a computer and three, two, one. From firefighter to entrepreneur, today we're going to be talking to a friend of mine by the name of Cole Hatter, who was in a couple of accidents early on in his life, where he lost the temporary ability to walk. And then he went on to start several multimillion-dollar businesses. And then he also lost a lot of money in the recession. And then he rebounded and came back again. I've got a little bit of a man crush on him, to be honest, because he's got a beautiful wife. He's got two lovely daughters. He's very successful. I've listened to him speak on stage, and I've learned a lot of sales techniques and persuasive techniques from Cole. And today we're going to be learning a little bit more about his story, how he did it, but also how you, the listener, know, can create a business of your own, not just that makes millions of dollars, because that is the goal. Obviously we want to make millions of dollars. But how do you create a business that actually gives back to the community that serves a purpose? As you know, as you've heard my podcast here before, I made a million dollars pretty quickly with my Swanee's glasses in 11 months. And it feels amazing. But what really feels amazing is all the people who message me all the time saying, wow, my sleep's improved. I've reduced my eye strain. Thank you so much. Like that feels really good. And that's giving back a business. You don't want to be selling sugary treats or Coca-Cola or cereal or whatever. That's not really giving back. But if you can create a business that gives back and gives you a sense of purpose, that's the goal we're trying to get to. So without further ado, it's a big welcome to Mr. Cole Hatter. How are you Cole? Good, man. I love, you know, in the intro, it's very cordial to say, oh, this is my friend Cole Hatter. And, you know, sometimes people I've never even spoken to before will introduce me that way. But you really are my homie. So it's, it's good to see your face. It's been, when's the last time we saw each other? Like seven or Thrive, I think was the last time I saw him. Yeah, Cole, you, Cole runs this amazing event called Thrive, which I should have said at the beginning. And actually it's the best business conference seminar that I have ever been to because of many factors, one of which is Cole talking and how he runs the whole show, but two, because of the quality of the guests there. I mean, we had Fan Marrow, we had, we've had Gary Vaynerchuk, Keith Farazi, who's a good friend of mine, Ty Lopez, Grant Cardone. How do you get all these people in the one spot, Cole? Yeah, yeah, but that's the last time I saw you. We could talk about that too. So it is good to see you. And as you were running through, you know, our friendship and how we got to hang out in Dallas that one day, or that one weekend and work on sales stuff. So anyway, it is good to see you. And yeah, man, I'm excited to hang out with you and to talk about this. I think like you mentioned, you know, everyone's goal is to be profitable as quickly as possible. And I never heard that. So congrats that you made a million bucks in 11 months. It does not surprise me at all. Obviously, I knew you pre-swamis. So I knew that that's just one thing that you're going to do. And the next one will be equally or even greater success. But, you know, we all want to hit big numbers. And that has to happen, right? You can't, you can't be in business if you're not profitable or you can't stay in business. I should say if you're not profitable. But then there's this place that many entrepreneurs get to where, you know, they're doing well. And that vision board, that thing that was once a dream is now their daily life and all the cars they wish they had and the money they wish they were making, all that stuff's happening. And then at the end of the day, they almost lack purpose because it's like, jeesh, like getting to this point was like the definition, the pinnacle of everything. And now I'm here and now life still has to go on. This reminds me of a story Tony Robbins taught. I went to Tony's live event last November and he says that there's a crazy amount of depression that happens with astronauts when they come back from space. Their entire life was dedicated around one mission that only lasted days or even a week. And then they come home and every single decision they made and every single thought and every single action was around getting to the moon, so to speak, or getting into space. And now that they're home and in their thirties and still have the majority of their life left to live, they almost get misplaced. And I'm still a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, we may be at a desk job and we have a goal to quit. And then once we're in business, we have a goal to hit certain revenues, live in certain houses, take certain vacations, drive certain cars. And then all of a sudden for many of us that happens and we get into a similar place where it's like, sheesh, everything I've been working for, everything that got me out of bed in the morning I now have or have accomplished. And there's this kind of place of like, so what's next? And that's a conversation that I would love really having under the UN. I've had that chat. That's a lot of what we talk about at Thrive is, is building a business that doesn't just make money. It has significance, not just as, you know, us as individuals doing with our profits, what we will, but the business itself. And so, so yeah, just with what you were talking about in the beginning there, it resonates with me that, that, you know, we all want to make millions of dollars sure. And maybe some people just thousands, maybe some people tens of thousands, maybe some people tens of millions, whatever that number is. But then, but then what is the big question? But then what? And that's the conversation I love to have. And why is that so important to you? Is it something to do with, you know, the start to your adult life? I guess you had because you were a firefighter at one point. And then you had a couple of crippling injuries and a couple of devastating things happen in your personal life. If you'd be willing to just share a little bit of that, maybe that would create context for why, you know, businesses with purposes so important to you. Yeah. And that's actually a big reason why I feel like I'm on borrowed time twice.  And a dirt biking accident, my best friend and I fell into a mineshaft. And in the car accident, my best friends and I were in a rollover car accident. Again, they happened 66 days apart and I obviously survived both accidents. Others did not. And so as a result of the car accident, I was in a wheelchair for a while, as you mentioned earlier. And previous to that was a firefighter and you cannot be a firefighter from a wheelchair. So I had the grief of losing friends in both accidents. I had the guilt of surviving. And then I had the reality of being crippled to the point where I had to move back into my parents' house. I was 21.  And I thought I'd be in the fire service my whole life. And then those two accidents ended up again, physically, I couldn't care for myself, right? I was hurt so bad immediately following the accident. I had to move back to my parents' house and like literally be carried to the toilet.  And so in that season of life and then recovering, I decided that, you know, I'm on borrowed time twice. And that for whatever reason in both accidents, I survived where others didn't. And I went through a lot of crap of processing that. You know, I felt so guilty. Why am I alive? And why aren't they?  And they didn't. I finally realized I can't control that. I can't bring them back. I can't control the fact that I survived and they didn't. And feeling guilty about that doesn't honor them. The only thing I can control is number one, what I allow that to mean to me and about me and then number two, what I do going forward. And so I decided to stop being upset and feeling sorry for myself that I was like some victim of life circumstances and decided instead to honor their lives by pushing myself farther than I ever dreamed I would. And so that was kind of the beginning of this mission, this war path of making my time count and the thought of just making money a little bit more each year to live a little bit more comfortable life each year, to eventually just tip toe to my grave and arrive safely without anyone even noticing I was here or mattering to anyone. That felt like I was stealing from those that I'd lost. Steve and Matt, Steve passed in one accident, Matt in the mine shaft in the other. And for me to just live a pretty normal life under the radar, just paying bills, starting a family someday, trying to put my kids through college, then trying to save for retirement, then hopefully retiring and then just like what the world tells you is what life is all about seemed to me like I was robbing them. And for whatever reason, I got to live and they didn't.  And then if I make it, sit around a retirement totally my thumbs until I die. It's like, man, that's literally stealing from Steve and Matt, I got to make my life matter now. And so I think that was the genesis of what has over about 12 years now evolved into what Thrive is and what Thrive teaches and what Thrive, you know, my mission of what I want to do with entrepreneurs was really that I made a commitment to Steve and Matt one day, it was December 18, 2004, I looked up and was talking to them and said, you know what, I will not let you be forgotten and I will not let my life not matter. I'm going to do things big enough for the three of us in your honor. And I think that was really the beginning point of where this all came.  And so, you know, from from that life experience of losing Steve and Matt and surviving twice, and then the business experience of having made a ton of money lost at all, and then made millions since has all been a life lesson, right? They say you're only a failure or you're only you've only lost if you don't get a life lesson, right? Like, like, I forget who it is. I don't think it's Warren Buffett, but someone says there's no the only such thing as failure is to not learn and try again. And so as I've failed through life and learned each time what not to do and what I should have done differently, I ended up coming out the other side successful. So anyway, that was a tool that was been a 12 year journey. I just condensed there into one minute for you. When you first started to make money as an entrepreneur was the temptation there to just make a bunch of money in whatever industry you could. And that was the that was the goal. And that way you were honoring your friends by just making as much money as possible and having the freedom to do whatever you want. And maybe the purpose or maybe the the you know, the helping others was less important. I don't think it was less important. So yeah, my goal was to make money in the industry. But I always had the clear vision that I wanted to start my own nonprofit. And well, actually, that's what I did first. So before becoming an entrepreneur, I started a nonprofit. And then I realized that nonprofits are very non profitable. And that I needed to make a decision. I could either a start a nonprofit a traditional one and spend forever raising money from wealthy people like yourself that believe in me and the vision that would donate to me. And as I realized how I was going to go about fundraising, I realized it's kind of like starting a business. You start a nonprofit. And the effort of getting people to donate to you is like starting a glasses company and trying to get people to buy them from you. But at least in your business, people are getting glasses versus in a nonprofit, they're just donating because they want to. And I felt like it'd be easier to create a product or service that I could sell for money than just asking people for money. And so what I decided to do is start a business to fund my dream, my nonprofit for Steven Matt. And then what that business was, I didn't care. So it was kind of both of what you asked. I don't care how I made the money. I just knew that I needed to make a difference and that the way I wanted to make a difference required money. And as opposed to just asking for donations, I wanted to make a ton of money so I could live my dream life and have enough leftover that I could give back to. So it's originally in real estate. So I started 2005 investing in real estate. The accidents were in 2004 in the fall of 2004. And then in the spring of 2005, I was out of my wheelchair and rehab to the point where I started a real estate investment business. And just because I was in the right place at the right time, I made a ton of money very quickly. 2005 through 2007, it was like impossible to lose money real estate, you know. And so I thought I was something special. And then 2007 turned into 2008, I realized I was just lucky. And so lost everything slowly, I slowly hemorrhaged everything 2008, 2009. And then finally in February of 2010, quit and said, enough's enough, I can't do this anymore, I'm out. And actually moved to Mexico, where I did philanthropy full time. And then that's where I got the idea to make money matter, which eventually became the theme of thrive, came back to America, started up some of the old businesses I'd closed, started a few new businesses, went off to make millions of dollars and then to make my money matter. So that was it was exclusively real estate. And then when America had our recession and real estate collapsed, I realized two lessons. Number one, I should not be fully invested into one thing and only have one income stream. I should diversify and have multiple income streams. Number one. And then number two, I realized that I was nothing special as an entrepreneur. It was only about timing. And so I invested in some coaching and some mentors to help me learn how to make money no matter what real estate or the economy is doing. It's interesting you're telling that story. I see a lot of similarities on what happened to me around that time. And I started this PR company around 2008. And I had this six floor corner office on Sunset Boulevard, 64, 64 Sunset Boulevard. I was driving around in a silver Jaguar. And I thought that I was the king, right? I mean, Hollywood, I got this great office, clients are coming up for the seeing the view right down Sunset Boulevard with the holiday with the Hollywood Hills and the palm trees. And I'm like, yeah, I'm the man. And then all of a sudden financial disaster hit the world just went into Armageddon. And I lost all these clients overnight. People who were paying us stopped paying us. We couldn't get new business. And within four months, I had to close the business down. That's how much had just changed right away.  What I did was I actually got on a plane and I flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I ate steak, drank beer, and learned Spanish and danced tango for about six months. And when I was when I was there, I read a book called Never Eat Alone by Keith Farazi, who has been a speaker at one of your Thrive events, I think 2015. And that completely changed my life. I went from up until that point, I was going into new relationships thinking, how can this person help me? And after I read Keith Farazi's book, it was all, how can I help this person? How can I be valued to this person, which is the essence of business. Anyway, you want to make millions of dollars. And then when I came back to Los Angeles, I quit drinking, not that I was drinking a lot, but I just quit drinking. And I started helping people and everything turned on its head. I got this amazing job hosting Sports Center on ESPN for two years. That led me down an entrepreneurial path. I got mentored by Tai Lopez, who's also spoken on on your on your stage at Thrive in the 2016 event. And everything just flipped around for me. So we kind of got similar stories in the sense that we kind of like, well, for me, initially, I was greedy. I was like, I want money. I want to be a king, but sure entrepreneur.  And then I kind of went away and found myself, and then came back and changed everything. And now I have, you know, my two main businesses help people like help people sleep better. And the other business 30 day no alcohol challenge helps social drinkers quit alcohol for 30 days. So um, yeah, kind of a kind of a similar similar story. They call yeah, and I like that we both use mentors to, you know, there's, I think a degree of humility, not to pat us on the back, but there's a lot of people out there that think they know everything. And one very common denominator of the most successful, most wealthy people in the world is they give a lot of their credit to their mentors. They talk a lot about reading books. And they are people that are consistently seeking things out like your podcast to consume content to make them better versions of themselves. And then there are all these people that make a bunch of noise that have, you know, okay businesses at best that are the, I know everything. I don't need to read. I don't need to write. Yeah, I could, I could just do my own thing. And I'm just God's gift to the earth and I make money. And I find that the most successful people are the ones that are most receptive. And it's funny how, you know, we talked about having some similar mentors there, but I think that's one good takeaway for your listeners too is we, I'll bet you this, you're still learning from someone being mentored. You talk about fan Merrill. I was on the phone with him this morning for 90 minutes. So, so in that time of the wilderness, I guess you would between where I'd made money, lost it all. And then before I start making again, I started investing in coaching. I'm making more money right now than I ever have in my life. And I still invest in coaching literally from 10am to 1130am. This day I was on the phone with fan Merrill, who's my mentor. So I would highly recommend for anyone in here. Now that's sometimes people ask me a question. I call you say to get a mentor. What if I'm so beginner? I don't even have the money. I consider a lot of men and women who aren't even alive anymore. My mentors like Henry Ford, I learned a lot from Henry Ford. Guy died way before I was born, but there's so many books and document documents or people have documented his journey for success. You know, Napoleon Hill, Think of Go Rich is like the most famous old book ever. So I almost hesitate referring it because everyone talks about that book. But that's just to show that things that were written long ago can still be valuable today. So I highly recommend for any of the listeners to get a mentor in person. If you can afford it, if not, start consuming massive amounts of the content you can for free and let those people mentor you through their literature, through their work, and then apply it and then you'll soon be in the financial position to actually pay to hire mentors. Yeah, I'm always trying to learn. This book is called Simple Numbers, Big Profits by Greg Crabtree. I interviewed a guy called Evan Tarty on my podcast a few weeks ago. Evan is the Chief Operations Officer for a company called Dr. Axe out of Nashville. I'm 41, he's like 32. I'm nine years older than him. You'd think that I've got all those years of experience, but I'm listening intently to every single thing that he says. And on that interview he says, oh, I read this book called Simple Numbers, Big Profits. And so I bought it. It cost me like, I think it was $14 on Amazon. And it's a game changer for my business because it's got me thinking about the business of my business. When I was at Cole's event, Thrive, the Thrive event 2016, which was in San Diego, I listened intently to Fan Merrill, who's Cole's mentor here. And Fan talked about the importance of having KPIs for your staff and for system, system, systems. And I'm listening. I'm taking down notes. Before I got on this interview with Cole, I actually pulled out my notes from that event and I was just rereading them and going over them again. I don't know at all. Thrive's three years younger than me. I'm three years older than him. I'm learning from him. Like, age has got nothing to do with it. And then next week, I'm flying to Lithuania to speak in an event from a guy called Matt Postius, who's 21. And I'm learning so much stuff from him. It's out of control. I'm twice his age and he's so much more advanced in certain areas of business than I am. So you make a great point, Cole. It's so important to just be humble in your learning all the time. Totally. And I actually know Greg Crabtree who wrote that book. I was just hanging out with him at an event a month ago. And that's a great book for anyone who's listening to this to pick up. And there's a couple of other books. I'm trying to think of the names right now that I would recommend to go with that. I'm trying to look if they're right here. I can't think of the names right now. Gosh, the harshish. I'll figure it out. You can put in your show notes. But if someone's going to grab Greg Crabtree's book, these would be two editions. I know they're like literally within three feet. I just can't find them right now. You'll grab them before we get off the call. We're talking to Cole Hatter who is the creator of an amazing conference called Thrive. It takes place in San Diego. The 2017 version of it is coming up September 29 through October 1. We'll get Cole to tell you a little bit about that in a second just a few minutes. So Cole, now that you've... How are you making your money now? Like how are you generating it? It's a bit of real estate. It's a bit of conferences. How are you ensuring then that you're doing it in a way that makes you feel amazing, that's giving back and that you have a purpose? What are you doing differently in this go-around than what you were doing the first go-around? So the majority of my income comes from the real estate industry. I buy and flip residential properties. I buy and hold residential properties. We are focusing now almost all of our effort on buying and holding commercial. We want to get about five million dollars worth of commercial real estate, whether that's one building or five that are a million dollars in the next 12 months. So a lot of the income comes from that. And then speaking, I do get paid to speak about real estate primarily or entrepreneurship. And then also, speaking of Tai Lopez, we have our program there as well where we are educating people on how to invest in real estate. And so how I'm making my money for the majority of, if you look at my spreadsheet of where it's all coming from would be those areas. I have some side hustles as well that are absolutely nothing to do with real estate. And then I also invest in some. I was an early investor in a couple of startups where I get paid quarterly dividends. And then what else? I invested in some funds as well, where we invested in a fund and then that fund now lends to people. And I get monthly distributions from the different funds like we're talking 75 million to 100 million dollar funds that are out there where I put in money, you put in money, it's all SEC regulated. And once the fund is closed and there's in one fund 75 million and another 100 million that money is then used to fund either real estate and or startups, kind of like a venture capital fund where I'm just the guy that put the money in. And then the firm itself allocates those monies and monitors the companies for my returns. So it's a combination of those things is what keeps the bills paid. The bigger question that I like more is, you know, how, what am I doing with the money and how am I impacting people, etc. And so, you know, there's this evolution like I shared earlier that many businesses are going through. I'm not the creator of this. I think I'm just making the most noise around it. But of instead of just having a business that makes money, it's a business that makes money and impact simultaneously. Tom's shoes is probably the most famous example where when they started Tom's for every pair of shoes they sold, they give a pair away. And, you know, there's listen, which is LST and it's a headphone company for every set of headphones they sell, they give hearing aid to a child who's currently deaf and help that child here. And so you're seeing all these companies now more every single day, start their businesses around instead of just someday James, you and I are so successful have so much money that now we give back with the first dollar you make, you're somehow impacting people and it's built into the business model. And so my, my businesses have that for purpose business model. I call it a for purpose because it's not a nonprofit. It's not a for profit. It's something in between. It's a for purpose because again, traditionally have your nonprofit organizations like the Red Cross and then you have your for profit organizations like Nike and Nike donates to the Red Cross. The Red Cross goes and changes the world. Now you're seeing Tom's shoes that is a shoe company that's changing the world itself. And more and more and more people are jumping on this. And so, you know, my companies fund 12 different initiatives around the world. We are on five different continents. So from things like clean water projects and farming and microeconomics in Africa, we work with women and children who are victims of human trafficking in Southeast Asia. We have worked with the homeless in Europe and parts of Russia. I have my own orphanage in Ensenada, Mexico. So literally all over the globe where we align ourselves with different nonprofits to fight one of 12 different initiatives that are all around what I believe are human rights. I'm not talking about civil rights like voting human rights. Like you and I should have the right to be free and not be slaves. And so a lot of people think that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln.  It's a $34 billion a year industry. And I believe it's your human right to have freedom and not to be a slave. So part of what my nonprofit does is we are freeing women and children who have been sold into slavery. So there are these different things that I believe that we should just have as human beings and my businesses fund the initiatives to fight for those causes. And so the more money I make directly impacts more people in the world. And one thing I'd like to share about this because the only real pushback I get from people on this is cold. Don't you feel cheesy telling everyone what you're doing? And I want to clarify that like, like, oh, look at me. I'm such a good person. I'm such a good Samaritan just looking for attention like it's some type of gimmick. So let me clarify that. What my wife and I do with our personal money is ours. It's private. It's our business. And so our business is just as a business model give back. And so I'll use Tom's shoes for an example, because I already brought them up. Blake McCauskey is the founder of Tom's. The guys estimate to be worth $350 million. Tom's shoes as a company for every pair of shoes they sell, they give a pair away. That's what they do as a company. What Blake, the founder of Tom's does with his $350 million. None of us know. He's not posting up Facebook. Ooh, I bought a homeless man breakfast today. I'm such a saint. So I always want to distinguish that this is what your businesses do. What you choose to do with your money should remain private.  So if there's any type of internal conflict, because you know, I was raised in the church and we were taught, hey, be generous, but don't flaunt it. Otherwise, there's no point. What you do with your own money and your own resources, you should keep private. This is just my business model that it publicly, when you do X, YZ, when you buy one pair of shoes of Tom's, they then give a pair away. When you buy one headphone from listen, they then help a child here, you know, and so that's just the business model period. So for anybody who would want to make your business make some type of greater impact because you don't want to just make money and you have that internal conflict. Remember, it's not about you. It's about what your business does. So that's one thing I wanted to say. But for the listeners that are maybe already in business or want to get in business, but you know how you're wired and you know that although you're money driven and money motivated, that you know that you, at the end of your life, don't want everyone to say that all you do is make money. You know that there's a greater calling. I'm recording this podcast from my house that is my dream house that in the community I've always wanted to live in. Every dream car I've ever wished of owning is right outside my door here or in my garage. So this isn't about working to give it all away. It's living your dream life guilt free because your businesses aren't just making money. They're making an impact. And you know, we can talk about how to implement that model if you're interested. But more importantly, is just share the concept of why it matters. Yeah, that was going to be my next question. Like the listener is got this guy. Yep, that sounds okay. I understand that. How do we implement it? Like how do we execute on that? So the three easiest ways to create a for purpose business, or if you already have a company to, I guess, adapt a for purpose business model, the easiest way would be or the easiest three ways. Number one would be the Tom shoes model where you're actually giving products away, right? So for every single pair of shoes Tom sold, they gave a pair away. That's the one for one model. You might not have the margins to do that. And you could say, Cole, you're crazy. Well, then maybe it's for every 10 pair of whatever it is that you sell, you give a pair away, right? Or every 100 pairs. So you figure out what makes sense within your business model. But definitely there's the give aspect where you're actually donating or giving your actual product or service. I do want to talk about that for a second, because the first thought that goes through, you know, prudent capitalists, which is what we are. And capitalism is beautiful is we'll call that's cutting into my margins. It's actually not you bake the cost into your margin. So let's just say, for every 10 units you sell, you give one away, then you would increase your costs 10%. You might say, that's not possible. I bet you it is. And you can find that money, right? Like without going too deep down that rabbit hole, take a second to evaluate what it is you're selling. I'll use this is like a promo for Tom's apparently, but I'll use them for an example. If you've ever seen those shoes, I guarantee you they're made for less than 10 bucks. They have to be there. They are not complicated shoes. So I'll and they sell for anywhere between 70 to 80 bucks.  James, are you still there because you're frozen right now? No, I'm still here. I can hear you just fine. Can you hear me? Yep. I can. Okay, cool. All right, perfect. Just making sure. And so so that's that's option number one. Option number two is to actually give a monetary contribution. And so I'll use seven Lee was founded by deal partridge seven Lee as an online retailer. And for every product they sell, they give $7 to charity. So it's real simple. They give like bracelets, necklaces, and you know, it's an online retailer. And if they're going to sell a necklace for 20 bucks, instead, they just sell it for $27. So they're still making exactly how much they need to to stay in business. Yet they give $7 away. So there's the giving away of product or services. There's giving away of actual money. Another example would be Stella Artois, which is a very famous brewing company. I know that you teach people not to drink, but just to give Stella a shout out. They have their chalice initiative going right now where if you buy their glass chalice, which is basically a fancy word for like cup from Stella Artois, they will donate clean water to a recipient for five years. So that is a monetary donation they make through water.org. So Stella says, hey, we've created these cups. And if you buy them, we are going to give enough money out of the purchase of this cup to donate to a recipient somewhere five years worth of clean water. So they're just writing a check, water.org then receives that check and makes it happen. So that's option number two is to just financially give money away. And then number three is who you're employing. I'll give you an example of someone I actually met at the event where I was just hanging out with Greg Crabtree, speaking of which, here's a gentleman who went to prison. He didn't pay his taxes. He's not some violent criminal. He just evaded taxes and went to jail. And while he was in jail, this is a man I just met, he was sharing a story with me. While he was in jail, the food in prison sucks. So he started like going to the commissary store and making his own granola bars and then selling them within or trading them, I guess, within the jail, these granola bars, right? And now he's out of prison and he's taken that and he's actually created a company called prison bars where it's like meal replacement nutrition bars. I love it. And their slogan is, these are criminally delicious, right? So, so it's called, it's red, right?  Well, he just didn't pay his taxes in my, I'm rooting for him in my corner. But so, so while in prison, he does this, he's now out of prison. He's been out for years and he's got this coming called prison bars. They are criminally delicious. And he employs ex cons who have a hard time getting employment. So through his business, the way that he's changing the world is for men and women who made a mistake, who have served their time, they've paid their debt to society and are now out yet struggled to find work or create income. He will hire them and give them a chance regardless of their criminal record. And so his business is a for-purpose business in the sense that the men and women who he's employing, he's impacting their lives. And so those are the three ways to get started right now. If you have a business, or if you want to create one, consider a model where you're donating product or service, consider a model where you add cost on whatever it is you're selling and give that money away, just like Stella or 12 does with their cups or their chalices. And then the third model is employ a demographic of people that might otherwise struggle for employment. One other, one other example I'll use is there's a scarf company. My wife wears these scarves where women in Africa hand knit those scarves and then they get shipped in here. And so these are women who live in very rural areas. I'm not sure which country who otherwise couldn't find employment who are now knitting these scarves that are then shipped to America and then women like my wife buy them. And so they're helping these women who otherwise have no employment. So that's another example of a for-purpose business. So let's use my glasses as an example because I've been trying to figure out how to do this on an ongoing basis. Now I've donated to Operation Smile before I've donated product with the glasses and then I've also donated cash like money. It's not really synonymous with sleep, Operation Smile. Operation Smile helps children with disfigured faces and cliffs fund operations to give back their smile essentially. Wonderful charity I got involved with it a year ago. It's not, there's no real correlation though with the Swannies blue like blocking glasses. So if I wanted to come up with something specifically around the benefits of the glasses that being it helps people sleep better, what's a way that I could do that? Like is it enough to just donate to like the National Sleep Foundation or do I really need to find people in need? Could I give like for every every pair of Swannies that people buy, I would donate a pair of Swannies to children who can't sleep well or like I don't I don't know. Well so I know that your glasses are designed around sleep. They cut out the blue light, melatonin. You know I know the science and obviously I have a pair and benefit from them. So thank you. There's a real testimonial. But since they are glasses and you know they're not designed around vision maybe maybe you maybe you add one or two dollars to whatever you're selling them for right now because you've got a lot of volume you're doing very very well and only one or two dollars isn't going to get someone to not want to buy your glasses but if you sell a thousand pairs well now you're freaking you know creating some serious income and maybe you partner with someone who helps do corrective surgery or helps blind children sleep. There are a lot of nonprofits out there and although those aren't seeing eye glasses the fact that they go on your eyes obviously they help promote sleep but so so whether it's helping people sleep which seems like a harder message because the one thing you want to remember is this needs to be something that's easy for your consumers to understand correct and so so hey when you buy a pair of Swannies you know we help people sleep okay but how versus we help people see that seems easier and so again they're not seeing eye glasses and this might be more off-brand but I just think because they actually go in your eyes that could be something where you donate two dollars for every pair sold and you raise your prices by two dollars so it doesn't impact you but then because people love what you're doing you actually get more market share so it actually makes you more money but you know you're out there helping children see and you know for for every 10 pairs of Swannies sold or whatever it is some child somewhere gets to see or if you do want to stay within the sleep because that's what your glasses are actually doing right they're not helping people see better although it sounds like you said that you're hearing feedback from people that it is helping yeah it doesn't help them see but yeah it reduces eye fatigue and strain eye strain and reduces headaches and all those kind of things so I mean then maybe that is maybe that's right on brand but since the idea maybe that's an extra benefit but since the idea is around sleep promotion then maybe you would have to figure out with some type of a charity or nonprofit that's out there that helps people with sleep apnea or whatever it would be you know hey what does it cost for one session to come in because I'm a friend that actually works at a sleep place where people pay they come in they sleep there for the night or monitor to help them sleep better I assume that that overnight stay costs something and you know you would figure out okay at two dollars or maybe you raise your prices five dollars it's a hundred dollar session cool that's 20 so for every pair every 20 pairs of Swannies sold XYZ is being benefited you know so so it's just to for you specifically or for anyone listening you want to find what's on brand like you said I I think that's huge bro that that you're helping kids with like cleft palates and things like that get to get their smiles back I don't think that that's on brand for swamis so maybe that's something you continue to do privately with with your income yeah obviously you're making great money and because that's something that personally matters to you out of your profits you keep writing those checks you keep helping those children and that's not specifically what becomes a part of your business while that's what you keep to yourself you're not arrogant about that no one really knows that you're doing and you just are impacting the children the way you want as far as what the public business model of swamis becomes is is is helping those children see or or people sleep or whatever it would be whatever whatever is on brand I definitely think it's on brand you know Tom sells shoes for the give the shoes away listen sells headphones so they help children hear you know Stella Artois is a beer it's a beverage but then they give away clean water so it's all you know like Stella Artois doesn't give away shoes that would be off brand they don't give away beer that'd be a little inappropriate and probably counterproductive but they do give away water and it's you know it's it's within at least the same vertical so yeah so find something that's on brand for what it is you're doing yeah we're talking to Cole Hatter who is the creator of the Thrive conference which is coming up September 29th through October 1st let's just go over his suggestions there for creating a for-purpose business the three ways that Cole suggested number one is you can give away product to use the example of the Tom shoes model where for every product that you sell you give away one of those products or for every 10 products that you sell you give away a product number two you can give a monetary contribution just for every product that you sell or for any program that you sell you give a certain amount of money to charity as a donation or thirdly who you're employing you could also always hire people who need work hire specific people that are in a synergy with your brand or in synergy with what you're trying to put out in the world with your business those three things combined will give you a for-purpose business Cole I wanted to just ask you just before I ask you about the Thrive conference how do you live a really balanced life with your family which is your lovely wife Sonia your two beautiful daughters and giving to charity while also trying to make money and all that kind of stuff like some people might be thinking like how the hell do you do all this kind of stuff so how do you manage that to have a great family life to give to charity and to run a thriving business well of course it's we know it's perfect and there are there are times where I fall out of alignment need to come back in so here's how Sonia and I did it we created 11 truths my wife and I were extremely blessed for our honeymoon we traveled the world for three months and while walking through the streets of Rome she and I started designing what our lives would look like right we were in Europe we've been married for only a few weeks when we came back from Europe and back to the real world we wanted to know what what our lives would look like so we designed dream lives and then went out there and built businesses that supported that lifestyle most people start a business and then have to figure out how to live around their business they don't own a business their business owns them what we decided to do instead is design a dream life and then go start a business that supports the life and in order to know what that life looks like my wife and I started 11 absolute truths no matter how much money somebody offers me if 10 out of 11 are good I won't do it all 11 must hit directly and so I call them absolute truths you can call them anything you want core values or whatever I'll give you two examples just just for context one is autonomy James if you said Cole I want you to be the CEO of swamis and I'm going to pay you a 10 million dollar your salary but you need to move to Kansas where our manufacturing plant is and live in Kansas and be in an office five days a week 8 a.m to 5 p.m I would say nope not interested you couldn't give me 100 million dollars to do that because it would require me to be in one place at a certain time so autonomy no matter how juicy the opportunity is I have to be able to do it from anywhere even like like I professionally speak and thrive I have to be there but I can live anywhere and fly in does that make sense another one is my daughters I have two beautiful daughters like you said and a wife and whatever I say yes to has to make my little girls proud I had the opportunity to invest in an app that was very early on that was designed for just hooking up with people it's not a dating app it is literally about no strings attached casual connections and unfortunately with the way our society is that probably would have gone off to be a very profitable and lucrative for me that uses gps location to find other members so you can meet them and whatever happens happens but that would be an app I would hope as a father my daughter's never in a million years found and let's just say it turned out to be the next uber and I made a hundred million dollars off of that I don't want my daughters to know where daddy's money came from was helping people have affairs on their spouses etc so although that could have been lucrative I wouldn't even entertain it because it's not something that would make my daughters proud so there are those are two I've got nine others of these absolute truths that I live by and I will not say yes to any business opportunity unless all 11 are in alignment and by running all my opportunities through that filter what comes out the other side is that my lifestyle is congruent I'm live like you said how the heck do you do this cool you got this family this life you're doing a charity and making millions of dollars because I won't say yes to anything that pulls me out of that ecosystem that I've created if it if it doesn't support my vision of what I want my life to look like and pulls me out in any way I just don't say yes to it and then the other thing that's important is doing regular audits my wife and I do this a couple of times a month or or sometimes maybe only once a month but very regularly we evaluate where we are and figure out if we are congruent still with what we said we would do and because Thrive is getting close we actually just had a chat where we're like whoa whoa whoa like this isn't working we've gotten way off track we're working too much we got a we got to reel it back in so I think number one setting very clear standards of what your life will look like and then number two having regular check-ins or audits of yourself of figuring out if you're still living that lifestyle that you designed or if your business or life circumstances has pulled you out of that uh is how I do it and again I'm not perfect but we there's no ambiguity there's no vagueness we work crystal clear on the lives we want to live set these 11 core values these 11 absolute truths and literally we'll not say yes to anything unless it's perfectly congruent and I think that that's what's really done it for us uh and I've lost out on a lot of money because of that but I have way more happiness than a lot of people who have more money than I do because I'm living my dream yeah well said Cole well done to you and Sonja for doing that it's terrific thanks um Cole just before we wrap it up here tell us a little bit about the uh the upcoming thrive event which uh just to reiterate I went to the 2016 event and it was just terrific I mean I learned so much stuff um from being there it was it was super inspirational incredible knowledge really positive atmosphere everything about it was just terrific in fact just to to to compliment you even more on it Cole when I walked out of there I actually phoned a friend of mine Eli will hide I think you know Eli and I said yeah so Eli I just went to Cole had his thrive man that was the best seminar I've ever been to and I know you and Eli does Tony Robbins seminars you know yeah people and stuff I said man it was it was so damn good and we spent 15 minutes just dissecting your conference about how how good it was and in fact the um the schedule that you had for the three days I took home with me because you'd handed it out and I put it on my fridge where it sat for about four months and I just looked at it as an example of just a beautifully produced event and just attention to detail and like someone really operating at an outstanding level Tony Robbins talked about being good very good excellent and outstanding and and when I plastered that on my fridge with the with the little magnets on there every single day open the fridge I looked at it just to remind myself of what outstanding looks like well thank you that is a huge compliment that is awesome and yeah Eli is a buddy of mine um so that's really great feedback um but yeah I think the question was talk about thrive I think that you've just done a pretty darn good job it's a three-day business conference we bring in the best speakers in the world um you know some examples of this year is we have Les Brown who's been a hero of mine I think anyone who's in the entrepreneurial space is listening to some audio of Les Brown so uh he'll be there Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank uh Jay Abraham a couple of people who will be announced in the next two weeks they haven't yet signed a contract so I don't want to say anything too soon and hex it but some unbelievable names are being added to that as well uh we have Apollo Ono who is the most decorated winter Olympian in US history um who's now a multiple seven-figure business owner as well um Lori Harder I mean it's it's it's gonna be freaking rad and so what we do is we bring these amazing men and women who you never see in one place at one time there isn't a conference out there that brings these many A players together teach everything we know for three days on how to make money how to grow your business and then of course a much more in-depth explanation of how to then make your money matter which is that for purpose business model and what attendees get like you just mentioned who leave are actionable there's no fluff at thrive it's actionable hardcore heavy content do this do this you know it's not like hey math is fun it's two plus two equals four it's it's action items they leave with that and then obviously the clear blueprint of how to create a for purpose business uh we focus heavily on how to make money because you can't make it matter if you don't have any uh and then obviously the again the for-purpose aspect and so it's it's very unique there isn't another conference like it and I appreciate what you just said about it and it's really cool to see articles and ink forbs huffington post entrepreneur.com uh saying that it's the number one must attend business conference in the world because we've only done it twice and it's already getting those types of people I don't even know it's not like you know everyone knows someone who writes for entrepreneur hey will you write this article these are strangers I've never met before who came to thrive and that was them writing about their experience that it's the best they've ever been to in the world so you know we work hard and I give that credit to my team and to the speakers and to the attendees who've come I'm just the guy that's the glue that's holding it all together but that's what thrive is and like you said it's in October no sorry September 29th through October 1st this year we're moving back to Vegas so last year with San Diego this year it's yep this year it's happening in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Hotel very nice okay Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas where can our listeners go to check out more about it online col they can go to attend thrive.com they can learn all about thrive at attend thrive.com and also if they're interested in a little bit more detail on how to start a for-purpose business we just literally created a free three-part video series so I'll throw this out there too it's what is that one on colhatter.com forward slash money M-O-N-E-Y like I want money so if you know we briefly touched on how to create a for-purpose but if someone wants more detail again it's completely free it's a three-part video series colhatter.com slash money they can learn more about that and that just again that's that's just a train series but about thrive the event is attend thrive.com there you go so check out attend thrive.com I will be there September 29th October 1st of Las Vegas make sure if you go when you go you go up to col and tell him that you heard his interview on the James Wanick show podcast and if you want to do that for get that free three-part video series go to colhatter.com forward slash money col thank you so much for your time I really appreciate you giving so much value to my audience brother that's uh I really appreciate it thanks for having me on the show man it's good hanging out with you again yeah absolutely and to you the listener and the viewer thank you so much for listening thank you so much for watching and I will catch you on the next one


My name is Second Lieutenant Jake Spooler. I'm here for my computer science masters. The overarching goal with this research is to design automated agents that can adapt their used and self-driving cars. They have to be able to adapt to those changing environments on the fly or else that could be dangerous for the driver and for others on the road. I love programming and being able to work with a video game was a lot of fun for me.


Hello and welcome to the International Daily Nanda by People's Dispatch, where we bring you major news developments from around the world. Our headlines Activists demand dissolution of military junta in Chad 65 killed in fighting between Houthis and government forces in Yemen's Marib city Israel removes restrictions around Al-Aqsa mosque following days of violence And in our video section, we take a look at the latest from the COVID-19 outbreak in India In our first story, civil rights groups in Chad are mobilizing to demand the dissolution of the military junta The military seized power last week after the death of President Idris Debi Army officials stated on April 20 that he had died due to wounds sustained in the battle with the fact rebels in the country's north His death was announced yesterday after he was projected to win a sixth term in office as per provincial election results The election had been boycotted by most prominent opposition leaders following crackdowns on protests and opposition campaigns Following his death, the army announced that his son Mohammed Debi Itno will head an interim military council The country's government and parliament have been dissolved, curfews have been imposed and borders are closed The military council will stay in power for 18 months following which elections will be held However, this is in violation of Chad's constitution It mandates that power be transferred to the speaker of the parliament in the event of the president's death and fresh elections be organized The constitution now stands suspended The former colonial power of France has backed the military junta citing stability and territorial integrity France is a large military base in the country's capital which serves as the command center for its operations in the region Meanwhile, opposition parties have condemned the military takeover as an institutional coup Fact also announced on April 25 that it was ready to observe a ceasefire for a political settlement However, the military junta has rejected the offer In the meantime, the African Union also issued a statement demanding the restoration of power to civilian authorities The next two or at least 61 fighters have been killed in a violent conflict in the city of Mareeb in Yemen Houthi rebels are fighting the Saudi and western-backed government of Abdullah Mansour Hadi for control over the city Mareeb is the center of Yemen's oil and gas rich region and is the large major stronghold of the Hadi government in the north Military reports say that on April 25, stated that Houthis were advancing very close to Mareeb's center despite heavy casualties They have reportedly seized full control of the Qasara battlefront in the northwest and made significant advances on the western front lines The fighting has now moved to the Al-Mil area which is just 6 kilometers from the city's population center Among the 65 Kilo 26 fighters loyal to the government including four officers and personnel, the number of Houthis killed has not been confirmed The city also witnessed escalation of conflict earlier this month with over 100 combatants killed With reports of renewed violence over the weekend, the UN has warned of mass displacement of civilians Around 13,600 people have already been displaced so far in 2021 Mareeb is home to around 800,000 internally displaced people living in camps The fighting is also led to civilian casualties with the UN reporting 40 deaths in March alone In our next story, Israel has removed restrictions around the Al-Aqsa mosque following over a week of violence in occupied East Jerusalem Metal barriers had been previously set up in the Damascus Gate area to prevent Palestinians from gathering there Sunday's decision was announced following nightly demonstration by thousands of Palestinians These had been met with violence by Israeli settlers and forces who deployed stun grenades and skunk water cannons Several Zionist supremacists in extremist groups including Lehava attacked Palestinians throughout last week Lehava also led hundreds in a march on April 22, chanting depth to Arabs Over 100 Palestinians were injured and dozens were registered while trying to oppose this violence Demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem were also held in Gaza Israeli forces also opened fire on protesters in the occupied West Bank on Sunday Palestinian news agency Wafa reported the use of tear gas, stun grenades and live gunfire At least three Palestinians sustained gunfire injuries in the village of Al-Bubah Meanwhile, Israeli media reported rocket attacks from inside the Gaza Strip for the third consecutive night on April 25 The attacks have been attributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Fatah al-Aqsa Marjah's Brigade In response, Israeli authorities announced a complete closure of the Gaza fishing zone on April 26 Israel's heavy naval presence affects the livelihoods of nearly 4,000 fishermen In our final story, we take a look at the current COVID-19 situation in India The country reported a record high of over 352,000 new cases in 24 hours The Health Ministry also recorded 2,812 fatalities as of the morning of April 26 State governments and hospitals across the country have been consistently reporting severe oxygen and ICU bed shortages The Ministry of Home Affairs however has claimed that India has sufficient stocks with the main issue being transportation Here is Dr. Satyajit Rat to talk more about the current crisis facing the country We should be thinking about this as a series of local outbreaks Each of which has its own dynamics So what we have been seeing is a convergence or a coalescence of these outbreaks all across the country As we have locked down and reduced interactions in response to the growing numbers Inevitably, the rate of spread of many of these outbreaks is going down But our response has not been uniform across the country Clearly, in some places, heavily affected places, heavily policed places Since we keep converting this into a law and order problem, we have reduced interactions But in other places, we have not So what we currently have is the sum total of outbreaks which are dampening down because we have physically distanced ourselves But in other places, smaller outbreaks but many outbreaks which are still growing And that sum is going to be what is going to be represented by a flattening And it's slowly as more and more outbreaks die down and fewer and fewer outbreaks come up That we will begin to see the descending up So this is a point that all of us need to keep in mind The sheer noisy complexity of the landscape Secondly, all of that said It's quite clear that in the major areas contributing large growth in case numbers There seems to be a leveling off And if that pattern continues Then what we are likely to see over the next two or three weeks Is a tapering off and a plateauing and a long slow decline But clearly the decline, none of us should be expecting to be as precipitated decline as the increase was So let me say two things about oxygen and the related issues that have come up Firstly, despite the fact that we have been critical of the DST supermodel so-called What the current reports emanating are underlining is that by and large The technical advice that the government has been getting has been pretty good The government got the advice that it should be planning the so-called plan B reports that we are seeing That it should be planning for large numbers of simultaneous cases And one of the major limitations and components that needed to be planned for was oxygen as you point out So these things, it's not as if the government was not given this advice It's much more than that the government in sheer hubris and complacency seems to have not exactly ignored But as you point out, put this advice and implementation on the back burner So to say And that's clearly a contribution to our present state of affairs Secondly, the point I want to make is that a lack of hospitals, a lack of beds, a lack of oxygen does not manifest in dramatic spectacular falling off the cliff fashion And it does not do so because health workers struggle to provide within their means for as many patients as they can as best as they can Which is how what we are seeing underline becomes the north 3-4 people hooked with makeshift apparatus to a single oxygen cylinder desperately lying in corridors waiting for beds It's not that they are simply dying in rickshaws although clearly we also have that happening But that's not the only thing happening. There is a whole spectrum of suboptimal care happening And that spectrum of suboptimality is the result of individual healthcare workers, not just physicians all across the healthcare workers trying to do their best under awful conditions to provide for as many people as possible As a result, you have low pressure oxygen being provided and all of this is resulting not in two groups of people getting good care and people getting no care But a whole range of people getting suboptimal care and at each point in this suboptimality, we are going to have an increased possibility of illness, prolonged illness and death Consider just how much pressure we are putting our skilled healthcare personnel under when we increase the numbers that they have to deal with We have nursing staff that are being put in charge of 15, 20, 25, 30 patients day after day, week after week We are not just acknowledging their efforts, we are not making any efforts to enhance these numbers See, it's one thing to talk about oxygen. You can manufacture oxygen with a delay of weeks if you do it on a phrase that I particularly dislike war footing How will you do this for skilled personnel availability? This is what the largest casualty of short term crisis perspective in pandemic management has been We have not planned for the long term That's all your time for today. We are tomorrow with more news from around the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch


Now, if you've been following along with the course sequence starting at 312, 313, 314, and then 321, you're already kind of familiar with Cottonwood, this machine learning framework. It's worth seeing a couple more words about, not least because I actually changed it significantly between finishing course 321 and publishing this course. The great part about having code that is so flexible, so research oriented, is that I can make big changes and I don't have to worry about continuing to support older versions. Instead, I've opted to clearly communicate that any time you use Cottonwood, you need to specify the particular version that you want to use. So in this case I had called out, we're using version 28. So we specifically check out branch V28 and that we know will work on it. So that has the advantage of anytime anyone comes back to this later, after no matter how much time, they know they can pull up V28 of Cottonwood and it'll still run. The disadvantage is that anything new and exciting that gets added to Cottonwood afterward, they won't have access to. So there may be some extra legwork involved in moving it forward, but at least this particular case study stands as an operating example. So the current version is different enough from the previous versions that we've used that I want to call some things out. The first thing is that I took and removed a lot of sub-directories. So if you look at the structure now, there's the top-level Cottonwood directory. And to be able to handle this as a pip installable library, it has to have another Cottonwood sub-directory. It feels a little awkward to me. There's the license, there's the readme, those are standard setup.py that hasn't changed. And under the Cottonwood directory now is all of the meat, all of these blocks, the activation functions, our convolution, dropout layer, initialization functions, linear layers, loggers, loss functions, normalization options, different operations, operations specific to 2D arrays, our optimizers, our pooling functions, the structure, data structure itself, and then a test script and our toolbox. This right here is the framework. And I love how this makes it feel small, tight and accessible. Anytime you need to look at the code, it's right there at your fingertips. What I hope is that by having it be so easy to navigate, that you'll feel comfortable jumping right into the code, saying, I'm not sure exactly how to call this. Let me go look at the code and see how it's implemented and what the comments say there. And then that minimizes the need to document that again somewhere else. There's also, of note, this experimental directory. So these are things that are not canon. There are changes, either things that I've tried out or things that I've implemented from someplace else that I'm not 100% confident pulling into the core set of functionality. So to put an asterisk by it, a caveat I put in this experimental sub-directory. So the structure visualization, it works okay. There are other methods that I've seen that give prettier results. I'm not 100% happy with it, so it lives here. There are some initialization methods that I'm playing around with. My implementation of online normalization, which we'll talk about later in the course, is here because it deviates from the original paper in a non-trivial way. And there's just a couple of other things that are here because they are experimental to a certain extent. I've had good success with them or they wouldn't be here at all, but I have not, they haven't gone through all, gone through peer review or been beat on by lots of other people. Another thing we have that I have found really useful is this collection of data sets. Some of them are very small, the 2x2, the 3x3, the blips. They are meant to, as a very beginning data set to be able to just try things out and make sure things are working nicely. They're not meant to be challenging in any way. They're very small. But we also have, for instance, Nordic runes, which is a small alphabet from the Elder Futhark alphabet, and then MNIST, like we're using in this course, which actually goes and pulls down the MNIST package and creates these blocks. In all of these cases, it takes the data sets and wraps them in data blocks, so that we can conveniently import them and add them into a cottonwood structure and begin to work with them right away. I expect that this will expand significantly in the future.


I want to let you in on a little secret, if you will. Maybe you don't notice this about me, maybe you do, but I am an introvert. This means that I don't feel comfortable when I do something socially before I feel like it's the appropriate thing to do. If I'm making a sale, I want to make sure that the person is interested before I try to close them. If I talk to somebody, it's really important for me to know that he's actually listening and interested. It's not that I get offended if he's not. It's not that I get offended if my potential buyer doesn't want my product. But what really screws me over is not getting validation. Now what does this mean? When I'm in a social situation and there's a group of people talking, I don't feel comfortable coming up, just interrupting them and being that charismatic guy that just starts talking to everybody. So I do something simple. I take the obscurity, you could call it the ambiguity. You could call it the question. Do they want to hear me talk? Would it be okay if I butt up and become the dominant guy? So I'll walk up to the group and I'll tell them, Hey guys, I have something to say. Do you want to hear? And they might say, yeah. Okay, everybody wants to hear? Yeah. Bam! I'll go into it because now I've got the validation to keep going. If I'm making a sale, again, I have to talk to the client either until he asks me, Okay, how do we move forward?  Or until I ask him, So what do you think about what we talked about so far? Would you like to see the next phase? Would you like to know more about working with me? And if he says, oh yeah, of course. Then I'll be, okay, awesome. I'll be highly enthusiastic. If he says, okay, then I'll tell him, What's on your mind? What's the problem?  Let me know, I want to know about it. If I'm doing a lecture, I'll stand in front of the audience. I'll ask, hey guys, are you excited? Are you happy to be here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to hear about self-improvement. Yeah, yeah. Let's say I want to sell something at the end. Maybe I want to sell my coaching at the end. I don't feel comfortable going into a pitch without making sure people are interested because I don't want to waste their time. So I have as an introvert, I have a very high sensitivity, sensitivity, sorry, to other people's time and energy and money. I don't want to take value ever. I just want to give and give and give. Now this doesn't mean, I thought it means in the past that I'm just a sucker. I just give and give and give and I never get. But the only reason I never got is because I missed the transition of the question. Well, would you like to hear more? Would you like to know about what I offer? Are you interested? Does this sound good? Does paying me $2,000 to get coached sound good to you? Yes. Maybe the guy says, oh, I think so.  Oh, it's because I'm not sure about, oh, awesome. Let's fix it. You know, let's talk about it. I'm not sure about this. Okay, awesome. Awesome, let's fix it. So I'm always providing myself with validation. And the mistake that introverts make, what keeps them introverted is the fact that they don't ask the questions.  You're not sure anymore if they're listening.  You're not sure if they're listening, but you're like, oh, I'm not sure if he's listening.   I don't want to waste value. So I'm going to suppress myself. You get like the handbrake is going up, you get blocked. So what I do in this situation, I'll just straight up ask like, hey, you know, does the story interest you? Do you want to hear more? And they'll be like, oh yeah, of course. And even if they say, oh no, it's actually not that interesting. I'm not going to take it personally. I'm not going to be like, oh no.  I'm going to be like, oh, okay, cool. Do you want to talk about something else or, you know, why maybe tell me why it wasn't interesting so I can know it for the future. Was it my delivery? Was it just you not being interested? I can actually do something with it. So it doesn't matter if I get a good reaction or a bad reaction, you know, you know, I come up to a group. I'm like, hey guys, you want to hear a story? I have to tell. It doesn't matter if I get a good reaction or if they say like, no, because at least I got something definitive.  And until you confront them, you won't really know if you're taking value because you're not, again, entertaining. You're not really doing what you should do or if you're doing the right thing. So you'll just be stuck in this half in half out thing and you won't be charismatic. You won't be engaging. You won't be passionate. You won't be energetic. You'll sound like forced. Like when you tell your story, you know, you'll be like, yeah, this, like, do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? It's going to suck.  You know, you're going to the closing already. You're like, you know, yeah, the product is this and it has that. And in your head, you're like, oh, I don't know if you like this. So the secret for me and you to thriving. So sorry for the misleading title because it's not surviving.  But I needed something to get you to watch is to confront the scary shit, scary stuff, to validate it. Ask the questions. So anytime I feel introverted, I know intuitively why I'm introverted. Again, it could be lecturing because I'm afraid to sell. Maybe I'm afraid my topic isn't interesting. Maybe I'm afraid the video isn't interesting. Maybe I'm afraid I'm doing the workout wrong. Maybe I'm afraid the guy I'm talking to isn't interested. Maybe I'm afraid the group I want to talk to isn't really open to me just interrupting.  I won't feel confident to just try and sell. Sorry. I'd like to know first that he's interested that I can help him. You know, some people are not like that. Some people just don't have that thing. And, you know, that's fine. But there's advantages to be introverted as well. Because again, when you're introverted, you're more precise.   But it never feels like, you know, negative pressure because the person intuitively feels that you deeply care about their well-being, which is actually true. Because people who are introverted like me, we don't care about the money as much as we care about the value. So first of all, you know, Matt, money, great, I love money. But if I get value, I don't want to get money for nothing. I don't want it. I won't feel good about it. Like I had so many clients that I could have worked with, but I just told them, no, like I'm not going to war with you because I don't think it's a good fit. And they're like, oh, thank you. And they actually appreciate it because I just gave them the blunt answer. Like, hey, I'm not the perfect match for you. You should go with this guy. You should do this. So introverts actually have, again, an advantage in that because you can actually control your energy. But again, you have to be able to confront the scary stuff. You have to be able to validate it. So whenever you get introverted, then again, you're not in a born introvert and you're just stuck that way.  It's like, you know, when they find something that's interesting to them, they find valuable. They can definitely focus, you know, for hours or 10 hours straight. But, you know, maybe the problem isn't with them. It's the school that's not interesting enough or that's not, they don't feel like it has what they need. You know, it doesn't really spice the, what they feel inside so that they get passionate about it and really want to study hard. So what I'm trying to say is you don't have any problems. Stop trying to fix yourself. Stop trying to be confident in spite of being introverted. You're not an introvert. You're simply more picky with your value. So you only want to give value. You want to make sure you never take value. You're very, you have hypersensitivity to that, to that. Just like people with attention deficiency simply have an extremely precise and picky attention span because they can only focus on things that they know to a very deep degree that will actually provide them with value. You know, by that definition, I'm extremely with ADHD because I can't focus on anything that I don't find interesting or valuable. But, you know, I think that's a skill. I don't think that's like a disadvantage. So same with my introvertedness. I don't find that like a deficiency.  I find that as my characteristics, part of my unique setup, one of my advantages. Because when I do find people that are good for me, I close them like a motherfucker. Like they're not going to go away and they're going to be happy that I close them.   So I hope this gave you a lot, a lot of hope. What's the other words? Clarity, guidance, understanding of how to actually use the introvertedness and how to actually control it and use it to your advantage.  Everything is perfect with you. If you're an introvert and this video helped you, please let me know in the comments because I appreciate it so much. It really, really does wonders to my happiness to see how much I can help. So let me know and if you need personal help, please contact me by email. Let me know if you need my help. I'd love to give you a free coaching session. I can answer your questions via email. We can do anything pretty much. So thanks again and if you haven't subscribed, please do. Let me know if this helped you and I have one last video today, the fifth video. So I'll see you soon.


The battlefield of the future will be complex, with mountains of data moving rapidly between commanders, operation centers and the joint warfighter. With this multifaceted environment, Army researchers and their partners are searching for solutions. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory formed an alliance in 2010 with universities and industry to enable revolutionary advances in soldier systems technology by merging neuroscience, psychology, engineering and human factors to deliver those solutions. The more we know about how individual soldiers are doing in any given situation, context whether it's mission or training, the more we can develop technologies or solutions that will improve performance. Turian said the researchers are working on new technologies that will enable intelligent agents that take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In theory, these intelligent agents will have computational power much greater than that of humans. The alliance, which will continue for two more years, recently held a biennial research management board where laboratory leadership and their partners looked at progress so far and envisioned the path ahead. This is about taking all that we've learned in the field of neuroscience and neuro-technology and taking that out of the laboratory and putting it in real-world contexts, army-relevant contexts and situations. During the review, attendees watched demonstrations of research successives such as a study to gauge how effective communications can be in a life-and-death situation. Outfitted with sensors looking at the body and in particular the brain, a driver and passenger drove up and down a busy expressway while the passenger communicated information. What we're interested in doing is understanding whether we can look at the synchrony between the physiology, so the brain response or the heart rate response, between the driver and passenger and use that synchrony to predict whether the driver is going to remember the information that the passenger is telling them after the drive is over. The experiment also used a unique visualization tool developed at the laboratory known as Clive, or customizable lighting interface for the visualization of EEGs, think brainwaves. The tool shows how well two brains are synced. As Clive was showing this synchronization across the brain, we know as neuroscientists that certain brain regions are implicated in particular tasks. With 244 individual LED lights, Clive can portray many colors and intensities. It's often very difficult for us to explain or visualize what's going on inside people's brains to other people who are non-scientists. And so this was just sort of a creative way that we came up with to show people what's actually going on inside someone's head when they're doing different types of activities. In another demonstration, a participant with brainwave sensors participated in a computer simulation while researchers introduced external distractions and measured how her brain reacted. And we can provide feedback that will mitigate the stress that the operator is feeling and help them improve their overall performance. As a basic science research program, the scientist said it is challenging to know exactly how their research will translate into technology for the future army. This is a very challenging technology field because of the complexity of the brain, inherent complexity of the brain makes this research very challenging in addition to the complexity of measuring the brain and corresponding physiological signals in the real environment in a real world operational context. The Alliance, officially known as the Cognition and Neuro-Organomics Collaborative Technology Alliance, has seven principal organizations as consortium members and a number of institutions as sub-awardees. They are primarily academic institutions like the University of Florida, the University of California San Diego, Columbia University, and the University of Texas, San Antonio, as well as international partners and a number of smaller programs with other universities and small businesses. Collaboration, I think, is essential because our academic partners have a broad understanding of the problem space, the scientific problem space. They have insights and resources and they make excellent partners when doing executing basic science research and we provide a lot of, in addition to that type of expertise, an understanding of the army problem space, the things that the critical gaps that need to be addressed in our research. So together, we can develop combined project plans and programs, research programs that push the science forward in a way that's meaningful for technology transition that will be useful in future soldier systems.


I'm so grateful for your attention, for your willingness to listen to my ideas, but I don't want to be your guru. I want to talk about why that's so important today. A lot of teachers and coaches and mentors and speakers aspire to be the guru for their audience. And I get it. It's a very visceral drive, human drive, that comes from our evolution. Because thousands of years ago when we were, you know, in the savannah, right, in tribes where we needed each other to survive, if you got rejected by your tribe, you would literally die in the wilderness. So it was a matter of life and death that you kept with your tribe and did not get rejected. And then even more, you also learned through evolution that it's good to be a king or a queen, because then you have the adoration of your followers and you get lots of food and benefits, right? So we have this human drive to be adored, to not be rejected. And so teachers and coaches and mentors sometimes forget that drive, and then so they just are blindly trying to develop that kind of audience that will adore them, question them not one bit, not give them any critical feedback, and do everything that they say. Do you have a teacher like that? Do everything exactly as I tell you, don't stray. If you're straying, even if you find a way that you think works better for you, you're wrong. My way works better for you. Be very careful of those kinds of teachers. And there's a reason why you should be careful. There's two reasons. Let me talk about it from why it's bad for you as a student and why it's bad for you as a teacher, as an aspiring teacher. So the reason it's bad for the student is because your free will is the most important thing you have as part of you. Meaning your ability to solve problems by your own decisions and with your own conscience. Your personal agency. And when a teacher says, just do my things step by step without straying. Don't think. Just do what I tell you. And whatever you find elsewhere is not as good as what I'm going to tell you. Be very careful because you are basically getting your free will stripped away from you. The most important thing you have. Okay. To be able to grow in solving problems and being creative and listening to your conscience and sharpening your conscience. That is the path of personal development. And so by following a teacher to the T with complete step by step. Ironically, you are straying from the path of personal growth. Alright. So everything you hear from your teachers take it as an idea for your own experimentation. Experiment with it. Try. Yes. Experiment with it faithfully because someone else has a lot of experience and they're giving you an idea. An idea for experimentation. See if it works for you. If it doesn't work, throw it away and try something else. Okay. Not that the teacher is wrong because the teacher only knows from their point of view. Right. The teacher has not lived your life. Even though the teacher has lots of experience, maybe with lots of students, but your life is by definition unique to you. Now, as you become a teacher, why is it dangerous to become a guru? Okay. And by the way, I'm not talking about religion. I respect your way to practice religion however you want. You may have a spiritual guru in your religion and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about business here. Becoming a business guru for your audience, whatever topic you talk about. Why is it dangerous for you as a teacher to become a guru? Because you stop learning when you become a guru. If you hate disagreements from your teacher or from your students and you are not open to their honest feedback and you ignore critical feedback. Okay. I'm not talking about trolls. People who just want to hurt you, that's different. I'm talking about students who give you honest feedback in hopes that it will help you. If you don't take that in and wrestle with it. Yes, it feels uncomfortable, but that's also an opportunity for you to grow to welcome feelings of being uncomfortable. It's okay to feel uncomfortable. It really is. There's a value. There's gift in that uncomfortable feeling. It's called the opportunity to grow. So that's why I'm obsessed about getting feedback from my clients and from my students. After every course I asked them, please give me honest, even brutal feedback. If you're in a rush, just give me brutal feedback. I don't want you to sugarcoat it because that's how I can grow, right? That's how I can learn. So as a teacher, you need to be super open to what your students are learning outside of the relationship to you. Okay. And I hope that you're not asking them to only relate to you as a teacher.  I always encourage my students and my clients to say, great, please learn from other people. Don't let my own courses and my own programs be the only thing you have because otherwise we're all in an echo chamber here. Please learn from other people too. Okay. That's why I always introduce other people, you know, in my videos, Instagram videos, not so much because it's hard to do it this way. But in my Facebook videos and my YouTube videos, I always recommend other people, right? So anyway, long story short, yes, we should passionately teach what we believe. Yes, we should help our clients step by step, but always remember to balance confidence with humility. Yes, be authentically confident. I'm very confident. But I also know I need to work on my humility to say, hmm, where am I needing to grow? What is my, are my students or clients showing me? Anyway, I hope this is helpful. My name is George Cal, authentic business coach. I hope you benefit from this and more importantly, I hope you're learning from others as well. So anyway, hope to see you in another video and thank you again for joining me.


arena is the need for speed. I get that, but that's where I see a lot of mistakes happen.  If you can get surrounded through your school or through third parties, that's probably the biggest takeaway that I had on my notes this morning before our call was start to surround yourself early in school with people that maybe don't share the same views, but are going to be able to offer different perspective as opposed to just focusing so much on getting through school. I hear that so much. The curriculum is so focused on the science of dentistry, which it has to be that a lot of the younger doctors just don't even know where to start. And so they get advice at the school that DSOs are bad or DSOs are a great spot. And that doesn't necessarily fit either parties.