Welcome to Close it now, the podcast that's revolutionizing the H Vac and home improvement trades industries. Get ready to dive deep into the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning. We're turning up the heat on industry standards and cooling down misconceptions. And we're not just talking about fixing vents and adjusting thermostats. It's about the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of H Vac and home improvement. We're the driving force, inspiring top performers who crave excellence not only in their professional endeavors, but also in fitness, nutrition, relationships, and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. This is Close it now, where excellence meets excitement. Let's get to work now. Your host, Sam Wakefield.

Hey, Close it now. So I have a very special episode today. This is my highest profile guest to date. I am so excited that he was on the show, and because of that, I was very intentional about being conscious of his time. So what I did is I left all of the announcements and typical banter and back and forth out of the interview. And we're doing it now. So thanks, everybody. Thanks, everybody for hanging out today. In this episode, I interview Jay Samet, who wrote a book called Disrupt yout. And that is how I learned about him. But his history is incredible. The things that he has been able to accomplish and the impact that his books have made. You're going to love the message. And I wanted to have him on the podcast very specifically. So let me set the context here real quick in right now, in our industry and all the home service industries, you know, 2020 was awesome. That was the boom, 2021, 2022. And then everybody started to lose their minds in 2023 when things started tapering off and then tapering off more and tapering off more. And now we're well into 2024. We're in fall of 2024. And what I am seeing across the country is for the most part, most people are really struggling right now. The homeowners are taking longer to buy. This is a very polarizing election year. The economy is doing all kind of uncertain things. And it's not that the economy is good or is bad. When the economy is good, people buy. When the economy is bad, people buy. When the economy is uncertain is when people start to hold on to cash a little bit. So all of these things are going on. You've all seen the reports and the things about, you know, as call volume is down 30%, you know, you've probably experienced a slowdown. Why Is that what's going on? Well, there's a lot of reasons for that. There's a lot of, you know, theories. There's a lot of hypothesis. There's a lot. You know, I've listened to a lot of experts talking about this, and one of the most interesting things is the piece that most people miss has to do with business anytime. It has nothing to do necessarily with what's going on in our industry, what's going on in the world, all these things. The piece that most people miss. And when you look across the country and you see the companies that are growing in these last couple years, the ones that are truly making a massive impact in their areas, in their communities, in the industry, what do we see? We see companies who are doing things differently. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, and thank you for listening, this is my heart, my passion, and where I live and where this training comes from is from a place of, you know, and I've said this over and over, if anything that's been done the Same way for 50 or more years is ripe for revolution, or in the case of this episode, I'm going to change revolution to disruption. Is ripe for disruption. The companies that are truly growing and expanding and making a big impact are companies that decided that if there's a box that says H vac, or there's a box that says plumbing or electrical or windows or home services or whatever, garage doors, whatever, the box says, that they have decided to live outside of that box. And that's 100% where I live. Anything that falls within the constraints of the norm to me is repulsive. And that's what's happening across the country and around the world with companies that are expanding and just really making a massive name. They're doing things dramatically differently than everyone else because they decided that in order to get change, you have to make change. In order to get new results, we have to take new actions. So that is what this episode is about. And this is the thought leader for disruption in the world. And I was privileged and honored enough to get him on the show. So I know you're going to love this episode and the ideas that he brings up in this episode and just the example stories that he tells. It instantly got my brain working on how I can recognize a problem and solve a problem that's not currently being solved within my space. Not MySpace within, from coaching and training perspective. And I know it's going to impact you and get your mental creative juices flowing to recognize opportunities for you to be able to disrupt your market. If you're the business owner, if you are running a PE group, if you are a technician, if you are a comfort advisor, if you're csr, if you're ancillary to the home services, I know there's a lot of people that listen that are in marketing or digital services or other coaches and trainers. Every single one of you. There's not a person who's focused on making an impact or bringing value to the world that can't benefit from this podcast. I am so honored that he was on the show and I know you're going to love it as well. So before we get into the show real quick, I want to make sure to get you all of my contact information. First of all, if you've ever gotten value from the Close it now podcast, I would appreciate and love if you go to Google and leave me a five star review on Google, include a picture. Google loves that. And it could be a picture of just a screen where you're listening to the podcast. It could be you giving a thumbs up. It could also actually this would be awesome. Put your picture with your with your what's in your cup? What are you drinking today? What's in my cup today is actually Starbucks Sumatra, which it's a longtime favorite and I like the dark, rich nuttiness of this bean. So that is what is in my cup. What's in your cup? Post it in the Google review with a picture. That would be awesome if you do that free coaching session for you. I don't care if you hear this announcement, if I read your review on the episode or not. If you post a picture on Google, reach out to me and we'll rock out a free coaching session. I absolutely would appreciate that. Or also go to Apple Podcasts and leave a five star review there as well. That is. You know when I very first started I had like three, four episodes up and of course people are going to trash talk a few trash people trash talk me gave me a couple negative reviews. So five years later I've had basically nothing but almost five star reviews since the first six months and I am sitting at a 4.7 now. So if you would find it in your heart, please go over to Apple Apple Podcast and leave me a five star review because working on bumping those metrics up as well. Now let's see what other announcements. Got a super quick announcement. In the spring we are having a sales boot camp masterclass in the Boston area. It's going to be end of April Start of May, somewhere in that range. As soon I'm going to be locking those dates in asap. As soon as I get those dates in, you will be the first to know. It is going to be a three day event and it's going to be just absolutely fire. So I love, love, love that you are listening to this and I'm bringing my trainers, I'm bringing, we're going to have some serious, serious content in here. We're going to take you through the sales system and how to optimize for 2025. So really excited. We're developing a lot of new training and content for that session. So you are going to love it. Go ahead and mark that little area. Go ahead and pencil some, just draw a big circle around it. There's going to be an incredible training up in the Boston area in the spring. There might be another one on the west coast if we get it coordinated and that kind of thing as well. But I know for sure we've got one going up in the Northeast. So yeah. My friend Jonathan, thank you so much, brother. I'll be in touch soon and we'll get to working on this ASAP as well. So. All right, without further ado, I'm going to stop talking here and pass it over to Sam in the podcast interview and I know you're going to love it. So everybody, until next time, go be someone worth buying from. Well, hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to Close It Now. Sam Wakefield here and I am here to tell you that I am so grateful and honored to have this guest on the show today. I read his, his book Disrupt you a few years back and I was just telling this gentleman before we hopped on, started recording that book has lived rent free in the back of my head for years now because every single time I'm thinking of innovations or doing something different or if every single time I feel like we're getting in a rut, that book pops into my head and starts to inspires me to think differently. And I know you are going to love this guest today. There's also a new book that is out which is exciting. I know we're going to talk about and I'm just so honored to have you on the show today, Jay. For everyone listening, this is Jay Samet, a best selling author. He has been the leading voice in innovation in industry disruption for decades now and I am so honored to have him on the show. Thank you for joining me today, sir.

Hey, pleasure to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. So you were giving me a little bit before the show which we're definitely going to going to talk about future proofing you which is of course the new book. But what was like to start on this on, on this show with give us everybody a little bit of your background story, highlight reel of you know, where, how you got to where you are, why should they listen, etc. And just, just kind of throw us a little bit of your, your life journey here.

So I bought into what parents and teachers told you, which was get good grades and live happily ever after. Turns out that's not true. And most people want you to go and get a steady job, a reliable job. Well, 90% of the original Fortune 500 companies are gone. Okay? So there is no such thing as a safe job, a safe career. Okay. And so it isn't that security robs ambition, it's the illusion of security that rob's ambition.

Sure.

So I got out of school during a recession and no one was hiring and I had two sons when I was very young. And short answer is I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. I didn't set out to change the world. I set out to make sure my kids had a better life. And I think we all share that in common. And during my journey of building companies like no one ever heard of before but eBay and LinkedIn and all these other ones and working with some of the most famous names across the world and you wake up and dozens of friends have become billionaires. That's with a B. And you go, wait a second, these people aren't smarter than the average person. They didn't go to the right schools, come from the right family. What are they doing differently? And if you really want to feel like crap, a self made billionaire is made every 17 hours.

Holy moly.

So I don't know what you did yesterday, but you're a slacker and they're coming younger. You have self made billionaires in their 20s, so what are they doing? How are they looking at life? And what I learned is it can be taught. And so disrupt you was to break down the world. There's nothing in the. When you read it, you go oh my God, this is rocket science. What's the theory behind this? No, this is the common sense stuff isn't taught to you. What we're taught was enough reading and writing to go work for somebody else. And the second you're working for somebody else, what you really are doing is making someone else's dream come true.

Right?

So if you really want a wake up call, the very first thing And I say this, I speak all over the world. I say this to large crowds. I'll be staying in San Antonio this week. Are you living life or just paying bills until you die? And that's a gut punch for most people because they can't get out of that cycle. And so I figured it out. I then started as a way to pay it back. Teaching it at the university level at the largest, I'm not an engineer, but a largest engineering school in the country and I student to a hundred million dollars in a semester. Now this isn't investing with capital, this is starting from zero.

Sure.

So it can be taught. And then as I told you before the show, one of the joys if you have a book and you absolutely write it, that I didn't expect is getting emails from people all over the world. My books are in a dozen languages I didn't write, thinking, how can I help people in Thailand? You know, what do I know about the Lithuanian market? But it turns out we're all the same. And so I love that. And one day I got an email from a millennial that had read the book and said, this is all fine and dandy, but I could never do it. And I'm like, why? Like, And I take the onus on me. Sure, maybe I don't know how to communicate to this newest generation. So I came up with this audacious Pygmalion like experiment. What if I take a homeless immigrant, mentor them one day a week for a year, give them no cash, no business contacts, no capital. They have to come up with a business that takes zero dollars and zero cents. And spoiler alert, if you're going to read future proofing you he went from homeless to self made millionaire in under a year. And this has been repeated and repeated. And these aren't get rich quick schemes. These are work your butt off, but work smart, right? And so that's what I'm about is paying it forward. Because here's the little thing. You're not selling a product no matter what business you're in. No one ever went into a hardware store to buy a quarter inch drill, I mean quarter inch drill bit. Because they wanted a quarter inch drill bit. What they wanted was a quarter inch hole, right? So you sell solutions. If you can solve something for five people, you have friends. Solve for a million or wealthy, sell for a billion and you change history.

Wow.

And you're one click away on your phone from 6, 7 billion people, which means you only have to be right for a nanosecond to make millions of dollars. Right. So why aren't we doing these things? And it doesn't matter what field you are and in, in future proofing you. I wanted to break down some of the myths that I didn't talk about in the first book, such as higher iq don't end up being wealthier. Sure. Going to better schools or, or college graduate doesn't make you wealthier. And in many of the trades today, there's actually shortages of people because somewhere along the line, society put a value on one type of, of background and not another.

Exactly right.

Good luck not having a plumber. Okay. I spoke to the organization that maintains the power grid, the guys that climb up the lines and run all these utilities. You know, that's a job that starts at $150,000 a year and they can't find people.

Right.

So we need more people solving problems. And you don't have to have a high tech background, but you're going to use technology. You're going to use them to find your customers, you're going to find them to build your brand. You're going to have to break down. And here's the very basis of what I told this particular young man. He thought being a millennial, he knew about social media and so he wanted to be like a social media influencer agency, you know, do social media for big companies. I'm like, coca Cola isn't about to hire a homeless guy to do your stuff. So I said, look out in the zeitgeist. Look at what's, what's everybody talking about right now. And then market yourself as the social media expert for that one thing. Because here's the secret. If you don't want to read my books or hear my talks or any of that, I'm not doing any of this to make money. I'm doing it to help. You either have to be the best in the world at what you do or the only one doing it. Because if you're the only one doing it, by definition you're the best.

I love that. I've always told everybody what's the. Especially when I'm doing trainings and stuff, I'm like, okay, everybody raise your hand. What's the definition? What does it mean to be the best? And of course, thousands of guesses. And then the answer, of course, just like you said, is, well, it just means you suck less than the next guy.

Or you're the only one doing it.

Or the only one. Yeah, you're the best at the same time.

So I built the first social network 10 years before Facebook. Okay, was it as good as Facebook? Did it have a stickiness? No. Was it the best in the world when I did it? Yes. We use Zoom. If you look back, this technology was invented by another startup of mine called oobu. We didn't have a pandemic to make it popular, but we got the 100 million users. I mean, every thing that I've been involved in was just trying to solve a problem and most people aren't thinking it. And right now AI changes everything you read disrupt you. And I said by the end of the decade, half of all jobs will disappear and people go, you're nuts. You're nuts. I spoke at Davos in Switzerland this year and the head of the World Monetary Fund, these are people that have tons of researchers and know what they're talking about. So 30% of the jobs on the planet will be disrupted in the next two years because of AI.

Yeah.

So we can understand self driving trucks replace truck drivers. That's the number one job on US tax returns, someone driving a vehicle. But now AI replaces accountants and lawyers and middle management and copywriters and photographers and graphic artists. And that's a whole lot of people that are going to be struggling. But during that process, there's a tool that you can use that's basically free, that can make you 10 times more powerful than your competitor who's not thinking that way.

Right?

And you're trying to find new business, you're trying to find a repeat business, trying to build customers. What we're talking about is data, okay? The world and big companies. I, I've run companies where I've had250,000 employees.249,000 of them have nothing to do with making money. Okay? They're, they're cost, but they're drowning in data, but have no insights. So it's not anything other than knowing what you're solving for, knowing what you look at. There were two guys sitting in traffic in Tel Aviv. Now, I'm from Los Angeles, we own traffic. Okay?

Right.

Let little countries say all that they want, but they own it. But it bugged them. They were stuck in traffic and they're good looking and they're going, wait a second, the phone company knows where my phone is, knows where that guy's phone is. So there's a way of telling that guy to make a left of me, to make a right and no more traffic. And that was the basis of all the, all the guidance systems that we now have. In cars. That one insight. And there are dozens of them. One of the simplest ones that just like shows that anybody your parent. It's the middle of the week, it's 8 o' clock at night, and your child has to make some poster board, you know, sign for their school project the next day. And they mess it up.

Sure.

And they're going, mommy, Daddy, please take me to the store. I just need one more sheet. So this mom did that, and the next day she's having coffee, talking to her cousin on the phone, because why don't they make poster board with lines on it so kids can write stuff straight? We're not talking rocket science here. She knew nothing about any of that, but she was smart enough to know to get a patent. And so she went to the second biggest poster board company and said, I'll license to this to you. You've watched Mr. Wonderful and Shark Tank. You know, licensing is easier than building a business. And she became a multimillionaire. Still no employees. Still just opens the mailbox and a check comes in. Solve a problem.

I love this conversation so much. In fact, one of the questions that I had written down here for you, which this is a perfect segue for it, thank you for those stories, is I was reading that of course, you've got a formula for helping people recognize opportunity for innovation within the industry. And of course we're seeing that right now. Everyone is. You know, how do we constantly be innovating, but especially in it, like in our trade. It's such an old trade that things have been done the same way for so long, quote, unquote, that every trade's an old trade. Innovators are the ones that. And you're right, every industry's.

What's the world's oldest profession?

Okay, yeah, absolutely. Sales.

Right. No, of course. And yet this year, only fans made more money than all the NBA players. I'm not commenting on anything. I'm just saying anything can be innovative. Sure. Okay.

All of the money, right?

So here's a. Here's, here's the formula that you wanted me to share today, not tomorrow. Because the sooner you start, the longer you can enjoy your success. Write down three problems in your life. Everybody's got three problems. I was in traffic, whatever it might be. But you have to do this for 30 days. And here's what happens the first couple days. Oh, God, I've got problems by day three. Most people tap out because we live in autopilot and we don't see problems. Okay? And in a line trade to the audience. And I ended up joining this guy's board. It was a reader and it was brilliant business. He was a roofer. And they climb up the ladder and they work on the roof. I'm not a roofer, but I think that's basically what they've done for thousands of years. And to get insurance claims to pay for the stuff. Some guy from the insurance company in a suit and slick shoes climbs up the ladder and has to do this too. Yeah, they fall, they get hurt or whatever. And the guy's looking at Google Maps one day and says, wait a second, every roof is on the map. Can I figure out he's not a mathematician? Because there must be some way to turn that into how many square foot feet it is. So you can do an estimate, the insurance company can estimate, everybody can, can do this automatic. And he started a company and it was very, very successful. Right. He wasn't an engineer. But you know what? Either was Steve Jobs. Okay? You can hire people to do any of these things and if you don't have money, you can hire them with equity and give people piece of the company for working on it. The only two things you need to have that can't be hired are insight, which I can teach, and persistence. So most people give up before they're successful. They are embarrassed that they failed at something. Well, guess what? You don't become successful without failing. When you fail, one of two things happen. You either learn or you earn. But either way you're better off than when you started. I've raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups and venture capitalists don't want some kid on their first idea. They want someone who has failed because they've learned lessons that they won't make the same mistake, they'll make new ones. Life's folded, but so there's a difference between failing and failure. Failing is learning what doesn't work. You know, the old Thomas Edison, a thousand tries at the light bulb or whatever. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up. And you'll never know how close you are to success if you just stop.

Right?

And so it's about having a positive mindset. It's about thinking differently. If you want something that's going to sound like I'm a hippie tree hugger, but it's based on science. When you get up in the morning and shave or put on your makeup or whatever and you're looking in that mirror, say two things to yourself. Today can be better than yesterday. Say them out loud and I have the power to make it so. And what happens is your brain actually hears what you say. It doesn't assume that you lie to yourself. And so it lights up your synaptic nerves, it gives you endorphins, it puts you in a positive mood. People with a positive mindset complete more sales, have better relationships, have better sex. I mean, your whole life becomes better. And we know this because we've all worked with the person that wakes up with that cloud over them every day. They come in and, oh boy. And I tell you about, they wouldn't see opportunity if it hit them in the face. But the person with the positive attitude will always find something. So it isn't that. Yes, there's luck, there's all kinds of things, but if you're not in the right mindset for this. So take this, this, this. This young kid that I mentored, his name was Vin. I realized he had a whole lifetime of I can't do it, I can't be. His parents weren't, you know, his whole social strata that he came from, no one had, had ever done anything. So he didn't believe it was possible.

Right. His belief system, his socio, everything way he's been programmed, right?

Right. So if I was going to change him in a year, I had to hit the ground running. How do you change a person's mindset instantly? And there's a psychological principle called the Pygmalion effect. A professor went to a school, tested all the elementary school kids and told the teachers six kids were going to be super learners. They were going to out learn and outgrow all the other kids in the school that year. And sure enough, at the end of the year, those six kids outperformed everybody. Fun fact, the professor lied. He tested everybody, but then he pulled six names out of a hat. But if you tell people they're special, you end up treating them special and they become special. So my first meeting with Vin, I told him I had interviewed over 200 people and he was the only one that had all the attributes to be a self made millionaire. And he didn't actually believe it, but he said, if this old guy sees it, I'll, I'll play along.

Sure, give it a try.

By the end of the first month, when he had made like $70,000, he could have flown to Europe without a plane. Okay. He was unstoppable from that point when in fact he was the only person I ever interviewed. I realized I had to do it with the first person I meet. Otherwise it's like, okay, I'm going to pick somebody random. Michael Jordan, come shoot hoops for me. You know, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be a fair experiment. And what really amazed me in his story is midway through the year, something happened to his business that could not have been predicted. Wasn't his fault. The rules had been changed. It's like if you had a, had an ice cream store and the government suddenly outlawed ice cream, like you couldn't see this coming.

Yeah. Being in the trades and regulated by the EPA and doe we all come across every couple years. Yeah, it just completely changes.

And those that are in power will always change the rules to stay in power. So anyway, I he about half a million dollars and I'm like, that's not a bad book. Guy goes back. I was expecting him to come in crushed. And he comes into the weekly meeting, goes, Jay, this thing happened. So I said to myself, what are the pieces that I've already built? How can I pivot the business? And without missing a nickel in revenue. He was on a new revenue path and just kept on going. I was like, I'm not worthy. This was incredible.

That's awesome.

But it all comes down to mindset, you know, why is it so many poor immigrants can come to our shores and exceed one out of three Fortune 500 companies was founded by an immigrant or first generation child. And the reason is that isn't a random selection of people. Those are people who were willing to give up everything that they knew to try something better.

Right.

This country was created by people that explored and built and did. And then somewhere along the line we went from being, you know, explorers to settlers and just settling.

Right.

And you know, the world isn't the same. The generation where dad went to work and mom could stay home and he could retire and have his house paid off and, you know, have a boat that doesn't exist.

True.

I don't leave it to Beaver, Brady Bunch, Ozzie and Howard. I mean, that era doesn't exist. What does exist is that your market is no longer your town. Your market's the world. You say, well, I have to be close to an actual building that I can do my work at. No, you might come up with a tool or an innovation that your whole industry could use. You might see something that everybody already uses here that no one's using in another country and start selling that online. There's lots of people that have made millions just seeing something in one country and taking it somewhere else. So it's about looking at life differently. And if you're not happy. Wouldn't you like to look at life differently?

It's so much better when we do, right? I love this conversation so much because it speaks into so much of what for, well, almost six years now, this podcast, every single episode, we talk about mindset. One of the things that I train and just say over and over is work to become, of course, because it's sales focused work to become someone worth buying from. And as you increase as just your personal growth and the level of person, then people will sell. Your numbers will naturally follow as you constantly work on your sales skills along with that. And I love how much it so much of this is mindset. If we think we can, we're right. And if we think we can't, we're right. And the fact that you took a homeless immigrant and mentored him proves that. So everybody listening. We get a lot. We get wrapped up in our excuses and the season and how it's slow and all those kind of things, but everybody listening. I want you to listen to that story, go back and listen to it again, and then ask yourself how bad you have it and what you're not doing that you know you should be doing to make progress in. In what you're doing and how to think differently. So I love this conversation so much.

And if you want the secret to both happiness and success, solve for others. Gratitude and happiness comes from solving for others. Okay. You know, there was a. I was the stereotype kid in elementary school when they had the science fair. I made the baking soda and vinegar volcano. I mean, I painted it. It looked pretty badass, but like, I didn't take it seriously. A couple years ago, a girl in junior high school, her parents aren't doctors or scientists, has to do the science fair. And she read somewhere that the number four cause of death in the United States is hospitals, not what you went in for, hospitals getting infections. And she started just thinking about it. Junior high school said when people get surgery and they put in stitches, what if they made sutures that change color if it's infected? So she starts playing with vegetables in her fridge and ph balances and figures this out and was smart enough to go get a patent. And you can just buy patents for dummies. You don't even have to hire an attorney. And became this multimillionaire before she even applied to college. But more importantly, is saving hundreds of thousands of lives a year.

Right.

If you want to talk about me feeling like I've done nothing with my life, like we all have that Power.

Right.

And what I love about young people is they don't think everything's already been thought of. This is how we do it. They figure it out. Bill Gates used to say, and I love this line, hire lazy people. They'll find the shortest way to get something done. And he's right. You know, and so there's so many ways to just change how you're doing it.

Right.

Calling someone up to ask if they want to buy a service is not going to go anywhere.

Sure.

Because how does that differentiate you from anybody else? What prior thing did you solve for that person's life? That has nothing to do with the problem at hand. How can you be part of that community, that environment, that whatever.

Right.

So you're top of mind. I mean, all these things. I don't care if you're an attorney or, you know, you're a tradesman. That's how you have to look at things. And then what can you do that makes it 10x better? I only take board seats at this stage of life in companies that I believe change the world for the positive.

Sure.

And an engineer that had worked for me years ago, his father had died from being exposed to pesticides. He was a farmer. Fourth. Fourth generation. Kansas people farm the same way since Mesopotamia. Okay. So nowadays, about 100 years ago, somebody figured out the best way to grow food was to slather it and cancer causing chemicals. Right. And that's all the food we eat. Why? And he said to himself, why do we put pesticides and herbicides on plants? Well, you do the herbicides to stop weeds from growing there faster. What if we made little robots that go up and down row crops and just cut the weeds off? No more poison. Farmer makes more money for organic crops. We don't die and the runoff doesn't go in the Gulf of Mexico and kill all the fish. And today that company's making these little robots. It really is that easy. Now, are the steps from I got an idea to making it happen easy? No. But if you don't know where you want to be in five years, do you really think you're going to be anywhere different?

Absolutely not.

See, the key to a journey is not to know all the steps when you set out. It's to have your North Star. This is what I'm trying to do. If your kid wants to become a doctor, okay. I guess I got to get good grades. I guess got to take these science courses. I guess I got to be pre med. I guess I got to go to med school. The path is pretty laid out. What's the path for being a millionaire? What's the path for making multi generational wealth so your kids and grandkids don't have to worry? You know, I started my kids real young with I never asked him, you know, what did you learn at school today? I would ask them, what problem did you solve today?

Oh, better question.

I helped somebody do something right, you know, what problem do you want to solve when you grow up? It's not what do you want to be right? That don't know if it's a true story. But John Lennon used to tell the story. Somebody asked him, his teacher asked him as a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he said, happy. And the teacher said, you don't understand the question. And he said, you don't understand life. If you want to be happy and successful, it comes from having this mindset of solving things. All the other pieces fault I've had hurdle upon hurdle. I have failed more than most people will ever imagine. You know, most people go, how did you do all this stuff in one lifetime? It was like I really didn't have a choice. Nobody was going to hand anything to me. Sure, you know, I, I, I left home as a teenager and, and you know, never looked back. And one of the differences between disrupt you and future proofing you which was an oversight because I did it my way to get well Sinatra is you don't have to do it alone. Find a mentor. Find a series of mentors for each stage of your life because it's the mentors that shorten the journey.

Right?

And lots of people that have learned lots of things would love to be validated that their knowledge helps and help the next person. And so, you know, I show people how to find the right mentor. LinkedIn's a great tool. No, you don't send an email. Jay, will you mentor me? No.

The cold messages that we get all the time on LinkedIn, you start a.

Conversation, you build a rapport, you ask meaningful questions and that's where things start from. And I guarantee your road will be much quicker. By the time I got a mentor in life, I was in my 40s. It's already successful, but I went to a whole new level of life when I had somebody was Richard Branson's original partner. That opened my eyes to just different ways of how the world worked.

I Love this. I'm 44 now and I can 100% agree with that. I the last couple years I've started a 10x the amount I've been investing in my coaching to turn around, to be able to coach better. And for everybody listening, invest in coaches, was it. Brian Tracy says that we can't live long enough to learn it all ourselves, so we have to learn from the. On the backs of others. And starting on the backs of giants is exactly that. Hiring the people that have been there and done it to compress time for you.

I'll give you a great example. Bill Gates was wet behind the ear and was the richest man in the world. Right. His mom said, you really need to go meet Warren Buffett, who was one of the richest guys in the world. He was a generation old or whatever. You don't know how to live like that.

Yeah, right.

It was a legitimate question. So more money, more problems, and they became lifelong buddies. I mean, the idea that two of them sitting in McDonald's having hamburgers together still blows my mind. Right. But that's what they do. So, yeah, everybody can learn from somebody. I mean, Mother Teresa had a mentor that set her on her path. I mean, and. And if you hear what I'm saying, money is a byproduct. What I'm trying to do is, is make a better world. And. And governments don't make the world better.

Correct.

Entrepreneurs make it better. They solve problems. How great would the world be if a billion people were focused on solving problems? Right. We got a lot of problems, and humanity is great at making new ones. So. So that's my mission. And I got to tell you, it's been the most rewarding decade. We're coming up. Next year will be 10 years since disruptive first came out, and the journey it's taken me on around the world, the people I've gotten to meet, the governments I've mentored on changing their policies, the companies that have turned around. It's amazing and exhilarating because I get inspired by what others are doing.

I love this so much. Can we do something super quick? There was a story. I just want to turn the corner here. There was a story in Disrupt you. Because, as you can see, the guitarist behind me, musician. So I want to ask you about the Soundgarden story when you were first showing off the digital video puzzle game.

Oh.

Would you mind recapping that story for us a little bit?

So I'm pretty sure I know the story. If I'm going down the wrong path, cut me off.

Sure, sure, sure. So, yeah, it's like backstage, and you're demoing it.

And so anyway, so I'm old, okay. I'm old enough that I worked on some of the first video games. And at one point my Little startup had six of the top 10 video games in the world. We're talking a long time ago. So anyway, back then, video games sounded like this. Beep, beep, beep, boop, boop boop. And sound cards were now going into PCs so they could actually make real sounds. And it took me about a split second to say we could have real music. And I made a puzzle game that scrambles up the video and you put the video back together and I want it to be timed like more pieces, but you only have so much time and it took about three seconds. Again, we're going back a few decades. Popular form of entertainment then was music videos. What if it was music videos that are scrambled and you have to do it, it's going to sell, it's going. And it turned out to be my biggest seller ever. But, but how do you, you know, I don't know anybody in the music industry. I don't know how this works, whatever. So the very first step I did was I, I had cold written to Bill Gates, didn't know him from Adam, that this game would help him sell more Windows and, and everything would he write an introduction to David Geffen, the richest man in the music business. So the richest man in the music business gets a letter from the richest man in the world. He takes the meeting. I can't make this up. I'm a guy with, you know, 12 employees that nobody knows from Adam.

Sure.

And so Geffen, who, if you're not from music business, the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt and John Lennon, the solo career at the end and just the most successful guy in the history of music. So he, he, he, I met him, I said, I'll give you half ownership of this if you'll help me get that. So we went around to the various bands and back then to demo something. You had a big PC, a big heavy monitor, you had a bunch of stuff. So one of the bands, and I'm a nerd, I don't know bands from Adam, you know, one of the bands is recording a music video at the, the old Charlie Chaplin studios in, in Hollywood A Records. And I'm carrying all the stuff in and guy sees me, some long hair guy, and he helps me carry the stuff in, was really nice and I set it up because what are you doing? He goes, well, I gotta show, gotta show soundguard in this, this, this, this new video game. And so I set it up and he's playing It. And he's really loving the game.

Nice.

And I go, you know, I really just gotta get in the mindset for this. Would, I think, the bands coming. Could you, like, leave? It's like, yeah, no problem.

Get it packed up, right?

And. And he leaves and then comes back in as all these guys with him. And it was Chris Cornell. I have made myself an idiot in front of more famous people than anyone in the history of mankind because I never pretend to be what I'm not.

Right?

And so, you know, if I don't know, I'm not gonna, like, oh, wow. You know. And my guess is he found it really refreshing that somebody was just honest and had no idea who he was.

Just a normal person that treated him like a normal person.

And so fast forward a few years later, helping launch a TV show called Jimmy Kimmel Live. We had to get live bands and everything. And. And I had an itunes competitor, a big online music store, and we sponsored all the bands, so that would be fun. And. And what if we could close Hollywood Boulevard and make a big event so everybody tunes in and Chris Cornell came and did that. I mean, it's just back to if you solve for people, if you. Do you know Aerosmith, who. I did know who they were. I'd never met them before. They were. They were. They were the. The most savvy business people interested of the bands. So to. To. To drop some names, we had Ozzy Osbourne, we had Peter Gabriel, we had Nine Inch Nails, we had all these great Kurt Cobain, all these great things. But Aerosmith goes, we'll do your TV commercial for you for nothing.

Oh, that's awesome.

Like, okay, fun fact. They went on to also do Guitar Hero and all this stuff. They made more money from video games than they did from CD sales.

I'm not surprised, because I remember the one in all from the time when I was little, the one in every single arcade had like, the big Aerosmith game right out in front.

Make me feel old. Okay, you were little?

Well, I say a little, you know, early and.

And later, I worked with a. A really talented musician who was arguing over his contracts and stuff with. With the record label. And. And I said to him, give them what they want. Let them own everything from the cd, but put in there that you want to own ringtones. No one knew what a ringtone was.

Ooh, nice.

He did $500 million in ringtones.

I love this. Different thinking, right?

You know, again, what was he doing? He was the only one doing it. He was the best in the world at it. So. And that's what aerospace did. That's what. So you're going to have to reposition yourself to first believe that you can. And listen to my voice right now. I believe that you can. I'm telling you can. Here's why your parents and teachers told you that you couldn't because they couldn't. They gave up on their dreams. They felt some pain out there. And as, as loving parents, they wanted to shelter you from pain. There is no growth without pain. You know, a lobster doesn't grow unless it gets out of that whole shell to make a new bigger one. Okay, it's going to hurt. It's not going to be, wow. I start my business on Tuesday, Wednesday. Then I told him the ground rules. You're going to work every day for a year. No tv, no going out to the clubs, no dating, no anything. Daytime was for sales, nighttime was for doing the work. And you're going to work your butt off. And I only had to give him that speech once because once the results started, he was unstoppable because he's working for himself. He's working for his future. And I called the book future proofing you because at the end of the year he knew he had made the goal before we hit the year mark and you know, it was take the last book, like victory lap, you know, we hit. He hit the million dollars. But I asked him, what are you doing next? He goes, oh, I'm taking the next year off. I'm going to travel, I'm going to. He never had a dime to his name.

Okay.

He's going to see the world and everything. And he could do that and shut down his business because he knew he was future proof.

Sure.

He now knew anytime he wanted to start again anywhere in the world, he had the tools to be able to be self sufficient and thrive. So that's what it's about.

Love it. So, so much and excellent job landing the plane. Here we were wrapping this up and so if you could give the listeners one, like point them in the direction to start, like wherever they are in their place. And of course the exercise of writing down the three problems a day for 30 days, that obviously is a great place to start. But once they have that, you know, say they've like recognized this major problem, one or two, what do they do with it?

So, so let me answer with a question.

Sure.

Pretend for a second I'm your doctor. For those that are just listening, I'm watching. I have a white beard. Okay. I'm Old. And I tell you that I have not learned anything new since I got out of Medical School 40 years ago. Would you go to me as a doctor?

No, probably not.

Right? You'd skedaddle out of there in two seconds. Right? That's the same. The people that you want as clients and customers, you have to commit to lifelong learning. The world's dynamic, the world changing. If you're not constantly changing and evolving and learning, someone else is. And they're gonna own your market. Yeah, they're gonna do something different. I'm guessing, and I don't know your industry, but if I tomorrow wanted to be in your industry, here's what I would start. Pretend I live in Arkansas. Small market, small wherever. I would look around the big markets in the big countries and around the big cities around the country, see who the big leaders are. Look at their marketing materials, look at their go to market strategy. Look at, they've done all the work and it's out there to do and see what can I copy. You know, in, in the art world, they say good artists copy, great artists steal. Okay, so learn from everything out there. Second one is I'd look at aligned industries, things that have the similar sales cycle, similar customer base. There are other people selling to your same customers. And I've used this a million times. And I'll end with, with this, this tale, because if you can figure out somebody else that's spending a lot of money going after those customers, you can dovetail on to them and then use other people's money to market your service. So fast forward my life, number three, it's Sony, big company, and they're late to the game. They used to have the walkman and own the world and the ipod ate their lunch. And they're going to compete with itunes, and we're a year late. And Steve Jobs is the world's greatest marketer, and Sony is in 1950s marketing. Here's the weight of the device, here's the battery life. I mean, nothing sexy. So I have to figure out, how do I launch my store? And I know that the competitor is spending a hundred million dollars a year advertising itunes. And my budget is slightly above zero dollars and zero cents. So I stopped to myself, I said, who out there is going for the same market, the same demo? And to make the story short, I ended up with two candidates. One was McDonald's. I saw the McDonald's year over year, sales had dropped for the first time ever. And they were in trouble. And they felt that they were in trouble. So anybody that has a problem and I can solve it. What does that have to do with selling music? That's all I have to do. Make the Venn diagram. Here's a hamburger, here's my music download. What do they have in common? Buy a Big Mac, get a free track.

Sure.

Fast forward. McDonald's spent millions doing great TV commercial all over the place.

And thank you for those by the way because I listen to plenty of those tracks over the years.

Justin Timberlake in the TV commercial because his boy band had just broken up. And I mean every favorite I could figure out of different things to make this thing work. And we had 20 million customers our first day online. Because McDonald's is a marketing machine.

Yeah. Absolutely. That's what they do.

The other one that I went after is United Airlines had filed bankruptcy. People stopped flying. People stopped making that the place to get their their bonus points and everything. And they were about to come out of bankruptcy. How could they announce that to the world that they were back in or whatever. So again stealing. Richard Branson had had a great idea once of do a concert in the sky with Virgin Airlines. And the FAA said he's not allowed to. I won't tell you why. But anyway. But I figured United has more pull. So I went to United and said what if we do a concert in the sky announcing that you're out of bankruptcy. And we shot Cheryl Crow did a concert from Chicago to LA. We filled the plane with press 6 camera shoot edited on a laptop in first class. So when everybody got off the plane they got a dvd. We led all three evening news. Okay. That concert video played on in the flight all their flights for a month. And we drove millions and millions of people to our store. United wrote the check to Cheryl. Cheryl had two requests of me. I love Cheryl. One when she got off stage there better be two pizzas right when she lands. Like gotta love that.

That's an easy one. No problem.

Any woman that loves pizza has my heart. Okay. Number two, could she have a tv? Okay. I think Sony can afford to give her tv.

Yeah.

It's that easy. And once I had shown that pattern to somebody that worked for me. My protege. He repeated that with over 200 different corporations.

Wow.

You know what's a company that has a product going after somebody because people to listen to music happens to be pretty wide demo that we could judge up and improve their brand.

Sure.

And get attention. And they're already spending that same marketing money.

Mm.

I'm just now part of the message. I mean if you had the money to do a TV commercial. You couldn't hire the director that would want to do for McDonald's. You couldn't hire that. That level of ad agency excellence. They're working on the big accounts. I mean this, this commercial. And I hope YouTube hasn't taken down. I put it up years ago when the book came out. But it has a guy sitting in a traffic circle, you know, where the traffic goes around in a little park in the middle and he starts taking his, his Big Mac like he's a dj and, and moving it back and forth and the traffic moves back and forth and the flights of birds turn into music notes on the line. I mean, this thing was amazing.

I remember this commercial so vividly in my mind and I haven't seen it since it aired. So it. I'm living proof that it accomplished exactly what you were wanting. $0 in success from that many years ago.

So. So we'll end this interview with focusing on three letters. Opm. Other people's money.

Love it. And so for everybody listening, think of all of the different ways and clearly home services, there's so many companies that market and sell to the exact same demographic. How can you partner with them? Random example. I had a friend years ago that had partnered with. There was a tiny town. There was a company that did both pizza and donuts so they could hit the entire 24 hours of the day. They stayed open late and they got up early and just hired for it. So it was cool. And so the company that I was, you know, was actually kind of business coaching back at the time. And he was a. This is back when the device repair companies were just really starting. So repair broken phone screens and tablets and all those kind of things. So he co branded with this, this company. He was like, tell you what, I'll pay for. You need to buy new boxes, I'll pay for your new boxes. Put my logo right on the top, right next to yours. And then. And sure enough, man, it was one of the biggest ROIs that he's ever seen. I know this is a completely different example than the ones you gave. No, I want to hear the audience to hear a very super simple one too. And just all the different ways we can work together with people.

There. There's always a solution. I'm going to. I don't remember which book it was in. So if you already know the answer, then it's not as much fun for your audience to play along. I want to tell you how somebody raised some money for their company and you tell Me what the company is sure. It was a presidential election year and there was going to be the big Mac world in San Francisco. Tons of people coming in. So they set up a table outside selling. They made fake cereal boxes that they printed and put cereal on them. Obama O's and McCain O's or whatever, you know, two cereals and sign which will sell the most. So every rabid fan of one candidate or the other, you know, sold them out as much as they could do.

Sure. Major competition.

What was the business?

I have no clue.

Airbnb. Airbnb was started by guys who couldn't pay their rent. They didn't have a business plan. Their idea was, well, a bunch of people are coming into town. If we let them sleep at our apartment, maybe we can make enough money right now to pay our rent. And then they said this probably happens all over the place. Right. And that whole, you know, excess inventory of Uber of this and Uber of that came out of that.

Right.

The first thing was we need some money and came up with a wacky foolproof plan.

Yeah, sell cereal. I love this so much. Thank you for joining me today. Last second. Let everybody know one, where they can find your book, how they can get a hold of your books, as well as to contact. You know, there's a lot of. In fact, just really quickly, if you would run through all of the things that you're currently doing and really excited about right now and let everybody know how they can follow you.

So the books, all my books, Amazon or wherever you like to get your books. Amazon's pretty good. I'm on boards of a few companies that are doing some earth changing things that I'm excited about. But I disrupted my own life when the pandemic hit. Prior to it, the month before, I was in nine countries. Right. I mean, I'm always traveling the world speaking, and then all of a sudden, stop. Right. And I thought the pandemic would be like, you know, two months.

Yeah. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Right.

What's the silver lining? What's the positive? If you're not dying and I'm not making light that people died in the series. But if. If you're staying in. And I literally didn't leave my house for two years. I didn't go to supermarket. I literally didn't. Didn't see my kids. I mean, I was really. Because I've got bad lungs. If you're not sick, what's the silver lining? The silver lining is, for the first time in my adult life, I had the gift of time. I wasn't on airplanes every day. I was running around. And one of my personal patch passions is I paint. And so I decided to sell social media and you can follow me by my name, Jay Simon on Instagram. And I would put up a painting a day of just what I was missing. You know, live music, what. That's the sole reason to keep me from going insane.

Sure.

And because I enjoy and now have this ability. And I would get better and better by, by spending the time and art agents discovered me, art galleries discovered me. Collectors discovered me. I now paint close to full time. I just shipped off two paintings this week that were bought by somebody in Washington D.C. i have collectors in 17 countries. My stuff is my commentary on how we interact with technology in life. So it's, it's fun. It's, it's. And so I'm just having fun doing that. I, I, I, I'm not doing any of this, the books, you don't make any money. I'm doing that to help.

Sure.

So if this time helped, you know, there's speeches you can watch by me online or whatever. But that's about it. I have a website, jsammit.com J-A Y S A M I T and that's it for those looking. Here's what the like that was such.

An eye catching COVID too. It, that's what grabbed my attention years ago.

Oh, I fought for that cover. Good.

I'm glad to hear that.

Yeah. You know, anything that you do in life, you want it to be the best it can be. So everybody thinks of writing a book and maybe it's the greatest thing they ever wrote. That's the least time consuming part of writing a book. Publishers literally print it and ship it.

Sure.

And it goes on a shelf in a store that has 40,000 to 90,000 other books. So it's figuring out how to market, figuring out how it stands out, you know, all, you know. So I did a deep dive and went to talk to other authors that had paved the path before and learned tricks and tips from each of them and you know, beat the odds. And then you get to a certain level of, of success where people go and buy it for their friends or you know, I mean I had a touching letter from one, one person that really moved me. A woman in her 50s had lost all her money starting a business and she called her daughter to say goodbye because she was going to commit suicide that day. And her daughter left and her, the mom was taken aback. I'm serious. I'm gonna get. You're gonna kill yourself for money. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of. And the daughter went over her mom's house and gave her my book. And the mom was writing to say she started a new business, she's successful and I had nothing to do with that.

Saving lives though but boy, what a.

Difference we can each make. So I love it.

Well, thank you for sharing your story. The message is the key that unlocks somebody else's prison and I stand by that wholeheartedly. So I'm grateful for to you and for your books because what I'm doing is exactly that. I recognized a hole in my industry and no one else was so specifically focused on it. So that's why I started my company in February of 2019, about the same time that you were talking about that month before month before COVID time. And I spent that gift of time myself actually building and growing the business that it to where it's at right now. But so thank you for that. I appreciate it very much because it definitely is very impactful and I'm excited definitely to dive into future proofing you which would be great and yeah give me ideas every single time that I well any books or reading I'm sure plenty of podcasts will come out of it because the concepts and ideas are so so awesome. So thank you for what you're doing in the world. It is definitely impactful and I will make sure to so where can everyone see your Is there a specific place to see your art when you're from your paintings?

I have someone website but Instagram.

Instagram. Okay. I'll make sure to get your to get all of your links and the Instagram in the line in the show notes for everybody listening that's driving right now is Drivetime University. Go to the show notes. You can go click on the links. You'll be able to check out Jay's art as well as his books and the website.

I guarantee you'll laugh.

I love it. Well if we're not having fun, what in the world are we doing?

You've been listening to the Close it now podcast. Our passion is to dive head first into the transformative movement that's reshaping the very foundation of of H Vac and home improvement and at the same time covering fitness, nutrition, relationships and personal growth, proving that we can indeed have it all. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like rate and review. We'll be back soon but in the meantime find the website@closeitnow.net find us on Instagram at thereal. Close it now. And on Facebook at Close it now. See you next time.