23: Gene McNaughton

Chris Suarez: [00:02:37] All right. I'm super, super pumped to talk to you. And as I said in the outset of this this interview largely it's because our community believes that personal growth is a pillar of experiential living and very few people that we've talked to.

Have had just the history and focus of personal growth as you have. So maybe take us even before that, just give us a quick rundown Jean on your history, how did you end up in the personal growth space? And last I checked online  there's a little side journey that has shown up after personal growth, but we'll get there.

Bring us to the four person growth. What were you doing and what led you to 

Gene McNaughton: [00:03:15] personal growth? W well, Chris I'm the product of. Many mentors, many coaches, many mentors. I've never met in person in my life, but I've listened to their tapes. I've read their books, I've attended their seminars. And in my mind, they became my personal board of advisors.

Now they didn't know it, but I did. Zig Ziglar Tony Robbins, who eventually I ended up working with and being his opening speaker, Jim Roan, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra. They were my personal board of advisors because I would listen to their tapes in those days at night while I was driving in the car.

Because one of the things I learned early when I was 22, 23 years old and reading my very first book, which was thinking grow rich. Was that you become the voices you listened to the most. And that another thing that Napoleon Hill said in that book is the number one investment you will ever make is in yourself.

And I took that to heart. And what I found was. As I started listening to the tapes. And the first one I really got into was a guy named Jim Roan. You've certainly heard of Jim Roan and there was this, something about his voice. And then I heard, on a Brian Tracy tape, you remember Brian, Tracy.

These are the legends that the living legends, not Jim Rohn, he passed away, but these are the living legends of our time. Brian Tracy said that. If you're playing it in the background, even though you're not paying attention that your subconscious mind was paying attention. And I thought.

I don't need to figure out why this works, but if he said this works, this is what works. So I started, if you remember the days, Chris, I don't know if you're old enough, but you could have a tape player and you can hit a certain button. So when it got to the end of the tape, [00:05:00] it would just automatically go to the other side of the table.

Chris Suarez: [00:05:02] Yeah, that was like that, that was on the up and coming cassette recorders and players, right? Yeah. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:05:08] I remember. So the thing, 1992, and so I said, okay why not? You know, so I would just play these tapes and it was Jim Roan and Brian Tracy Zig Ziglar.  Think of some of these names and as a listener right now, if you're not familiar with these names, you study their work they're on YouTube and just get their stuff.

Cause it's the baseline of about everything you hear today. Here's what I found was I was selling computers over the phone at gateway computers. Many of you remember the cattle spotted box company? Yep. And I first, my first 

Chris Suarez: [00:05:40] computer I 

Gene McNaughton: [00:05:40] bought was the gateway by the way. Okay, cool. Cool. So they're early nineties probably.

But I started to find the more that I listened to this stuff. And I was very fortunate because I enjoyed it. I didn't have to force myself to put in a Jim Roan tape instead of listening to eighties rock. And I love eighties rock. Don't get me wrong. I love all rock and roll, but I enjoyed it.

It was like a journey. Then I would buy another book of tapes. I remember getting all of the SIG Ziglar stuff. And Oh my gosh. And I could just listen. And it was like, I could, it was almost like a form of meditation for me, but the ironic thing is I started to find myself being more impactful on the job.

The more I listened at night, or I would carry the, okay. Here's how old I am. I would carry the CD player. The Sony CD player to the gym because it wasn't supposed to skip. Remember those. And I would listen while I was at the gym, but I Ronica, I found myself thinking different. I found myself behaving different.

I sound found my habits changing and one of the great things that I think Jim Rohn said was first you make your habits, then your habits make you. And I started to feel and experience the results. My sales results improved my happiness improved. While those around me were still bickering or complaining or discussing why something wasn't the way it was.

I was just on to the next thing and onto the next thing. And in this computer company, sometimes you can be friends at the right place at the right time. And if you're in real estate right now, if you're in mortgage right now, I would say that this would be an example of right place, right time. It doesn't matter where you are, that you are in the right place at the right time.

So now it is the time to make hay. And the other thing was, Tony Robbins always said is act like it's not going to be there tomorrow. See how hard you play when you don't think that the gravy train is going to live forever. And I had that mindset in all Cain, from personal development. Now, today, Chris, we can listen to your podcast.

We can listen to Tony Robbins podcasts. We can listen to ed my lead and Andy Frisella, Gary V. If you know those names, we get those voices and we get them for free, but that became a hallmark. That two years later when I was running the same division that I was selling computers on the phone. And some of the people I started in training with were still on the phone selling computers.

And they're saying, what, how did you get here? Oh, you're so lucky. Oh, that person that the VP likes you better. And I'm like, Hey guys, here are the books. Here's Tony Robbins, personal power. Here's the Zig Ziglar cassettes. Here's the Tommy Hopkins, how to master the art of selling book, read these books.

This is what I did, and the results prove themselves out. And I'm here to say as an example, that. You work on yourself and you work on these habits and it's not a, there's no quick fix. There's no overnight sensation. There's no you know, who is one of the Brock band said, it's a 20 year in the making overnight sensation.

It's. It is the same thing. 

Chris Suarez: [00:08:49] Yeah, delayed gratification. Right?  So you began, you're listening to these tapes, you're listening to the books what consciously and subconsciously you began to see your sales go up and you begin to progress through that. That sales job in that organization.

Gateway. How long were you there and where did you go from there? What did you build? 

Gene McNaughton: [00:09:08] Gateway grew from about a $50 million company. When I started to 11 years later, we were an $11 billion company with a B. We have 21,000 employees. And at the final stage of my career, I was running all of their what's called public sector business.

It was an $800 million P and L my, my, the biggest chunk of the divisions of gateway. So we served all of government and all of the K through 12 schools in higher education. And there was a big adjustment when nine 11 hit. And we, our stock had gone up and split and up and split and up and split.

And on paper, I was worth multi millions. And I remember sitting in a meeting, just the stock had gone up 10 bucks and I'm calculating this money and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm so rich. I'm going to retire at 36. I'm going to Cabo. I had all these great visions, but [00:10:00] one lesson that all of you can learn is when.

When you're rich on paper, don't spend your real money. Like you're rich on paper, which I did. They're also buying the jet ski and the better car and the bigger house and the different clothing. And it is Jim Roan said, driving what you want to drive, living where you want to live, where and what you want to wear.

And all that paper, money fizzled out. The stock went from 80 to five. It never recovered gateway. Eventually went out of business, was bought out. And I just saw resurgence of the brand in Walmart. So it's not completely dead. The lesson there is, in studying money. I didn't do that. I didn't get taught the mindset of money, the semantics, what is a mutual fund?

What is compounding interest? What is hedging your investments? What is, when you take a risk, you know, you're taking a risk when you want to minimize the risk, then what? I didn't get taught any of this stuff. Most people know. And while the money was flowing in at levels that I never dreamed I would have, I didn't manage it well.

Chris Suarez: [00:11:05] Gina, I think that's a valuable lesson. In fact, some of my favorite work that you've done and some of my favorite messages that you've given to us.

Is around our mindset with money, right? You have said in the past that principles applied over time, allow us to create outcomes over time. And it was your probably pain and realizing that you didn't have money principles to actually create money outcomes. And interestingly enough, We believe that yes, personal development is a pillar of experiential living, but wealth is a pillar of experiential living as well.

And actually one of my takeaways, even from this conversation is that we'll shoot like the personal development may actually be the first step because it will lead us to understanding how to build our wealth pillar. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:11:52] That's so good. And I love your pillar concept. It's like the wheel of life concept that I went through in 1994 and a Zig Ziglar, see at the top seminar, like we went through and we did this full assessment of, I believe he had eight pillars in hands and how'd you rank yourself on a scale of one, make sure the 

Chris Suarez: [00:12:11] wheel, the 

Gene McNaughton: [00:12:12] wheel is wheel how's the wheel of life running for you. And but it was a good look. Now let's talk about money. Here's the best thing I could say is study money. And when I say study it, that doesn't mean that one person saying it is a certain way, is the absolute end all and be all study three to five people and study people that have made money over time.

That would be people like Warren buffet. That would be the work of guys like Robert Kiyosaki who wrote rich dad, poor dad like gain   the fundamental psychological side of both the strategic and the tactical execution of what these people have done over time. We get almost drunk on social media of the one night.

Overnight success, I put up 5,000 in Bitcoin and I just bought a million dollar house and you know what good for those people. I'm jealous. Cause that's just never happened to me. I haven't hit that, that that right place, right time threw some money down and, had that windfall cash.

And that will happen for some people. Bronc on that time, the folks that have made the money and written about the money. And if somebody said, who are the best people to study in terms of money investing in psychology, I'd say, who are the greatest of our time? Warren buffet? Robert Kiyosaki. And if you haven't read rich dad, poor dad, as well as cashflow quadrant.

And if you're an entrepreneur, this should be like required reading before you can stamp an LLC on your checking account. 

Chris Suarez: [00:13:45] I agree with you. I actually even speaking of books I think even the newer book, the psychology of money is a great one to begin .

To take out a researcher's perspective of many minds of money and interpreting it as well. So gateway goes through some restructuring and changes. You end up somehow working with alongside of one of your mentors, right? Tony Robbins. How did that happen? What did you do there? 

Gene McNaughton: [00:14:12] I left gateway amidst a some executive management changes.

And we went from being this family company where everything we did was customer centric. Everything we did was to build value and serve the customers at the highest level to being this micromanaged. How do we cut costs? We were. We were taking him in facturing out of South Dakota, which is where we really started and moving it overseas because we get things done cheaper and pretty soon it started showing up and just pour, equip just, it was just time to go.

And, the owners had made, literally billions of dollars and they were moving on to other things as they should have. I participated in a startup, not really knowing anything about starting a business and that lasted about 10 months. And while it [00:15:00] wasn't a total loss, I learned a lot about what I didn't know, and right at the midst of deciding what I wanted to do with my life.

One of my best friends called me. And he's like, what are you going to do? And I'm like, I was going to go into the mortgage business, think 2003, when it was just hand over fist, like no rules. It was the wild, wild West. 

And my friend who was my financial planner said, look, you got to do what you teach Jean. You gotta say, if you could. And he said, if you could do anything in your life and money, wasn't an issue. What would you do? And I was. Listening to Tony Robbins' personal power two. And I'd said, I said, I would go work with Tony Robbins and that's after I listened to Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar and Hopkins and Brian, Tracy, and augment Dino.

Then I got turned onto the Tony Robbins stuff. I got past the glitz and the glam, and really started diving into his work and realized this guy is, this guy has the goods  like he is the product of the greatest mentors and he packages it in a way that's both. You're easy to learn. It's chunked down in three steps, five steps, eight steps, and it's entertaining, right?

It's Tony Robbins. And as I'm sitting here talking to you right now, it was four days later. That was a Thursday on Tuesday. I get a phone call from an eight, five, eight area code. And normally I don't answer those calls, but it just. Right place, right time. I picked that one up there wasn't really caller ID, but you could see the phone number.

And it was a recruiter. I was in Kansas city at the time. And she was like, yada, yada, yada, what do you think about moving to California? And I'm like, I hate California. I don't want to live there.  I'm a small town kid and I said, thanks, but no thanks. I appreciate you calling. I got to go. And she said wait, wait, wait. I'm not supposed to do this. Recruiters are not supposed to tell you the actual company they're recruiting for because the danger is you go right to the company and they don't get their recruiting fee.

I get it. And she said, have you ever, I said, she goes, I'll tell you the company, have you ever heard of Anthony Robinson? I'm like. Excuse me. Yeah, she was Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker, and I'm like, I'm listening to personal power right now. I was in my red Honda accord. I remember it just like this, pull off to the side and I said, let's talk.

That was the Tuesday. I had my first interview on a Thursday. I had the next interview on a Monday. And they said, Tony's got an event in Orlando this next weekend. Can you make it down? I'm like, let me check my schedule. Of course. Yes I could. But you know, I've got to play hard to get a little bit, but I was like, are you kidding me?

I'm going to go see Tony Robbins. And it was, 20 degrees with four inches of snow on the ground. And I did, I went and I was blown away at the, walked on fire. Did the whole unleash the power within experience. Now I had listened to this guy so much on tape. And I had read every book. He had, he had two at the time and I read these things cover to cover multiple times.

Like just any extra time I had, I'm reading these books and just fill in my brain with the knowledge and the nuggets. And suddenly I'm at an event. And the second day I get a phone call that says, Tony, I'd like to talk to you. And I'm like, what? So this is like my, if I, if this sounds a little.

Airy fairy. But the guy was like my, he was my board of director, the leader of my directors, my own personal, he didn't know this, just me listening. And I went into meet with him and I remember I sat down and I prior to meeting with them, I had written out about every quote, what would Tony Robbins asked me in an interview?

And I wrote out all the answer. I was trying to memorize them. And I was so nervous and so stressed that finally some voice came to me and said, Just go be yourself, throw this stuff away. And I rip it pages out of my notebook. I throw them in the garbage and I'm like, if this is meant to be, if I'm really ready for this, then it's going to work.

And I did. And I just took this pressure off myself. Remember getting whisked up to the big penthouse suite at the Peabody hotel in Orlando. And I'm sitting there with Tony Robins, his wife, and one of the executives of the company. And I'm just, my heart is pounding out of my chest and I'm trying to be cool.

Trying to  act like you've been there before. And we just started jamming and he asked me my philosophies and the truth is what he was looking for was somebody that knew of his work. But somebody that wasn't from the seminar world that would bring fresh perspectives. And it just happened to be, fortunate that I really had 12 years of training leading up to that interview.

Because I had taken a company that was somewhat of a startup to a publicly traded company to a fortune 200 company to a company that was a wall street darling. Now I didn't, I wasn't the executive, I wasn't the president of gateway. I just had a a heavy contributing role. And we talked for 90 minutes.

 He didn't in the interview. They're saying Tony, it's time to get back on stage. And he like, come with me as voices, all raspy. And so I he's like, okay, we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And we get in the car or the big vehicle we race around to the back of the auditorium.

And I can hear the roaring, there's 4,000 people in the crowd and I'm like, okay, Behind the curtain with Tony Robbins and he's putting his headset on. He's like, okay, so I need you to get with Bob. And then what you're going to do is this, and I need you [00:20:00] site as soon as possible. There's so much opportunity a year.

And then he clicks his little button on his microphone. He goes, wake it up out there. Place goes nuts. I'm getting goosebumps. As I talk about it, he gave me a kiss on the cheek and he said, I love you, man. You're going to be my brother. And he went back on stage. And I started, I was hired that day and life has never changed.

 The beautiful value is, is then I moved into a career where I was immersed in personal development, like everywhere around me. Like some of the sellers were bodybuilders, or they were triathletes, some were meditation experts, but they were all there on a mission. And I was immersed with these fantastic people and indoctrinated as their leader, but the truth is,  I really took on that servant leadership.

What can I do to help you be more successful? What tools do you need? What resources, what technology, how do we do it? And I listened to people and just continue to take massive action. It was just an amazing 

Chris Suarez: [00:21:00] time. What I hear is see you are a student of personal development years before you stepped into the personal development industry.

So that was just preparation. And then you were immersed in personal development which ultimately as a human allows us to be ready to prepare for anything, ready to prepare for an interview, ready to prepare, to build a company ready, prepared for brand new industry. So you are part of that organization for how long Jean.

But four 

Gene McNaughton: [00:21:28] years, 

Chris Suarez: [00:21:29] four years. Okay. And actually, we're a part of it. It was part of the growth of the selling of the product, but also became the product itself. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:21:38] Before I got the offer from Tony, we had to have, we had a video conference meeting.

Now, if you go back to 2004, you had to go to a special building that had this special room screens. And that it was like, Holy, I can't believe I'm talking to somebody that's, on the other side of the world, he was in Fiji. And I had this conversation. He ended the conversation by saying this, and this is, I'm telling you this, everybody because of the power of intention.

And if you believe in the secret, which, which ultimately is the law of attraction that you stated out loud, get clear on what it is you want. He said, gene, what are your goals? Two years, two goals. What are they? I said we'll break every record of every sales division. And at the time, I didn't know, he had 11 sales divisions.

I didn't know that. Just, I just said what break every record in every division and I, in a, you said in your second one, I said, I want to be your opening speaker. He goes, excuse me. I said, I want to be on the stage. And he goes, are you a professional speaker? I said, no, but I know a little bit about speaking.

He said, okay, thank you. And we were done now. I w w. Part of my career at gateway was building out sales training. After I'd become a manager, then a director I had been just, there's, I would teach new sellers there's steps to the sales process and on an inbound phone call from somebody calling from a magazine there, there were steps and flows that if you followed the flows, it would lead you to the outcome.

And that's, that is absolutely true today. My button says sales edge is teaching how to go win, hunt, and win the million dollar deals. But it doesn't mean you can't use that stuff to win a mortgage customer, to have them choose you versus the multiple other options they have, or have them choose you as their real estate agent versus the multiple other options they have.

You got to do, if you have a premium price, you got to have a premium story and a premium sales process. So I. Built the first sales training manual at gateway. And one of the things that, sometimes this law of attraction kicks in a fax, came in a random fax, came in from the Zig Ziglar headquarters and it said, zigs, inviting, whatever it is, just some random spam facts, totally new Isaac fan and said, Hey, we just got a fax from the Zig Ziglar corporation.

And what is it? The born to win seminar. You were because you were born to win Mike. All right. So I take it to my boss and I said, can I go to this seminar because I want to learn how to set goals so I can teach everybody how to set goals. He said, done deal. It was at that point, I signed up for $199, a lot of money.

It's a lot of money now. And in 1993, it was a lot more money, probably like spending two grand and the company paid for it. But I learned the art of the upsell. I got a phone call and they said, Hey, I see you're coming to see Zig Ziglar and Oh, you're going to love it. And they said, by chance, are you going to be speaking in public?

And I'm like, well, yeah, I am the new director of training. And they said do you know how to speak? And I'm like, I don't know. I guess I never thought about that. And they said we got good news. One spot just opened in zigs doing an extra seminar on that same week. Called effective business presentation skills.

What do you think? I'm like, sign me up. I'm in, I went there for the goal setting retreat, which was amazing, but what I came out of it was, [00:25:00] I got trained on public speaking, the science, the art language patterns, humor, how to speed up, how to slow down, how to eliminate the , which you notice on this call. I don't think I've said the word.

Once that's technique talking my friends. I got that training. And the beautiful thing happened was our Salesforce started to grow. So I was training every day, sometimes three or four times a day. I'd have five people in a room from one team I'd go to the next room. There'd be another five, 10, 15. I spoke three to four times almost every single day for two and a half years.

We opened another sales site in salt Lake city. We opened a sales site in Japan. I took those learnings that I got from the best in the world at that time Zig and some say the best ever right. Applied it to my passion of selling that led me down the road to be able to say to Tony, with confidence, I want to be your opening speaker.

Tony never had a chance to see me speak except that every six months we do executive team reviews. So each executive would get up and do a report out on how they're. Group or their division was doing, I had sales. How do we perform versus target? How did we perform versus last year? What is our expected growth for the next six months?

What are our issues and challenges? What are our breakthroughs? I knew that in that little forum of me and my eight or nine peers, legal counting, finance, HR executive, International, they all had to do a report, but I knew that would be the only time Tony would actually see me speak. So I took this stuff syrup.

Most people just worked on their presentation slides and they're all pretty. I did that, but I practice that thing over and over and I practiced the right body language. I practiced not using almond. I practice work in the room. Now this was a tiny conference room I'm talking like I wasn't on some stage.

It was right after that. He said kid, you're ready. I'm like, I'm ready for what I'm going to have you go on tomorrow, 10 minutes, see how you do, what am I going to talk about? See this new product. I want you to go pitch this product. And that was my first indoctrination in Los Angeles. 4,500 people. And I was going out on stage now.

I'm not just going out on any stage and going out as the other guy. And if you're a long ways away, I have dark hair and long ways away I look tall, but I'd see people like, Oh my God, Tony's better. Who's that right? All this limiting beliefs in like, Oh my God, am I good enough? Am I worthy?

Yeah. What did they call it? The imposter syndrome.  As much as it could that I've ever experienced, I'm not worthy. I can't believe I'm doing this 4,500 people. What happened, Chris is everything that I had soaked up and learned in personal development and disciplines and habits and rituals that I had followed.

Every bit of it kicked in. I wasn't perfect by any stretch. In fact, I was far from that. What I would say though, is the body was right. The gestures were right. I understood how to work the stage. I understood how to look up at the people up and the people down and everybody on the side. After I got done, I got about a page of feedback.

He watched it. I'm like, Oh my God, I've written feedback from Tony fricking Robbins. And he said, okay, do this, do that. When you say this, you've got to pause. You got to wait for people to laugh. Don't just jump right out of your joke. When you hit your line, you walk three steps, then you wait. Like the feedback was impeccable.

And he said, okay, tomorrow on Sunday, you're going back out. And I want you to talk about this. I got a one page script that I had all night to memorize. Remember, I'm running the sales teams during the day. I'm not just whistling Dixie, at the seminar, I've got people all over the place and not just stuff that breaks down or goes wrong or some forms don't show up.

I got to be the guy getting all that stuff. Ready to go. I memorized it. And I stayed up literally all night in my room by myself, walking through it, practicing, looking at his notes. And that led to a month later when we're in London and Tony was having some voice vocal issues. If you followed his career, this is when they were about at their worst.

And he had another seminar in Colorado Springs in a month. And I remember him calling me in and he could barely speak. This is after three days of 14 hour days. And he said, I want you to do day two that Saturday morning I go, what do you mean day two? And he goes, you're going to do the first four hours.

He goes, that'll allow me to sleep and allow me to rest my voice. He goes, I'm going to have the transcript of what we just did today sent to you. He goes, can you do it? And what do you say? Ah, let me think about it. Yeah, you were ready. Oh, I say, hell yes. 

Chris Suarez: [00:29:49] That's a really valuable question that he asked you day one, two goals, two years. What are your two goals for two years? And you knew them, . And every time you got in [00:30:00] front of Tony, like you, you were auditioning for your two goals two years because  you framed it as you speak it into existence, but you didn't speak it.

I mean, you spoke it into existence and then you acted it into existence as well. And I think that's a valuable lesson for us to realize that, yeah, this is what I want, but if we don't act that way, We don't do the work that it takes to get there every time you have that opportunity. Every time you spoke, you were speaking to 4,500, even though as a board room of 11 people.

And I think that's a massive takeaway for us that once we speak it into existence, we have to act it into existence. And you had years of past training that you then executed every time you had the opportunity to. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:30:48] Yeah, brother. And here's what here's that got me to the opportunity. And I had 30 days to memorize a 77 page script.

And I'm just saying, memorize a script, hit the high points word for word memorization is what I was told at 30 days. Now, mind you, I had a full-time job. I had a five-year-old child that, you know, w if you have your parent, you know, so I would spend time with my child. I put him to bed.

I'd backed the cars out of the garage. I'd shut the garage door. And I would pretend the wall was my audience. And I perform that script every night without missing one night

 The law of attraction teaches us that getting clear on what you want is the first step. Not, I want to make more money, but I want to make an exact amount and stretch yourself. Not, I want to lose some weight, but what do you want your body to look like? So moving towards exactly what it is you want and you speak it into existence.

Now there's all sorts of cosmic, whatever, study John Asser, AF study neuroplasticity study. Neuro-linguistic programming that we'll say, and then there's certain things like, I don't need to know how the hot dogs made. I know they're good when I eat them. And sometimes I don't want to know how they're made, right.

The law of attraction can be looked at the same way. I don't need to figure out the physics. And how, thoughts are things and all that stuff. But if I hear enough people doing it, that I'm going to be that and I'm, they're successful. And I know they're successful that I'm going to follow what they do, and they all do the same thing.

They get clear on what it is they want, they know why it's important, so they don't quit when things get hard. And then biggest lesson is they will get hard. That's where most people quit. And then action. You, do you do the work. 

Chris Suarez: [00:32:37] I think if we go down the science path of it, the work of Anders, Ericsson and now actually a lot of what Angela Duckworth is driving towards it as, as he was her mentor is this person and this situation and yes, it's not one or the other.

It's both, but in the situation that we put ourselves in place ourselves in our find for ourselves is dramatically. At times more impactful than where we came from. If we get stuck with who we were, who we are today, versus the situation or the environment that we place ourselves in, man we're limiting our opportunity and you're up.

You're a perfect example of that. Like where you are today versus where you were. Is some people would say different human. No, it's the same human differences, but you created that or found that situation. It's remarkable. It's remarkable. The journey. Now I have a question for you because I'm.

That's how I know you. I know you in the personal development space, I know you from then going and launching and building a personal growth brand and company, growth smart, and your book and all of that. And yet if you Google right gene McNaughton, all of a sudden, there's a engineering company.

And I thought, Oh no, that's a must be a different guy. Like, 

Gene McNaughton: [00:33:59] what are you doing now? Okay. So all listeners, you know, as Chris continues to do these podcasts, you know, today is what is it? May 4th, 2021. After leaving Tony Robbins, I realized that I got the entrepreneur bug and I started working with a guy named John

He was in the movie, the secret. And he's written four New York times best sellers. I mean, the guy is a superb success story and he's a superhuman. He's a good dude. Like you and I are talking Chris right now, just bantering, be just like talking to ask, except he's just at a different level than me.

And he just, he said, , it is almost impossible to get mega wealthy working for somebody else. Somebody else if you work for somebody else and I'm not judging that, but if you work for somebody else, they're going to pay you just enough. Right. They're not going to, people are notorious for saying, yeah, I way overpaid.

My employees said almost nobody never. Right. Cause they gotta run a business. They got a profit and loss [00:35:00] statement and so forth. They got to control. And he said he, he got me to read Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad. So I can understand the psychology of profits over wages, right? Jim Rowan said that profits are better than wages and that if you can learn to create your own situation and then through Kiyosaki and other authors to understand taxes and write-offs and tax planning, and investments.

So I got that bug and I went to work with John as a ref. We started a company called one coach. That went very well and then came to somewhat of an abrupt halt based on some decisions. I didn't agree with John had a board of directors that decided to take the company in a different direction than I, that I wanted to go.

I didn't believe we should become a franchise organization. I believe that we should have sold everything from where we were. So we had a professional disagreement, but it didn't deteriorate our friendship. I said, I need to go. I was introduced to a guy named Chet Holmes. Do you know that name? The the the ultimate sales machine.

And I have never, in my life, met somebody a more sharp business executive than Chad Holmes. I called him in and he said, are you looking for an opportunity? I said, always. And he said this is your lucky day. How'd you like to be president of my consulting firm? And I said, great, who's in it. And he said, just you,

but with that experience in working with Chet, he worked with me. Side-by-side and taught me how to be a great consultant. So he said, we're going to take everything you learned in. Taking the company from a tiny little warehouse in South Dakota to an $11 billion publicly traded company, the everything you learn with Tony Robbins, everything you learned with John ass Raff.

And I'm going to teach you how to execute that in big companies. And he did that now. Sadly, we built a company called business breakthrough international. Eventually I helped Chet partner with Tony and we built a program called business mastery, which Tony still runs today. If you're on you can't help, but see that he does those events.

It is fantastic. And Chet eventually got sick and passed away. Very sad. And I was like, this is it. I was a great number two to Tony. It was a great number two to John ass RAF. I was a great number two to Chet and all of them. I got a chance to watch and model their behaviors to see what they do when they're not on camera, not on stage to see the disciplines and the regiments they follow when nobody's looking or when they think nobody's looking.

These guys are the peak of the personal development world. No then there's others, but you know, being able to like really see these guys and how they behave and how their relationships are and how they treat their body and what they eat and don't drink or eat and don't eat. It was time to carve my own path and that's when growth smart started.

And I'll fast forward with gross, smart, because, over. 11 years, we built a multi-million dollar consulting agency. Now I was able to land accounts, my accounts, where companies like T-Mobile divisions of Panasonic American air filters. I was doing a keynote in LA and it was a free one. I didn't get paid for this, but it was for a charity event.

And I thought, okay. And people had to pay to come in and it was all the Gore towards a great charity. And I remember I was sandwiched in between Jay Abraham, one of the world's greatest marketers of our time and Jack Canfield was after me. So I was that other guy at once again, I'm the other guy and I got up and delivered one of my signature.

My favorite talks, you know, the favorite talks are always when you have something that's unique and different than what everybody says, and it helps people see their situation even better or understand the keys. And it just so happened. There was a about 120 executives. It was $5,000. They had all that money, went to charity, but I was in the bathroom about an hour later and I heard some guy say, Hey, that was a really great talk you gave, and he had this heavy accent.

And I said, thank you. That's really cool. And he goes, I go, what do you do? He goes, I have an engineering firm in out of Finland. And I live in the UK in London. I said, great. And he goes, you think this would work for engineers? And I said let me ask you this. Do you have competition?

Yeah. Do you have competition that undercuts your price and wins deals from you because of price? Yes. Are your sellers responsible for hunting business? Yes. Keeping business, yes. Growing business. Yes. Is this will work for you and that beginning relationship. Now I want to say something, this all stemmed from me getting on stage and teaching something of value.

I didn't ask for an order. I didn't hard clothes. I didn't high ticket program them. I got up and delivered value because it was the right thing to do for the audience. It had greater good because it helped people kids that needed help that blossomed into us deciding to do a two day sales bootcamp in we're the Beatles from [00:40:00] Liverpool.

So I'm like, yeah, I'll go to Liverpool. And kid me hanging out with the Beatles were born or the Beatles started. And that was 2017. I eventually became a full fledged consultant for them. And during that course of time, this engine, ground engineering firm that had offices in China and all over the UK doubled in size.

And as you know, March last year the speaking world. The consulting world, the training world, like a napalm bomb was dropped on that entire industry.  It was wiped out. And it was like webinars in zoom and to get charged, you're not charged.

What are you upselling them to online programs? Selling future pro we didn't know a year ago. We didn't know COVID would last, this long. We didn't know about there would be a lockdown. We didn't know there was going to be death rates like, right. I mean, you didn't know a year ago. But I did what I thought was right after chilling a little bit and laying around and pool and putting on 15 pounds from just eating and exercising.

Cause the gyms were closed and granted, yes, I could have exercised, but I didn't. I started building new content. I thought, you know what? We have to adapt. Time management is different. Now kids are in the house, you're in the house. There's no office to go to. How do you manage time? Better? I started building content.

How do you hunt and prospect when everybody's at home different world?   How do you present a big deal when you're not? What we traditionally knew was you would go onsite. You'd have the buyers table, you'd be in their conference room and do your presentation and close the deal. Critical 

Chris Suarez: [00:41:33] path of sales that you taught for so long.

Just shifted. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:41:37] It shifted the path. Didn't the methodologies at the high level. Didn't change. Everything I teach in the book does instill that's like timeless stuff. Not because I didn't invent 90% of that. It was the best of everything I learned from everybody else. And I packaged it in a, in my way.

And so I said, okay, I got this new content. I'm going to start reaching out to some of my former clients and say, Hey, I got new content. I'd like to come train your team for free. That's how this started. And I did that. I reached out to this company out of Europe, reached out to the CEO, said, Hey, let me do some free sessions.

I'll do China at night, our time. Cause that's morning for them. I'll do you know Finland at this time, I'll do the UK London at this time. And I'll just Sweden at that time. And he's like, what's it going to cost us that I'm not gonna charge you anything. I have new content. I need live bodies, right?

I mean, that's the truth. You need live bodies to really test stuff out. And I said, Oh, I asked, cause I get honest feedback. So we did that. In a month later, he called me and he said that training was great. I appreciate it. Always good to hear from you. As you know, we doubled in sales during your time.

And he said, I'm ready to pull the trigger on launching in the United States. And I said, great, how can I help you? He said, I want you to run it, or you want me to do what? Because I want you to build the company because you know how to build the company. And the truth is I did. But in most cases, I consult at 159 companies and all of them were successful.

You couldn't call one of the 159, the VP, the EVP, or the owner. And they wouldn't have said they got their money's worth and more in working with myself and my team, the marketing team, the salesforce.com team. And I'm like, okay, how would this work? Now, once I started realizing that, when is the best time to start a company, one is when there's significant demand in the market.

When there is a problem that needs to be solved, that is not getting fully solved by the available options. Two is when you have a unique offering to bring to that product or bring to that marketplace. And three is when you know it works. And I had gotten this, these tidbits. I know that seems simple, but when you really put it together, I did an interview with gene Simmons in 2019, and he was talking about not rock and roll, but how he built his half billion dollar fortune.

He's a businessman and we know him as gene Simmons of kiss, but he's a businessman. And he said, right place, right time, right product. That's when you start a business. And I started doing the math and we worked out a deal. And lo and behold, on October 23rd, I signed the deal and I'm president of geo bear USA, geo bears, a grounded improvement company.

And those of you that. Are in real estate and mortgage, you know, the importance of this, let's say, for example, you got a deal. This ready to be sold mortgage. Person's going to make money. The buyer's going to be happy because they're going to sell the sellers are going to be happy because they're going to buy.

You got in most cases, two real estate agents that are going to make a commission everybody's in it to win it. The inspector comes in and says, you got a big crack in that foundation. What would you do? So you're going to scramble and find now what happens is now what I'm seeing to be true is there's a lot of older methodologies push piers, dig it out and all this stuff, it screws up your lawn.

It kills your flowers. [00:45:00] They got big trucks all over your yard. This company has a non-invasive process is completely environmentally friendly. And instead of having to dig everything up, they literally inject this resin. It's called geopolymer into the ground and it's 10 times stronger than concrete expands and can literally lift the building.

So when you got those cracks on your walls, you got the cracks in the foundation. It's a result. Not because it was poorly built, it was result of the soil moving. And if you, regardless of where you are, the soil or always moves, but if you're on a coast, California, Where you are Florida, where they have sinkholes, that's all a result of the earth.

Moving the earth will always move. This will always be a problem. So I'm like gene Simmons in the back of my voice going my time. Right. Place problem in the market that needs to be solved, not enough people able to solve it. That's the place to be. So on October 23rd, I became the president of geo bear USA and we improve the ground that you live and work on.

You 

Chris Suarez: [00:46:07] know, it's wild genius. What I, the message there is oftentimes we get really hung up. If our space is being disrupted at the business that we've been in is going away. Or, and the fact is if we do the work upfront, if we focus on personal development, if we're like all day, every day of our life, where we're auditioning for the future, right?

Our future self, our future opportunities. And I love that you have span multiple industries and being highly successful in multiple industries across multiple genres across, you need to know different things in each one of those, but going back to the kid in the car, listening to the tapes, developing self.

Like those same, that same premise, the same what you call as principles applied over time. Allow us to create outcomes over time. I wrote that down from you early, and I think you're a perfect demonstration of using that across now, multiple industries. And when I went with wild is when I saw that a lot.

I thought now, like I said, like different gene. Nope, same gene, right? Same person, different opportunity, because you've always developed self. And I think that's a, it's a phenomenal message for all of us here. From a person who has lived and experienced personal development, which has led to experience experiential growth and experiential living.

For sure. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:47:34] I'm going to speak this into existence. We are going to build a multi-million dollar company from scratch. Now I have the advantage of some startup capital, right? You gotta have money. You gotta buy equipment and pay salaries. Gotta hire people in an industry that I really knew. Almost nothing about.

I'm not an engineer by trade. I'm not a civil engineer. I'm not a technician that can operate this giant machinery or do soil investigations. But I am a businessman. And I see the opportunity as there. So I'm speaking into an existence that in five years after I built a $10 million company, I'll write another book and I'll come back on Chris's podcast.

And talk about how it happened. Now, let me add something. It is not been easy. I've had many unexpected surprises. I've had some sleepless nights. I've had some waking up, can't go back to sleep. I have so many moving parts that from October 23rd, when we said, okay, what kind of company we're going to be as Corp C Corp, LLC.

What about a parent company in Delaware? But like everything from starting with. We're committed. That was the first step to getting every stitch of it done, building HR systems, building job postings, building comp structures, health benefits, 401k payroll, finance expense control technology. I'm in a building right now.

And I'm going to show this video. It's almost nothing in here at this stage, but we've got our building. All of our equipment arrives. And this is the ultimate test. So this podcast audience, if you've listened this far great job, by the way, hopefully we've done a good job of teaching and entertaining a little bit, but you can learn through these experiences and whether it's Chris or myself, listened to the voices.

Here's my rule of thumb. If more than two people recommend, I see a movie, I go see the movie. If more than two, two people recommend, I read a book, I read a book. And by the way Duckworth's book mindset. One of the best that you can read it. You referenced that, but you didn't dive deep. And I'm like, this dude reads Suarez reads.

Good job, brother. 

Chris Suarez: [00:49:47] Yeah. It's how we grow. Right. It's how we grow. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:49:50] But it here's what I'd say is it's all out there and the marketplace doesn't care about your background or if you had an easy childhood or a hard [00:50:00] childhood, if you were poor or rich growing up the color of your skin and the nature of your sexual identity, the marketplace only cares when you deliver value to it.

And the marketplace always rewards you for delivering value. And if you're in that mindset, No, I would love a, get rich, quick scheme that worked. I just haven't seen it. I haven't experienced it. I haven't like just miss this or just miss that maybe Bitcoin. But it's so confusing. I just disliked didn't I left it alone, but I'm in it now, but I'm just saying that the, what is it?

The, you know, slow and steady wins the race, man. Yep. And if you're a young study, this word compounding interest. 

Chris Suarez: [00:50:45] We teach it. You're right. You're right. 

Gene McNaughton: [00:50:48] Studying that money. I know Chris would go on forever 

Chris Suarez: [00:50:51] and I want to be respectful of your time. And family's time as well. But I appreciate you spending some time with our community.

There's a lot to learn and I've appreciate much of your journey and what we've learned in that journey to where it brings us today. And here's what I love. There's no end right there like today, right? October of last year, brand new beginning. Right? Completely different playing field, bringing everything you've learned to this point.

But life is about beginnings as well. And right. As long as we're learning you spoke some stuff into existence. We're going to check in and make sure that happens as well. Love of love the time that you spent with us. I appreciate you being willing to pour into our 

Gene McNaughton: [00:51:33] community as well.