide like your friends did.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: It's Something that needs to be talked about, because it will help you connect with people and people will want to help you. And eventually it'll be part of your story that'll make you relatable, which you've been on millions of stages, and you have this big alpha energy. And when I met you at that event, I'm sitting there going, okay, I'm on day two. You're the leadoff. And I was like, who's this guy? And you completely delivered. You were fantastic.
[00:16:21] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: But for people out there, again, they're so ashamed now of telling their story, especially if it isn't all glitz and glamour. So for people who maybe feel like they're not living up to the Instagram life and they don't have the watch and the jet and the vacation and all the BS that's pushed out, that that thing that they're going through is actually going to be the thing that's going to create the deepest connection and is going to drive them to have the greatest impact.
That's my hypothesis. And so, you know, with that context, like, how did this advocacy thing start for you? Because you weren't like, just please, if you're willing to share how this started with you, that you were not understood. And why is advocacy so important to you?
[00:17:08] Speaker C: Yeah. You're not trying to Barbara Walters me. Are you crying? I'm not crying. I won't do it.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: I might.
[00:17:17] Speaker C: What you just said, I want to be thoughtful on the answer because it's so incredibly important that the people that watch this get this point, which is, you're not broken.
Everybody has a story. Right. Mark Andreessen just recently said. He said a sentence that was. I was like, oh, yep. If you're an entrepreneur, you can't be anything else.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: If you're an entrepreneur, you can't not be an entrepreneur.
And that's my family. Like, those are the people that I've been with for my entire life. It's the thing that allowed me to live the life that I live now.
But you have, you know, a lot of people are walking around with that shame that stunts their growth. It stunts what I believe God's plan was for them in the beginning until they get over it. And a lot of why I decided to speak was because when I was a child, there was, you know, again, I told you the story of when I was in fourth grade and I developed this concept of how do I protect myself?
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Had an abusive father, adopted father. And, you know, my pictures as a kid are hilarious. Cause my Nose is over here. My nose is over here. It's smashed in. It's up, like, because he loved to break my nose.
And that went on from the time that he adopted me, I think, at 3 years old, all the way to 17, when he eventually went to prison for attempted murder of me and my mother. And there was a lot of abuse. I started stepping in front of my mom when I was, like, 8 or 9 years old to try to take her beatings away from her.
And he. You know, and when he went to prison, this is. Again, this is my story. But it's. You're doing the show for other people. Like, I'm here because we want. Everybody else has it. Everybody has a story of something that broke them or makes them feel broken or makes them feel less than or makes them feel less deserving of the life that God brought you here for in the first place.
And I was no different. I did what I knew after that. I was delivering drugs since I was 12 years old. I was a great fighter because I'd been fighting a grown man, you know, my entire childhood. So I became a collector.
And if it wasn't for people like you and people like. And things like this show that just. I call them my angels that were dropped into my life at certain points, I know, like, the majority of my friends and my family, I would have been in prison or dead at this point.
And so the decisions came along, you know, and it happened because of the birth of my first child.
And it was interesting because I was telling my friends at the time, I go, I don't really. I think I'm done with this lifestyle. I don't know what I'm gonna do next, which is what everybody thinks, like, okay, Jason, I'll get to the end of this, and I'll go, okay, cool. I don't want that anymore. But what's next?
[00:20:24] Speaker B: How old were you?
[00:20:26] Speaker C: I was 19, and my son. And my son had just been born. And I was telling my friends this, and they said, well, that's cool. You know, they didn't really care. They're like, whatever.
And so they go, we have a deal going out in the parking lot.
And I went out into the parking lot, and I was watching everything. I go, oh, these guys are going to rob us. And this guy came after my friend with a knife. I saw the glint. I pushed him out of the way, and I showed you the scar on my chest where I got stabbed in the chest.
And it was in that moment where that knife was penetrating into my chest that I had one thought, and it came from when I would get locked in my room and my face was so beat up that I couldn't go out in public.
My grandmother always made sure I had a Bible.
I wasn't religious, I think, you know, I got saved and baptized about four years ago now. So really it wasn't about religion. It was about the stories that were in the Bible. And the stories that were in there were incredible and filled with hope. But there was. When that knife went in, there was a Bible verse that jumped out at me, which was, the sins of the father are born unto the children.
And so I thought to myself, if I survive this, my son is not going to grow up to be exposed to this lifestyle. I had no idea what I was going to do.
And again, you know, there's a long story from what happened, but I went, I got a $5.50 an hour job peeling logs and graduated from that to like $8.20 digging a sump three levels down at my father in law at the time's mine that he worked at.
And I.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Which was a lot less money than you made when you were collecting money for drug dealers.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Oh, and no status. Like I'm in the bottom. Like you think about where I was feared, respected right back then. And now I'm shoveling shit at the end. I'm shoveling garbage and trash and excrement three floors down in total darkness all day going, what am I doing with my life?
And so that while I was down there, I was like, there's got to be something different. And that led to the next question, which was, what can I do? And that's. Then I was able to pick up a job as a helper for a carpet guy. And then I bought my first business, which was a carpet company, and I bought another business, which was real estate and another one that was a gym. And then I crashed all three of those because I didn't know what I was doing. I had a lot of guts, I had a lot of energy. I crashed all those.
And you know, and I fell into a deep depression because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I was married, I had children. I was like, I can't do anything. Went through a divorce and fell into a really, really deep depression. I ended up at a homeless shelter.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: How old were you at this point?
[00:23:27] Speaker C: This was late 20s.
Yeah, late 20s. And because I built businesses, I made more money than I ever had in my life. I got that. I was trying to buy the world's love. At the time, I was like, if I make enough money, people respect me. People will love me. And what happened when I lost all of that was everybody that was coming to my boxing parties and everybody that was hanging out with me for the money disappeared.
And so when I decided that I was going to build back, I said, I'm going to only surround myself with people who are ride or die.
You know, it's not about the love. I don't need their love anymore. Because as I was coming back, you know, I went to that homeless shelter that day. And Pastor Ricky, I'll never forget him, he handed me a Bible, which I immediately threw back at him because I was pissed at God at the time, right?
And he handed me Tony Robbins book Awaken the Giant Within. I read that thing cover to cover, and I got one thought. It's in your moments of decision where your destiny is shaped. And it took away all excuses, all blame. And it was like, I am where I am because of the decisions and the thought processes and the behaviors of Jason Sisneros, nobody else.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: So that's such an important point that the, like the taking responsibility, that when you stop the blame game and you start doing what that is. So for all of you who are in a place that you. You don't want to be, you want to come back after the break to see how you go from blaming other people to turning that inside and actually igniting what it is inside you that's meant to make you great. So we'll see you after the break.
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[00:28:28] Speaker B: Welcome back to the new Barbara Walters Show. I'm Chris Jarvis, posing as Barbara Walters, trying to make everybody cry with Jason Sisneros.
In segment one, you talked about all the great things you're doing and how motivated you are to help the small business owner. So for all of you small business Owners out there.
I know you need people. I've been you. Jason's been you.
We know this, and this is why we do what we do do is because it is a lonely game to do this.
And in the second segment, you talked about really challenging life you had, and that everything from abuse to, you know, feelings of not being good enough, and did you deserve any of that? And made a lot of mistakes, and a bunch of stuff happened. But then you had this moment.
You had this moment, which everybody's looking for their moment. And your moment came from Tony Robbins and awakening the giant within.
And this epiphany that all the bad things in life, the only common denominator was you, 100%. And I remember that moment for me too. And it's the, oh, I'm gonna take 100% responsibility. So it's not 50. 50. Well, it's your 50. It's like, this is on me. What can I do? And if you just ask yourself, how can I fix this? Like, that was a pivotal moment. So tell people about that experience, because there's a lot of people who have a life that they like to change.
How does that process go? And then as you start to change, also talk about the challenges you have, because people don't love to see the people around them change. So to prepare people for the. You can have more, but realize it's a little bit of work.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: Yeah. There's a phrase that I started that dawned on me at one point, and it was. It was this phrase, nobody cares.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Right?
[00:30:22] Speaker C: And it was so freeing for me because I was having a conversation with Tony Robbins one day, and I was complaining about something, and I was like, why can't blah, blah, blah. And he goes, stop.
Who loves you the most on the face of the planet? And at the time, now it's my wife. But back then, it was like. It was. I go without even pausing, my mom. My mom loves me more than anything else. Face of the planet. And he said. He said, what do you think she's thinking about right now?
And then sat back with one of his. You know, I was like, how am I supposed to know?
And then it dawned on me.
Oh, she's not thinking about me.
And it was. There was this domino, like. Like in the Matrix, right? Like this domino thought process that went. Everything I have done in my life was to remain consistent with how others saw me or what definition had come up. My gang name was psycho.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Right?
[00:31:23] Speaker C: And so what are you going to do? You got to remain consistent with that whether you want to Be, you know, crazy and fighting people and, you know, doing all that kind of stuff. You have to, because you're remaining consistent with all the people that were around you. Oh, Jason, you went soft.
That's not going to happen. Right. I'm not going to have that conversation. And then, you know, you get married and you have friends and you have your mother and father and the people. And so I woke up with that moment and I said, wait a minute, nobody. Because he asked me, he said, what do you think she's thinking about? And I was like, she's thinking about her own things.
She has a life. She has things that she cares about. She has things that she's worried about.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: She.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: She's worried about her stuff. Nobody's thinking about me. And so I'm like, oh, I have a blank slate.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: So the person who loves you most isn't thinking about you all the time. Right. So certainly people who love you less, even less. Even less.
[00:32:19] Speaker C: Right?
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: Until you get to the people that you said, which is super important that people get that point that you brought up, which is those people, when you start to change now, they're going to bring up everything. This is what I think stunts a lot of people's growth, is they bring up everything in your past.
You know, with me, I finally just did a. I did a book, and I put every mistake I'd ever made, I did a couple. You know, I've done a bunch of shows, and I told them I've gotten divorced. You know, I was in jail, you know, all of those I went through, and I just went here. So now I don't have any.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Which is liberating. Right. Like, when you tell people, then they can't use it against you.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: So liberating.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: And that was be the draft. When I wrote the book, someone said, even good friends of mine said, I thought I knew you.
[00:33:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: I said, well, you did. Right? You. Do you know who I am as a man? Well, I didn't know this story. Well, now you do. Right.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: And people know you from the past. You're not the same person. Nobody that's watching this is the same person that they were when the thing. The mistake they made or the travesty that happened to them. Right. We're something new. And the only reason we get past that is because God thought you were strong enough to handle it and. And was teaching you empathy for people that are going through that. So that when you do get strong, you are meant to protect them.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:34] Speaker C: That is your calling, is to take all of that pain and all of that. And he gave it to you because he knew you were strong and you were going to get through it and that you were going to have a heart for service and either get bitter or, you know, there's a fortune cookie thing. Right. You either get bitter or you get better.
And so for those of us that understand that, we, we go, okay, nobody cares. Now, it's not that my mom doesn't love me, and it's not that other people don't love me, but I will not live my life according to what other people think is possible. I will not remain consistent with the version of me yesterday that I fought, go to bed at night and I say, I'm dying to myself of today, and I'm going to awaken anew.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:14] Speaker C: And so whatever that was, I believe that we're drawn. I don't think God would have given me the vision to build out what we've built out if it wasn't for the idea that I'm ready for it. I'm getting prepared for it. All of those years in business, the bankruptcies, the homelessness, the divorce, all of that stuff built up in me an unbelievable swell of information to give to other business owners so that they protect their income stream, so that they can protect their family and. And the families that work for them and the desires of their heart to serve through charities and the end of life stuff that they want to do, the basket things that they want to do. And so that idea is that nobody cares.
Now you can live your life according to. Between you and God. That vision of what and who you're supposed to become, it becomes more clear and you're able to go through that.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: So help me reconcile something that I think will be helpful for the audience that you obviously care about people.
And as humans, we're social beings. We're the only animal that if you don't get nurtured as a child, you will die. It's not like a crocodile where it's born and it just goes about its business.
So we're social animals. We need to be held, we need to be touched, we need to connect with other people.
You certainly love people.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: But you made the point that I have to get past the whole, I'm gonna live for other people.
[00:35:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: So. And realizing that people, if you want to change, one of those challenges is you don't become anti social.
[00:35:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: You have to surround yourself with different people.
[00:35:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: So how'd that process go? Because that's the. You want to be with people. Yeah, you're changing, you're not there yet. How's that process? How important is that to get in a certain group and like who did you associate with and who'd you learn that from? Because I think that's, that's the hardest part of the transition is people want more out of life, but they don't.
The line I like to use is everybody wants to be an outlier. They want to be an outlier, they want to have more money or more success than everybody else. But the catch is they don't want to be an outcast.
[00:36:22] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:23] Speaker B: So they want to be an outlier without being an outcast. So you don't want to be thrown away socially. But the truth is to be successful you have to think differently.
[00:36:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: And you have to be, you can't be one of the guys and just have 10 times more money than the rest of the guys.
[00:36:36] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So how do you handle that?
[00:36:40] Speaker C: It's a great question that I don't think I've been asked before.
And I believe that antisocial is a funny word because I think most entrepreneurs actually are antisocial.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:56] Speaker C: They're. We have to put ourselves out there and it's exhausting because really all we want is peace and quiet.
That's what we're hoping that we're gonna build. Oh, I've got choice. I've got this, I've got that. And so you have to be pro social.
And there's this.
Principles. I go back to principles. Running an ethical capitalist business is biblical in nature. It's biblical in nature because you have to fall in love with somebody else's outcome and prior to your own. I have to fall if I'm going to offer you a service like Built to Exit. We help people build their businesses and sell for the most money that they're possible. That's one of the only sell side advocate companies that exists for business owners. And so I have to fall in love with my business owners outcome and serve them prior to me receiving the reward.
And most people start with, okay, I'm going to start a business.
How many people can I go out and sell my $10,000 package to Real quick? Because I got to make sure that I've got make my house payment and I do all that the shift goes to. I have to be of massive service.
I have to be crystal clear on that thing that I'm falling in love with the other person. And whether that's H vac or plumbing or painting or roofing or whatever. It is. There's an outcome that somebody needs from you, and they don't really care.
The only thing that they care is that they get that outcome.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Right?
[00:38:22] Speaker C: They don't care about your story, they don't care about a lot of stuff. So you serve selflessly for long enough and then the reward comes. That's what I love about ethical capitalism. You have to overcome. You can't be racist, you can't be sexist, you can't be judgmental of other people's religion. You can't be any of those things, at least not publicly, because then people won't do business with you, Right? So you have to behave, and that shifts incrementally your behavior and disciplines you to be a servant. The people that are the best business owners are the greatest servants. And it's not, I'm going to make a bunch of money and then people, and then I'll serve people. It's I start service now and eventually I'll make enough money to take care of me and my family. And then the exit comes because I know that my outcome, the skill set that I need to actually perfect is being a servant to other people.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: So it's so powerful. And I know for me, the entrepreneurial journey has been a very lonely one. That idea that you don't fit in. Yes, you are different misfits you look at. Yeah, I just got a text. Well, the text I got at dinner last night of one of my friends who's dying. The text I got was from my friend George dying in New York. And I can remember I was in my fourth year of business, and I can remember he asked me, when is enough enough? I said, when is enough what? He said, no, when do you call it? What do I call what?
Well, when is that it? When is what it? George, what the hell are you talking about?
And he said, when will you quit doing this startup thing and go get a job?
And I honestly couldn't even fathom that. That's what he was asking, right? I wasn't trying to be difficult, which I often do with him. It's part of our back and forth.
But I wasn't trying to be difficult. I just couldn't even see it. So when I was at New Lab in Detroit last week and I walked in, I could smell the delusional optimism, which I told you, like, I could smell it. I could feel it with all the entrepreneurs in the room. And so when we come back, I want your take on how the delusional, optimist, semi antisocial Soloist, entrepreneur, what they can do next to. To get their life back, find joy and have greater impact. You're not going to want to miss it.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Ever feel like you're meant for something bigger in life? I'm Chris Jarvis, and on Be the Giraffe. We ditch the herd, stick our necks out, and find a better path in life, in business and with money. It's time to disrupt the ordinary and build an extraordinary life. Laugh, learn, leap. Join me Friday, 7pm on NOW Media TV.
Chris Jarvis here.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: I'm Peter Giraffe, and we are doing our own little Gilligan's Island. And for you entrepreneurs who feel like you are stuck on an island alone, this segment is for you.
So we've covered a lot of stuff in three segments. The part here is the entrepreneur is on an island. Right. We take all the risk and then we have no backup, no safety net.
Everything's out there.
And when we leave, you leave the company. All your friends at the company are like, what's wrong with you? What, you don't like my idea? You don't like. You know, you're too good for us.
You're trying to change the way you believe about what you think about life, what you think about yourself.
Talk about the getting in the room with the right people. What is that? What was that like for you? And what can people do now so that they get the right feedback?
Because, like, you talked about your mother. My mother passed earlier this year, and I would. Every time I would fly, I would call my mother before I would leave somewhere, and the last two words she would say to me before we'd hang up was, be careful.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: And it wasn't because she didn't trust that I knew how to navigate an airport. I have 2 million miles. I've been doing this a long time. Right. But it was because she cares about me. And so sometimes the. The feedback we get from people is because they care.
Right. They don't want us to get hurt. And the risks that we're taking are significant.
[00:42:51] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:42:52] Speaker B: But the problem with that is they're reinforcing. How do you take. How do you appreciate them for the care and the love that they have, but spend more time with people who encourage you and fuel you to do the thing that, you know you need to do.
[00:43:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Like, how do people do that? I think that's when you care about people.
I found that to be the hardest challenge, is reconciling that.
[00:43:18] Speaker C: So the phrase sticks out to me because the team that I rescue underage children from the sex Trade with now is an organization called CERT Ministries. And Pastor Rudy Gonzales, one of my best friends on the planet, been doing this for 25 years. And.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: And.
[00:43:37] Speaker C: He taught me because when we would go out on missions, naturally everybody around says, what?
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Be careful, right?
[00:43:46] Speaker C: And his immediate retort one day was, don't tell me to be careful. And he was a little bit angry about it. He said, don't tell me to be careful. Tell me to stay dangerous.
I get goosebumps even now when I hear about it, because it changed my entire perspective, you know, being careful. And in the Bible, it says, be careful for nothing.
Be always that warrior, that fearless warrior, because you know where you're going right there, that type of thing. And it changed my perspective to say, oh, being dangerous means that I will be dangerous to those things that harmed me as a child and made me feel vulnerable and made me feel unsafe and made me feel unprotected.
I need to be dangerous against those forces if I'm going to be the man that my children need me to be, the man that my wife needs me to be, the man that my businesses need me to be, and the man that my country needs me to be is to stay dangerous.
It's stay dangerous against those forces that would want to weaken you, including anything that you've done wrong, any rumors about you, any mistakes that you made.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: Right?
[00:45:00] Speaker C: Staying dangerous means I'm gonna write a book about everything that I have about that I've done in my life. And by the way, I'm gonna talk about it on TV and podcasts, and I'm gonna talk about it because it loses its power over you. Everybody has made mistakes, and the ones that haven't made mistakes are lying, and you're being judged for who you actually are.
I love this about your show because one of the things you said to me before you come here is what I want to do is let people get to know you.
And I want people to get to know me and either have my presence, repel them, which would keep them out of my life and keep them out of my frustrations and all that stuff, or to attract the ones that are ready to make that shift and become a part of a team and get off of that island.
The three things based on your question are, number one, you're not broken.
Number two, you're not alone.
And that number three thing that we talked about last time is nobody cares.
So how you shift and change into that is by becoming and finding your tribe, finding people. This is why it's one of the benefits. I speak, as you said, I speak all over the world.
I speak all the time. And for me, it puts me into that energy that you felt in Detroit. You know, you and I met, you were speaking on the same stage as me. And so the idea is, if I'm not alone, then where are my people?
Because they're all going through stuff, right? They're all.
Everybody that's an entrepreneur shares that one thing, and that's big. That's a big thing to share.
So understanding that you're not alone, you get out of your own head. And one of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners make, thinking that they actually have all the answers. Why employees all come to them for the answers, right? Family all comes to them for the answers. The people that want their donations and their money are coming to you for the answers. You're always so accepting and understanding that you are that steadfast oak tree for your people, but also understanding that that oak tree is not going to grow without new relationships and, and new information. And we talked about it last night. Cross pollination, learning from other industries and understanding that.
But none of that starts until you realize, why am I doing this for myself? When you realize that business. I'll say it like this, and just to shorten it is that every business owner is looking for one word, whether they articulate it this way or not. And I'm not talking about the mamby pamby weak word, the. That most people think of when I say the word freedom, right? I'm talking about the. I need that for my family. I need to make sure that if something happens to me that the house is taken care of. If something happens to me, they've got cars, something happens to me that they can feed themselves. Something happens to me that my wife, if she marries, is going to marry for love and not because she's desperate to be able to take care of the family, you know, and that's our role and that that's what our desire is. And then maybe the freedom, not the morbid side, but the freedom is I want to go see Paris. I want to go see the world. I want to go experience swimming with sharks. I want to, whatever it happens to be for you. And then I want to go and serve the world. I want to give money to veterans. I want to give money to these things.
That freedom has a number.
Pastor Rudy told me a long time ago, he said this phrase, a slave cannot free another slave wrecked me when I heard that, because I had to ask myself, what am I Slave to what addictions do I have? What mindset do I have?
What are the things that I'm still carrying around with me that are hindering? Because the only difference, the only thing between a business owner that's watching this and their freedom is their own self inflicted prisons.
And so you understand, here's my number and my freedom number. That freedom, it comes with a number, a very specific number that is incredibly unique to you. I have one that's different. You have one that's different. You have one that's different. Everybody that's watching this, you all have a number that's different. But if you don't know your number, you're not even in the arena because that's the outcome for your activities. What am I doing? Freedom account. What am I doing? Freedom account. What am I doing? Freedom account. You're putting that money away instead of trying to. The Instagram thing you said earlier, which is total bs. I know a lot of those people. They're my friends. You know, they're like during 2020, hey, can I borrow some money for my Lambo payment? You know, can I. Those kind of stuff, you know, not to disparage, but that's fake.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:49:33] Speaker C: And it's unrelated to the person watching this because that's their life. Your life is, I need to put $2 million away so that it's spinning off 10%, you know, interest so that I can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever it is for you. When you get that number, things fall away and you can go directly to your desired outcome.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: So this freedom thing is really interesting. My course for entrepreneur mindset is actually called Uncaged and it is about freedom.
In the last couple minutes we have, we want to be around people who think that way. That's one way to free us, is to get people to get us to encourage us to think bigger.
[00:50:10] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: But the other thing is for the entrepreneur, thinking about processes and legal and documents takes you away from the big thinking thing and it gets you into. For me, it's hell. Yeah, I know it is.
[00:50:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:22] Speaker B: And like, you do this. So tell people. Because I think it's important that they know what you do. Yeah. Unfortunately, we only have a couple minutes, but maybe we'll do a bonus segment about this after. So stay tuned to see where the bonus segment is. But the Tell us. Tell people what you do for them, because I think what you do and take off their plate is going to be so interesting to the people that are in the room.
[00:50:42] Speaker C: Well, it relates directly to my childhood trauma which my adopted father beat me, which means, oh, how do I protect myself? And then realizing later on that my first love was advocacy for domestic violence survivors.
We literally put on bulletproof vests and go rescue children. We feed people around the world.
I cannot stand bullies, right? And I feel like my family, my small and mid sized business owner family was getting bullied. And that's what drew me back in to the marketplace to say, I'm going to build a sanctuary for my family of business. And so what we do is we start at the very beginning, we have an assessment and then we go through the assessment and we say, okay, what's your end game? That target that I was just talking about. Because we can't do any, we can't help anybody unless we know that number. And then you get into optimization phase and then you get into pre exit prep so that you're always ready to sell, right? Because everybody exits. How matters is our tagline, right? You're either gonna fail, involuntary exit, you're gonna have a dictated exit, or you're gonna have what we do at built to exit, which is a custom tailored exit, whatever it is for you. We're gonna custom tailor that. And so then you get to that place and then you go into due diligence and then you go into post integration. And on the other side of that is called Horizon. What do you do when you can do anything with your life from that standpoint? That's where a lot of people mess up. Post integration is where a lot of people mess up. Due diligence is usually the buyer of your business dictating to you how much they're going to get and when they're going to give it to you. And optimization is something that most businesses don't do in the first place. Very few people have the desired outcome, that end game in mind. And very few, few people stop to assess their business. So we're there to do all of that, to hand you back your power with your business.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: It's so cool. And this is something you have to check out. Jason Sisneros and his Built to Exit. Because if you are looking for freedom, freedom from the grind, freedom from the weight, freedom from your past, guilt, shame, all of that, he's doing this for you. This is what this show is for the whole elevate your perspective, see a better path. Be the giraffe is really so that you can reach higher, right? We want you to reach higher so you can impact and elevate others. And you have truly elevated me. And I hope everybody else. Jason, you've been a spectacular guest. Thank you so much.
[00:53:18] Speaker C: Thank you, brother. You've been an amazing host.
