The 6 Ultimate Steps to Success with Robert Riopel

Be sure to grab your free copy of my list of 27 tools, resources, and software programs. I use to run my businesses on a tight budget. You can get it at the Sarah St. john.com forward slash 27 tools. That's T H E S a R a H S T J O H n.com forward slash 27. welcome to the frugal preneur podcast. I'm your host, Sarah St. John and my guests today learn during his extensive travels teaching around the world that he noticed success has left clues everywhere. These are insights that people like himself have come to learn through experience and trial and error that they now pass on to those who follow allowing others to bypass obstacles and obtain results sooner. Welcome to the show. Robert reopened.

Hey, Sarah, great to be here and feeling blessed to be able to help an audience, especially of entrepreneurs in any way I can.

Well, awesome. Well, can you give us a little bit of your background history and I'm curious to hear more about. These travels and about what you mean by success left clues everywhere, because you have a book also called success, left a clue. So I'm, I'm curious to hear more about what, that means.

Exactly. first of all, I became an entrepreneur almost by stumbling into it. It wasn't supposed to be because where I grew up, I was taught here's the. I don't even think about the box and don't question the box and just, you don't do the way things are supposed to be. And, growing up, one of the things that I'm working, it was when it comes to work, you find a job that's secure. If there's such a thing, and if it's paying you a wage, even if you don't like it, you do it to support your family. And by the age of 21, all of a sudden I'm being laid off from the third job because they're shutting the factory down and I'm going, I'm working on. I'm staying loyal, but something's not working here. And here in Alberta at the time we were in the middle of an oil bust, something that you understand in Texas more than other people do because when oil prices are down, the economy doesn't do well. And I couldn't find it another real job by my definition. So to support my family, I decided to do something until I found another job. And I started delivering. And I started delivering for Domino's pizza. I know no one's ever heard of them. And from, because of my work ethic, I went from being a delivery driver to actually becoming a manager. My wife became my assistant. Next thing you know, we're working open to close seven days a week and a year and a half in. We were faced with that dilemma that our franchisee decided he didn't want to be in Domino's pizza anymore. And he was selling his two sisters. And it was like, oh, we're about to be laid off again. And I kind of went into panic mode and I don't know how much you know about Domino's pizza, Sarah, but you actually can't just buy a franchise. You actually have to qualify first by being a manager for at least a year and successfully meet a bunch of criteria. And so my wife and I are actually qualified to be franchisees, which would mean they would waive the upfront franchise fee, but you still had to have money to buy your. And then, so I'm thinking my natural way of thinking is we're going to have to find another franchisee, find out who needs a manager, get a new job. And my wife's like, why would we do that? Why don't we just buy this store? And I'm looking at it. And I'm like, cause we don't have any money. That's why we don't do this. And I'll tell you, I am so blessed to have my wife because we met when we were 30. We started dating when we were 16, we got married when we were 19 and we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary. And please don't do the math of how old I am. here I am, I'm the, in the box thinker. But to my wife, it's like, what box are you talking about? There's no such thing as a box. She said, let's figure out a way to do it. And so we started making a lot of mistakes, figuring out how do you buy a business if you don't have. But every time we made a mistake, we actually learned something. And eventually after about four months, we now knew what to say and what not to. When we were introduced to our own bank manager for business accounts. And when we were able to finally get a meeting with him, we were able to sit down. We knew what to say, what not to say. And he didn't give us the financing for our store. He actually gave us a hundred percent financing for both the sores my franchisee had for sale. And next thing you know, we're franchisees and it's like, Ooh, we've got it made. But here's the problem. We knew how to run a Domino's pizza, but we didn't know how to run a business. And I think, you know, Sarah, there's a big difference right there. And in our first couple of years, it was our whole working mindset was if there's money in that bank, we must be doing okay because we didn't think we could afford to hire an accountant. We thought we'd do it on her. Right. You talk about being a frugal. Preneur is like, we can figure it out. We'll do it on our own. The fact that we're working 80 hours a week in the store and we'll do our accounting as well. Yeah. That didn't work. And a couple of years in when the, because of we're now behind on paperwork and the government's like knocking on the door, hello. We've had to hire an accountant. They got everything straightened out and caught up. And also they're looking at. How did you guys figure, how did you make it? There's no way you should have survived and been able to stay in business. You've lost two years, but at least at that point, ignorance was bliss. We didn't know what we didn't know. And we were just too tenacious to quit. We made it work. And once we had our numbers in place, we started understanding it. We started doing better when we started making. But then we did something that and I, I'm probably going to shock you Sarah, because we did something that probably no one else you've ever known as ever done. I hope you're ready because I don't want to shock you to battery. Ready? Ready? We started spending more money than we were earning. I know, right? No one's ever done that before. And, but we were franchisees for eight years. We're now actually over $150,000 in personal debt. And going down quickly. And that's when we were introduced to personal development and we ended up doing a three-day training that taught us a, why were we spending money the way we were? Why weren't we managing it, but how to manage it? More importantly, it taught us to take responsibility. See, we, I was good at blaming other people while they lost my investment or because of them. I lost my. And the moment we learned to take responsibility ourself, we are then open to, okay. How, if we want to get out of debt, how do we do it? And when we left that training, we decided we had to put things into action and step number three of my book of success left, a clue is you must take action. That's what separates success from non-success. And we put things into action that we'd learned that week. And next thing, you know, we were able to go from me the $150,000 in debt to actually retired completely financially free nine months later at the age of 32 We're like that worked. If this wedge information gave us out result, what would more learning do? And we became, super learners. We want to learn from everybody we could, because I'm also a big believer. Don't just learn. Don't just learn from one person. And while we're on that learning journey, I realized my passion, my passion was to teach others because I felt that if I could even help one person do what we'd been able to do it, make it all worthwhile. And so now the last 18 and a half years, plus I've been blessed to travel around the world. And I've personally trained over half a million people around the world in about 30 different countries living my passion. And while I've been doing that, I've been blessed to share the stage with a lot of the greatest thought leaders in the room. And I'm watching successful people. And I started noticing the differences between success and not, and I just decided to call them clues. And that's when I decided to put them together in a book. And these are clues that if you utilize them, you can have an amazing life. You can design the life that you want. And that's kind of where I'm at today.

Oh, wow. That's quite the story. So I'm, curious about the different types of clues. Can you maybe go into, without giving the whole book away? Of course. Some things,

the book has six specific steps that a person can take to design their. And mixed in there. I give a lot of clues and that's why on the front I'm known for on the stage giving clues. That's why I have my hands up. It's like, I'll have my audience go give us a clue. And when they do that, I'll give them a clue. Like well, here's one. Have you noticed that when people learn a system, especially entrepreneurs, they learn a system, but then their mind automatically goes, I have to do. I have to reinvent this wheel and they wonder why they struggle. So the one clue is if you're going to reinvent the wheel, do it later, do it later, use the system, get the success first. And then once you have the success, if you still want to reinvent the wheel, go ahead and reinvent it because at least you have the success. And instead of trying to reinvent it first and in struggle all the way through. So that's an example of, a clue and a big one of that. My wife and I in the last year of being Domino's pizza franchisees, one of our specialties is we are traveling around Canada and into parts of the United States where we'd go into stores that were bankrupt or about to go bankrupt. Within three months, we'd retrain the staff. We were walking out the door and the store sales and profits were going up by over a hundred percent. And people were like, how are you guys doing that? They thought we were. And really all we are doing is going in getting rid of all the crap. That was not the Domino's pizza system, because the new franchisee or the manager wanted to do it their way. So they started adding a bunch of. And wondering why they, your sales in that went down. So we'd go in and get rid of all the stuff that wasn't the system, bring the store back and train everybody on the actual system of Domino's pizza. And all of a sudden sales profits magically would go up and we looked like rock stars. So that's how powerful following systems are, especially in business, especially in business.

Wow. Yeah, that's a good point. I think so many people like the whole reinventing the wheel, they might have a good idea of how to change something, but if they don't have any success yet or money or whatever, it's going to be really difficult to, reinvent the wheel. Instead of. working on the wheel that maybe already exists. And then once you build up either experience or money or whatever, then maybe you can think about reinventing.

Well, yeah. and cause one of the traps a lot of entrepreneurs fall into is they think they're an entrepreneur, but they've just bought themselves a job. Because they got tired of their old boss and they, then they hate the new boss, which is themselves. And because he gets so caught up working in that business, they forget to work on it, you know? And I love a book I'm restudying again right now is E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Because when you learn about actually work on your business, even take a little bit of time and start to systemize everything. If you do that, then that's how you're going to be able to, and you can do it on that shoestring. Look at when we bought our Domino's pizzas, it took every penny we had just to keep them running. There was a lot of nights. We actually slept at the store underneath our ovens on hot bags, because we didn't have enough fuel to go home and back, I remember the one time Domino's pizza changed their look and we had a certain amount of time to update the looks of our stores. And while a lot of the other franchisees were hiring contractors, We're like, we can't afford to do that. So we'd work to midnight or one o'clock in the morning, shut the store down, pull out the ladders and we'd work on the store painting and changing and constructing till eight or nine in the morning, we would then get a couple of hours sleep and start all again at three o'clock in the afternoon and do it all over again, day after day after day, because we just didn't have the money to try and up. And to do what they wanted us to do, and they weren't going to accept excuses that we couldn't afford it. We had to figure it out. Right. And so a lot of I've noticed entrepreneurs nowadays, they get so caught up in trying to that they have to do it their way or another way that if they just find a simple system model, it work, step-by-step work on really systemizing the business so it can work without them so they can remove themselves from the equation. And what's really kind of cool is if you do this, it opens up a lot of options. And what I mean by that is if you can systemize your business and you can make it profitable by being systemized, you can now either turn it into your own passive income where you can be there when you want to. And not because it's still making a profit without you, and you can do another business and redo it again. Or there's companies out there that are actually looking for profitable systemized businesses, and they're willing to pay millions and billions of dollars for them. And a truth I love to teach entrepreneurs is if you start your business with the intention, I'm going to sell it. You're going to start systemizing it right away. that is the key. And every business I start today, or I take over my intention is I'm buying or starting this business with the intention of selling it because you can make good money owning and operating of it. But you can actually make more money selling your business. And once you've learned how to do it once rinse and repeat for those that have hair, I don't have to worry about that part.

I'm curious to hear more about that process of selling a business. Can you give us some examples of, times that you've sold a business and. Things to think about or even look out for, or how do you know when it's the right time or the right deal, I guess, to sell it?

Yeah. And I'll use the example of the two last two stores we sold the first one we sold under duress. We are stressed out beyond belief. We're deep in debt. And we felt we had to sell the business and of the two stores that we had at the time we wanted to sell one store that was in British Columbia, because it was not as profitable as our store in Alberta, but the problem was. Where our store was in Alberta. The only way you could expand in that area is why it was by buying existing stores. So people wanted that store. The other store that was in British Columbia, if you bought it, there was really nowhere to expand for you afterwards. So you're kind of limited to that store. So no one wanted this store. And so that even though we didn't want to sell the profitable store, we felt we had to, we are not positioned our mindset of stress. And if you ever noticed that when someone's desperate, other people can say, Right. And so all of a sudden this gentleman, he's like, okay, I'll buy the store. And he knew we were desperate. And originally I used to say he took advantage of us, but now I, again, I own it that I allowed him to take advantage of us because all of a sudden the price would go down. There would be a delay in the possession date. He wants to refinance all of a sudden it came down to where we actually finance the whole purchase, where he was paying us monthly payments instead of a lump sum, which didn't help us at all. But that was the only way we felt we could do it. So the mindset was really stressed out. I do not recommend selling a business when you're in that kind of position. Now from that, that was in January of 2001. We sold that to. The second store. All of a sudden, we now were introduced to the personal development and our mindset changed. And the first thing we realized was one of the reasons we were struggling is we had not systemized our stores. We had management in place, but if we weren't there, they didn't run it properly because we didn't systemize. And so when we can start learning these things, we went into the store with a whole new attitude and our attitude was this store. If we keep. Not a problem because we're going to put it up for sale. And if someone wants it, they want it and they'll pay our price. They'll, you'll be a totally different energy if they don't we'll keep it because as we systemized it, it was now running profitably without us. And so first thing you want to do is you don't want to make a buying decision or a selling decision out of duress and need. So don't even consider it unless you've systemize your business. Because as we did that also now the store's running smoothly. My wife and I aren't in it anymore. And out of nowhere, it's amazing how three people wanted our store out of the, and this is just a year later where no one wanted it a year before now, three people did and here was a difference. Our mindset created, we went to the first person and we said, look, you came to us first. So we're going to deal with you. We'll tell you the good, we'll tell you the bad. We'll tell you the. See, I am. I'm very big on being very upfront. I'm not going to try and hide things. And I'd watched a lot of stores and Domino's pizza get sold where the franchisee didn't tell the new franchisee something that was underlying. Right. So I said, I'm going to tell you everything. Here's the price. Non-negotiable, here's the possession date. Non-negotiable. And as long as you meet up with your end of the deal, everything will go through the moment. You don't no hard feelings. But our deal's done. I'm going to go to the next person in line. Are you agreeable with that? And the guy's like, yep, absolutely. I'm on board. Thank you so much. And everything was going smooth until he was supposed to put down a nonrefundable deposit of $5,000. And my wife and I are waiting for them at a coffee shop. He doesn't show up and we're like, what's going on? We form Eric. What's happening. Now in this moment, and this is the big problem, that business owner. If we wavered, that was on us. And so we said to him, we said, look, have we been clear with you? Yes. Have we told you everything? Yes. While you're not here, the deal's done. And we hung up the phone and my wife and I are like, we've worked on this for the last few months, but we had to hold to our word. See that energy is more important. Then knowing when to sell or not to sell in my opinion, within two minutes, he's falling back saying, oh, okay. I'm so sorry. I'm on my way now. And again, we could have gone. Okay, great. Let's continue. But see, we had told them the deal was off and I don't know where it came from, but my wife goes, tell him the prices went up five grand. I'm like, I can't. She says, tell him. So I'm like, okay, Eric, here's the deal. The prices went up 500. If you want to continue the deal and you have two hours to decide click, I have a phone. I'm like why? And she's like, I don't know. I just had to do it right. Cause we have to own our power. This was new to us. He phoned back within a couple minutes. He's like, I agree to the new terms. I'm on my way down with a deposit check and he met us and the rest of it went seamlessly smooth And to me, the difference was not about the deal and knowing when to do. It was who were we? Who were we as the ones putting the deal forward and in small businesses, that's the big problem. See, there's tons of buyers out there waiting because what people don't realize it's larger corporations. Why do you think Facebook and Google pay billions of dollars for other companies? They need it as part of their tax. Write-offs they're going to spend that money on taxes anyway. So they might as well acquire another business, another arm that's going to make them more. C. And that's what there's companies that are looking for other systemized companies in alignment with them. And that's why they're willing. If you can sit there and show that my business is making X number of dollars, they'll pay the 10 times, 20 times, whatever price. Because they're not looking for it as a big moneymaker, they just need to add it and get a little profit out of it and as long as it makes sense on their end, they're going to spend the money because it saves them in taxes, gives them more options and grows their business for their investors to be more valuable. So it becomes a win-win situation.

Yeah, that makes sense. I hadn't really thought about that before, but, I imagine there's some people out there who create businesses with that goal or intention mind is to sell it. And maybe they have a particular buyer in mind even, but yeah. So are you familiar with clubhouse?

Absolutely.

Okay. Yeah. I think that. If I'm correct. I think Facebook offered to buy them and they said, no, but now Facebook and Twitter and Spotify and all these other places are coming out with something similar. So it's like, part of me is thinking, Ooh, they probably should have sold it before people started doing knockoffs but I don't know.

Well, and that is, and she, and that's where overthinking can really overthinking and greediness can get in the way. You're absolutely right. Because if you take a look at it before Facebook live, do you even remember the name of the app that was out, that people were using to do live streaming, like Facebook live and there was a hole in the name will come to me when I quit thinking. And all of a sudden Facebook went, oh, that seems to be working. And you're getting lots of followers. we'll do our own version. And Facebook live quickly, collapsed them because they didn't keep up with it. But also the opposite is true is, and you take a look at the history of Netflix, They actually, when they started up, they went to blockbuster video. And they said to blockbuster, here's what we're doing. And we are in alignment with you. We're just looking for a buyout of a million dollars and blockbuster looked at him and said, no, that's not the future. Forget it. A few years later, blockbuster goes bankrupt and where's Netflix today. Right? So if you try to overthink about it though, Sarah is you're going to stress it comes down to trusting you. Who are you as the person? I'm writing my new book called the authority. And in the authority key, there's easy ways to teach people. You'll be a podcast host that elevates you as an authority, write a book, that'll help you become an authority. There's all the practical skills, but what most people don't learn and what I'm really diving into is who are you as the person to be able to not only become the authority, but have the confidence to maintain that. And the success that comes with. So you've got to be someone that can handle that. Otherwise you'll self-sabotage or you'll implode, or you'll make the wrong decisions and sell at the wrong time or not sell it all. See? So it skills are one thing, but if you work on you, who you are, that's going to make all the difference in the world. Most people think themselves out of success. And so it's constantly, and that's why even today I will never quit working on me. I will never quit growing who I am. Because the moment I think I know at all, I'm done, I'm done. So I'm always going to continue to be a student. And so as a business owner, don't think you have to know everything. Don't think you have to know that I got to know the right time to sell or what if I make a mistake, you're going to make mistakes, be okay with that plain and simple. And just trust yourself that you can handle what comes along if, and when it does.

Yeah. I was going to ask about your new book. So one of the things in the new book that you talk about are the four phases of life and the four currencies. I'd love to hear more about that. That's kind of intriguing,

let's start with the four phases then the four phases of life. And I love acronyms because, I tried this accent earlier. It didn't work, especially with the person in Texas. He said, here's a Canadian try and an Alabama accent, but my fours gone. I'm not a smart man. So I like acronyms. Cause I like to keep it simple. And I use the acronym of open for the forfeit. And when, what people want, I want them to understand is we're going through these phases all the time. You have no control when you enter or exit or how long you're in each phase. But if you understand the phase, you can utilize the phase and you can flow through life. And it was based on information that a friend of mine. I gave him a nickname years ago. I call them the quantum monk because not only was he actually a monk for eight years and did over 15,000 hours of meditation, he also loves to study quantum physics so he can tell you all about spirituality and then the science behind it. The man is brilliant. the O stands for the observation. When you're in the observation phase, this is where you're thinking about who would I like to be? What would I like to accomplish? What would I like my business to look like? So this is the time you meditate. This is the time you have vision boards, dream boards. It's not about how will I make it happen with all the steps is just dreaming. What would I love to have my life be like? And then from there you go into, what's called the pamper phase. The P stands for pamper, and this is the phase that most entrepreneurs ignore. Or don't think they can do. See, there's a big saying that says, you cannot give what you don't have. And most entrepreneurs are, they work, work, work, work, work, and they forget to take care of themselves and they wonder why they burn out. And I know you can't relate to that. What's so ever, right, Sarah, I get it. I thought I'd get a smile on that one. And so in the pamper phase, when you enter this phase, this is the time you book or go on a vacation. Get a massage, get a manicure, pedicure, maybe take 20 minutes to read a book. If you enjoy reading. I'll take my phone and I love the app calm. I love the sound of rain. So even just before this interview, I took 25 minutes. I just put my earbuds in, laid back and listened to rain for 25 minutes to calm, quiet my mind and just rejuvenate my. See, when you don't take care of yourself, that's when you burn out. That's when you get overwhelmed, that's when you start, you can't come in at a hundred percent focus. So it takes you 2, 3, 4 times longer to do things. And that's what I see with most entrepreneurs. They think they have to push through it, push hard and they forget to take them themselves. And one things I do, it's so important. You've heard the saying in money, wealth rule, number one, pay yourself first. And so here's the question. If that's important for money, why wouldn't you do the same thing for your time? Why wouldn't you pay yourself first for your time? So when my wife and I sit down and do our calendar, because we live on our calendars and the first thing we put on those calendars before anything else is we put in our balanced. Time together time for ourselves family health, whatever it is that allows us to rejuvenate that goes on our calendar first, not at the end, if there's time left over, we put that on there first. And so the pamper phase allows you to then fully utilize the third phase, which is called the energy phase. This is the, get it done phase like today. As an example, today is a full on energy phase. my first interview started at 5:00 AM my time this morning, and I won't finish up. I've got some power mentoring calls with students in the Philippines right after our interview. And I won't finish it until about eight 30 my time tonight. So including having to be ready in time up and wind down time, I'm putting in a 17 plus hour day today. Now, am I going to be tired at the end? Yes. But am I going to be burnt out and wasted? No. Because I have the pampering phase and I make sure I take care of myself. And when it comes to the energy phase, a lot of entrepreneurs, their excuse or what they come up with is, but I'm so busy. I don't have time to do extra stuff. I've got my business, I've got a family and I'm just busy and what I've realized, and I've noticed that, that people are really, really good at being busy, but they're not necessarily productive. And again, that's a world of difference right there. So the second thing I put on my phone after I put the balance pieces in for pampering, I put in focus. Because one hour, let's take into example writing my new book. I can sit there and go, okay, I'm going to go right on. Right. My buck I'll come into my office eight hours later I'll I can leave and I could go, oh my goodness. Was I busy? But it doesn't seem like I got a lot done on my book. What was I doing? And I look, oh, I was on social media. I was messaging. I was reading emails and responding. And I wrote a little bit of the book because I was. But on my calendar, I might say 10 to 11 focused on writing book. And when I come into the office and I write for that hour of focus time, I can get more done in an hour, then six hours of being busy. So for an entrepreneur, you can actually free up time as you get in the habit of having focus instead of just being busy and it takes discipline, it takes cause it's habit. We're all creatures of. So you've got to learn that. And then the fourth phase, I call it the unclutter phase. I know that does not start with an N and is the second letter of that word. But I, it was the only way I could figure out to get open, to work with a word that described what I wanted. And so I hope everybody can work with me on that. And the unclutter phase, another name for that is chaos. Have you ever noticed Sarah, that things can be going well and all of a sudden it's like life slaps you upside down. And you get into a chaotic situation. Heck the world's in a chaotic situation right now. And most people that are struggling right now in this time is because they're resisting chaos. When if you understand chaos is natural, but if you learn to embrace it, the reason I call it, the unclutter phase is because you can actually volunteer for chaos, meaning in the chaos or unclutter phase, you want to destroy something that's not working. This is the time to destroy. So maybe a business or personal relationship isn't working, or maybe you've got your desk is covered with stuff, paperwork that you haven't used in should be thrown away, but you keep it on your desk. So you can actually volunteer by I'll come into my office every couple of weeks and I'll unclutter my. Going into your closet, getting rid of the clothes that you haven't worn in years, but you're hoping they'll come back eventually into, style someday. So they're still sitting in your closet, right? And so by volunteering and going in and uncluttering, you can actually make room for the new things. one of the things my friend says that I love, he says, instead of being willing to let live life courageously allow life to live. And I hope people get what I just said there. You see, if you think as an entrepreneur, you have control over your life. Sorry. That's a huge cosmic joke right there. Right? you, only thing you have control over is how you respond to what's coming into your life, your reaction to it. And so if you're willing to courageously allow life to live. And you embrace chaos by volunteering by, and that's why I will always be, clearing my desk off. I'll go to the refrigerator every so often and clean out the food that just shouldn't be in there anymore. I'll clean out the closet. You have to be willing to let go of. What's good to get. What's great. Be willing to let go of. What's great to get. What's amazing. And so when you go through the unclutter phase, it puts you back up into the observation phase, which will allow you to dream even. And set your sights higher for more great things. And those go round and round and round. And that's how the phases work.

Oh, that's interesting. So it's like a cycle. You go through the phases and then. Go back through them again.

Yeah. And you were saying your personal relationship might be one phase, but your business can be in a totally different one. And so that's why you want to be able to understand how to identify being in a phase and then what to do while you're in there. So you can actually embrace. again, I want to put the folks on the pamper face for people. Entrepreneurs just don't know how to do that, or they don't give themselves permission. And you, you have to be actually creative for one and a little bit selfish on this phase, you know, as an example of that. before, COVID, when I was flying all over the world. On average, I was flying 200,000 miles a year and people say, why are you willing to get on a plane for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours? And one of the reasons is I love teaching people all over the world. Love it. But another reason selfish, you see Sarah, the moment I sit in the seat in the plane, that's my time. I don't do business. I don't connect to wifi. If the plane has it, I sit down and I read, cause I love to read. I watch movies because I love movies. I get a little sleep, eat some good food and drink some great wine. That's what I do for those long trips. Why? Because I know the moment I land in the new country for the next three to five days, I'm on stage for up to 12 hours a day, giving, giving, giving. So if I don't take care of me, how can I give to my fullest?

Yeah, that's a good point. Cause you know, most business owners are when they're on a plane, they're working. So to view it as kind of an opportunity to slow down and pamper yourself like you're talking about read, watch movies and catch up on things that you can't really do when you're, working on your business and stuff. So.

Right. and in the beginning, I, you know, whatever flight was available, I would take, and I'd cram into cattle, I mean, into economy. But at a point I made the decision that with how much flying I was doing, I choose not to fly anything but business concept for. And yes, it's more expensive, but I'm at the point where, when you're flying 200,000 miles a year. economy class just isn't for me. And so that's one of the ways I take care of myself and that's very, very important. And even it doesn't matter what stage of business ownership you're in, whether you're just starting where you're doing okay. Or whether you're amazing. You've got to be willing to identify who you are in that business. And are you the one having to make it work or you're the one that oversees it and it's working for you because again, it comes back to that. You're not really a business owner. You're just a solo preneur, not an entrepreneur.

Yeah. And can you go into the, the four currencies?

Yeah, the four currencies. The first one is what everybody thinks of. When you hear currency is the currency. And what I've researched and found out is that if you have too much money, that's called affluenza. And when you have affluenza, you do stupid things with your money. Too little money is called poverty, and everybody has a zone and your zone is going to be different than the next person and your zones will adjust. And so, as an example, when I was in my Domino's pizza, if between my wife and I, we were making less than 40,000 a year, we felt the financials. That was our kind of poverty level, because now we don't have enough to pay the bills. what are we going to do? Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress. Our affluenza level was about a hundred thousand a year. Anytime we'd get over that, we'd start making investments without properly doing the due diligence. And then we'd be surprised when we'd lose money. It would just be like, I don't have time. Sounds good. Here's the money. And so we're making bad mistakes. as long as we're in the zone, we're good. Outside of the zone is where I life was different. So what I've seen. Like today because I like my lifestyle. My current poverty level is about 200,000 a year. If I'm making less than that, I get stressed. And my affluenza level is now about a million a year. If I'm making more than a million a year, all of a sudden I start noticing I started doing odd things with the money and not properly paying attention and doing my investment, doing my due diligence. So your, levels will always adjust with who you are as a person. And everybody's. So that's the first currency. The second currency is the one currency that we all have the exact same amount of, and that's the currency of. Too much time on your hand. You're bored too little time, your stress. And it amazed me when we entered into the COVID generation. How many people, when they're at home, they're going on board. I got nothing to do and I'm like, come on over to my place. I'll give you lots to do I went from flying 200,000 miles a year to zero and I became busier at home because I was in re-invention. Right. So when you're looking at the currency at time is again, are you being busy or are you being productive? You've got to really watch on that currency of time. And that's why, again, taking care of yourself and having scheduling your things first is important because it doesn't matter how much money you have. You're not going to be able to buy them. No matter what. So work, work, work, work, work, and hoping to have a great life that maybe when you finally get successful, you have your health and have time and, and family laugh because you haven't, you know, worked yourself out of family. That's why you've got to start thinking of it now, especially in the time. Third currency is a currency of fame and what's interesting is fame. you've seen fame ruined. You see it in the media all the time. And so, especially when you become a successful entrepreneur that comes with a level of fame, because now you've got success. People are starting to know you more. And the question isn't, how do I become famous is how do I maintain that level? And the difference between us and I'll use Hollywood as an example, the actors and actresses that seem to crumble when they get famous versus the ones that seem to be around for decades. What's the deal. Well, it's who they are and how they view that fame. And I love an interview that I saw years ago, where Jennifer Lopez was being interviewed and the person said, you know, J-Lo, you're a powerhouse in business, singer dancer, actress. Oh my goodness. All these things and a business woman, but you're also a powerhouse in your relationships, your family, the importance of them. How do you keep the two. And she said, well, I'm just me. I'm Jennifer Lopez. But when I'm in front of the camera, when I'm doing business, I'm, J-Lo, that's my persona. When I'm at home with family, I'm Jennifer, I'm just Jennifer Lopez. And I went, wow. See, when I'm traveling around the world, Sarah and I'm in front of thousands of people and I've got assistants taking care of everything for me, I'm Robert, Raymond real pelt. That's my brand. That's who I am. But when I come home, I'm just Robert or Rob to my family and my wife and I have a running joke. You know, I can come home from being overseas for a couple of weeks and I'll come home and she'll go, honey, you're home. Now you have no more assistance here. Go take out the garbage. And I love it because it keeps me grounded. can you imagine next week as an example, we're going camping with family. We love to hear. Yeah. Imagine I sit around the campfire and I'm like, don't you guys know who I am. I'm Robert, Raymond real bell will get me a beer. I'm not going to go over very well with family. Right. They're going to be like, you know, you're my little brother and I'll give you a new, you get off your high horse. And so with the currency of fame, it's just about knowing that be you. And when things are going well, don't get into the. Continue being you because to me, that's the greatest gift. Anybody can give the planet. That's the third currency. And then the fourth currency is the one I choose to spend most of my energy and time on right now. It is a currency of experience. See, and this is another one, especially for entrepreneurs. As an example, entrepreneurs are so far in the future trying to figure out all the, what if scenarios, how everything should look out, where things should go. What if this happens? What if that happens? Or they're so tied in the path. Well, that didn't work. And if I do it again, I'm going to have the same result that they forget to be in the present, the here and now and experience what's going on in that moment. And then they wonder why also when they do hit success, they look back and they go, what did I do the last 10 years? Why is my health not good? Why is my family? Why did I end up? Why are my children not talking to me? Why did I get a divorce unsuccessful? But they forgot to be in the moment experiencing the day to day. And so that's what I really focused on. And I use a lot of Zen principles on that one where meditation's important and what people, a lot of people don't understand. Cause I didn't is that meditation is just simply being present. And at any time during the day that you're truly present with what you're doing, you're actually meditating. So one of my goals every day is to see how much I can meditate throughout the day. See you and I are talking right now, I'm here present with you. You're here present with me. We're aware of everything else that's going on, but we're here in this moment right now. So we're actually meditating at the same time, which is kind of cool. Those are the four currencies.

Oh, interesting. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that before as a form of meditation. Wow. That's interesting. when does that book come out? Do you have a release date yet?

We're looking probably around the beginning of the year is the goal for it.

if people want to learn more about you, they can go to Robert Rio, pell.com. That's R I O P E L for the last name and success left a clue.com. I'll also have show notes with links to everything at the Sarah St. john.com forward slash. Are are, are for your name forever Raymond rebel

and the three RS. Yeah. And Sarah, you know, because you were so gracious to have me on as a guest on your podcast, as I would love to, from us to your audience, give them a gift for taking their valuable time to listen is if they go to the Robert real pell.com. They are actually going to be able to download the full digital version of my book. Success left a clue as our gift to them for taking their valuable time. And because time is one of our most precious commodities. And I will tell you, though, it does come with a caveat and the caveat is this. I didn't write this book for people to read it, put it on the shelf and make it shelf help. That's not why I wrote the book. See, because most people. Step number three in the book is taking action. So I wrote this as a workbook, meaning there's action steps all the way through. And so don't just read it. I want you to actually do the action steps because if you do, it will change your life. And here's what's going to happen is in the book. You'll come apart where after an action step, it'll say something. Did you do the last action? If not stop reading right now, go back, do the action. Then continue reading because we know people are creatures of habit and so I'm going to call them on it. And so I would love for them to go and download it and utilize the book and watch how it impacts.

Awesome. I think I'm going to have to do that myself. Well I like physical books, so I might actually just order it on Amazon, but, and your new book when it comes out as well, so. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate your time today.

Oh, my pleasure. I tell you what Terry semi and. And I'll have my team mail you out a hard copy for having me on your podcast.

Oh, well, awesome. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah. Email me your mailing address. I will make sure we get it in the mail the next couple of days so that you can, because I love physical books myself as well.

And I've never heard her referred to a shelf help, but that's funny.

And that's what most people do because unfortunately, the statistic is only 3% of people will actually use the information that. Only 3% in north America. Yeah. And that's why, and they wonder why their lives don't change. You've got to take action. You really do. Thanks, sir. Thanks for having me here.