Tyler Harris
Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show Respect The Grind with Stefan Aarnio. This is show where we interview people who have achieved mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who has achieved mastery and examine what it took to get there.
Stefan: Today on the show, we have a superstar, Tyler Harris. He’s sold over 8,000 life insurance policies face-to-face in about three and a half years. He runs two agencies, over 140 agents, he runs two podcasts, and he says he’s just an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things. Tyler, welcome to the show, Respect The Grind.
Tyler: Thanks for having me, Stefan. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Stefan: Yeah, man. It’s really great to connect with someone like yourself. You know, we got a lot of real estate people on the show, I’m an investor myself, so I’ve got into house flipping, and that’s been my thing. But super cool to have a life insurance person on the show.
Stefan: Now people who are out there wanting to make money, one of the biggest things I find with my audience is a lot of people want to make 100 grand, they want to get into sales, they want to hustle, they want to grind. They’re younger, they don’t know what to do. Why did you choose to get in the insurance space of all things?
Tyler: That’s what I love about the whole story, and it’s what I preach about when you have the average person that says, “Well I don’t really do something that interesting. Why should I put myself out there on social media.” I’m like, “Aye, I sell life insurance. There’s nothing interesting about that whatsoever.”
Tyler: But man, mine was purely out of circumstance. Some mentors came into my life when I was at a really bad place. I was broke, I was in debt, depressed, had gone through a business failure, a marriage failure. These mentors came into my life and really breathed life back into me. I joke around today and say that if they were selling rubber bands at the time, that I’d be sitting here with you guys as the greatest rubber band salesman of all time.
Stefan: One gong right out of the gate for comedy, man. Good for you.
Tyler: They happen to be in the insurance business, and gave me an opportunity. Quite frankly, it was exactly what I needed because it was transactional, fast-paced, and it gave me the ability to build my confidence back very quickly. I put in effort, I got a reward, I put in effort, got a reward. That became an addicting process to see how much reward I could get out by the effort put in, and it just so happened that insurance was the product that we were selling.
Stefan: Eight thousand life insurance policies. That’s a big number, man. How many people do you have to meet with a day to make that kind of sale?
Tyler: It’s an insane amount. We have developed a very, very narrow niche and built a system around going all in on that niche. That’s the biggest thing that I preach to people, is developing a system around working with the people that you want to work with, but developing a system in a way to where every word that comes out of your mouth, it’s like if you’re speaking to someone that speaks Spanish but you’re speaking German, it’s gonna be difficult to sell that person. But if you speak Spanish to them, then they’re gonna be able to make a buying decision a whole lot quicker.
Tyler: We know exactly what to say, how to say it, what to wear, what to have in our hands, the motions that we go through, the certain clothes that we use to be able to extremely efficiently sell and do a whole lot of volume. That’s been the precursor to that volume. But at the end of the day, a system is all good and well, but it’s the hard work that goes into that system. We’ve had plenty of people that have come in, and we’ve given them the magical system, and they’ve done nothing with it. The rest is left up to the individual, and the amount of hard work that they’re willing to put into it.
Stefan: You know, I love what you said there. There’s two things I love. You say, “Rich in the niche, rich in the niche,” we’re Canadian, so we like to throw some French in there, rich in the niche, rich in the niche.
Stefan: I got a question for you, Tyler. I’ve been training people for six years. I’m a real estate investor, I was buying, fixing, selling houses. I came from the private equity world. I was good at raising money, eye for design. I’d flip up to 30 houses a year, and people would see that and they’d go, “Man, I want to flip houses like Stefan,” so I start coaching people.
Stefan: Now I learned a dark thing when I started training and coaching people, and the dark truth that I discovered, maybe you can confirm or deny this dark truth, is that 50% of the people just do nothing. You sign up 10 guys, and half of them just literally do nothing. They buy the cake mix, but they never make the cake. They buy the IKEA furniture, they never build the bed, or whatever. Do you find that number to be … Is it 50%, no matter what they just don’t do anything?
Tyler: I think it depends on what your process is. With our recruiting process, yeah, 100% in the beginning we found that. We have gotten laser focused and have gotten our recruiting process down to a science to where we know when we bring someone on, that they’ve got a 90 plus percent probability of succeeding, and it’s through about eight different layers of a recruiting process to weed out those people. But that’s only being done through trial and error of the beginning of running through a million of those 50%-ers.
Stefan: Right, right, right. Yes. Tell me about the recruiting process. Eight layers of weeding out the guys. Let’s hear about that. This sounds like you’re joining the Navy Seals when you’re joining Tyler Harris for insurance. Let’s hear it.
Tyler: It’s almost that tough. But number one, all of our recruiting efforts, it’s all done through Facebook. That’s the only place we recruit from. When they come in, they got to submit an application, and then they’ve got to upload their resume. They’ve got to answer a bunch of essay questions. Then they go to their first interview, which is face-to-face with our head recruiter here in house.
Tyler: From there, they’re given a script that they have to go memorize in 24 hours, and then they have to come back 24 hours later and interview via Zoom, and perform that script. That script is similar to one of our sales processes. They’ve got to be able to perform that, then from that we give them some feedback that our head recruiter gives them some feed back on what they could have done better, and then they have to go perform that script again the next day on video to see if they can actually follow some instruction and follow some feedback.
Tyler: From there, we go through and in-depth personality profile assessment. It’s the one that we found that works by far the best. It takes all of them and throws them together, and puts them on steroids.
Stefan: Which one’s that?
Tyler: It’s through TTI, through a group called The Rainmaker Group, and it’s incredible. It’s the only one that actually has a patent tying the results to actual brain research. Myers-Briggs can’t say that, strength finders can’t say that, none of the other DISC can even say that.
Tyler: But this one is pretty remarkable, and we have created basically a money ball style system of grading the recruits, and knowing what the probability is of them being able to succeed. They’re gonna do that. They also have to do a two-minute phone call pitch on why they’re the best fit, and we make them at the end do a video pitch as to why they are the best fit for that particular territory. We take all of that, we bring it to our meeting that we do, just got out of it on Friday mornings. There’s six of us that watch the video of the person, hear all the information, hear that money ball grading score, and we make a decision. From there, they go to one last interview with our Director of Training, and from there we make a final decision on somebody.
Stefan: Wow. I’m gonna give that a gong. That is probably the best recruiting process I ever heard. I got a very tough one myself. We make people do four book reports. They have to read all of the books, so I guess it’s five books. I’ve written five books. They got to read five books and do book reports, and they got to pretty much be ready on day one to come in and sell. But yours is damn good, man.
Stefan: Now let me ask you this, Tyler. What’s the failure rate if 100 guys sign up for your recruiting process, how many make it to the end? Like two?
Tyler: Maybe three, but it’s low. It’s two or three, and we like it that way. It’s much more cost effective that way ’cause we invest heavily. The insurance industry, it’s notorious for just churn and burn, bring a bunch of people on, see if they can stick for a few months and then invest in them when [inaudible 00:07:53] bring them onboard, our training and onboarding process is intensive, and it’s expensive on our side. We want to make sure that the people that we bring on and we invest heavily in have the greatest possibility of giving us a return on that investment.
Stefan: That’s awesome. I love it. It’s almost the opposite of what you’d see in the industry. I’ve been running a sales team now, so we do high-ticket coaching and consulting in the real estate space. I’ve gone through, I’ve collapsed five phone teams, I’ve failed five times. The sixth time I got a good team.
Stefan: What’s the key to running a good sales team? Is it having a great manager? Is it great training? Is it great recruiting? Is it all of the above? What do you think is the linchpin there to make it work?
Tyler: It’s certainly all of the above, but I think the most important is having the leadership, having them lead by example, and having them have been in the field. The CEO, myself, and my other two partners, there’s four partners in this business, we all have been in the field, and we all excelled at an insanely high level. We know what it’s like. We’re not afraid to go out today and go sell with the agents.
Tyler: To me, there’s a big issue in the sales industry as a whole, and its current credibility versus past credibility. The way I like to talk about it in sports terms is you’ve got a guy that makes it into the NBA. He plays for X number of years, he’s a all-star, a couple championships, retires, makes it to the Hall of Fame, then becomes a coach. He’s able to coach that team because he has these insane accolades to be able to use past credibility.
Tyler: What the reality is, in most organizations, they haven’t been around long enough to have that level of past credibility, so it has to all be about what are you’re doing right now, versus what have you done. I just want to be the hardest worker in the room at all times so that the people that I’m telling to do something, I can never tell them to do something that I am not doing myself or haven’t done.
Stefan: I’m gonna give you a gong for that. It’s all about the integrity, man. You wouldn’t ask someone to do something you haven’t done yourself.
Stefan: Now let me ask you this, Tyler, how important … It sounds like you guys [inaudible 00:10:06] some technology in your training and technology in your recruiting. How important is technology to what you’re doing right now?
Tyler: Technology is huge. It gives us the ability to onboard our agents all over the country at one time. We use a bunch of different … We’re huge with role play. Role play, role play, role play, role play. It’s the biggest asset as far as training sales people, and we have some software that we use for that. We’re constantly having people certify or re-certify using that role play software.
Tyler: But even down to the agents that are in the field writing the policies. Everything’s done through e-app now. They’re able to right at that application, have that thing submitted and have a commission check in their bank account 48 hours later. Whereas that process used to take a lot longer when you have paper applications having to be sent through the mail, and processed, and all that. It makes everything a lot more efficient.
Tyler: To me, the biggest thing, especially when a salesperson is first coming onboard, you got to get a check in that person’s hand as quickly, as humanly possible. Technology enables us, from a training perspective, to get them completely certified and ready to sell faster, but also that e-application process gets those commission checks into their bank faster, which builds that belief, and that’s when they’ll really go all in.
Stefan: I love the word you use there is belief. I find that the biggest thing with no matter what you’re training on is we train people to flip houses, and a lot of them have the dream of flipping a house, a lot of them watch the videos with flipping the house, they read the book about flipping a house, they come to the seminar. But until they go into the field with their coach, and see it, and touch it, and taste it, and smell it, and feel it, then they believe in Disneyland. Do you find that’s the same thing with training insurance guys or sales guys, is that they got to watch someone do it so they believe it and they see it?
Tyler: Yeah. I agree. They’ve got to watch someone do it, but they’ve also got to go out and do it themselves before they get to certain aspects of the training as well.
Tyler: We have a boot camp training that we bring them into our home office, and it’s like drinking from a fire hose for two and a half days. But we strategically put that in the process once they have been out in the field, and they’ve had a few weeks of success and failure. We want someone that’s gotten their teeth knocked in a couple of times, a bloody nose here and there, so that now when we bring them back to training, and we can really refine those skills, now they’re being able to learn things based on experience, “Oh yeah, when I was in that situation, when I did get that objection, that’s how I should have handled that.”
Tyler: In the past, we were doing all of this training upfront, then sending them out. But some of the training you have to be in that environment first to really understand the importance as you’re going through that part of the training to understand that, “Hey. Man, I’ve experience this a couple of times. Now I know how to handle it. When I experience this again I’ve got it.”
Stefan: Yeah, I love that. It’s all about building up that bank of stories, and the stories make the beliefs, and the beliefs make the reality. I think that’s really powerful.
Stefan: Now Tyler, let me ask you this. Sounds like you’re in almost a blue ocean strategy. You’re doing something that I’ve never even seen or heard of anybody doing what you’re doing, which is super cool. Do you think that for mastery, let’s just say you’re a master right now, do you think it’s more important to be a master right now on the creative side or the discipline side? ‘Cause I think the creativity and discipline blended creates mastery, but what do you think is more important? The creativity or the discipline?
Tyler: It’s a great question. I think at the end of the day discipline is what takes you there. People ask me all the time, they’re like, “Man, how do you stay so motivated? You always seem so motivated.” With the amount of content that we put out, I understand that could come across that way, but I always answer them, I’m like, “I’m not all that motivated. There’s plenty of days where I wake up and I don’t feel motivated. But it’s the discipline, it’s doing the stuff that you know you’re supposed to do even when you don’t feel like it.”
Tyler: To me, you can build a team that can provide the creativity that you need, you can build an environment that can provide aspects of creativity for you, but discipline is something that you’ve either got it or you don’t. To me, I would take a person with discipline over creativity any day.
Stefan: Yeah, the creativity is the starving artist. If you’re delivering the daily bread, as you say, that’s one of your podcasts, The Daily Bread, you got to go out there and do those daily bread actions.
Stefan: One thing that I notice when I’m training people all the time, Tyler, is that I got a bunch of sales agents right now, and I’m training real estate investors. I notice that everybody has a fear of the phone. The key to success, I believe, if you’re in sales, is making X number of phone calls a day, whether that’s 50 or 100, or whatever that number is for that industry. Why are people afraid of the phone? Why are they afraid of picking it up, and making offers and proposals?
Tyler: We see it all the time. I think it’s because people don’t understand the numbers in the beginning. If you haven’t had the longevity of a few years of running those numbers, and knowing that, “Hey, I just know if I make this many calls, I’m gonna set this many appointments, which is gonna lead to this many sales. It doesn’t matter if the last three were no, I know that if I make X number of more calls, then there will be this many yeses. It just always turns out that way.” But when you don’t have that, that experience on the backend, and when you’re first getting started, then it just seems like this monumental task to go do, and that phone freaking weighs a million pounds.
Tyler: To me, I think you have to build some level of competition. They got to be driven by something other than just self-driven. They got to be driven by, “Hey, what’s this guy doing, and how am I gonna make more calls than him or her so that I can win this daily competition, weekly competition, monthly competition?” Organization is always fostering healthy competition where I love every person on our team, but I want to destroy them on a daily basis. That’s how all of our agents feel.
Stefan: Yeah. That’s really important. We expanded our team. We went from three agents to six agents. We got a small little sales team here. It was interesting ’cause we put them in two different rooms, and as soon as we split the rooms for whatever reason, people stopped working. Then we crammed them all back into one room, and a room that’s made for four guys, put six guys in a room for four, and suddenly the pressure … I don’t know what it is. They got a feel of the sweat, they got to hear the bell ringing, they got to feel it, they got to see it. I don’t know what it is with people.
Stefan: I’m a self-motivated person myself, so I go and I work. I’d say maybe there’s one other guy in company, the manager, he’s a self-motivated guy. But everybody else for whatever reason needs constant whipping. Why is that?
Tyler: I think it’s human nature. A lot of that …
Stefan: Gong for human nature.
Tyler: A lot of that has to go back to the recruiting process, making sure that you got the right person. You’re not gonna get the wrong person to do the right thing. It’s just not gonna happen. I think a lot of that is based on these personality profile assessments that we do, and figuring out what their motivators are. If they’re not money motivated, then what is their motivation?
Tyler: We’ve learned so much through this process of really understanding our agents, and what their behaviors, their motivators, to understand how to get them to do the things that they maybe don’t feel like doing, but we know that are gonna lead them towards success. We know that, “Hey, what’s that extra 10 grand this month? What are you gonna do with that money?” Then we get them to start visualizing these things. I’m gonna give to this organization, I’m gonna be able to buy this, I’m gonna be able to go on this trip.
Tyler: As we’re going into 2019, an extra 50 grand, an extra 100 grand, what does that look like? What are you gonna do with that money? Let’s go ahead and plan that trip, let’s go ahead and plan out, let’s go look at some properties ’cause you said you want to do some real estate investing this year, let’s go look at a few properties, let’s get some pictures of those properties. You make it a much more real than just, “Hey, Johnny. Pick up the phone because you’ve got to meet your quota.”
Stefan: I love that, the visual indicators so that they can see it, and they can believe it, and they can tell themself a story about how they’re gonna have it. I think that’s super powerful.
Stefan: Now, what are some of those personality indicators? Tyler, you mentioned that money motivated is one. If you’re gonna be in sales, you better be money motivated ’cause otherwise you’re just gonna do human nature, and stay at home and do nothing. I’ve got a theory actually that the natural state of humanity is poverty. You can’t really fix poverty ’cause it’s natural, it naturally occurs in nature, and unnatural forces like training, and pain, and all other things drive people to succeed. What do you think of that theory?
Tyler: I’ve never heard that before. That’s interesting. I think the majority of behaviors are gonna be learned behaviors, but there are things that are just born in somebody that you’re not gonna be able to change. A lot of that is resiliency. That’s a huge one that we look for, is this person gonna get knocked down and be able to get back up?
Tyler: Mojo loss is a big one with resiliency. When someone lose ….
Stefan: What’s mojo loss? What does that mean?
Tyler: When someone gets a few nos and they get their dick in the dirt, they just can’t overcome it, they can’t pick up that phone again, or they can’t go on that sales call the next day, and it takes massive coaching. Quite frankly, it’s not cost efficient to deal with an agent that has the propensity for a lack of resiliency or for that mojo loss.
Tyler: To us, it’s so important. When we start to even sense that someone’s losing their mojo, when they’re starting down that downward spiral, we do, it’s like all hands on deck to make sure that we can do everything that we possibly can on the front-end to make sure that they get right back in the game, because if they start down that process, they’re gone. It’s just the beginning of the end.
Stefan: That’s interesting. You know what, I heard a really scientific term there, dick in the dirt. I’ve never head that one before. When the guy gets his dick in the dirt, he’s got a dirty dick.
Tyler: That’s it.
Stefan: It’s almost like it sounds like you’re having an intervention with the guy when he gets into the downward spiral, into the pit of despair. What are some of the things you do to pull him out? ‘Cause I think this is one of the biggest things, man. I think that what you’re talking about right now is why people fail. I always ask on the show, why do people fail? It seems to me like there’s an isolation, there’s a pain, they get into pain, then they start numbing the pain.
Stefan: I had one guy who was a hardcore drug addict. I don’t know what he was. It was gambling, prostitution, or something. He was wasting all his money. [inaudible 00:20:24] gave him 10 grand. The next day he needed a $100,000 advance, always. The guy had some sort of addiction. It seems that when people get pain and they’re isolated, that’s when this downward spiral really happens. How do you keep them from being isolated. Tell me some of these intervention techniques that you’re using to get these people back on the bus.
Tyler: Isolation is the beginning of the end. When communication starts to go away, then we just know that person’s on their way out. There’s a couple of things that we do.
Tyler: One thing that I personally do with our agents is I do coaching with them. We call it LIFE goals. LIFE stands for L is love, which is relationships; I is influence, which is the mind; F is finance, which is the business; E is energy, which is the body. We’ve constantly got three goals in each of those four areas for every 90 days. I take them through this process where I hold them accountable. Every 30 days, we’re on a Zoom call, and I’m just literally going through each goal, and I’m saying, “Hey, Stefan. It says here we’re gonna do date nights every Saturday night with your wife. How was your date nigh Saturday?”
Tyler: Well, we couldn’t do it this Saturday. Well, okay, what happened? Because this says mandatory date night every Saturday, so what happened? Well, we couldn’t get a baby sitter last minute, yada, yada, yada. Okay.
Stefan: I hate the babysitter, I hate the babysitter objections. Dude, it’s 50 bucks or 30 bucks. Come on, man.
Tyler: Yeah, and we take it a step further and we’ll say, “Okay, great. Let’s get on care.com,” or whatever website, “and let’s find you a second or third babysitter than you can have in your arsenal so that doesn’t happen again. Hey, while we’re here, let’s go ahead and plan out your date for this coming Saturday?” We got on here that you’re not doing carbs and sugar. How’s that been going for you? Well, you know, it’s Christmas season. They had this party the other night.
Stefan: Dang.
Tyler: I just hold them accountable to teach these areas.
Tyler: It’s funny, the business portion of that conversation is the least. But what we know is that a byproduct of winning in the other three areas is always gonna be an increase in production.
Stefan: You know what, I feel like I’m meeting my brother here from another mother. I mean, I’m up here in Winnipeg, you’re down in South Carolina. I’ve got my team on a thing called the High Performance Journal. It’s three goals, 90 days. It’s a 90-day journal, daily, weekly monthly. I said, “Look, here’s the deal. You got your health goal, you got your wealth goal, you’ve got your relationships/happiness goal.” I used to be like, “Oh, do whatever you want for your three goals, like two money, or one health.” I was like, “No, man. The holistic thing, it’s health, it’s wealth, it’s relationships.”
Stefan: Now influence. You said love, influence, finance, and energy. What was influence again?
Tyler: That’s the mind. We got a lot of people that for the very first time in their entire lives, they’re meditating, they’re reading books, they’re listening to the podcast, they’re doing all these things to feed their mind.
Stefan: Yeah. I love that, man. I just got into mediation two weeks ago. I’m 32, I feel like it’s too late, but it’s never too late. I use this headband. I put the headband on, it measures my brain. You ever tried that?
Tyler: I have. I have, yeah. It’s awesome. I use Headspace. It’s worked pretty well for me. I think I’ve logged in 4,000+ minutes this year on that thing. I just got started this year. This year is the first time I had ever meditated. I made fun of it for the longest time. I’m like, “There’s no way I’m gonna sit. I’ve got ADD.” I’m just thinking, “Sitting down for 10 minutes sounds like a nightmare,” but it’s been life changing for me. I absolutely love it.
Tyler: When you’re doing the first thing in the morning, if you can start your day on your terms …
Stefan: Oh. Bro, [crosstalk 00:24:01] I’m getting shivers over here, man.
Tyler: Start …
Stefan: Stop seducing me, man. I’m getting shivers.
Tyler: Well I mean, for so long I just literally from the second that I opened my eyes, it was chaos. It was self-induced chaos. It was I felt rushed, late, behind. I started thinking about it, I’m like, “Late for what? Rush to what? I control my schedule. Why do I feel like it’s instant chaos ’cause I’m reaching for my phone, and I’m looking at notifications, and I’m responding to text messages and emails.” Taking that first 10 minutes of the day, on purpose, with a purpose, for me, it changes everything. It changes the outlook of the entire day, and honestly, it’s been life changing.
Stefan: Something I made my team do with the journals, I said, “Look team, so everybody’s on a journal, everybody, even including the secretary, bookkeeper, everybody’s on the journal.” Then I said, “Okay, team,” this is what I said last week. I said, “I want you to book your sleep in your calendar. Minium six hours, just book it in your calendar, so 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m., or whatever. Just book that in. Sleeps on there.”
Stefan: Then I said, “We’re gonna have three hours booked as your core 10 items.” There’s 10 I wanted them to do every day. I said, “Book three hours before you come to work, that’s your time.” You’ve got your six hours of sleep, you’ve got your three hours for your core 10 items, and I prescribe them 10 items which include a lot of these, love, influence, finance, energy, they got to discover something, they got to declare it, they got to meditate, they got to revelate, they got to fitness and fuel their body. I even got down to sex and [inaudible 00:25:30], manager your sex energy ’cause you start wasting that, you’re gonna be totally messed at some point.
Stefan: I said, “Look, you got your sleep, you got your core 10, then you got eight hours of work, you got then, and then you got another five to seven hours for you.” I said, “I don’t care what you do with the day, but you got your core 10, you hit your core, hit your sleep, everything else is just out there.”
Stefan: Now what’s some of the things … Let me ask you this, Tyler, since I’m a new student of meditation, I think it’s gonna be a life thing for me. I actually am going to the jungle here for 40 days. I’m gonna meditate like crazy, I’m gonna grow a beard like you bro, I see you on camera. It’s a great beard. What are some of the epiphany, or some of the divine wisdom you’ve got from the source from meditating? ‘Cause to me, it’s been huge. What are some of your biggest things you’ve found?
Tyler: Gratitude.
Stefan: Bro, you’re just hitting gongs everywhere, man. Gratitude, tell me about it.
Tyler: That’s it. Yeah, as a part of the meditation, I do a gratitude journal afterwards. I just jot down three, four, five things. I try to make them different things every day that I’m grateful for, and spending that time just by myself, and just gratitude. Completely grateful for all the opportunities, all the things that I have. Some day I’m writing down, “I’m glad that I woke up in a warm house with a roof over my head and food in my stomach,” some of the basic necessities. Then some days I’ll take it, what I look at as level 2.0, and I’ll be grateful for the things that I don’t have yet, as though I already have them. That visualization has been huge for me.
Tyler: But it’s gratitude, man. Every single person that is listening or watching this has so much to be grateful for. There’s someone else on the other side of the planet that’s praying for the things that we complain about every single day. It just drives me crazy. We have so blessed, but it’s all about perspective. I think that meditation gives me that 10 minutes of perspective to just focus on what’s really important, focus on what I already have, and focus on where I’m headed. That’s really it, man.
Tyler: There’s a lot of power just in that process of doing something that I said I was gonna do, first thing, and starting my day that way, that anything that actually comes from the meditation is just icing on the cake.
Stefan: Wow. Wow. Now when you’re meditating, Tyler, are you a mantra guy or do you just focus on your breath? What’s something that you do?
Tyler: I’ve tried a bunch of different things. Again, I’m ADD. For me to sit in silence is a little difficult. I like a lot of the guided stuff. I do use Headspace just because again, competition-wise, I love being able to show people how many streaks, how many days in a row I’ve done it, how many minutes, like keeping track of that kind of stuff. But I like the guided stuff because I’m certainly no expert in meditation. If you can tell me how to breath, tell me what to think about, tell me how to sit, I’d do a lot better with that than just sitting in silence and staring at the wall.
Tyler: But I feel like that’ll progress over time. I’ve tried some of … I did a podcast with David Meltzer, who’s just freaking incredible. He talks a lot about the particular meditations that he’s doing, and there’s a bunch of different things that I want to get into in 2019, but for me it’s just starting the day intentionally.
Stefan: Yeah, man. It’s huge. You either come at the day with your agenda, or the day comes at you with its agenda. One of the two is gonna take over.
Stefan: One thing that’s been new to me that has been a revelation in the last two weeks for me is do versus be. We’re here on the Respect The Grind show, and you’ve got hustler in the background, or hustle or something, and I think we live in a world where it’s do, do, do, do, do. Respect the grind is do, do, do. Hustle is do, do, do, do, do. We’re masculine so we want to do, do, do things, and what are you doing, and how can I do that?
Stefan: I think the other opposite side of that is the feminine, which is be. Who do you have to be? That’s more about essence rather than doing. How important is it to have that essence and the being to go with the doing?
Tyler: Do a lot of that with the visualization. I just have a deep understanding that the person that’s gonna accomplish the goals that I have for 2019 is a different person than the person that’s talking to you right now.
Stefan: Gonging that up.
Tyler: In order for me to do those things, I’m gonna have to be someone else. Then it’s just a journey in becoming that person. I know the person that I have to be to accomplish those things, and that person’s gonna have to level up, that person’s gonna have to go through some challenges, that person’s gonna have to expand in a number of different ways, but I am constantly chasing after that next version of myself.
Tyler: I think that’s a big encouragement for those that are going through tough times, is that when you’re in the middle of a struggle, if you can understand that there’s purpose in this, like I’m going through this for a reason, and there is a blessing on the other side of it, but until I become the person that can receive that blessing, it’s not gonna happen. I actually have to change who I am in order to get out of this, and step out of this obstacle, step out of this pain, step out of this struggle, and step into the blessing that’s on the other side.
Tyler: It’s easy to say in hindsight when you’ve been through it a number of times. You know when you tell somebody that and they’re in the middle of it, they’re like, “Screw you. That doesn’t take the gun out of my mouth. You don’t understand what I’m going through.” I would just tell that person, “Yes I do.” It’s always the same. It’s always the same no matter how hard, no matter how difficult, there’s always a blessing on the other side of it, and I am of the mind that the harder it is, the bigger that blessing is.
Stefan: Man, you just dropped a lot of wisdom there. I love what you said, the harder it is, the bigger the blessing. I noticed on the show from interviewing so many successful people the lower the low, the higher the high.
Tyler: Absolutely.
Stefan: You know the lady who was living in her car, or the guy who’s totally, totally bankrupt, or whatever is usually where that guy rebounds equally high. I think that’s from Think and Grow Rich. Inside of every failure is the seed of a greater success. It’s interesting.
Stefan: There’s a lot of people out there that don’t really want to fail, they don’t want to try, they don’t want to see how dark the darkness is, they just want the light. What do you think of that attitude?
Tyler: I take it to a weird place where I’m almost envious of other peoples’ low, low, low, lows. When I hear somebody’s story now, like the other day, I had lunch with a guy. We sat down, and we didn’t know each other, we had connected through Instagram. We sat down for lunch, and he just unloaded just what was going on in his life lately. It was heavy. He’s going through some stuff. At the end of just unloading this information, he says, “So what do you think about that?” My response was, “Dude, I’m so freaking excited.” He’s like, “Okay.” Completely caught him off guard. I was like, “Man, I can tell by your tone that you’ve made that switch.”
Tyler: That’s the big, it’s the if you’ve made that switch. But no matter how low, the lower it gets the better. If you can make that switch it’s directly proportionate to how high you can fly. To me, it’s so exciting to watch that in someone. Someone that has right when you know they’ve made that transition, and they’re starting that upward trajectory, they’re almost on the other side of it, those are the best stories. Those are the stories that we pay to watch, and that’s what life’s about, is overcoming obstacles. Everybody loves an underdog story. Man, I get envious sometimes. I’m like, “Man, I wish my lows were that low. I wish I had that story.”
Tyler: I wish there was some college course or some mastery program we could create where we just absolutely destroy your life at a young age, like at 20 to 25, just destroy every aspect of your life, and then help you rebuild it so that you can go on. I’d much rather experience it at 25 than 55, and go on and live a great life.
Stefan: Wow. You know what, dude we’re getting deep. We’re getting deep now, man. Talking about it, it reminds me of the movie Fight Club. You ever seen Fight Club?
Tyler: Oh yeah.
Stefan: Yeah, so that one part in the movie, and actually I wrote a book called Hard Times Create Strong Men, it just came out. The last of it, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. It’s the cycle of history.
Stefan: That one part in Fight Club, where Tyler Durden goes to the convenient store, and he pulls that little Asian guy out from the desk, and he throws him in the back alley, and he points a gun at him, and he says, “What do you want to be in your life? What do you want to do?” The guy’s like, “I want to be a vet. I want to be a vet.” He says, “All right Raymond K. Hessle,” and he pulls out his wallet, and he takes his ID. He like, “I got your ID, and tomorrow if you’re not on your way to becoming a vet, I’m gonna show up at your house and I’m gonna kill you.”
Stefan: The narrator is like, “Oh my God, what are you doing? You’re ruining this guys life.” He’s like, “No, tomorrow Raymond’s breakfast is gonna taste better than ever, and the colors will be brighter, and the birds will be singing because he’s gonna be on the exact path of what he wants to do with his life, and he can say goodbye to this job at 7/11,” or whatever. What do you think of that story?
Tyler: Dude, it’s incredible. I could not agree more. People don’t need more information, they don’t need more motivation, they don’t need more inspiration, they need clarity. They need clarity in what they really want, like what they actually want. I love taking people through that process. You say like, “Hey man, what’s your goal? What do you want?” I want to be financially free. What in the world does that mean?
Stefan: Yeah, what the fuck?
Tyler: They’re like, “Well, you know.” I’m like, “So tell me, what does that look like when you’re financially free?” Well it’s when I’m no longer a slave to debt. Okay, that’s still ambiguous. We’re getting closer. What does that look like when you’re no longer a slave to debt?
Stefan: Yeah, what does it mean?
Tyler: We take through this process, where you just keep asking why, and what does that look like, but why? But really, but why do you want that? But why, why, why? When you dig down deep, all of a sudden you realize that the person really just wants to ride horses again because they had a horse when they were …
Stefan: Multi gong for that.
Tyler: They had a horse when they were growing up, and they found so much joy riding freaking horses, and now they’re in this corporate environment, and they’re killing themselves with work every day, and their relationships are terrible, and they really just have no outlet to find peace again. It’s like, “Oh, got it. Because you said you wanted to be financially free, but now we know, you just want to buy a freaking horse. Let’s figure out how much does a horse cost, and where are you gonna keep it?”
Stefan: Three thousand bucks.
Tyler: Yeah. Let’s do that.
Tyler: Or you find out that it’s, I want to be able to pick my kids up from school, and I want to be able to take this many weeks of vacation, and I want to live in this house. But until you get clear with what you actually want, it’s a absolute joke to try to put together a plan to get somewhere, you don’t know where you’re going.
Stefan: Dude, we’re hitting bed rock here. We’re getting so deep, we’re hitting the bottom. I think what you’re saying is so relevant. I can tell you Tyler, you’re the real deal, man. I got to praise you, I got to appreciate you, I love having guys like you on the show. Sometimes you get a dud, you’re a stud, man. Sometimes you get duds, but no, this is stud day today.
Stefan: One thing that I think is super crazy, I’m really going through a lot of changes right now myself. I notice that our reality goes through the lens of our beliefs. Then our beliefs are controlled by our stories. There’s a lens, on a lens, on a lens. You got reality, which is this is a cup. I got a cup here sitting on my table. That’s reality. But then there’s a belief about that, that comes from a story, and then inside the story when you’re stuck, there’s a lie. To fix somebody or make them move forward, or make them unstuck, or make them do whatever they got to do, you got to find that story, change the story, which changes the belief, which changes the reality, and edit out that lie. What do you think of that piece of wisdom that I’ve downloaded in the last two weeks.
Tyler: It’s extremely deep, but it’s extremely important. Something that I’m certainly no expert on, but it’s something that I’m extremely interested in, and it’s given me a lot of compassion learning, is this whole law of first truths. The reason I say it gives me compassion because let’s just take an extreme example.
Tyler: Let’s say you’ve got a guy that’s racist. He’s racist. Okay. The whole world would just say, “That guy is racist, and let’s get in an argument.” Okay, great. But why is that guy racist? Well it probably goes back to a moment when that guys was four years old, riding down the road in a car with his dad, and his dad looked over and saw someone on the side of the road and said, “That person,” whatever that person was, color, ethnicity, “we hate those people.”
Stefan: Right. It was like Lion King, everything the light touches is our kingdom. He goes, “That’s the dark space. We don’t go there.”
Tyler: Exactly. In that moment, that four year old learned that we hate those people, not why, but just that we hate those people.
Stefan: That’s the story.
Tyler: It’s been developed over time, and through their culture, and that’s the way they are.
Tyler: It’s given me a lot of compassion. That’s an easy example to use. It’s given me a lot of compassion for that person that normally society would say, “Well I hate that person, ’cause that person thinks this way.” No, I don’t hate that person. I hate that that person went through that situation to bring them up in a way that would make them think that, but until you take that person all the way back, like you said, until you unfold that story and figure out where the lie was, which in that moment, that was the lie in that person’s story, is when that was told to them, and they just believed it because it was their dad and that’s just what they said. They understood it and they believed it, and it became true. Figuring out where that lie is in their story and being able to rebuild from there.
Tyler: But until you go all the way back, you’re never gonna solve the root problem. That’s probably one of the biggest problems we have in society today, is you got a lot of people that have never gone through that process, and they just think that the louder they yell, the somehow more truer the words become, which is absurd.
Stefan: Yeah, we got a world now where everybody’s got their own media channel, right? You hear the people who scream the loudest.
Stefan: I remember Howard Stern was saying that in the old days, Howard is one of the biggest radio people in the world. He used to be offensive in the ’90s. Nowadays he said he’s tame ’cause everybody’s got their own channel, and he just blends in now, which is crazy.
Stefan: Now I was out with a girl last week, and it was a really interesting conversation, ’cause we talked about the stories and lies, I said, “You know, you’re a beautiful girl. Why don’t you marry? Why don’t you have a relationship.” She goes, “Oh, I don’t want to be my parents.” I go, “Okay, so what about that? Why?” We go deeper, “Oh, I don’t think my dad should have had kids.” I go, “Okay, so you shouldn’t have been born. Okay. I get that. Your dad shouldn’t have had kids.”
Stefan: I say, “Okay, why?” She said, “Well he didn’t know how to raise us, and he was a dad, and didn’t do all this stuff.” I said, “Well, from your dad’s perspective, do you think that he loves you but doesn’t know how to love, and everything he does, ever day is his best choice?” Everything he does, even the dumb stuff, he thinks that’s the best thing at the time. He’s running around on this earth doing what he thinks is best, even though he’s totally messing it up. Maybe he’s got an 80% or 90% mess up rate, but he still loves you.”
Stefan: It was interesting ’cause that whole perspective flipped in that second. When you think of it from the other person’s perspective, my own parents, they love me, they love each other, they couldn’t figure it out. There’s things they didn’t know how to do, there’s things that they still don’t know how to do, they’re just people, they aren’t perfect. What do you think of that technique of looking at the story from the other person’s perspective in some of your traumas to maybe reverse that or change the story?
Tyler: It’s huge man. It’s empathy. It’s being able to hold space for someone and be able to not judge, and not necessarily even try to fix. I think there’s a huge problem now, especially with men. There’s a problem where men don’t have these conversations, men don’t have real conversations. They walk around and, how are you? Great. Hey what’s up man, how are you? Awesome. Hey man, how are you? Can’t complain.
Tyler: Meanwhile, they hate their wife, their kids despise them, their business is barely staying afloat. They’re on thin ice in all areas, but they keep this alpha male, keep charging like I’m good. Everything’s good. Everything’s good. The reality is they need those vulnerable conversations with people that they could trust, that don’t judge, that will just listen. It’s an epidemic with men.
Tyler: It’s one thing that I’m super passionate about is creating environments for those conversations to occur because I think it’s so important. We can’t do life alone. I think so many of us are trying to, especially men. It just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. I think it’s an extremely important thing that you just said. You’ve got to have other eyes on your situation because there’s things that other people will see that you don’t.
Tyler: But that being said, there’s something that I learned from a guy, he has this thing called The Art of Conversation that he discusses. He travels all over and speaks. He gave me this line to use in situations when I’m talking to people. It’s been pretty transformational in the conversations that I’ve had.
Tyler: When someone’s explaining to you something they’re going through, a struggle a problem, when they’re done speaking, just to be able to ask them one question. It is, “Hey, do you mind if I give you some feedback on that?” That one question just opens everything up, because quite frankly, they may not want your feedback, they might want you to try to fix it, they’re just trying to vent, and they just need to get this off their chest, and they’re just trying to work through it themselves. That’s fine.
Tyler: But if they say, “Yeah. I’d love to hear your feedback,” then they’re giving you permission to try to give your viewpoint on what they’re going through. That’s been a really valuable lesson that I’ve learned in conversation lately.
Stefan: Dude, this is a deep show. I really got to give you some props, Tyler. This is a great conversation, man. I wish we were going for two hours today, but we both got actual businesses to do. We can’t just play around on the podcast.
Stefan: I got a couple questions I ask everybody on the show.
Tyler: Sure.
Stefan: One of them is, if you can go back to the beginning, let’s say 15 year old Tyler, what’s a piece of advice you would give yourself?
Tyler: Be patient.
Stefan: Oh man, I’m giving that a gong. That’s gong Friday here. Tell me more about being patient, ’cause I think that’s a lost art form in today’s world.
Tyler: As I alluded to in the beginning of the show, it was just four and a half years ago I found myself in a really, really bad place. I was completely broke, had a bunch of debt, I had been through a failed marriage, a wife that had had an affair. I was led through about a year of just turmoil to me landing in divorce, business failure. I was just in a bad place, all around. I was out of shape, I was depressed. At that time, I was 28, 29 years old.
Tyler: You had these pictures in your head of what you’re gonna look like when you’re 30. What’s life gonna be like at 30? I see so many people. Whether it’s 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, what’s life gonna look like then? When you do that to yourself, you start feeling like you’re behind, you start feeling like you need to play catch up, you start feeling like the odds are stacked against you, and it creates bad decisions, it creates riskier decisions than you should, and it just can really, really take someone into a bad place.
Tyler: But what I would tell people is to be patient. It doesn’t matter if you’re 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. If you’re still breathing, you’ve got time. There’s so much more time than people realize. I’m 33, and I feel like I’m 23. I know people that are 43 that feel like they’re 23, 53 they feel like they’re 23. You’ve got so much freaking time.
Tyler: The last part I’ll say to that is, everything can change so quickly if you’re just patient. It’s almost like the more patient you are, the fast it comes, which really doesn’t make any sense. But I’ve just found it to be true in my own life. The times where I felt the most patience, things progressed quicker. The times where I felt rushed, things took longer. If you can just believe that, if you can just hear my voice and just say, “Okay, I’m just gonna believe that, because this guy says it’s true, he’s experienced it,” if you could just believe it, then just try it. Get yourself …
Tyler: Unfortunately it’s one of those things where if you pray for patience, God doesn’t give you patience, he gives you the opportunity to be patient. That could be frustrating at times. But it’s in those opportunities to become patient that you really prove yourself, that you really are able to develop, like we were talking about in the beginning, the disciplines that will ultimately carry you toward your success.
Tyler: Patience is huge because when you’re in that feeling of being behind, or feeling like you’ve got so much to do to catch up, man, that’s a hopeless feeling. I’ve been there. Man, I’d hate for somebody to feel like that when they don’t have to. You don’t have to feel that way because you have plenty of time. There’s plenty of reasons and things that are gonna happen to make you feel pain. That’s not one of them. Yeah, it’s just patience. To say patience is virtue is obviously cliché, but man, this is so freaking true.
Stefan: I think it’s a book, The Richest Man in Babylon, where Arkad is teaching he’s the richest man in Babylon. He’s teaching these kids about money and he said, “One of the ways to lose your money is to expect too high of a return from it.” That’s the same thing. If you’re expecting too high of a return, you’re rushing, as you’re saying, rushing through life, you’re gonna lose your life. I think that it’s so interesting. Time, money, all that stuff is the same, and be patient. I can hear the meditation coming out your voice, man. Live in the moment.
Stefan: Tyler, top three books that changed your life, man. What are they?
Tyler: Top three books. I love The Four Agreements. I love …
Stefan: Bro, I’ve got to stop you. You’re the third person in the last 24 hours that has said that book.
Tyler: Oh, really?
Stefan: Yeah. I don’t what, is the universe is bringing that book into my world? I just [inaudible 00:48:59] last night, so you’re the third person, 24 hours that said The Four Agreements, The Four Agreements. My secretary last night at midnight was saying Four Agreements. I was like, “Oh man. I got to get the book, dude.” Tell me about it.
Tyler: It’s meant to be. Qbq! Qbq! is a big one for me, the Question Behind the Question. I truly believe that your life, the success of your life will be determined by the level and value of questions that you ask yourself and others. That’s a freaking incredible book.
Tyler: I’m reading one right now though that I’m getting obsessed with, which Atomic Habits by James Clear. I am really enjoying that one, so that ones gonna be a big one for me for next year.
Stefan: What’s an atomic habit? Is that microing down your habits, or what?
Tyler: It really is. It tells a story about a guy that lost 100 pounds, and the first six weeks, all he did was get ready to go to the gym, go to the gym, and then five minutes later go home. We’re like, “Well how in the world did he lose all this weight?” Well you can’t develop a habit that doesn’t exist. You can’t increase or enhance a habit that doesn’t exist. For six weeks, he developed a habit of going to the gym.
Stefan: Just going.
Tyler: Then he built upon that habit, and now he’s lost 100 pounds, and he’ll keep it off because now that habit is ingrained in him.
Tyler: So many of us, especially as we head into this new year, so many of us, we get these new goals, and let’s just use the exam of working out. You haven’t worked out in a year, but January 1, I’m gonna go workout for two hours, and then January 2, I’m gonna go workout for two hours. I’m gonna be so sour on January 3 and 4 that I don’t go back for three months. It’s just always what happens.
Tyler: There’s a system that he details out about these habits, and about different hacks really, like combining habits with things that you’re already doing, which is very interesting. Making habits enjoyable, and just all these different aspects of habits, but what has been a little bit of theme in this show is it’s those habits that create the disciplines. It goes hands in hand.
Stefan: You know what, you’re coming back to patience. It’s coming back to patience, it’s coming back to those small wins compound. You know what’s something I’ve always said to people who are training is, “We can multiply you, we can’t add.” Whatever you’re doing, we can multiply by two or three or four, but if you’re a zero, you multiply zero by two, it’s still zero. Right?
Tyler: Yup. Absolutely.
Stefan: Last question today for the people at home, Tyler. What is the one thing that young people need to succeed these days?
Tyler: What is the one thing people need to succeed these days?
Stefan: Yeah, we’re talking 18 year olds, 19 year olds. People who are just coming into the game now, and maybe they’re obsessed with Instagram, or maybe they’re obsessed with Facebook. They’re young kids, they got all sorts of ideas. What’s the one thing you’d say to those young kids starting out?
Tyler: Man, they just got to be willing to do the work. You got to be willing to do the work. The idea that you’re somehow gonna stumble into success is a joke. If you have the audacity to want to live an extraordinary life, or have extraordinary things, have extraordinary success, then it’s gonna take an extraordinary amount of work. That’s the only way you get there. One of my favorite sayings of all time is that, “If you seek discomfort, the world will deliver you pleasure. If you seek comfort, the world will deliver you pain.”
Stefan: Wow. That’s deep.
Tyler: I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I’m just constantly searching for ways to make myself uncomfortable, and getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, if that’s possible. But putting the work in when you don’t feel like it, when it doesn’t make sense, all those things, they’re uncomfortable. But that’s what ultimately will get you to whatever success is to that person. Get clear on that, and then just be willing to absolutely put the amount of effort in that’s required.
Stefan: Wow. Tyler, you know it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you, man. You are a evolved spirit. I really appreciate this.
Stefan: How could people get in touch with Tyler if they want to know more?
Tyler: Yeah, so Instagram, Facebook are the main spots. It’s @tylerharrispage. You can go to tylerharrispage.com. It’s got all my links there. Would love to connect with everybody, I respond to every single message that I get. I would love to talk to people.
Stefan: Tremendous. Tyler, thanks so much for being on the show. Respect the grind, brother.
Tyler: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
