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VoiceAmerica 0:04
One problem facing people at many levels of business is how to make time for a work life and a personal life. Do you find that one seems to keep getting in the way of the other? This is the work life balance with Rick Morris. Even if you're not involved in the business world, you'll have a lot to gain by tuning into today's show. Now, here's your host, Rick Morris.
Rick A. Morris 0:26
And Welcome to another Friday edition of the work life balance. So excited to have everyone along and I'm gonna just jump right in. There's times when we have guests. I think we're booked through December now, already and of course, you know, I'm always excited for any guests that comes on. But every once in a while, you kind of circle a guest and that's what I've done for this one. I was really really looking forward to this interview. And so I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time and we're just going to jump into it. This gentleman has personally interviewed business leaders and companies like Nike Reebok Fruit of the Loom, FedEx, American Airlines, Ugg boots. KFC, McDonald's, Disney, United Airlines, Ted Baker and others, so that they can share their success secrets with you ABC television and Fox Business referred to him as the modern day Napoleon Hill. And of course, all of you that are my longtime listeners, how many times have we discussed Napoleon Hill and thinking grow rich. He's also the producer and director of four out of the top 10 personal development movies ever made. And now, the new hit film, which is how thoughts become things. He's authored three books in the guerrilla marketing series, and he's a regular featured expert on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CTV, CBC and others his training program share strategies of how to connect with the highest level achievers and expand your network to grow your business. His award winning entrepreneur training programs have been rated among the best in the world. Let's bring him on Doug vermeeren. Doug, how are you sir?
Doug Vermeeren 1:52
I am doing excellent. Thank you for having me.
Rick A. Morris 1:56
We're so excited to have you here and thank you for the I got it. Link to be able to see the movie. And so of course got a chance to watch the movie. It's fantastic.
Doug Vermeeren 2:06
Oh, we had such a fun time making it too.
Rick A. Morris 2:08
And you've got a powerhouse of people that that's on it. Go ahead and write. I'll just bring it with you. Yeah,
Doug Vermeeren 2:13
sure. So we got Bob Proctor Denis waitley, Joe Vitale, john demartini, john Ostroff, Murray diamond, Bob Doyle. Like you name it. We've got some of the heavy hitters in there. And again, it was so much fun to make it because I could ask them any question I wanted. Right?
Rick A. Morris 2:28
Sure. And beyond that, they're kind of your crew, right? I mean, they are.
Doug Vermeeren 2:32
Yeah, we're a posse. We we do a lot of stuff together, it seems.
Rick A. Morris 2:37
Well, Jim Rohn, who actually is credited the five people around you, right? I've heard Jim Rohn credited. I've heard a couple other people credit, Max. Oh, yeah.
Doug Vermeeren 2:45
Yeah. And but you know what, here if we're talking about how thoughts become things, this is something I really hope people got from the film is that everybody talks about our programming from the past, right? You were a kid, your parents didn't treat you great. You know, you were a dysfunctional family. And now we use that as a And excuse to say why we're all so messed up. But the truth is, is most people don't realize that our programming is continually ongoing. And that idea of we become like the five people we spend, I love that word spend. It's it's current tense, not past tense, who we spend the most time with. And so yeah, I mean, that's the quickest way to shift your programming right now, if you feel like you got dealt a bad hand, just start leveling up that influence around you. And you'll see some things change in a hurry.
Rick A. Morris 3:27
And I couldn't agree with you more. It's something that you know, I came to near bankruptcy in 2014. Really, really close right and just had to reevaluate everything. As when I joined the john Maxwell team and started to level up the game and some of the people we were talking kind of in pre show to some of the people we know in common. But once I started to advance around them, I really started to think and I'll tell you, the exciting thing for me, was really understanding the subconscious and how much that plays into not only Creating everything that that you hope to gain. But how to build that as a muscle you talk about that a little bit. Well,
Doug Vermeeren 4:07
let me also share another thought that I think is really kind of cool that I teach in some of my training, you've heard, of course, the idea that your network becomes your net worth. We've all heard that idea. But what we don't really do is dissect that word net worth a little bit. And it's really two words net and worth. And everybody focuses on the money, that's important. Okay? We won't deny that but worth worthiness worthwhile values, right? If you think about who you hang out with also becomes your net values, right? And we rise to the standards of those that we surround ourselves with and the things that they value, right. So I think it's really important to recognize that when we are choosing to find out who is our immediate right, who's our favorite five, who's our team Supreme, the people that we're going to really learn from, we've got to recognize that it's not just about hey, I'm gonna hang out with money people I want to hang out with people who really value the same things as me and can To help me open the doors in the direction of the things that I value, one of the things that I also think was kind of cool just about this idea of value. When we were making movie, the treasure map, I was chatting with my buddy, john demartini. And he said something really kind of cool. And it stuck with me. He said, Everyone is wealthy, it just appears in the form that we value most. And so most of the time, like if you think about your day, like you give your priority to the things that you really find important that you value. And so if we start hanging around with people that have a powerful set of values that harmonize and fit with ours, we can start seeing kind of how all the activities as let's call it the ultimate mastermind, right, the way they think the way we think the way together we think if we really build strong value, then we start doing things at a different level.
Rick A. Morris 5:47
Now I'm said it in a really positive manner, though, because you said rise to their standards, but there's also that potential then to lower those standards. If you're not surrounding yourself with the right vibe.
Doug Vermeeren 5:56
Well, yeah, it's kind of like what Bill Bartman told me. I don't know if you know, Bill, he was at one time that Fifth wealthiest guy in the United States. He says if I'm the smartest guy in the room, I'm in the wrong room. Yeah. Right. And so I know that's kind of funny. But the truth is, we don't look at it enough actually one of one of my favorite experiences in my entire life that shifted everything for me, right really shifted everything. As you can imagine interviewing 400 of the world's top achievers, you start seeing some success markers that are just clear, right? I mean, it's funny because I had a lawyer once Tell me if I had three witnesses for a court case, I'd be in pretty good shape. If I hadn't done I'd be awesome if I had 400 indisputable facts 100%. And so you know, maybe I'm a bit blessed, because the stuff that I've been able to learn, I haven't really seen a lot of personal development, people that have been able to have 400 resources like that, right. So as part of that, I'm sorry, this will be the first negative comment hopefully the last but I noticed a lot of coaches speakers and trainers that are out there aren't really always teaching what's really required for true success, because they've never really built like seven or eight figures in their life, right? So they're kind of reading someone else's book. They saw The secret to more their law of attraction coach or the go see Tony Robbins into more their life coach or business coach, whatever, right? But when I saw the top 400 achievers, I had some real experiences that shifted everything. So here's one that's really kind of cool for me. So I am had an idea for a business. I was 19. At the time, I was in the thick of these interviews with the top achievers. And so I decided I'm going to talk to one of these top achievers about my business. So I sat down with a guy named Ryan, who is worth about $300 million at the time. And as I was sitting with him, I said to him, Hey, I got this business idea. What should I do to find customers? What should I do to do the marketing? What should I do to, you know, find my demographics, what should I do to get the distribution here? What should I do to raise funds? And he just, you know, politely sat there and observe me for a minute. And then he said something that kind of hurt my feelings, but was really profound. He says, I can see you're gonna start a very small company. And I said, Well, that's not my goal. I don't want to start a small company. I want to start a big company. And he just kind of again, politely shook his head and said, No, you Start a small company. So it's okay. Tell me why, why? Because what's because you're asking selfish questions. And I said, What do you mean by that? Then he explained, he said, so many of these gurus say this idea if it's meant to be, it's up to me. So instead of asking, How can I, how should I, he said, shift your questions to ask this? Who, who, so in other words, who can help me find my customers who can do my marketing who can solve this problem? Who can do that? And the truth of the matter is, is we shouldn't to create success step out of our comfort zone to try and be a jack of all trades and Master of None, and try and do everything. his advice was that we step into our brilliance zone, the thing we are incredibly good at, then we go hire other people who can solve the problems with things that they're incredibly good at, and then we can't be stopped. And it kind of goes with what Steve Jobs once said. He said, We don't hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do. I'm going to add to that we also hire smart people so they can actually go do it and make us the money right? That's the real method that we need to do is we need to start surrounding ourselves with really that dream team that team Supreme.
Rick A. Morris 9:07
And I think I think when you get into that point, and I'll be honest with you recently, for me is when I really started to look at who could do it, right. So I feel like I'm the great connector, but I did everything on my own. And I always felt like, not if it was up to me, you know, it's meant to be but more so, to my standards versus right. And that was a big thing.
Doug Vermeeren 9:26
That's an interesting thing. You say that too, because, um, one thing that you kind of didn't mention in the opening, but it's not really super important as Money Magazine just recently rated me as the number one passive income coach in the world. And the reason why is I'm doing about 14 million per year in passive income, no job attached. And the thing that I've had to learn the thing that every entrepreneur has to learn, the thing that you just mentioned, is to first of all recognize I'm not going to do it perfect either. So it's okay to also hire someone that's not going to do it perfect. And I'd rather and here's the definition of wealth. If you guys really want the true definition of rich, it must include Not just money, it must include time. So yes, I want the 14 million. But here's the deal is I'm done most days, I know it's gonna sound really kind of a bit smug. But my next book is called the six minute work day, 360 seconds. And I'm generally done everything I need to do. Why? Because I've learned a system and a system means either to delegate or automate, those are the only two choices you have. So when you understand the power of delegation and automation, it creates wealth, but not just because it creates money, but more so because it creates time. So when somebody else is off doing, let's just call it a mediocre job of something that I would also do a mediocre job with. I can actually be somewhere else either enjoying my family, which is a form of wealth to me, or I can be perfecting the systems while someone else is doing it. So I'm genuinely not working as Michael Gerber says, we're working on our business, not in our business. And most people they have no clue what that even means.
Rick A. Morris 10:58
And it's it's a newer thing for me, as I've grown in, you know, I built a company up to about 40 people we we did well, But to your point, everything ran through me. I didn't delegate it not made to do anything. So, well, if
Doug Vermeeren 11:14
you're not getting the wheel, if you're a cog in the wheel, you're the cog in the wheel. That's it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And
Rick A. Morris 11:18
hit an absolute leadership lid, and it was time to start to look beyond that. And Funny enough, when you say step into your brilliance for me, I came up in project management and project management person, but my brilliance was in sales and selling the dream and influencing people into what the dream was not necessarily writing the project schedule and organizing the team to get there. Does that make sense? Well,
Doug Vermeeren 11:40
you know what would be really cool? And this is just a thought for you to think about if your skill set of sales and by the way, I love sales too, because sales is the idea to get other the thought of getting other people to buy into your ideas. So my challenge to you would be you know, go and sell some of the top leaders and CEOs to be part of your journey. Sell Have them on why they need to step in. And people with big customer bases like here's the deal, there's a difference between networking at a $10 breakfast versus a million dollar area, right? You'll never do a million dollar deal in a $10 breakfast. And so at these higher levels, you know, it's different than the lower levels at the lower levels. People are looking for customers, that's what they come, they come to the networking event to sell people at the high level, we're looking for people that already have our customers, big groups. So this is my chance to go out and sell yourself and your idea to these people who already can move it to the next level.
Rick A. Morris 12:31
Alright, so we're just going to go ahead and shut the show down right here and I'll take up
a report
back we'll see. I'm an action person. So we are going to take a break right here. We're going to be right back with Doug. You're listening to the work life balance with Rick Warren's.
VoiceAmerica 12:48
Are you aware that 80% of project management executives do not know how their projects align with your company's business strategy? Are you aware that businesses identified capturing time and costs against projects as their biggest project management challenge. Are you aware that 44% of project managers use no software. Even though Price Waterhouse Coopers found that the use of commercially available project management software increases performance and satisfaction? Now, imagine that you could have the ease of entry like a spreadsheet and a software tool set up and running within two to four weeks. Imagine within two weeks being able to see clearly where all of your resource conflicts are. Well, you don't have to imagine because PD ware has already created it. pd ware can give you real time access to KPIs easily updated views of what your teams are working on, and immediate feedback to some of project management's toughest questions. Like when can we start this project? What happens if we delay this project? Can we do this in time? How does this new project impact our current portfolio? Find us at PD were calm and imagine not manually compiling endless reports again, are you getting the most out of your project management Software. In many cases, it is not the software that is failing, but the implementation limitations or processes surrounding the use of that software. r squared can analyze your current use and help improve your return on investment. r squared can also suggest the best software for your organization and goals and assists in the selection implementation and training. Allow r squared to ensure that you are getting the value of your investment visit r squared consulting.com today
from the boardroom to you, voice America business network.
You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1-866-472-5790 if you'd rather send it Email, Rick can be reached at r Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.
Rick A. Morris 15:08
And we're back to the work life balance on this Friday afternoon. We're visiting with Doug vermeeren. Who is the producer of how thoughts become things. And when you were talking through that, Doug, the first time you you brought up the secret the movie The secret? How is your film different from the secret?
Doug Vermeeren 15:26
Well, you know what, I guess the thing that I think is important to recognize the film, The Secret really opened the doors for so much more. But it was also the beginning of a conversation right? There was so much more that we could get into. But how is it really different? Let's talk about that for a second. Then in the film Mike Dooley says thoughts become things you remember, he was all like dramatic with it. But he never he never really and I love that thoughts become things right like, but the truth is, is he never really talked about the how, right? And so that's kind of what got me thinking and the more that I looked at this question of how thoughts become Come things. There's such a big journey not just with the law of attraction, but even modern neuroscience and psychology and so much that we've kind of grown to understand about how our thoughts really are generated. And, and there's also a lot of misunderstandings, right? Like, if we look at this idea of thoughts become things. There's actually two words, even in our title that everyone neglects. Everyone's focused on our thoughts, how do I overcome negative thinking, How do I beat fear? How do I, etc, etc. And then they also focus on the things how do I get the Ferrari? How do I get the money? How do I get that, but they don't focus on actually, I think the two most important words, which is how having a bit of a process that we can follow and recognizing and creating awareness, but the become, which is really the change that we needed to make. While I was sitting with Bob Proctor when we were filming this and again, you know, this famous line that he did share in the secret. Everything vibrates at a frequency, right, like we talked about that again, and we talked about why is it that most people can't bring some of these things into their lives and whether you're thinking from sort of the New Age point of view or even just modern psychology, it's because they're not prepared to become They're not prepared to make the changes. They're not prepared to put in the work, right. I love what Jim Rohn said, You and I were talking about Jim a little bit before Jim said that if somebody wins the lottery and they want to keep it, they need to learn how to become a millionaire very quick, right. And I think that this is what we try to address in the film. And for me, I think there's a lot of really cool things that we share in the film that no one's really talked about, like, here's something that I think is really important. Everybody, I think, from watching the secret and maybe you know, a lot of the other seminars and tools that are out there. They always hear this idea that you got to think positive, you got to think these pristine, empowering thoughts proactive and that's the way you're going to get to where you're at. Well, you know, what truth is, is I've never been able to do that. And I know a lot of people who also struggle, and they think they're a failure, I'll never manifest everything and I'll just, you know, keep trying, but I'm, I'm failing. Well, the truth of the matter is his thoughts actually don't arrive positive or negative. They arrive both they have duality to them. And if you don't believe me, I know that we're talking about work home life here. Think about when you started maybe a business, right? The first thought is, is wow, I could do this. These are the positive thoughts, right? I could be profitable, I could be effective. I've got a background in this I can be successful. And right behind it is the doubt. I don't know, maybe I can maybe it's not for me, right. And so when the font arrives, it has a positive and a negative to it. But what happens is, is that positive and negative thought if you think of it kind of like landing in a nest, if you will, that nest is our support mechanisms, our programming our feelings about ourselves, it's like it's the jungle, it's the mess. It's the marketplace. It's all our interpretations and our perceptions of things. And if you've got a negative sort of outlook on things already and your support group is negative and your family's negative and your program is negative, all of a sudden that dual thought the negative side will receive more power. But if you've got you know, an awareness and a positive nature and even if you've got some negativity in there, but you've got enough of a belief in yourself To make a strong emotional commitment to this and your why is perfect if you find your white power, you find your willpower, right? And so if this if this positive and negative thought lands in that environment, all of a sudden the positive has more power. And I think it's really interesting just going again to the 400 top achievers that I interviewed. Um, you know, the thing that surprises me is how many of them actually came from a difficult background? Sure. And they made that awareness, that choice, right. And I think that that's one of the greatest powers that we have. But most of us neglect is that whenever a thought arrives with it's positive and negative, we have a choice. Most people, unfortunately are on autopilot, and they just sort of dismiss it because it seems like it just might be hard.
Rick A. Morris 19:41
Yeah, we talked about Paul Martinelli, but I mean, he was a janitor, high school dropout stuttering problem was told he was stupid his whole life and now he's, you know, very, very successful gentlemen leading a huge tracker and
Doug Vermeeren 19:55
I don't think I come from a great background either. In fact, you know, they call me the modern day Napoleon Hill, but what little To that the truth of the matter is, is we didn't have any personal development. My home, my father worked in construction. My mom babysat kids in the home. They understood the poverty pattern very well. In other words, paycheck to paycheck, working for a living, heavily entrenched in the rat race trading time for money. That's what they taught us work hard. And I believe that right, growing up, I believe working hard was the answer. And so when I was really getting quite discouraged, because it wasn't really producing any results for me, it was at about that time that a friend gave me thinking grow rich. And quite frankly, I'm, you know, for being vulnerable right now. I'm so glad he did. Because I was so depressed at the time that thoughts of suicide and failure and things of this nature were not uncommon for me. So it was, you know, it was a real big shift. But I think that this is kind of an interesting lesson that I think everybody in the audience needs to really understand who you were yesterday, who you even are today, it really doesn't matter. If you make a new choice. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy. By the way, I never preface that but I did say that We can get started wherever we are. In fact, one of the things that's kind of cool that I talked about in the movie that was really interesting. When I went out and I interviewed the top achievers, I also put in some people that were not who you think, right. So in other words, I didn't just interview the A listers, you know, the Richard Branson's and the mark Cuban's and the people everybody knows, I picked some people that I thought were also making a significant difference, specifically in the areas of change and transformation. And so I selected actually to interview a person that trains suicide hotline workers. Now, I thought that was interesting. If you think about it, we've got all these personal development people in the world who talk about I can make a change in a weekend and I can and they maybe can, and I'm not disputing that. But can you imagine a suicide hotline worker you have somebody calling in on their, you know, most despair moment of all these people, some of them have already been taken pills or they've got a gun sit on the bed by them or who knows what their plan is, right? And so if you're going to make a change for somebody, you better hustle, right? Like you don't have a lot of time and so I said to this lady, I said, um, so, you know, tell me what's like, what are sort of some of the rules of the game with this? And she says one of the only things we really can't say is don't kill yourself. And I said, well that like to me, that's a number one. I'm gonna say that first. Let's talk. Yeah, right. Don't kill yourself. And she said, No, the reason why is because most people when they are in that state of despair, feel like they already have all their choices taken away. And if you tell them what to do, you're just another part of that equation of telling them, they have no choice. Don't do it, don't do it. And she said, instead, we do it this way, which I thought was very clever. She said, we tell them they could kill themselves. Yes, that's a choice. But then we help them see the consequences. This is what it would look like if you chose to do that. But you could also call and get help. And that's what this looks like. And you could stick around and maybe get some counseling, and that's what this looks like. And we start helping them see their options. Then she said something really profound. She said that the more choices a person feels like they have the more power they have. Yeah. I also kind of equated that to this, you hear people say that happiness is a choice. I don't think that's entirely true. I think happiness is a choice, but being pleased with the consequences that follow, right? Because I think a lot of people make their choices based on immediate gratification. They make them based on emotion, sometimes even temporary emotions. In fact, one of the top achievers that I interviewed gave me this advice about money, but I think it applies to everything he says, never make big decisions when you're when you're in a state of high emotion. Right? Meaning if you're trying to make a decision out of anger or frustration, I mean, Heaven knows. I mean, everyone is like this, right? We've all said things to people that we love when we're in a state of high emotion that we definitely wish we could take back or we wish or would have said, and so I think that applies to everything. We've got to be really careful about, you know, recognizing consequences part of everything we do.
Rick A. Morris 23:54
So when people start to go down that negative path, how do they How do they So, for instance, I've got a friend that every time something pops up, the first thing she thinks through is the four things that can go wrong. Yeah. In which, which I think, you know, we need we need people like that, to help us see race and overcome risk, but how do you start to, to free them and to make a change that's a little bit more permanent?
Doug Vermeeren 24:22
Well, yeah, you know, that's an interesting question, too. And I think what I've experienced, you know, as we've done, sort of, like our personal power mastery training around the world and stuff is that momentum is always more, more positive and more permanent and more effective than motivation. Because motivation, basically, we have to be in the mood, we've got to feel like it even if we've got a to do list on our desk and in there's things that I know I need to do. I'm going to procrastinate, if I don't feel like it right, I'm going to push it off, but momentum. If I can get myself into a form of habit and create some ritual tendencies, some things that I'll return to and I'll do it again and again, it becomes much easier but here's how habit is created. habit is created because at one point, we have received value from an activity that we did we, it's been in line with, with the things that we treasure the most. And so I think it comes back to that really way back. And it's funny way, way before Simon Sinek was talking about it in my first film, I talked about the power of why, and how do we really discover our y? What's the true essence of y? And the funny thing is, is it's not just having your y have meaning to you, you hear everybody say that we've got to dial into our own passion and purpose, right? Well, Warren Buffett says what you love about you is your hobby, what others love about you is your business. So it can't just be about your passion purpose. So my advice is, where does your passion and purpose overlap the passion and purpose of others and that's the sweet spot. So same thing with your y where your y overlaps the y of others. Now, not only is that going to be your most profitable place for business, but it's also going to be your strongest sense of validation. And so when you are experiencing negativity, if you can find a why It makes sense to you and those that you're serving, it'll be so much easier to be valuable to those people. And when you feel valuable you just keep going. That's a new habit. Right? We're gonna keep doing what makes us feel really, really good.
Rick A. Morris 26:12
Yeah, I love that momentum versus motivation. I think that's fantastic. Switch on it. So we're gonna take another break right here. We'll be back with Doug vermeeren. And you're listening to Rick Morrison the work life balance. We'll be right back after this.
VoiceAmerica 26:29
Are you frustrated with the overall productivity of your project management processes? Do you lack consistency and project delivery? r squared consulting provides end to end services to assist companies of all sizes in realizing and improving the value of project management. Whether you want to build a project management office, train project managers or learn how to bring the oversight and governance to your project processes. r squared has tailored best practices to help you in all areas of project management. Visit r squared consulting.com. At the work life balance, we like to ask simple questions to our executives and portfolio managers. Are you picking your projects based on what the organization can spend? Or is it based on what your resources can realistically achieve? This question is not answered properly can cause great strain on your staff limiting the return on investment. When creating project selection criteria. Does your organization attempt to understand the amount of resources needed to complete the work? Is this done in spreadsheets or at a high level? What if we told you there was a simple and easy solution that was built with resource planning in mind, we call it resource first from PD where resource first was built with resource planning as its foundation. We have years of experience that proves before a company fine tunes its project and portfolio management processes without a process for resource planning. The best processes and algorithms can fall flat resources should be first when deciding the strategy of taking it Organization falmer Find out more at PD where calm put your people first with resource first from PD where join us at PD were calm.
When it comes to business, you'll find the experts here
voice America business network.
You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick A. Morris or his guest today, we'd love to have you call into the program at 1-866-472-5790. Again, that's 1-866-472-5790 if you'd rather send an email Rick can be reached at r Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.
Rick A. Morris 28:49
And we're back to the work life balance on this Friday afternoon. We are talking to the producer of how thoughts become things as well as several other movies out there. We've got Doug vermeeren here with us, Doug. He just said Did you write it wasn't in your bio, but you were just voted number one passive income coach by Money Magazine? Is that correct? That's right. So let's, let's talk passive income. I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there as to what passive income really means. You know, I think right now in the time of COVID, everybody's outputting, their online programs. And of course, as soon as you set it up and publish it, you know, of course, that money's just going to roll in or, oops, I just need Facebook ads, and then we're going to be just rolling in the dough. Talk to us about some of those misconceptions.
Doug Vermeeren 29:31
Wow. Well, a couple of things that I think are really important to just hit on right off the bat, is that the word passive and the phrase passive income are so misunderstood. In fact, if I had it if in my power if I was the Webster's dictionary guy that could rework some words there, what I would probably do is I'd shift the order and sequence of those words First of all, so it would come out as Active Passive, meaning that there is so much activity that needs to be put in properly and put in place before an income stream can become passive. And most people think a passive income means free money, it looks just like you said, put up this website and off to the races we go. And the other thing that's, I think, really important to just recognize is that passive income is a lot older than the internet. It just seems like everybody's talking about it now, right? Like, let's build a course and put it up. But the truth is, is passive income, which actually I prefer to call it leveraged income, because it utilizes systems has been around since the beginning of time. If you think about it, you know, even the first day that somebody rented a property or rented a physical object to someone else, that's a form of passive income, right? Or the first time somebody use the labors and efforts of someone else to produce income. It was leveraged, it was passive. And so I think, you know, the one thing that I think for the business owners that are listening is that we got to kind of get it into our mind that the goal with everything is to create more passive it, right, it's to create that leveraged income. We want other people To make the money for us, we want other people to give the customer support for us. We want other people to do our marketing we want to, it's really a game of delegation. And again, I'll repeat that any kind of system can either be delegated or automated. Those are the only two things that we're ever going to do. Now, how does a person do that? Because this is the question everybody at home is probably saying, Yeah, well, that's nice to say, but, you know, I've got so much stuff that needs to get done and I'll never be able to free myself from it right? Like I'm as passive as I'm ever going to be. I guess number one, first thing to understand is the passiveness comes in degrees. So it's kinda like a dimmer switch. Right? So it's gonna be varying degrees of you in or you're out. And the first step to really identifying the you out I think, you know, really kind of fun story. Again, when I was about, probably about 20 at this point, I met with another business owner, again a friend of mine who I'm still very, very close with and you know, he's he's almost just shy probably, you know, couple hundred thousand of being a millionaire right now. And by the way, that's COVID time, right? Okay, so very difficult to kind of keep and maintain those kind of monies. But he's doing it. So I met with him. And one of the things that was interesting was I brought a business plan of something I want to show him. And, you know, he sat me down and didn't even touch the paperwork, right? didn't even touch this business plan. But he asked me a question. He says, so what are the transactions? I'd actually never really heard that at 20. before. So I started to talk about Okay, so these are our customers how we're going to do it, he stopped me getting to know where the transactions and so again, I started talking about something else trying to hopefully, you know, show him I was smart, right? And so finally, after about three or four tries with this, he goes, No, no, no, stop. What are the transactions? He says, identify the clear, basic transaction you're trying to get people to do? You are going to give them either an asset service or information. Those are the only three things you can sell, and they are going to give you money. How does that happen? How does that occur? So when I finally understood that, you know, I can't scale anything, I can't know my marketing, I can't know my advertising, I can't even know my customers until I know what is the real call to action transaction that they're going to give me money for, for, again, either an asset service or information. So as soon as I identified that, then he did this neat little chart, like a circular chart with a happy face of me on one side on the on one, and a happy face of my customer on the other with the arrows kind of pointing from the customer to me, and then from me to the customer, showing that transaction money, asset service or information, then what he did was very interesting to me. He drew a series of lines between the two of us. And he said, so what needs to happen for this person to receive that asset servicer information? And he said, there's really generally three categories of what has to happen. There's the tell, how are they hearing about you? The marketing, right? The advertising, the messaging, the branding, right? The next is the sell. So how are they going to actually be convinced to do business with me? And how am I going to receive the cash in that sale, right? Maybe you've even got account for seeds. In that, and then he said, and the last one is what we call service? How are these people going to receive this? Right? So if we can identify the steps in those three areas in this transaction, this is where it begins to become passive. He says, under the area of tell, how can we delegate a few of those to someone else? So if you if it's marketing, how can you give that away to somebody. So your income stream now just became more passive by the degree of what you just gave away? Then he talks about sell. Right now, you told me earlier, you love sales. But if you had an army of like 10, guys, just like you that were solid and out there, you would become more passive to the degree that you got that support, and so on and so forth. So the object I think, and maybe this is the challenge I think the most business owners have, they don't really clearly know the steps that are that are involved in all the transactions they do. They just kind of know that another sale means a little bit of money, but they don't recognize all the elements of tell sell and service that goes into facilitating that transaction. And I think the more we can identify that few things happen. First of all, now we know our systems. So we can measure a lot better, we can see what's really happening in our business, we can see where the improvements need to be made. But we can also when it comes to hiring, we know who our superstars need to be. In other words, I'm trying to find a killer marketing guy for this, who will facilitate this kind of a transaction. Now I know specifically who I need to find, because let's be honest, I mean, not all marketers are created equal. And the same can be said about sales and service and everything else. But with more clarity, the more that we know, what is it that they say? When we say in personal power mastery, a goal that is specific and clear, becomes attainable in there. And that's the problem. Most people they, you know, lack of clarity, and that's why they're never making any money. In fact, it's so funny that as I look at all the top achievers that I ever interviewed that were not only the millionaire level, but more specifically the multi millionaires and the billionaires. They have such clarity on everything in terms of the numbers. And how the numbers are produced and their business. They really knew it. And you could like ask them almost any question. They know it off the top of their head. Or they would certainly just open up their phone and say this is kind of the numbers that we're doing in real time right now.
Rick A. Morris 36:13
What are some of your favorite questions that you've asked these high achievers? Not necessarily responses, I want to get into them, but some of your favorite questions that you'd like to get into?
Doug Vermeeren 36:22
Well, one of my favorite questions to always ask is what has been your biggest challenge? And how did you overcome it? Right? Because I want to know, because the truth is, is if they hit that wall somewhere, I'm gonna hit it. And it was interesting. I'll never forget, one of my favorite answers to that was with Howard Putnam, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines. He had also been the VP of customer service for United and also a brand of airlines. In fact, with Braniff, he was the only person in the history of the world to ever take an airline through chapter 11 and emerge without any government assistance, which was very cool. But um, you know, I think a couple of things that he said that were really kind of neat on a family level, he said, for a challenge he says, I always made sure That my family, including my children knew what was going on in my business life, that they understood what I was going through. So in fact, he used the phrase at the kitchen table, I would open the kimono. That's what he said, right? So that everybody kind of knew. And at the same token, they felt like they could share their life with him. And I think this is a really big thing for a lot of entrepreneurs is that many of us are severely out of balance, right? We're out of whack. And sure, and sometimes, you know, our spouse or our family members don't really know what we're going through. And so they assume that we're workaholics because we're trying to do what we believe is the right thing and everything else. They just don't understand sort of how our businesses is needing us at certain points. And by the way, I think because you can't explain it to others, you probably also can't teach someone else to put them in that position. Right? The more we understand, the more we can fill the position. So it's kind of a catch 22 one of my favorite questions also with Richard Branson was what was the biggest challenge that you had as an entrepreneur. And interestingly enough, we always see him Talking about how if you want your customers to be treated well treat your staff well. You've heard him say this right? how we treat our staff will reflect on how we treat our customers. But, you know, he said, my biggest problem is always been finding really good people. It really has been a big problem. So, you know, to me that says he's burned through a lot of people, right? And I'm not saying that that means that it's been intention, but he finds very quickly, who's not working. In fact, Howard Putnam also mentioned something similar like that, too. He says, in southwest, we actually always hired for attitudes rather than skills, because you can train the skills but you can't train the attitude. Like we talked about that. Something called the willingness factor to be successful. There's two things that anybody needs. They need a correct strategy, and they need a high level of willingness. And you can't teach willingness, right? If a person's not willing to do it, it doesn't really matter if they don't catch the vision. You can't help them. But you know, one of my favorite things actually, that I observed, I didn't ask this as a question. I just happen to be in the right place. place at the right time to see it. A gentleman that kind of became like a grandfather to me we talked about him on break was Howard arap was sorry, was Frank McGuire. Frank McGuire actually for those of you don't know him he started at ABC when was radio when it switched to TV he gave Alan Alda, Charles Osgood Ted Koppel, their first jobs he was the private philosophy teacher to Marilyn Monroe, a really good friend of Elvis Presley's. He worked in the White House under JFK and Lyndon B. Johnson. He actually used his skills and got JFK elected. He was part of the leadership team of that. He was also the VP of Marketing for all of American Airlines, and KFC and they took it to number one in the New York Stock Exchange. And he was one of the four founders of FedEx. So this guy became like a grandpa to me and I treasure he's passed away now but I treasure every moment that I had with him. And I'm so glad that I actually recorded audios with him about a lot of his life experiences just I listen to it and still learn from it now, but I miss him. So here's an experience we have that just blew me away. We were outside of a hotel, once we had just together done a speaking event. And as we went on to you know, get our baggage loaded into the vehicle. This kind of bellboy kid helped us put all our, you know, suitcases into the end of the vehicle. Then he kind of came around the car and Frank had a tip for him. You had a $5 bill and he held it out. And as he held it out, this kid grabbed it, but Frank didn't let go. Now the funny
thing is, is you have this older gentleman looking you dead in the eye, and he won't let go of your $5 tip. What do you do, right? So it kind of caught this kid off guard. So but Frank now had his attention like 100% Frank says to him, what did I give you? The kid not sure what to say looks kind of down. He's like, a $5 bill. And Frank said, what's it worth? And the young kid kind of shrugs and says, No five bucks. And Frank said, No, it all depends on what you do with it next. And to me, that was a massively profound lesson to really recognize that every dollar we have is a seed. And yeah, you could go in you know, buy yourself a Starbucks or go see a movie or whatever, and but then it's gone. Or You can make a different decision with that five bucks. And, you know, I'm not necessarily saying compounding interest and put it in the bank, and that's the, or in an investment. That's the only solution. No, I mean, you know, for me, I also look at every dollar that I invest in, maybe to use your example of Facebook ads. Right now with us running the movie, every dollar I invest can often turn into, you know, 50 or 100, or even more, depending on who clicks on that. Right? So we've got to recognize that the value of $1 and by the way, I don't just look at that with money. I look at that also with return on effort to every hour that I inject into something. What's the return? It's going to give me right because my time is a seat as well. And you know, I don't know it's kind of funny when one of my mentors once told me, he says on a regular Tuesday afternoon, you want to know where you can find the crappiest salespeople in the world. And I that question intrigued me I said where he goes go to the movie theater because they're the guys who are sloughing off taking the time off in the afternoon to catch a flick while everybody else is out there working these days. People don't believe in themselves. They exclude themselves from the you know, the whole program and they get themselves sitting in a movie theater somewhere. So he says you'll find the worst salespeople in the world at the movie theater. I just thought that was a clever idea. And so obviously since then, for me personally, yes, I get everything done very quickly in a day I do. But I also make sure that I'm not you know, taking an afternoon nap or I'm not sitting laying gummy drop or Tetris in the middle of an afternoon or whatever it is, right? So we've got understand that whether it's your business, your family, relationships, your personal connection to yourself, whatever it is, man, time is short. And we've got to really recognize that life is just a gift, right?
Rick A. Morris 42:41
Absolutely. So we're gonna take our final break right here. We'll be right back and I'm going to switch up our question that we normally ask every guest and I'm going to switch that up for him when we come back. You're listening to Rick Morris on the work life balance
VoiceAmerica 42:59
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When it comes to business, you'll find the experts here voice America business network.
You are tuned in to the work life balance to reach Rick Morris or his guest today. We'd love to Have you call in to the program at 1-866-472-5790? Again, that's 1-866-472-5790. If you'd rather send an email, Rick can be reached at r Morris at r squared consulting.com. Now back to the work life balance.
Rick A. Morris 45:20
And we're back to the final segment of the work life balance on this Friday afternoon, Doug, we've been talking about the movie where can people go see it?
Doug Vermeeren 45:27
The easiest place is just simply how thoughts become things calm, the name of the movie. So www dot housing, how thoughts become things calm?
Rick A. Morris 45:37
how things become thoughts.
Doug Vermeeren 45:40
But you know what, if you just
type in how thoughts become things, you're also going to find it in Google but add the.com you'll get there a lot quicker. The cool thing is, is right now we actually have added a bunch of bonuses too. So you get a workbook, some audios and all kinds of other cool tools in that on that website. So it's a great time to do it. And those are limited time promotions. So I would definitely recommend it.
Rick A. Morris 46:02
And then personally for you what what is your website? How do people find you?
Doug Vermeeren 46:05
Well, I've got lots of free tools that are out there. So you can find me on YouTube. We've got a channel up there also on Instagram. But we've got something really cool that we're doing lately that I think is worth mentioning. A lot of people who are in business or entrepreneurs, they really want to know how can I become more passive? How can I create more income streams? How can I fix the income streams I have. So we've got a new program called the income stream challenge, you can go to income stream challenge.com. And actually, for only $9 a week, I actually bring on some of the top achievers I've been talking about today, some of these top entrepreneurs and business leaders, and we coach every week, like every single week on Wednesday, you can be part of this group coaching for only nine bucks and I think there's several thousand dollars worth of bonuses there. In fact, I just wrote an ebook that's in there called the truth about manifesting money, because I really believe a lot of these books on manifesting are missing a handful of really big elements and there's all kinds of tools Like, again, we'll show you exactly how I got to just over $14 million in passive income. And it's only nine bucks a week, come visit us, you'll have a blast.
Rick A. Morris 47:08
So the question I normally ask at this point is what some of the best advice you've ever received, but talking to somebody who's interviewed as many people as you have what, what are two or three of your favorite nuggets that you've picked up from some of these top achievers?
Doug Vermeeren 47:22
Well, when we chatted in the break, I actually just wrote down three quick, really little thoughts, but have changed my life like dramatically changed my life. So the first thing is, is everybody's heard this saying, Have you want to become wealthy take a millionaire to lunch? Well, the truth of the matter is, is one lunch will get you started, but it won't keep you going. So rather than just going to lunch, I'm going to suggest you need to learn how to create and maintain high level relationships. So it needs to be an ongoing thing because not only is your network your net worth, but it's also your safety net. And it's going to be your safety net before it's going to be your net worth right. So it's going to increase the ability to solve problems. So you need have relationships with millionaires. The other thing I'm going to suggest is we all need to uplevel our network and you'll never do a million dollar deal at a $10 breakfast, we kind of talked about that. The other thing that I think is also important is this idea. We've heard it before you can be rich, or you can be right. The truth of the matter is, is the biggest challenge to any of your growth, whether it's financially in your life or in your personal life or whatever, it's going to be your ego. So you need to understand that students, people who are really genuinely curious, those are the people that are on their way to success. And the minute that you say, I've got this figured out is the minute you shut the door on any kind of possibilities. But the last one, I think is maybe the important one, it's that the return on nothing is always nothing. So you need to get started, you need to do something. So if you listen to this today, you know the most fragile word in the English language is the word now. Right? Even whisper it now and it's gone. Right? It's the most fragile word that there ever was. And the problem with most people is they never take advantage of now. And when we read that little poster that everybody puts up with the kitty cat on it, it says, Now if you do it now you'd spell backwards. You won, right? I think that's nice. But the truth is, it's not really a competition. So I like to take the letters now like n o w, and I say they stand for no other way. So that's the only thing that you have to work with is now. And so as you leave this show today with Rick and I, I'm telling you don't just say, Well, I was really nice. He said a few nice things. Hopefully, I, you know, I can make some life change where I sit down, if you say you're gonna do it, studies have shown that there's like an 80% chance to maybe do something. If you write it down, it bumps up to about 90. But if you actually schedule it, or you just simply get started, it rises to the high 98. Don't just talk about what you'll do. Put it in your schedule, say this is when I'm going to do it, get started. And again, start getting momentum rather than motivation. You'll find that the momentum will carry you to higher levels than motivation. everwell I love
Rick A. Morris 49:59
the had no other way that just maybe flashed a burning desire, right? Oh, burn all the bridges behind you so that all you have is the desire to go forward.
Doug Vermeeren 50:09
Yeah, yeah. And by the way, I would also kind of share an interesting thought on that I had one of my top achievers, we, we talked about this idea of burning the bridges behind you. And you know what he said? He said, Be careful, you don't really want to burn them all behind you, because some of those people you're gonna invite to follow you across the bridge later. Right? So we've got to be careful when we do that. And that's the other thing too is this definition of toxic people. I know we're running really close on time. But let me share this that I think is really interesting that also a lot of the Guru's teach nowadays, they say get rid of toxic people. And I'm going to share that that's wrong, certainly to get rid of abusive people. But all the top achievers that I interviewed were problem solvers. They didn't run from problems, which basically means this. We don't look at someone who's making us feel uncomfortable. Remember, right or wrong, right. You can be right or you can be rich. So your ego if somebody rubs up against our ego, we don't dismiss them because they didn't see eye to eye with us, right? We're open to receiving people that sometimes are a little rough around the edges. In fact, there's really only two kinds of toxic people. One is a complainer. And the truth is, is unless you have clarity on who you really are, you know, a complainer will knock you off base every time you'll subscribe. The weather is bad. Yep, the weather is bad. If you know who you are a complainer doesn't matter. So the second kind is a critic. And the critic generally, to be honest, has something valuable to say sometimes they have facts, sometimes they can point out flaws. Sometimes they can help you improve. What do we say that sometimes the customer service department is the most valuable because they get the complaints and when now we know what to fix. But most people aren't prepared to listen to those kind of concerns. So here's the challenge. Next time you have a critic that comes, listen for the truth in it, and just recognize that they're not a great communicator. That's why it feels not so good, right? That's why it feels a little bit painful, because they're not saying it in a way that's easy to receive. But what they're saying there may be truth like, you know, if you look back to your high school days, when your mom said, Be careful of who you hang around with at lunchtime. Well, there's truth that some of those kids may not have been great, but the way Your mom said it shouldn't make you feel good, right? Sure. So we should look to embrace all people, you know, we need to expand. If you want to expand what you have, you have to expand who you are. And that means embracing problems not running from them. In fact, you're always compensated more if you can embrace and solve problems that you didn't create. So just keep that in mind as well.
Rick A. Morris 52:22
Well, Doug, we've appreciated this. I've had a ball, and we'd love to have you back at some point as well. You're always welcome on the show.
Doug Vermeeren 52:29
Thank you.
Rick A. Morris 52:30
And so we're gonna be wrapping it up for this Friday afternoon. Next Friday, you're going to join me right here, we're going to be talking about the portfolio management dream in talking about a lot of those executives out there who are trying to understand, especially with COVID, and everything else, what they can accomplish, what they can accomplish. And in my favorite thing that we say in that as you're picking projects based on what you can spend or what your resources can realistically achieve. We're going to talk about how to stop the portfolio dream from becoming a nightmare. So that's next Friday, right here on The Voice America. Business Network. We will talk to you then. Otherwise, we hope that you live your own work life balance, and we'll talk to you soon.
VoiceAmerica 53:12
Thank you for joining us this week. The work life balance with Rick Morris can be heard live every Friday at 2pm pacific time and 5pm eastern time on The Voice America business channel. Now that the weekend is here, it's time to rethink your priorities and enjoy it. We'll see you on our next show.
Thanks again for listening to The preceding program brought to you on the voice America business channel. For more information about our network and to check out additional show hosts and topics of interest please visit voice America business
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
