Brad: Yes, I am JLD. How are you? Good morning.

John: Brad is committed to helping entrepreneurs reach their full potential, so that they can focus on solving the grand challenges of our time. With experience in real estate and investments trading, marketing sales and people forum strategy, he teaches entrepreneurs the skills to find their flow and thrive in the modern world.

Brad, take a minute and fill in some gaps from that intro and give us just a little glimpse of your personal life.

Brad: Yeah, good morning John, and thank you so much for having me. I’m a guy who really didn’t get it right a lot when I was a kid. Growing up on Long Island, I can remember when I was about five years old. I had been a really sheltered kid, so my mom never let me out of the house a whole lot. So, finally they let me out and all the other kids were a little bit older than me, and they have been socialized. And, the very first time I was allowed out of the house the kids took turns beating me up.

When I came back crying that first day, I realized that basically I equated having friends with pain, and I spent a lot of time figuring that out. Over many years I figured out hey, I could befriend certain kids and I wouldn’t get beat up as much. I learned that if I was a little bit kinder or a little bit nicer, little bit funnier, a little bit quick witted I could do that. And, throughout my whole life that became a theme. Eventually, I became the class clown in high school. I joined the crew team in college. I always found ways to connect to people, and as an entrepreneur that ended up really serving me very well.

Because, ultimately my gift and strength came from my greatest pain, and that’s the gift to connect with people. I can empathize with people, I can understand them, and on a deep level I can build relationships and over time the relationships I’ve built. I prayed when I was kid that one day I would have a family, because my dad passed when I was pretty young and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I grew up with cousins, but I felt like I didn’t have that really tight knit brotherhood or group. So, now when I travel, I go to all different countries around the world. I’ve been to most continents now except for Asia, we’re going in April.

And, anywhere I go now, I have a ready, willing family that is willing to take me in. And, that’s just a testament to how life works. Because I had so much pain at the beginning, I really focus on those relationships and building that community, and now I have that. That’s one of the biggest things that’s changed everything for me. So, that’s kinda what I’m here to share with a little bit about today. It’s not about that scarcity paradigm. If you ever played that game Hungry Hungry Hippos, do you remember grabbing for all the marbles? I’m all about making more marbles for everybody. So, that’s kinda what I wanna bring to the Fire Nation this morning.

John: I love that mindset of abundance in Fire Nation. It’s just kinda that one or the two option. It’s very binary, you’re either gonna have that mindset of abundance where there’s more marbles to be made on that table or it will be dropped down. Or that mindset of scarcity is that “Oh my god, he just grabbed one of those marbles”, that means there’s one less marble for everybody in this world. And Brad, was also kinda dancing around the word empathy a little bit.

And if you, Fire Nation, can really show real empathy for people that you’re connecting with on a day to day basis, that I know from experience and, now having done over 1600 in, what is this 45 episodes of EOFire, empathy –

Brad: Congrats, by the way.

John: – is huge. Thank you. Empathy is so huge. It’s the connection you’re gonna make with that by actually caring and connecting and realizing that this isn’t just a transaction that Brad and I are doing. This isn’t just me having him on the show as this kinda transactional situation, this is a relationship that we’re building. He is up in Vancouver right now, I’m down here in Puerto Rico, we’re in different parts of this continent, we’re separated by a few degrees in temperature I’m sure as well. But, we’re really connecting here and that’s what you Fire Nation need to be doing, as you’re building your business. That one on one connection, that one on one empathy.

And, Brad, just take a quick minute and give us what you consider your area of expertise and then from that share with us something within that area of expertise that we probably just don’t know, because it’s not our area of expertise, it’s yours. But we should know.

Brad: I help entrepreneurs to find their flow. What does that really mean? It’s what is the thing that you’re great at? There’s different types of entrepreneurs, and if you’re playing somebody else’s game you’re likely to not get the same results. If you’re not playing to your strengths as they say, and you’re trying to make your weaknesses mediocre, you’re really not gonna thrive. So, what I really ask people and try to get the heart of is, is what are you best at? What puts you in flow? What could you do for hours and it feels like minutes just passed?

And, once you find that how do we kinda start surrounding you with people that balance you out. Because, all businesses need four things. Let’s say, ideas, people, somebody to put their head down and actually do the work, like a service type of mindset and they need also somebody who is really good at numbers. And, you maybe one or maybe two of those things, but if you don’t surround yourself with two to three other people at least, who can balance you out on the things that you’re not great at, your team’s really not gonna thrive.

So, that flow and that thriving, is really what I help people do. Is connect people, resources, opportunities, and systems together to really grow and thrive in business.

John: So, within that growing and thriving what’s something that we all make a mistake doing? What’s something that we don’t know? Just because we’re clueless that we should know.

Brad: The first thing you should know is that you’re here to do a specific thing. You’re here to double down on your strengths and if you’re not doing that, you’re not only robbing yourself of an opportunity to step up and to your highest power and bring the best things that you can bring to this world. You’re also robbing somebody else of an opportunity.

Let’s say your best gift John is to be here on the radio. To be here making these podcasts. But, you’re stuck in the background working on spreadsheets, and that’s just not your flow, it doesn’t light you up. But somebody else is lit up by doing that work. You’re not only robbing yourself of your greatest gift in the world of your greatest gift. But now you’re robbing somebody else of a perfectly good job, because you’re not stepping in to your flow.

John: Oh, I gotta step in here, because I can just remember, this took me back to 2008, I was in Boston, I was looking for a job after my time in being in law school etc. And, it was really difficult looking around trying to find what was gonna be a fit for me.

And, I remember going to this one office and this person just was talking to me and showing me these spreadsheets that I’d be working on all day. And, he was so excited; you could see the fire in his eyes. He was lit up. He’s like “And you’re gonna be carrying over this column to this row and doing all this stuff”, and I was just “Oh my god”, kill me now. If I have to do this even for an hour let alone be closed up for 12 hours in this cubicle doing this, I won’t thrive. This just isn’t me, but for him it was the opposite, he was so excited about it. He was in the perfect fit. He had found his thing.

So, Fire Nation just to kinda sum up what Brad has been talking about. Amplify your strengths. Find out the things that you just love that make you come alive and double down on those things. Spend your time there and that’s kinda what my opinion is the big draw backs to traditional education right now, is that they try to get people from their Ds and Cs up to Bs and As, and what about those Bs and As you’re already getting, why not go to A+s. Why not amplify those strengths? Because we can always hire for our weaknesses. If you’re an entrepreneur amplify the strengths, hire for your weaknesses.

Now, Brad, take us to your worst entrepreneurial moment to date. Take us to that minute in time when it started. Tell us that story.

Brad: My dad had passed away in about 2010. I’d been working real estate for a couple of years in New York City. So, I felt a little bit more entrepreneurial than I ever had done. I had a ton of jobs throughout my whole life, and so here I am and I’m living out of this house, which is a terrible idea by the way. I decided to take six months to just figure everything out, and I got out of flow. I was out of my element and I was out of the tribe that I’d built in New York City where I was living.

So, long story short I ended up dating a girl. We moved to San Francisco together without really knowing each other too well. We had went to school together when we were super young, and she still lived in my town, but as an adult we didn’t really have a relationship. So, here I am, I have no tribe, I’m in a new city and I started this entrepreneurial venture, based on what I knew about real estate. I perceived the biggest problem to be that people couldn.t find their own real estate. So, I was gonna help them solve that problem.

You had to pay at the time, an exorbitant broker’s fee, like 15 percent on the year’s rent in order to rent an apartment in New York City. So, I said “All right, cool, I’m gonna out together a little start-up, we’re gonna teach people how to find apartments in New York City, without having to pay a broker”. And they gotta pay us $200.00 and we’re gonna give them the whole training course on how to do that. Well, I went out on Craig’s List and I put some kinda posts up and ads up, and I got a lot of traffic. A serious amount of traffic, tens of thousands of hits on this little landing page I’d built.

So, I thought, whoa, we’re in business. We’ve got eyeballs, we’ve got a product, people want this, this is exciting. I didn’t know anything about getting emails, list building, any of that. I couldn’t even cut a website at that point. So, this is like 2011. But, I went full steam ahead; I went out and got all my inventory made up and DVDs, and booklets. Warning sign, red flag you’re already carrying it, right. And, I probably put $40,000.00 in to this venture, thinking I’m gonna just crush it. We’re gonna sellout in minutes, because, of all the interest I got.

So, low and behold, here comes launch day. I’m excited as a kid on Christmas. We put this thing up on Craig’s List and what do you think happens? Immediate flag, right. And then I go and put up the ad a different way, in a different category. Immediate flag, flag, flag, flag, flag, flag. I got flagged 10, 12, 15 times. To the point where I got so frustrated I wanna spend this money. I’m actually putting these ads up and paying for this, this time, and I’m like why won’t they just let me advertise? So, I literally went on Craig’s List’s terms of service and I tried to pour through everything and they just kept giving the same responses.

I was emailing them saying “Hey, what’s going on, I don’t understand, I’m breaking the terms of service”, and they wouldn’t really give me an answer. So, I literally went with a friend of mine and we got donuts one day, and a big box of coffee and we went to Craig’s List’s San Francisco headquarters, which is just a house, and a bunch of people work out of there, including Craig Newmark. So, I go and I literally ring the doorbell, and I’m like “Hey, can anybody talk to me, can anybody talk to me?” And, I preframed the meeting with I wanna spend $10,000.00 pm, I’ll commit to spending $10,000.00 pm on advertising. And, this poor sheepish intern girl, she comes down the stairs and she’s like “They won’t talk to you, please stop bothering us”.

So, this is the worst, I can’t even go make friends with these people. Like that’s all I got. That was my trump card, literally go there and beg like “Please I’ll spend any amount of money, just let me advertise on your platform”. But, what I learned that day, was really important. And, obviously, that ended up being a failure and I ended up just having to destroy all that inventory and move on.

But, what I learned was two things. A) People didn’t want to put all that work in, and the reason that the brokerage community exists, is not because people are lazy and they don’t want to, it’s just because the landlords had this really great deal worked out, because of the high demand in New York City. Where essentially, they have this army of professional real estate agents who can work for free for them, in order to bring them better deals. That was one piece.

The other piece is Craig’s List is catering to that, they make millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars off of selling ads to realtors. To connect them with potential customers and clients. It’s an incredible system that only exists really in New York City. I’ve never seen it anywhere else for that type of money. And, then the tenant has to pay for all this, because that’s just it, it’s like that high demand low supply system. Five landlords in New York City own more than 50 percent of the rental real estate, as far as I know. Billion dollar private companies like Manocherian, Pan Am, BLDGs, Solil like all these different companies.

So, that was a big lesson. I didn’t understand the incumbencies in place and it cost me a lot of money. And, there was nothing I could do, no amount of glad handing, no amount of relationship building, no amount of “Hey, I’ll spend more money”, just didn’t matter. I was up against something where I had no control. And, that was really difficult. So that was a painful lesson I could’ve learned differently if I’d started today, for example I probably would’ve tried to iterate a little bit, maybe build an email list. Verify that I could continue to advertise. Speak to the advertisement platform, etc. etc.

There’s a million ways I could’ve done that. Not bought inventory, but that was a huge lesson for me and I lost a lot of money on that.

John: Well, you just shared a lot of little lessons learned, but what is the biggest that you would say that if you were starting today, and it doesn’t even have to be in that exact same thing. But just for our listeners sorta saying that I found a pain point. I know this, I know that, I know this is a great opportunity, how do I verify this first. What would be that thing?

Brad: I think you need to talk to everybody including customers. I was really afraid at that point I think, or didn’t think I needed to. I was totally going off the Tim Ferriss playbook, The Four Hour WorkWeek Playbook at that point. So, I didn’t actually have conversations with my customers and clients to understand their needs or talk to everybody from end to end. So, having the conversations I think is probably the biggest lesson there.

John: Yeah, and Fire Nation, I gotta say this. You need as an individual to have that one on one conversation, which people are scared of having. Because that’s not scalable, I can’t have one on one conversations with all my clients. No, it’s in the early days when you’re mining; you have those one on one conversations. Because that information that you pull out of those conversations will be infinitely scalable. That will be gold if you put in that work upfront, and are willing to do things that don’t scale. Have those one on ones.

Now, Brad, that was an “aha” moment obviously, that you now have in hindsight of what you should have done. What’s another one of your greatest ideas that you’ve had today? You’ve had a lot of successes since then. What are those great ideas that you’ve had? Walk us through that process.

Brad: Yeah, so this is actually a great kinda segway, because just after that it was like well that’s failing, what can I do next? I’d always been interested in finance and real estate, and a couple of other things. But, specifically something about finance, about trading. That really excited me, so I started really doubling down on my education in investing. I was really excited since about 2009 I got in to these 3D printing stocks. I don’t know if you’re familiar with 3D printing, but essentially, it’s added manufacturing. So, it’s like moving the world from mass production to mass customization. So, everybody gets their own wedge in, instead of everybody gets the same wedge in.

So, for me, I thought 3D printing and I still think 3D printing is gonna change the way that manufacturing is done. And, I had this series of instances happen where essentially, I would talk to one person and that would lead me to another person. I ended up getting the ear of Richard Branson and talking to him about 3D printing. Anybody who would listen literally, it was pretty cool, and to have a billionaire, the rebel billionaire be really excited about an idea that I had. I was like “Really”, and he was like “Yeah, you should email me about that”, I’m like “Okay, I’ll email you Richard Branson”. I was just like a young kid, 25 years old.

John: Totally.

Brad: I have no idea what I’m doing right now, I’m totally out of my element. But, it came back and one thing led to another and I started this little investment group. Again, relying on my strength of people, of people who I’d share investment ideas with. And, obviously, my big ideas with 3D printing, so this is about 2012, one person picked up on that and said “Hey, it would be really great, you should write for my article or my column in Forbes”. So, I did, it was great and that blew up, and then somebody read the article and reached out to me, and said “Hey, I took one of your stock tips”, because the stocks went up 10 X at one point. I took one of your stock tips, and paid for my wedding with it.

I’m like “Get outta here, this is great”. He said “Yeah, how do I give you money to manage?” I’m like “What?”. Money to manage are you kidding me right now. Again, 25 years old. So, I turned around again to my really smart people on my network and my mentors. And I said “Hey, what do I do with this?” They said “Oh, you should start a Hedge Fund”. I’m like “A Hedge Fund?” Now, we’re really getting off the crazy train here. So, I just kept doing things like that, I kept having conversations with people and relying on my strengths and talking to smart people.

And I’d go “Yeah, you do this, here’s a lawyer”. One guy would say “Oh, here’s a great accountant I use for investments”. You set it up in Delaware; you do this, that and the other thing. I’m like, wow, I could really actually put this together. And I went to some of my mentors and I went to some of my people I had met over the years and I had talked to 200 people. And I got 17 of them to invest and low and behold we had a Hedge Fund. Legit, SEC verified, Blue Sky laws the whole shebang a bang.

John: Well, one thing that I wanted to jump in here and talk about for you Fire Nation, that I love about this story specifically is, one cool idea not even a great idea, just a cool idea that you’re excited about that you’re like “This seems pretty awesome”, but you don’t know where it’s going to lead. The doors that are gonna open up. The opportunities that’re gonna unfold, just by you taking that next step. It always goes back to that Martin Luther King quote “You don’t need to see the whole staircase to take that first step”, and so many people never take that first step, because they are like “Well, I don’t know exactly where this is going”.

Brad, had no idea this was maybe gonna lead to a Hedge Fund down the road, but that first idea, that first step, the 3D printing led to this led to that, Richard Branson, CPAs, what are you gonna say, what are you gonna do, who knows? Open those doors there you are, you open your eyes up a couple years later, who knows how long? And, you have something in front of you that you’re like “I never knew I would’ve gone here right now”. But, I took that first step.

And now Brad, right now today, 2017 what are you most fired up about?

Brad: You know what I’m most fired up about right now John, is I see we have an opportunity really with technology to change our world. And, I think we could do that in a few different ways, but the ones I’m focusing on right now are food, energy, water and shelter, and sustainability. Getting everybody up to that basic, even though that demonetization or democrazation or just bringing the cost down basically of everything. To the point where everybody can have a very basic standard of living. So, they’re not so much focused on just surviving all the time, but they can actually begin to use their creativity and energy to thrive.

And, I think the key domino there is energy. If we can get – I follow of Elon Musk a lot, he talks about have a 100 giga factories putting out two billion power walls, and that would take us off the grid basically. The coal and fossil fuel grid. And, I think that’s really important. If we can get that key domino to tip, and use solar energy and batteries, not cook ourselves basically in our atmosphere. That can open the way for a lot of other things. Food ubiquity, water, shelter for the masses. Getting off this planet. Making humanity not a single point of failure system. It’s kind of an incredible thing. So, that’s what I wanna focus most of my energy on going forward.

John: Well, I’m fired up about that. To use a real simplistic example that I’ve thought about a few times, because I’ve read great books like Sapiens and Guns, Germs and Steel, a lot of great books like that. So, I think about the early tribes, back in Africa or Asia, wherever it might be. And, a woman would wake up and her job for the day was to track a mile to get fresh water, and to wash clothes, and to do this and to do that and then to come back and basically her day was done. And the man’s job was to wake up and to go out and to come back with like a squirrel or a piece of morsel of food for dinner. And, that took up all of their day. And, so now I think about it, where I can go in to Amazon and I can click fresh and have food delivered to my doorstep in an hour.

I’m not even having not to take that hour to drive to Walmart or wherever to buy stuff, it’s just coming to my door. I’m continuously taking time back. So, where before that woman or that man had to spend all of their time, all of their energy, for really one task to survive. Now we’re kind of taking all that time back because of technology, and we’re able to apply it to other things to continue to do this. And, it’s insane to me what could happen now that we’re essentially taking back all of this time that we used to need, just to survive, just to put food in our mouth and water in our bodies.

Again, this is just me, because I love history and I’ve been going back and reading those great books again. That’s Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel great books that kind of just walk you through this evolution that we’ve gone through, really exciting stuff.

But, the reality right now Brad, is that we’re about to enter the lightning round after we thank our sponsors.

Brad, are you prepared to rock the lightning rounds?

Brad: Yes sir, bring it on!

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Brad: I think a lot of it was just fear. Like you said earlier, taking that first step is everything. And, when I realized I didn’t have to see – like an orchard is not one tree, John. That’s a great way to look at it. You don’t plant one tree and then say “There’s my orchard”. You plant like a 1,000 because you have no earthly idea which ones are gonna thrive and which ones are gonna die. But, if you plant enough and you kinda tend them over time they produce a lot of fruit. So, again don’t pay attention to one tree, build an orchard.

John: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Brad: Tim Ferriss told me, and I think Oprah said this first. “You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once”.

John: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Brad: Oh, I’m just unstoppable when I get my arms around an idea. I just hammer it. Just my ability to plough through 14 hours a day. We just booked out 20 trips for a trip to China to source products in 4 days. Because I’m a maniac and I do 14 hour days on calls with Australia. So, like that’s my No.1 for sure. It’s just tenacity.

John: Share an internet resource like Evernotes with Fire Nation.

Brad: Oh, you know what I’ve been really loving lately. It’s this thing by my friend Sujan Patel, you might know him. It’s called mailshake, and it allows you to send very directed personalized notes, that don’t have unsubscribes or anything like that to a limited number of people. So, it’s actually a really great way to reach out so you don’t have to do them individually.

John: If you could recommend just one book, what would it be and why?

Brad: Abundance by Peter Diamandis changed my life in the way I look at the world. Anything by him or Stephen Cutler I’d recommend.

John: Brad, let’s end today on Fire, with a parting piece of guidance. The best way that we can connect with you, and then we’ll say goodbye.

Brad: Thank you John so much, and thank you Fire Nation for having me. The last piece of guidance I wanna offer is that, your mission needs to be large enough to encompass more than just you. If it’s all about you, well you’re not gonna make a whole lot of money, you’re not gonna have a lot of resources, joy, connections, flow in to your life. But life has a tendency to take care of that which supports life. So, if you wanna make more money, just to use an example, you really need to expand your vision to encompass your family, your tribe, your community, and the world at large.

Because at that point you’re thinking big enough where you’re gonna create enough movement and energy transference essentially, gonna add enough value to bring in the kind of money that you really want. Billionaires don’t need a billion dollars, because they need a billion dollars. They could never spend that money in their lifetime. But their mission is big enough to serve the world and therefore the billions come.

John: And the best, way we can connect with you?

Brad: So, I actually made up a really cool little sheet for you guys, it’s at makemoremarbles.com/eof and that’s gonna be up today and you guys can go check out all the resources I have around finance, tribe building, productivity, anything you wanna know I have a 30 Day I’ll Call Challenge on there, if you guys are looking for a new fun thing. There’s a lot of great stuff. I’m gonna update that right now for ya.

John: Fire Nation you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you have been hanging out with BH and JLD today, so keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. If you just type Brad in the search bar, his show and his page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. These are the best show notes in the biz, timestamps, links galore.

And Brad, I wanna thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Brad: Thank you John, thanks so much for having me.