Episode 1: How To Think Your Way To $66M

Dan Henry (00:00:09):
So welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of the, how to think podcast, the show where we break down the inner workings of the human mind and learn how to think like successful people so that we can achieve anything in business or in life by changing the way we think, Eric, how you doing, man?

Eric Toz (00:00:30):
So good. I’m so happy to be here. Been waiting for a couple months now for this.

Dan Henry (00:00:33):
So it’d be honest if it were friends. So if it wasn’t you, that was here for the first episode, I’d probably be, you know, pretty nervous right now, because last night I did this Instagram story and I was like, I’m gonna research, like all these world-class like podcasters and interviewers and try to try to be a good podcast or in the next two hours.
Eric Toz (00:00:55):
I think by the end of it will, you’ll be doing good.
Dan Henry (00:00:58):
Yeah. I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure it out. But I’m glad I’m, I’m glad I have a good friend on to start out.
Eric Toz (00:01:02):
Take it easy, slow and steady.
Dan Henry (00:01:04):
I’m not much for intros, but you built $66 million business. You’ve done about a hundred million in sales, selling customizable jewelry online, and you started it by sleeping. You were sleeping and you were in Brooklyn, sleeping on a mattress. A whole bunch of crazy stuff went down and, and now you’re here. And before we get into that, I just, I just want to say, like how, how would your parents describe what you do?

Eric Toz (00:01:32):
I think they would describe me as somebody who is always willing to burn all of the ships for me, like, you know, I had a pretty tough childhood. I think a lot of entrepreneurs did that provides an initial chip for them. They’re off at whatever their circumstance or their parents, or just something bad happened to their health. And so they have this huge chip and for me, like there was never a plan B, like I was, I felt like I was going to be successful no matter what, if it wasn’t like this thing that I’m currently doing, it was going to be something else. And so maybe not even about the money so much, but just such a strong desire to be successful in whatever

Dan Henry (00:02:16):
It was. What gave you that chip? Because I know it gave me the chip that I had. I had a bunch of people who I would, I was delivering pizza and I would be like, oh, I’m going to, I’m going to build a business one day and they’d be like, shut up, like the delivery, you know? I mean, what, what was, what gave you that chip on your shoulder?

Eric Toz (00:02:32):
Well, a big part of it was my family has been very entrepreneurial. Like my grandfather, he actually, he had a factory in Massachusetts, literally called package machinery. This is like your old school factory, literally making like boxes and like packaging and stuff like that. And he, he sold that business. He was pretty successful. And then my dad growing up, we had a power sports business. So we were a family business. We sold jet-skis, we sold, we sold ATVs, like all these toys we had, like each of us three kids had our own everything. And then we had a few bad winters in a row where there was no snow up in New Hampshire where I’m from. And the business ended up going bankrupt. And so bankruptcy, you know, 30 years ago it was a lot different than now. Yeah, it was a true like seven years to repair your credit.

Eric Toz (00:03:22):
And so, you know, my dad, he went from being this entrepreneur to being like a Knight Security Watchman. Like I literally remember him coming home with like, you know, eggs and breakfast for us all after he was working all night at like a hotel. So I had no idea what was going on at the time. Had no idea what happened, how old were you? I was like five, like five, six, and all three of us. We were me and my brother, sister. We were like three, four or five, something like that. So yeah, that was really difficult. I was the poor kid at school. I was on free lunch. You know, I remember Christmas, like three Christmases in a row. I got like the same thing, which was this little, like a Hot Wheels set. And I’m like, oh, another Hot Wheels again, but we couldn’t like afford anything.

Eric Toz (00:04:07):
So for me you know, going through puberty in high school at that point, I kind of wanted to latch onto something I could feel good about. And for me, it was sports at the time. So I threw myself into that completely. I would train for football, like during the summers, literally till like two, three in the morning, I’d be doing suicides and doing squats and stuff like that. And I had very good influences at the time. Like I had really, really great mentors. I had my football coach. I still can hear him yelling in my ear to this day saying, you know, stop feeling, sorry for yourself, stuff like that. So those were really good motivators at the beginning. And I had been influenced a number of times by some very important people not just in sports, but like later in business too.

Dan Henry (00:04:55):
So, so let me ask you this when you, cause I’ve seen, you’ve taken me to your warehouse in it’s within the St. Petersburg city limits. And you, you took me there and it was super impressive. I mean, it’s this gigantic it’s like, you wouldn’t even know it was there. You would not know it was there. You would not know that this building randomly in this industrial part of town is on a hundred million dollars in fricking e-commerce you know, and so you take me there and you’ve got these machines, let’s see if we can get it, maybe Brandon can get a picture of your, of your thing up. And I can hear myself like a delay in, in my headphones a little bit, Brandon, I don’t know if you’ve got the live stream going or not, but there’s a picture of, of your, and how many people do you have working there?

Eric Toz (00:05:53):
Currently, we have 70 full-time employees. Yeah. Seven zero, I think during, during peak Q4, we’ll have about 200 in the US and then we have an Amsterdam factory

Dan Henry (00:06:05):
Setting up now. So, so this right here is your, this is your warehouse. Okay. And I mean, that’s, that’s pretty big and it’s actually bigger than that. That’s just one section of it. And then you have another one where you do media, but I remember being in there, it was just like last week and yeah, zoom in a little bit, Brandon, like, look at that, look at all those people. So I want to understand the business model, because as far as I know it, you, you, you know, you have this company called shine on. Yup. And you, and you got to correct me if I’m wrong. Cause we’ve, we’ve been pretty stoned sometimes when we were talking about this, actually funny before I get into this funny story we met at this, this mastermind it was founders mastermind in downtown St. Pete. And we you had this you, you had this little segue thing that you were riding around on all, all through St.

Dan Henry (00:07:00):
Pete, that little, the one wheel, the one wheel. Yeah. And I remember I think you wrote it over to my penthouse here in downtown, and we got stone and just talk business for like three, four hours. It was amazing my condo. And it was a great conversation. And you told me and I definitely want to talk about this. Cause you, you told me about, you know, a lot of people say, oh, read this book and read that book. And you told me about the book, how to win friends and influence people, which I think a lot of people I think a lot of people say, Hey, read this book and people go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s cool. I’ll read that book, but they don’t actually read it. And they don’t actually put it into practice. And I re I noticed some things when we were, we were talking like, you would be like, oh, I’m sorry for interrupting. And you, you just said certain things. And I’m like, I really like this guy, like what the, what the, what is going on? You know? And I said to you, I was like, why are you so fricking likable? And you told me, you cheater that you read the book, how to win friends and influence people. And you like went hardcore on it. And you just, you, how much does that help you network and get through business and, and, and just in progress in your career.

Eric Toz (00:08:12):
Yeah. So I think, I think there are certain things you can learn that are timeless, right? There are certain principles that are timeless. And I think to be a good business person in the 1930s, when that book, how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie was written you know, you couldn’t hide behind email, then you couldn’t hide behind social media. Like if you, if you wanted to conduct business, you had to like, look people in the eye, you had to shake their hand. You had to like, keep your word. You know, these are like old-school fundamentals. And so I think it actually be really helpful if entrepreneurs more entrepreneurs read that book today because it’s really head-slappingly simple. Lee’s simple things that he says where you’re like, oh my God, I shouldn’t have, I should have been doing this my whole, my whole life, like simple stuff. Like the sweetest, the sweetest word to somebody as their first name. So try to use their first name as much as possible because they immediately perk up. Right. You know,

Dan Henry (00:09:06):
Eric. Yeah. It makes me feel good. It does. And you know, when I read that, but I literally, because when you told me that it, it stuck with me and I’ve, I’ve read a little bit of the book, but I actually went out, I bought the book and I read it and I read it all the way through. And then I listened to the whole audiobook all the way through it. And then I downloaded the cheat sheet and I might’ve had one. I’m not going to lie. It’s hard. It is super hard. Like some of this stuff is just hard to remember and hard to implement, and it’s sort of like, you have to take. And when you first read it, you really feel like a Dick. At least I did, I read this and I’m like, well, I’m missing a lot of this. Like my first reaction was I must be a total Dick because I’m just reading all these things that we forget on a daily basis, you know, like not interrupting people, using their first names, smiling, you know, just, just, just something as simple as smiling

Eric Toz (00:09:58):
With a pleasant tone.

Dan Henry (00:10:01):
That’s the whole chapter on that, the whole chapter on that. And you dive deep into it. And I think in business and, and not even business, but in life, you, I mean, I’ll give you an example. I was downtown. And I ran into somebody who was had actually followed me for some time and bought some of my products and stuff. And he had a friend who’s this like high, high level, you know, manages billions of dollars in real estate. And I was just, you know, very nice to them. And I, I mean, anybody could have been any, any one of a thousand ways with their personality. And I was just trying to be very nice. And I noticed that his, his wife was a super, super sweet woman. And I remembered the book where it said, you know, think about what appeals to them, you know, think about w what brings value to them and how to appeal to them.

Dan Henry (00:10:50):
And I noticed that she wanted to talk about like cooking and making food for people. And that was like really important to her. And so I had a conversation with her about that, and I learned a lot about a lot of food that I didn’t know. And then we ended up getting invited to their penthouse, which is actually four penthouses that they bought at the top of I forget which building, but it’s, I think it’s park shore. And they combined all four penthouses into one mega penthouse. Jesus. Yeah. It was you. And I learned so much about real estate and all that, and that was just, I

Eric Toz (00:11:23):
Think it was from the, you conducted because of the cooking

Dan Henry (00:11:26):
Conversations, because she invited, she invited us over for breakfast. She wanted to cook for us. So, yeah. So like, I mean, we didn’t get an invite before that. And then, I mean, or maybe he, he would have invited us anyway, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, is that, you know, sometimes I think we, we get wrapped up in all the problems in life. And so we’re so focused on those problems and thinking about those problems, that when we go and all these differences in life, our problems are on our mind. And it’s not that we’re not, not nice people, but we don’t take the time to articulate how nice and how genuine we are, because we’re just so drowning in our own world of negativity and all the stuff we have to do. And I think that that book just gives it a great reminder to how to bring that to the surface.

Eric Toz (00:12:11):
Yeah, totally. And there’s a whole chapter, literally just on listening. And at the end, he tells a story about how he had like an hour-long conversation with a woman on a couch. And he may be said like five words. And he was just asking questions, maybe like five or six questions. And she was talking the whole time, like, blah, blah, blah. I mean, he was into it. But at, at the end she was like, oh, you’re such a good conversationalist. And he was like, I haven’t said anything, but he just allowed her to sort of that. And just being there, like just holding space, I think for people can be really beneficial because everybody, especially in our business, our line of business, they just want to talk about what they’re doing, like all the time and what they’re currently up to.

Dan Henry (00:12:58):
Right. I, I do notice how did, and how do you think those tactics and that paradigm shift of how to interact with other humans? How do you think that differs between dealing with employees and dealing with just like other entrepreneurs, other, other people in your life that, that you don’t pay?

Eric Toz (00:13:17):
I think the principles are, are the same, right? Like a mentor of mine, he’s the co-founder of Zappos. His name is Fred Mossler and he, he treats his vendors the exact same way that he treats his employees and he treats people in the Las Vegas community the same way he treats vendors and, and they’ll actually have vendor parties. They’ll fly in their vendors once a year and have like a huge mega blowout party and something awesome that he told me was like friends, this concept of friends first. Like literally if you, if you just try to become friends first, all right. You know what they’re doing a little bit, maybe not a hundred percent, but just focus on being friends first and really solidifying that. And then the business will come naturally. If, you know, if what they’re doing is, is good. But you should be able to kind of know that ahead of time. So you don’t have to worry so much about the business. Just kind of relax and see how you connect on different things.

Dan Henry (00:14:15):
And a lot of people, they try to create opportunities and that that’s sort of, I mean, it’s cool, but when you’re networking and you’re trying to make connections, a lot of times you just have to let opportunities come to you. And I think that if you try to create opportunities, you will go into meeting people in a disingenuous way. Cause you always have an agenda going in. I mean, if you meet somebody that is a player, right. Something is at, at some point is going to come of that. Something, at some point you don’t know what it is right now, but at some

Eric Toz (00:14:49):
Point and be like an A-player. Yeah. I mean,

Dan Henry (00:14:52):
I mean, it could be, it could be somebody that becomes an, a player. It could be somebody that’s already an a player. It could be somebody that has done something that you respect. It could be a huge person in the industry. It doesn’t matter. But the point is is if you try to go into that relationship thinking, what am I going to get out of this from the beginning, it’s just going to, it’s not going to be genuine. And if you go in and you just become friends and let the opportunity come to you, I think it’s a lot better. Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:15:16):
Yeah. I have a firsthand example of this recently. I think we did a little bit of that also, my friend will, who, you know, who lives downtown here? He’s just a really interesting guy. I just like him a lot. He does some cool things in skincare and in like NFTs. Right. And so I knew, I knew when I first started getting to know him, like there immediately there wasn’t going to be any way where we do business together. And I was okay with that. Cause I didn’t care. I just loved what he was doing on his own stuff. And I just wanted to be friends with them, but you know, over the past week or so, I’ve had an idea where I was like, holy will, would actually be like the perfect partner on this. And so you can’t like expect those things to happen. It’s just sort of, you know the way is of the universe sometimes if you have if you established friends first. Yeah,

Dan Henry (00:16:05):
Absolutely. I, I totally, totally, totally agree. So let me, let me just go back to this mattress that you were sleeping on. And you don’t have to go deep on mattress pizza boy. Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:16:17):
My office is your pizza.

Dan Henry (00:16:18):
I see, I, you know, I actually I’m a mattress sleeper, every time I move into a new place, doesn’t matter what my financial situation is. I always end up sleeping on a mattress for two months. Cause I can’t find, I can’t pick out what bed I want, you know, but I do like sleeping on a mattress, surrounded by nice walls versus the walls I used to have around, which were crumbling. But you know, let me ask you this. You had some stuff happen, you know, you, you, you took on some venture capital. You don’t have, I mean, you can get into as much in this as you want, but you had some, some bad stuff happen and you basically had to sort of start over. Would that be

Eric Toz (00:17:00):
With on yeah. So you know, starting, excuse me one second.

Dan Henry (00:17:11):
So polite. Is that in the book too?

Eric Toz (00:17:15):
I’m doing it for the listeners.

Dan Henry (00:17:16):
That’s awesome, man. So, so, so what, what happened? They’re like, well, whatever you want do.

Eric Toz (00:17:22):
Yeah. So I like to say I’m a two-time venture capital refugee. So the, for the first time was when I was at CustomMade.Com. We ended up raising about $25 million. Google was our investor, like all the top Silicon Valley investors. And we were basically you know, we were basically a high-end Etsy average order value, like a thousand bucks. But that it was a great idea. The business, it didn’t work. At scale, we were burning a million dollars a month. And so it was just a really

Dan Henry (00:17:56):
Burning a million dollars a month, whatever. I mean,

Eric Toz (00:17:58):
We were losing a million dollars a month just because of our overhead. And when you raise that much money, you’re actually encouraged by all of your investors. Like, dude, we gotta, we gotta spend this as fast as possible because they either want it to pop in two to four years or they want you to, they don’t want you to be the walking dead indefinitely. They would rather have you die or, or crush it quickly time value of money. But yeah, so I saw, you know, some of the advantages and pitfalls of raising that much money. You know, you lose a lot of control of your company, you have bored. And so when I started Shine On, you know, I didn’t have any money either. So when I couldn’t even pay myself, really, I actually started it on unemployment, which is honestly, that’s the best trick.

Eric Toz (00:18:45):
If you want to start a company, try to get fired, ask your company, Hey, can you please fire me instead of leaving? Cause then you can get unemployment and you can get it for like nine months. So I was actually like, I went to Germany, I was like doing my unemployment forms from Germany. And the whole time I was taking literally all the money from the unemployment and putting it into shine on at the very beginning. Wow. Then that money ran out. And then I was, I was selling motorcycle rings to motorcycle clubs because I had this jewelry production knowledge. And I was like, how can I sell to a lot of people very quickly? So I made rings for like six or seven motorcycle clubs and that’s how I paid my rent after the unemployment money ran out.

Dan Henry (00:19:24):
Did you have a machine for that or did you see all the machines you have right now, but what did you, what did you have that?

Eric Toz (00:19:30):
So at that time, so I had a friend who had a massive factory in Thailand in Bangkok. And so the first version of shine on was, you know, we would, us a, a marketer would give us their idea for a piece of jewelry, like a ring or a necklace. We would actually do a 3d render. It looked like an, a photo. It looked realistic. Can you give me an example? Yeah, if you actually just Google scooter ring, like on on Google something I designed it’s like, it looks like a Vesper. Okay. So like Vespas scootering

Dan Henry (00:20:01):
Now. I feel like an idiot, cause I don’t know what a Vesta

Eric Toz (00:20:03):
Is. Just like a stallion scooter.

Dan Henry (00:20:06):
Oh, okay. Okay. Actually, do you want, [inaudible] we’ll talk about funny scooter story in a few minutes. You reminded me, do you remember what happened to me when I met Maura?

Eric Toz (00:20:17):
No.

Dan Henry (00:20:17):
You all, you don’t remember that. I’ll just tell it real quick. Cause Brandon’s going to bring up, Brandon’s gonna bring up a picture of this example, but you introduced me to Mara Glazer, who I ended up hiring to do some copywriting for how to think. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I remember I got that segue to go downtown and so I, I Google like how to change, make it go faster. Cause it was only going 15 miles an hour. And I got it to to a different mode where it went 25 miles an hour and right. So, but here’s just a crazy thing about how, how, how thoughts can create reality is I’m driving down the road or scooting or whatever. And I think to myself, how bad would this suck if I totally wiped out right now? And five seconds later, I went to scratch my head, which I don’t know why I did that. And I went over the top of it, wiped out. My knee was bloody. My hand was all messed up. I was going

Eric Toz (00:21:10):
25

Dan Henry (00:21:11):
Fast. Yeah. And I don’t even know how I, and so I, I literally like the scooters all bent and I end up scooting down to beach drive and meeting Maura for the first time and right after, and I’m full of blood. And my, my stuff’s ripped, like my jeans are ripped up and I sit down and I’m like, instead of saying, hi, how you doing? I’m Dan Henry. I had to explain to her why it looked like I just got to fight.

Eric Toz (00:21:34):
And she probably liked it like, well, this guy’s edgy.

Dan Henry (00:21:39):
He still showed up, you know? But that just reminded me about how, like when you think of something you can like create the situation to happen. But Brandon, do you have that? Do you have that? There it is. Okay. So, so click on this.

Eric Toz (00:21:53):
This was the first, the first thing I ever designed for Shine On. So I was the first seller. I was the first, I was the first CS agent website, designer, jewelry designer, marketer. I was packing the jewelry myself like the whole first year. But anyway, what happened was yeah, this is how I kind of got started with it. I would, I would work with a marketer. I would make something custom and then I, they would actually put that on their store that just a render. So there’s no inventory. And then we would take all the orders each week and I would put it in an Excel sheet and then I would send it to my friend in Thailand who ran a factory there. He makes all of David Yurmans jewelry. If you’ve heard of that brand high-quality men’s men’s jewelry. And so, yeah, that was great.

Dan Henry (00:22:39):
I’m going to stay silent. So I don’t have to admit that I don’t know what that is, but

Eric Toz (00:22:42):
There’s not a lot of guys do. But yeah, that was the first version of shine on. So I went from this like a motorcycle rings to actually designing some stuff myself. And then what happened was you know, Teespring came out, Teespring is like print on demand t-shirts and it was one of the first things Facebook marketers sold. There, I know a ton of guys who were millionaires a couple of guys, even in this area who made millions selling t-shirts there. And I had this jewelry knowledge. And so I was like, man, I, I love working with these marketers. We could really scale, I could scale this up much more quickly if I started working with Facebook marketers. And so luckily, you know, I had the prior experience from custom made which was, you know, it was still a success. Like it didn’t work out, but we still raised a lot of money. We made a lot of noise and there was some trust there just from me being around that environment. And so I raised about a million bucks in venture capital and then immediately after actually hired Teespring’s head of sales and Teespring’s head of marketing. And that’s how the initial Shine On got started. Wow. And they, then they brought all the sellers over

Dan Henry (00:23:47):
Now, did you, I know that you raise capital and then something went wrong, and then did you have to raise capital again?

Eric Toz (00:23:55):
What happened? Was it wasn’t that anything went wrong per se? It’s just that we’re kept pretty capital intensive business. A million bucks is not that much money if you want to build something large-scale. But what happened was we were it took four to five weeks for these items to be made in Thailand and then sent back to us where we would repackage it and then ship it to the customer. So these items sold super well. And we did over 5,000 various 3d designs and we did about five, 6 million in sales that first year. But what happened was we were getting a lot of chargebacks because of the weight. People didn’t want to wait that long. They didn’t trust it, even though the quality was super good. But no matter how many did it take, it took like four to five weeks after your purchase. So buyers are, you know, I think their limits around two, three weeks for reordering, they get pissy, they get antsy. So we started getting a lot of chargebacks and because we, we pay the sellers out like next day on their commissions or when it chips we would get these chargebacks after the fact.

Dan Henry (00:25:03):
So, so Jay, just to get the business model, right, you partner with people who want to sell their own personalized jewelry and you make the jewelry, and you ship. So it’s like drop shipping and I believe you also give them the education on how to promote their products and get it out, get it out into the,

Eric Toz (00:25:22):
Yeah. So fast forward to today. I mean anyway, we, we, there was, we were running out of cash and at one point I said, never again, am I going to not make something myself? Okay. So I was like, I want the, I want to own the entire supply chain. Right, right.

Dan Henry (00:25:38):
And just so I’m clear, I just want to be sure I’m clear. That was because they were, it took too long. Right.

Eric Toz (00:25:42):
Just cause it took too long. That was okay. Got it. You literally the only reward to interrupt. And then there’s, and then there’s another thing about, you know, having more control of your margins, right. Being able to provide better customer service for everybody. But yeah, fast forward to today, I mean, we started in jewelry but we’re, you know, we’re an on-demand factory that we, we prototype, we develop and we sell ourselves viral gift products. So jewelry, wallets, watches, all personalized. And then what we do is we launched them through what we call an IPO process, initial product offering. So we’ll say, Hey sellers, we got this new like wallet. That’s personalized. You know, we, we sold like 500 grand in our initial tasks. And then we literally give away the farm. Like, here’s exactly how we’re doing it. And boom, now it’s live in your app and it’s free. Just go click, click, click, and you can add it to your store. And now you can sell this product. So we’re almost becoming a little product agnostic. We’re adding like metal wall art. Like that could go up here. I’ll I’ll have something for you. Oh,

Dan Henry (00:26:44):
Oh, okay. Yeah. I can, I could use some more, some more brains around this Personalized man. Yeah, yeah. You might have to, you might have to get me selling some products because I’m going to be honest with you. I’m gonna be honest with you. E-Commerce physical products is super difficult. And I told you this when I was at your, your warehouse, I do

Eric Toz (00:27:07):
Hear like, oh no, I don’t know if I

Dan Henry (00:27:09):
Can, I couldn’t do it. I could not do it. I mean, I’m looking at all these machines just to break down the thought process here. Right? I’m standing in this warehouse. I know that you guys have hundreds, you know, you’ve got, you’ve sold almost a hundred total, almost a hundred million dollars worth of stuff. You have machines that are like, w w what’s your most expensive machine?

Eric Toz (00:27:30):
Ooh. we have we have auto pack machines that are about a quarter-million-dollar.

Dan Henry (00:27:36):
So $250,000 machines. And in my mind, here’s what I’m thinking. What happens when something breaks, you got to call somebody, they got to come out, they got to get a part, and then you got orders. And like all this stuff going on, it’s just, I gotta ask you this. How do you deal with the stress of going to bed every night and knowing that at any point, something like that could happen that could massively derail your business. Like, how do you deal with that? And how do you cope with that?

Eric Toz (00:28:06):
E-Commerce is complex because, you know, not only are you doing the marketing, sometimes you’re also doing the training, but you’re also if you’re doing it right. I mean, you’re also doing your own supply chain. You’re buying inventory, you’re storing it, you’re shipping it out. So sometimes what we do because we’re moving fast and we actually forget how many potential points of failure there could be, but we’ll actually just write out a list. I’m like, you know, what, if, if, if any of these things fail, are we, are we screwed? Like, is this going to ruin the whole thing? And so a lot of times we’re like, wow, yeah. If we ran out of X, Y, Z, that would shut down like everything. And so I’m constantly making lists constantly. If there’s a new thing, that’s a super imperative, making sure there’s ownership of it.

Dan Henry (00:28:54):
But what do you mean by making sure

Eric Toz (00:28:56):
There’s ownership that somebody owns that it’s like, Hey, if you have one job to do, it’s making sure that we never run out of these like 50 different things. You know, we have an inventory manager too. Yeah. a lot of it is automated now. So like all our inventory management’s automated their software to do it too. But you had to build, we built, we built our own. Yeah. So we’ll kind of get a heads up of something running out, but look, honestly, stuff just happens to like, it’s guaranteed, that stuff will happen. Major stuff. Whether it’s a flood here or like a hurricane, or like, there’s, there’s a crazy cargo ship backup right now, like are all around the world. There are like crazy logistics problems. And so the number one thing for your customers is to just be a good communicator with them.

Eric Toz (00:29:49):
And that’s honestly, it’s a lot harder said than done. So that’s where some of these Dale Carnegie principles come into play, just like thinking about them and their feelings being proactive, saying like, Hey, there’s an issue. There’s an issue here. You, you probably won’t receive this in this time, but then give them some options. Like, I can do this for you. I can do this for you, or I can do this for you and just make them feel like they’re the decision-maker next. And usually when you allow them to make decisions on what they want to do with their order, then a lot of the time they’re, they’re more cooperative and they actually will want to work with you. And sometimes you build stronger bonds with people and with customers when you screw up and then you, you like something detrimental happens. And then yeah, the redemption and you like go through this like thing with them. And they actually like, you have a tighter bond because they’re like, then they’re like the next time Eric screws up. Like, I know he’ll, he’ll be in my corner and he’ll like, figure it out. So the same thing with employees too.

Dan Henry (00:30:51):
Do you feel that, cause I don’t know if you’ve ever read the psychology behind likability and being imperfect, like, you know, what a Mary Sue is. So in, in film, Mary Sue is a character that is basically perfect and has no flaws. And so like imagine Superman, but there was no kryptonite. Like he wouldn’t be that interesting. You know? And like when, when the star wars movies came out, a lot of people were saying that Ray was like a Mary Sue and that’s why people were interested in her. And then so like later in the movies, they really

Eric Toz (00:31:24):
Didn’t know she had no flaws, she had

Dan Henry (00:31:26):
No flaws. And so you’ll notice it in the second and third movie, they really dived into her like flaws around you know, her parents and things like that. And, and some other things. But, but the concept is that if you have a character in a movie that is perfect and has no flaws, then there’s nothing to be interested in. There’s nothing to be likable. There’s nothing to, to bond with that because you can’t relate to somebody. That’s perfect. And I think a lot of times people strive to be perfect and they let perfection get in the way of the thing that makes them human. It makes them relate to other humans. And that in, in of itself is having flown.

Eric Toz (00:32:03):
Yeah, I think you know, we have our seller group on Facebook and so we’re always analyzing what’s what gets the most engagement and it’s, it’s usually two things it’s posting about success. And then it’s posting about like the hard times that you went through or like stories, hard stories, like redemption stories. Like people are so into that because we can all relate. Yeah. We can all relate to that.

Dan Henry (00:32:28):
Do you feel entrepreneurs have an ex an unrealistic expectation that things won’t, that nothing will go wrong, and that if something does go wrong, that means they did something like there they failed or they’re a bad person or they were wrong this whole time in their dreams. You know, like I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs really have that expectation going in that everything is going to go right. And they don’t know how to mentally deal with it when things go wrong.

Eric Toz (00:32:54):
Yeah. I think that entrepreneurs understand that things are going to go wrong, but every entrepreneur is different in, in there how much they’re willing to deal with. Like a lot of people will throw in the towel on something where somebody else won’t. And I have two really good examples from my, from my life about not throwing in the towel. And this is not, I’m not saying I’m right by or right or wrong by throwing in the towel or not throwing in the towel. Right. But I’ll give you an example of custom made.com where, you know, we, we raised that, all that money. And then I ended up leaving the CEO ended up leaving, but the sort of the third guy in our gang mentor of mine, Seth Rosen, he said, no, I’m going to stick with it. And so he made a deal with the bank wrote off all of the debt and he just went into this incubation period.

Eric Toz (00:33:49):
And now custommade.com is like 20 million, $30 million a year business. And he brought it back to life solely because he had a high tolerance for going through that. And he was so obsessed with it that he wanted to continue working on it. And same thing with me, I got to a point where after I burned all this, this seed capital that we raised and at one point I actually had to let go of almost all the company, like 90% of the company had to let go of like 15, 20 people in one day, once 15, 20 people in one day in one day. Yeah. We called it the red wedding. Like from

Dan Henry (00:34:28):
Game of Thrones, you have to be a game of Thrones nerd

Eric Toz (00:34:31):
Joke, but not in a mean, not in a mean way, but it was just like, no, like, and everybody was like, Eric, give the investors like the rest of the money back. And there was maybe like, like a hundred grand left in the bank account. And I was just like, no, I’m not going to because like, I still have this vision for it. I need more time. And so I literally went from the super high and there’s actually, if you Google the entrepreneur’s journey, there’s a graph of this where there’s like this initial excitement. And then there’s this period called the trough of sorrow. And then if you keep continuing going through the trough of sorrow, you get to experimentation and pivoting and new ideas. And then eventually you get product-market fit. And then when you get product-market fit, then you can scale.

Eric Toz (00:35:21):
And so how, how much are you willing to tolerate going through that trough? Because I’m not going to lie. I was, at that point, I cut my salary to like 40 grand a year. And I wouldn’t say I was a loser. It’s just that I kind of went into like hibernation mode. We’re actually had to, my mind was going crazy. And if I didn’t turn to meditation to help me calm down and just get refocused, like, all right, how am I going to pull this off? I would tell myself every day, this is going to be a book in a book someday. So yeah, we were down to like 20 grand bank account,

Dan Henry (00:35:54):
A book someday, dude, that’s a roast on that for a second. This is going to be in a book someday. Yeah. That’s that is that’s deep, man. I mean, if you think about it, like, that’s some internal motivation.

Eric Toz (00:36:11):
Yeah. I mean, I would tell people I’m like, you don’t understand like there’s no, I’m not going back. There’s no plan B like I’m, I’m in this thing, you can’t kill me basically. And I don’t care if I make $0 for like four years like I’m going to make this work. And so there’s, and then I kind of learned that there’s always something that you can do. I had another, I hired another mentor who helped me out with some financing and I actually bought the company back from the investors. Cause I believed in it so much. So I was literally taking out like per personally guaranteed loans to buy back the rest of the company. So not only was I going from $0, then I even put myself in debt, like to get the company back because I was like, no, you don’t get it.

Eric Toz (00:36:56):
Like I still see this path forward. I just need time. And so I actually have never raised money again since then. So we went from having 20 grand in the bank account to, we did, we did a hail Mary, we bought one machine and I moved out from Brooklyn to New Jersey and we started tinkering in a 1000 square foot garage with machinery and we built, then we built our first Shopify app in 2017. And we were the first people to do print on demand jewelry. And so then just incrementally building, building, building, building, building, come up with some new products, keep promoting keep doing what you say. You’re going to do, build trust with the seller, with your customers. And yeah, now we’re doing like 66 million a year in product sales, all bootstrapped. Yeah.

Dan Henry (00:37:43):
So if you were to like, imagine that on a graph, right. Where how much money did you raise at the, at the height of that?

Eric Toz (00:37:50):
At the beginning, we raised 1 million and then we ran out of that and we got down to 20 grand and then

Dan Henry (00:37:55):
Here at 1 million. Right. And imagine the, imagine it’s a plane, right. And the plane starts nose-diving and it’s heading towards the ground. And it literally goes so close to the ground before it pulls up that hits like 2200 feet off the ground. And it, you know, if you’re on the ground, it literally blows your hat off as it scoops up. And then sky rack skyrockets up to, you know, from its original elevation of, of, you know, a million up to 66 million. That’s insane. Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:38:29):
So when I went through the whole range of emotions, like you could possibly imagine like an idea raising money. Oh, other people believe in me, like this feels good. Like everyone thinks I’m smart. I have a great idea. And then reality sets in and just being like a total loser, firing everybody going. I had to learn accounting because I had to fire my accountant. I had to get rid of all the insurances. I’m like, what am I in? What am I protecting here? Something that’s like worth nothing. So I was like, it, no insurance, no nothing. And so, but that was like the best lesson I ever learned because I had to learn, I had to learn a little bit about everything in the company, all the operations efficiencies. And so that going through that experience actually is really helpful today when I’m seeing all the pieces from a high level, because I’ve done all those jobs myself to a certain extent, I know enough about everything.

Eric Toz (00:39:23):
So I’m very grateful for that experience. But I’m also grateful for capitalism. I’ll be honest because it allows you to go through that whole adventure and like that whole journey. And it is you against yourself. You’re not really like competing against other people, even though you think you are, it’s just like, you have to like, it’s you in the mirror. So how can you, how disciplined can you be? Right? Like how disciplined can you be? How can you calm your mind? Can you get over your old? Because a lot of people, they, they bring their old life’s experiences into their current business and they’ll actually project some times. So if they are very needy, if they’re a very needy person, cause you know, someone left them or whatever in the past, then they’re just going to be attention-seeking in their business. So these can be, these are bad habits that could kind of take you down. So you really have to quiet your mind and try to get over your old and not project. A lot of people to, you might hire people from outside the company coming in and they’re in a position of power and you don’t see their bad habits in an interview and you would never know. But then after six months of working there, you’re like this person’s horrible. Like just like they’re projecting because they’re in this position of power now,

Dan Henry (00:40:41):
How did you, did you identify anything about yourself, old baggage that you were starting to bring in to your company and then you, you like identified it, you acknowledge it and you got rid of it. Did you ever go through anything like that?

Eric Toz (00:40:59):
Hmm.

Dan Henry (00:41:04):
You couldn’t have always been the super nice guy that you are, that you are now. Eric. I refuse to believe that cause it’ll make me feel even worse though. I’m just kidding.

Eric Toz (00:41:14):
Well, I’ll be honest. Like when I had to let the whole company go I had somebody that really pushed me into doing that because I was like so nervous to do that. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But going through that experience made me a very strong person. Right. I think me probably wouldn’t have done it and I would’ve taken, taken it down, and gone down with the ship with everybody, but I got the sort of push from a friend, and he kind of helped me plan letting go of the whole company. And so yes, like the entrepreneurial journey, it helps you grow as a person too in many, in many, many ways. So I’m very grateful.

Dan Henry (00:41:56):
Do you think the unwillingness to let somebody go or let people go because it’s a good business decision. That was a potential thing that was kind of brought in. That was a detriment. And you had to learn how to get over that was that, would that be one of the things that I guess as you called it earlier I think you call it baggage. Would that be something that you think was baggage that you brought in, that you had to, you had to get over? That was like a major thing?

Eric Toz (00:42:22):
Oh yeah, for sure. Like I think, you know, Inex inexperienced in younger entrepreneurs, they have trouble doing that. Like letting people go, but then I started seeing things through a different lens with running a business. Now I actually see it as we’re working, we’re here together. We’re working on this project for like a finite amount of time. So instead of thinking about like, there’s an owner and there’s an employee and they’re basically like slaves to the company, like they own you. I don’t, I don’t think that way. I think, and I’m open with my employees, like, Hey, we’re, this is a project we’re working on for two to three years. So let’s go get committed to this thing and let’s go crush it and let’s see what happens. Right. And then, you know, provide the right incentive for them to, for us to crush it together. So having that sort of, we’re working on a project mindset, it’s helpful in letting people go because everything is finite and I’m not even going to be there in five, 10 years either. And I tell people that this is a project, so we’re not going to be doing this forever. It’s not like we’re married. So, you know,

Dan Henry (00:43:34):
Okay. Like Michael Jordan was not always going to play in the Chicago bulls, but while he was there. Yeah. And while his teammates were there, they did the best, they could to win as many championships as they could. But ultimately that entity, that, that concept, that project will live on. Right. Is that how you view it? Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:43:54):
Actually so the term I use is let’s go out and like get this Superbowl ring if we can, if we can go. And that might be we go public or we get acquired or something that experience that all the employees had. They can look at the Subaru warring and be like, yeah, I was part of that. I did that. And then what they can do is parlay that experience and go off and do their own thing and their com and their next company. And then maybe I’ll even invest in it or there’ll be able to get investment because people are like, wow, they worked at shine on. So that’s what I’m trying to do with this whole Shannon thing is employees. If they can get a Superbowl ring sellers, there’s a lot of sellers started with selling our product and e-commerce, and now I know two dozen guys that I’m friends with who started selling our product, and now they’re doing $10 million a year on their store selling something else. But, you know, we all got, we all got wins like early out of it and that’s, what’s important is getting wins together.

Dan Henry (00:44:49):
So if I was going to read between the lines here, I would say that one of the biggest things to keep in mind with everything that you said is before all this, you have to really get clear on what, why you’re doing it, where, where you want to end, because, you know, if you were, I’m just giving an example, right? Like Tony Robbins, Tony Robinson’s, Tony Robbins, you know what I mean? That’s his brand is his name. So, you know, the whole, like maybe the concept of I’ll be here, you know, for a temporary amount of time. And then eventually I’ll be gone. Maybe that still applies to his company. I’m sure he has an exit or I’m sure he has a death strategy, you know, cause nobody lives for other, I’m sure he’s not just going to die in his company. That’s it. I’m sure he’s going to live. He’s going to somehow has a plan of action in there. But you know, I think if you were to say, well, my goal is to exit or my goal is to build something great. Or my goal is to change the world. Or my goal is to, to, to do this. I mean, would you say that you have to get super, super clear on what that is before you can start, as you said, going after the Superbowl rings because you got to know what game you’re playing.

Eric Toz (00:46:01):
Yeah. 100%, a hundred percent like people ask me, how is my vision change? I’m like, no, my vision has literally been the same thing for five years ago. Like where we’re at now is where I thought we could eventually be. And so I need to keep going, but would

Dan Henry (00:46:17):
You articulate that vision?

Eric Toz (00:46:20):
So five years ago I said I wanted to be the Teespring of jewelry. So I was just looking at that model and I want to build something just as big as them. And they’re at the time they were doing a hundred million a year in sales. And so you’re almost there. Yeah. Now we’re getting, we’re getting close to there. I actually, in two weeks we’ll hit a hundred million in sales all time. So yeah, like if you don’t have that, if you don’t have that vision and you’re not committed to it, if you go through hard, like, like I went through, if I didn’t have that that level of commitment, then I would have totally thrown in the towel. It might be different though, if you’re, if you’re making good cash, if you’re cash flowing and then suddenly it starts hitting bumps. I could see getting out then because you’ve made all this cash already. But for me it was kind of like instill like most of my personal like all my assets, like most of my wealth is actually in the business. So I’m thinking like longterm and it’s, it’s definitely risky. It’s, it’s a huge risk. And that’s my personality

Dan Henry (00:47:28):
Condo that that’s being built right now. Saltaire in downtown. It’s a little

Eric Toz (00:47:34):
Sexy start my podcast there.

Dan Henry (00:47:38):
You got to invite me over, man. That place looks, looks like it’s going to be sick. Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:47:42):
I think we’re going to do some events there, some masterminds

Dan Henry (00:47:45):
And it’s going to be awesome. Let me ask you a question. And I know that you’re not your company is a little bit different than say mine where I’m a little bit more like the face of it kind of thing. And you’re you’re, I mean, you are, but like e-comm, it’s about the products and all that and, and you know, so I’m sure a lot of people, as somebody who built this, they have a way they view you probably a lot of different ways. They view you. What would you say is something that people misunderstand about you?

Eric Toz (00:48:19):
Hmm. That’s a good question. Misunderstand. Well,

Eric Toz (00:48:34):
You know, even when I throw these figures out, like a hundred million, 66 million I try to not make it about me. I try to say, we sold this together. Right? Like we did this together. And so I, people might see me as, I dunno being selfish because maybe on my Instagram, I promote like all this personal stuff. But at the end of the day, like I want, I want everybody to win. Like I truly do. And one thing is if you make other people money, they’ll always invest in you and your next thing, they hit,

Dan Henry (00:49:14):
They stay with you on the ride. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at, look how a lot of these funds have been built. Like you got guys that they run a certain type of business. They make people money and then they start like a real estate fund or a, or this, and then they’re investing in that so that, you know, that’s totally makes sense. Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:49:31):
Yeah. If you were, if I was your client and you know, I made a lot of money from your trainings right. Or teachings, and then you were like, you said to me, Hey, I’m going to go start this other thing. Do you want to invest in it? I’m like, hell yeah, you made me so much money, dude. Like literally here’s like, you know, here’s a million bucks or whatever investment, like no brainer. I, I trust you. You made me money here. Let’s do it again.

Dan Henry (00:49:56):
No, I think people underestimate the value of creating a great product. I think there’s a lot of people out there that do it for a cash grab and they do it for clout and they do it for a lot of the wrong reasons. And they don’t really care or not. It’s not that they care, but they don’t put the effort into making a great product because at the end of the day, a great product will, you know, it will transcend a lot of mistakes, you know? And that’s the thing that you’re going to make mistakes you’re going. And you know, when it comes to a lot of people in life, not just entrepreneurs, but a lot of people in life, they lack confidence. And I always say that you cannot build confidence. Does anybody tells you, you can build confidence full of. You build competence.

Dan Henry (00:50:40):
And as a by-product of that competence, you are granted confidence. Let me ask you this. I like that. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I, you know, I want to resist the urge to ask you a classic question. Like what, if you could go back to your 18 year old self and tell them something, what would you tell them? But what I’d like to ask is, you know, how did you in the ups and downs, it’s easy to feel confident, have faith and stay the course when things are up. But when things are down, that’s where people break and they fall off. What did you do specifically in your brain, in your mind that helped you get through those dips and maintain the course and maintain the faith and keep the confidence. Even when things look bleak, especially when that plane was right, the bottom, you know, 20 grand left in the bank or whatever other challenges you’ve had. How did you maintain, what did you tell yourself every day to maintain that level of dedication? Mm,

Eric Toz (00:51:53):
Well, I think, I think that you have to take the pressure off yourself. And so I’m in the process of writing this book. It’s going to be called the entrepreneur survival guide, 20 things you can do when you’re totally AFT, oh God, I love

Dan Henry (00:52:12):
That title. I really, oh, that’s a great title

Eric Toz (00:52:16):
Too. So it’s kind of like, imagine like how you would equip yourself for the zombie apocalypse. It’s like that before, like business for business, I’ve been through like 20 of these things already. And at some point though, like once you’re like, I’m doing this, no matter what you, at some point you have to take the pressure off of yourself in the day to day. So you have to say, all right, like, look, man, I still have to sleep eight hours and I can work like a maximum of 16 hours. And so, you know, you just have to be as efficient with your time, because if you literally do everything like perfect. And when you have no money left in the bank, you have to like, watch literally everything. Like watch every dollar spent every, every hour you have to be doing the right things. I remember literally going to like open certain tabs in Chrome and I’m like, no, like you can’t do that. Right. I didn’t know what the are you doing? Like, stay focused here. We don’t have time for this right now. It

Dan Henry (00:53:14):
Was, it, was it porn hub you were trying to open or it was just like

Eric Toz (00:53:18):
It could be anything like ESPN. It could be like news, you know, I’ve been in, I’ve been addicted to news before. And so news

Dan Henry (00:53:26):
Sports. So, so have you ever got addicted to looking at things that you didn’t have yet? Houses, cars?

Eric Toz (00:53:34):
Ooh, that’s a good question. Like fantasizing about cars and stuff.

Dan Henry (00:53:41):
Yeah. Like, like imagine you’re sitting there and you’re working and you’re like, if I just work hard enough, I’ll be able to buy X or Y or Z. So then you go and you look up that car, you look at the features, you look at the you know, you look at how much it costs. I mean, I’ll be honest. One thing I used to do is I used to put real estate up that I liked and I’d say, okay, this is called a vision board, like a vision board. And I would leave the tab up on my computer and every like two hours or so I would just flip over and I’d look at the house. And I remember I did that with I don’t think I knew you then, but when I had that 8,000 square foot house on the water in Gulf port, I was looking at, yeah, I sold it and I bought the penthouse because I just living on the water, man.

Dan Henry (00:54:21):
It’s like, dude, there’s always a contractor at your house every single day or something. Well, no, just fixing stuff because the salt water blows with the Florida winds, they blow against the house and I’m in you’re right on the water. So stuff, Russ, I had to replace my outdoor fans. Like every three months we would just go get completely rusted, no matter what you did. And just all kinds of crazy stuff that doc, you know, just so much stuff. And I just didn’t want, I wanted to focus on all my business and I wanted, I wanted to stop leaving my phone around. And then not finding it for six hours because it was on the, you know, it was on the third floor and this and that. So when I bought the penthouse downtown, I just liked it a lot. It was actually more expensive than the house I owned, but it was smaller and it was just, I don’t know, I liked the lifestyle more, but what I did was I would, I would put up a house that was very, very similar to that house.

Dan Henry (00:55:18):
And I would leave it up in my tabs and every two or three hours, I would just take a break and I would look at it and I’d be like, all right, I got to get to this much money. You know, obviously after taxes that dah, dah, dah. And so I would look and I’d say, okay, I need to sell this many units of my consulting or whatever. And I would, I would basically make that sort of like my, because you know, goals are weird, you know, like what are goals? You know, people have goals, but goals change. I just knew that I wanted to have a really nice house and I wanted to invite my family over and I wanted my family to experience being in a nice place. Cause they didn’t really get, get to do that. And so I would leave it up. Yeah.

Eric Toz (00:55:57):
So my opinion on it is are you familiar with lead and lag measures?

Dan Henry (00:56:03):
No. I would love you to

Eric Toz (00:56:04):
Explain it to me. Lead and lag measures would be like, so lag measure would be how much revenue your company didn’t last month. Okay. But that’s lead measures are more activity-based so here are the things I’m measuring each day for things I can control. Cause you can’t, you literally can’t control somebody else buying your stuff. I mean, you can’t take their hand and force them to click and put type in their credit card. But I think you’d get arrested it’s to me it sounds fun. It’s like, oh, open daddy’s wallet,

Dan Henry (00:56:36):
Dude. We should film. You should film an ad where you like break into somebody’s house and make them buy a little customized pendant under their heads that would not get approved.

Eric Toz (00:56:46):
Yeah. So if you think about lead and lag measures, like a lag measure would be revenue. You can’t literally control somebody opening their wallet and buying them. They still have to do that on their own, but something you can control every day is I’m going to go live two times today, I’m going to set 40 appointments. I’m going to try to close X amount of sales. So these are the things that you can control. Like I’ve always looked at houses and cars and stuff as like a lag measure. It’s like I would rather set a goal of like doing X, Y, Z for the things I can control, because if I do everything I can control, most likely I’m going to get, get those other, those, those prizes. So my goal would be like only the things I can control, which would be maybe orders made or on whatever metric, because then my taste might also change. I might also want to drive a car or something later on.

Dan Henry (00:57:38):
Could I present to you a different way to think about it and maybe mate, this how to think, bro. Yeah. It’s how to think. Right. And, and, and get your perspective on it. W so I have this crazy concept that I’ve really started to delve into recently the idea of not having goals now, before I that’s hyper bowl right now. Right? So a lot of people like that, but let’s, let’s, let’s dive into it. So if you have a goal, like, let’s say you want to go to the gym. Okay. And you want to get Jack. And the only reason you’re going to the gym is because you want to get checked. So you go to the gym and when you get there, you realize you’re kind of fat and out of shape, you don’t have abs, but you look around the gym and you see all these people with abs big muscles and you say, well, they’re jacked and I’m not jacked.

Dan Henry (00:58:18):
That’s why I’m here. So now I feel out of place, I feel like I don’t belong. And it gives you this sense of automatically right off the bat, you feel unaccomplished, you feel less, you feel like you don’t belong, right? Because you’re setting this expectation that there’s the reason you’re there is for a goal. When instead, if you simply fall in love with the process, you fall in love with working out. You just, it doesn’t matter what you look like. You love working out. You’re going there because you love working out. And you love that process. It’s sorta like when you Jitsu, right? If I like, I love jujitsu, I love it. I don’t go to jujitsu class and say, I’m only going, because I want to win worlds. Or I want to win ATDC or I want to be a black belt. I go because I love it. And I noticed that when you love a process and you don’t necessarily have a goal, you end up getting, so you end up getting rapidly good at that thing. And you blow past any goals that you could have achieved, or you could have made for yourself by falling in love with the process. I’d love to know your take on that.

Eric Toz (00:59:21):
So I think, I think more people should set goals around how they want to feel. Right. Because ultimately isn’t it all about having a feeling of happiness. So it’s like, I envision, I envision a world where I wake up everyday and I feel this way. Right? It’s like, that’s not something that’s tangible. That’s a feeling, but it’s also inarguable, right? Like if you feel a certain way, there’s no metric that can dictate whether that’s a success or not, because it’s about how you feel. So I think people should focus more on that because they can literally get to that goal, like a lot faster than any other like metric based.

Dan Henry (00:59:59):
Well, what do you think creates happiness? Do you think happiness is created by feeling like you’ve made progress, feeling like you’ve. So I heard a Jordan Peterson talks about this. He was saying that a lot of times we feel happy because we solve problems. Cause if you think about it, right, what is the human mind? It’s the computer. What is it? So forget the human mind for a second. W what, what does a computer do? What does it really do on a fundamental level? It solves it crunches numbers, and it solves problems. One after the other that’s its purpose. And then one day the motherboard goes out and the computer stops working and it stops solving problems. And it dies. The human brain is basically a computer. And it, I mean, you know what I’m saying? Like, like, like what happens if everything was perfect in your life? You’d almost go crazy.

Eric Toz (01:00:43):
Well, actually we see this with super rich people and celebrities. They’re like super depressed because the mind, even when, even when you saw everything, the mind will look for new things to solve. So it might actually drag you down. It might actually cause chaos in your life so that you can solve them. Like a lot of people, they bring themselves down from from success because their mind is just needs a new problem to create and solve. Oh yeah. I can feel that. And that’s another thing. There’s this amazing book called the big leap by gay Hendricks. And basically it’s like you know, success for a lot of people is foreign and the, their subconscious it’s almost scary to be successful because their subconscious is not used to that. So they would rather, almost subconsciously self-sabotage to bring themselves down to what they’re used to.

Eric Toz (01:01:38):
So I’ve seen it with a lot of people and alcoholics too that runs in my family. Like people will get a certain taste of success and then there’ll be, it’ll make them feel weird. They’ll get antsy with being successful. So then they’ll start drinking again and drag themselves back down to their, what they know because it’s comfortable. So what does book, the big leap talks about is breathing into the new reality, right? And like giving, like slowing down and giving yourself time to accept these feelings and then kind of breathe, breathe into the next version of yourself and staying focused on that and not allowing the subconscious to bring you back down.

Dan Henry (01:02:18):
Do you think that oftentimes will because success can happen fast. It

Eric Toz (01:02:25):
Can almost happen overnight, or at least you can feel like that. They don’t take time to breathe into it. Yeah, dude, I see so many people like who maybe they made a million bucks and that’s great. That’s like good money, but they’re like acting like super stupid. And it’s like, dude, are you trying to like, are you trying to kill this partnership? Are you trying to like, sorry, are you trying to self sabotage in some way, I can just see it in people where

Dan Henry (01:02:52):
You could almost look in their eyes and know they know what they’re doing is wrong. Yeah. You could see a way behind their, their, their eyeballs. They know, and they’re still doing it. Yeah.

Eric Toz (01:03:02):
Like I think the, the fake, the fake guys out there, maybe they made a million bucks. They’re like, they’re acting stupid and trying to get attention. And a lot of times they’re doing, yeah, they’re just acting stupid to try to bring themselves down. I think the most successful people are like the most like level and kind of calm and chill and they breathe and they allow themselves to experience this new reality. Right.

Dan Henry (01:03:29):
Yeah. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s let’s switch gears a little bit here. Okay. Did I ask you about myths yet? Myths. Did I ask you what the biggest myth in business? It just you off as I feel like I asked you? No. No, I didn’t. All right. Well, that’s the question then. I want to do this. I wanna ask you a couple more questions. And then actually two more, this one and one other, and then you up for some live calls.

Eric Toz (01:03:52):
Oh, hell yeah. Totally forgot about that.

Dan Henry (01:03:53):
Yeah. We were going to just go and I forgot that we’re, we’re able to take live callers. Yeah. So we can actually, so what I’d like to do is have some people call in and ask us some questions and you know see if we can give out some free, free, free consulting on, on this show and just talk to some people. Yeah. So, so here’s the question. We’ll just do two real quick. What, what is the thing that you off the most, the myth about business, or really not even about business, but just accomplishing things. Yeah. and, and succeeding in life. What is the biggest myth that just makes your blood boil?

Eric Toz (01:04:37):
Well, I think, I think some people feel like there’s some secret knowledge that they need to know in business. And you got it.

Dan Henry (01:04:45):
Yep. Yep. I

Eric Toz (01:04:47):
Think there’s some secret knowledge and they have to read all the books and they have to like learn all the secrets. But if you, after you read a few Dan Kennedy books and Dale Carnegie books as kind of like businesses, honestly, just human relationships. And so if you can focus on getting really good at those relationships and then just doing the work like you should, that’s a good recipe for success. There’s like, no, you know, there, there isn’t any magic light bulb that’s going to go off. It’s just doing the work everyday commitment. And then being a really good person because you can, you can not build a business for yourself. Like you have teammates, you have customers, like if you’re not caring about all those people as two, and on this mission together, then you’re going to have a bad day.

Dan Henry (01:05:37):
I think a lot of times people waste such a chunk of their life searching for the easier path or the path of least resistance. And, you know, I always sort of tried to view it a little bit different. Like I always say, well, if I pick the hard thing and I get good at the hard thing yeah. I’ll have very little competition because nobody’s willing to get good at that. So while everybody else is looking for the easy way, I’m busy getting good at the hard way. Oh yes. I love it. And they’re just going to keep looking and keep looking and keep looking. And by the time, I mean, they’re still going to be looking and somebody else who has dedicated themselves to mastering the hard way is going to fly past them because they’re just bouncing from thing to thing, to thing to thing, looking for that easier way. And the truth is there is no easy way. The only, the only way is dedication, hard work and commitment to the hard way.

Eric Toz (01:06:30):
Yeah. I think a good example would be what’s the difference between a garbage man and a nuclear waste disposal specialists. Like they’re both kind of garbage men, but wine just like went into the so much the hard and learned so much about this one area. And that’s like a moat, like how many nuclear waste garbage garbage men are there out there? Like not that many. Right.

Dan Henry (01:06:58):
I have never heard. Wow. That’s a, that’s that’s a striking comparison. Wow. Yeah. That’s true. Because you can go deep. You can go on, on almost anything. You can go deep into. Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Okay. So here’s the bathroom. Oh yeah, dude. Absolutely. Yeah. I got to too, but you know what I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna sacrifice my, my bladder. So yeah, go ahead. Go, go for it. We’ll all do is, is w we’ll get a hole drilled in the, in the table for the next one that we can just do it right here. I’m just, just get right, right. It’s right. It’s right down the other road there. All right. Thanks

Eric Toz (01:07:34):
For joining us again, everybody.

Dan Henry (01:07:36):
Thank you guys. Live bathroom break. That’s awesome. So, Brandon how are we doing here? But by the way, just guys. So, you know, this is our first show. And we’re just kind of winging it. I’m trying not to let my, my noticeably slightly lower aperture on my camera than his bother me. Hey, come on, come on. Is, is his brighter than mine or is that the lens? I know, I believe his is brighter than your, so you gotta just turn a little bit. I

Eric Toz (01:08:07):
I’m pretty sure the cameras are matched, but

Dan Henry (01:08:10):
I just gotta double check the lighting. Oh, this is my, this is my this is, this is my background in audio and video. That’s just killing me right now. I’m sure like Joe Rogan has no idea about any of that stuff, nor does he care. And he just sticks to the topic. That’s my internal. So we’re going to take live calls in a minute. We have a phone number and here’s what we’re going to do. The number is 8 1 3 4 7 4 9 1 2 2. And what you can do is you can text this number. Okay. And here’s what I want you to do. I want you to text the number with your question, and please keep in mind that we’re covering major problems in life business how to think about things, how to strategic things. We’re not, we’re not covering things. The word ad or funnel is barred from this show.

Dan Henry (01:08:59):
So no questions on that. But no, no internet marketing stuff, but if you text 8 1 3 4 7 4 9 1 2 2 with your question Brandon who’s in the control room right there. If, if, if he likes your question and he thinks is a good question, he will text you back and then he’ll give you a call and bring you on. So why don’t you guys go ahead and I’ll ask Eric one more question. And then while I’m doing that again, text 8 1 3 4 7 4 9 1 2 2. And we’ll bring you on if you have if you have a good question. So just text summary, your question to there. So I’m trying to remember that second question I was going to ask you. That was, that was really good. Oh yeah, here it is. What is something going on right now in the world? Like a current event that it’s just really difficult for you not to have an opinion on

Eric Toz (01:09:59):
Yeah, I think, I think right now is a kind of a strange time. I think there’s some undertones of like, are there really evil people out there who are like, you know, trying to, trying to take down basically the whole world or reset the whole global economy. That’s something that’s on my mind. Sometimes it

Dan Henry (01:10:16):
Of it kind of seems like that. Sometimes it doesn’t it.

Eric Toz (01:10:19):
Yeah. Kind of. It’s some, just some bad vibes lately, I think happening all and not just in America, like all around the world as it’s just COVID stuff. I think, have you,

Dan Henry (01:10:29):
We’ve seen, I forget the guy’s name, but there’s a YouTube video. It’s like three hours long. It’s one continuous shot. I mean, literally the guy’s looking at the camera, he’s got a black background and it’s three hours. There’s no cuts. He just looks at the camera and goes for three hours. And it’s about the social construct. Have you seen it? No. So it’s this idea that everything we see and we believe is basically based on, you know, this social it’s, it’s, it’s created a history, everything like, so let’s say somebody tells you that I don’t know of, of random scientific fact, like, I don’t know that water has is H2O. Right. And that’s it’s right. So, I mean, some scientist somewhere in a lab one day did this experiment and found that, and there was like maybe three people in the room. And then they told, you know, 10 other people that were out of the room and then those people told, but like, how do you know that?

Dan Henry (01:11:27):
And I’m not disputing the fact that water is H2O. That’s what I’m trying to say. But what I’m saying is like, whatever, that fact was the millions and millions and millions of facts we have every day that we build our entire truths that we consider truth. I mean, what was to prevent the person that found that out from just skewing that to the next person and down the chain and down the chain and down the chain. And so basically what he was saying was that pretty much our entire sense of reality is based off a, you know, a social contract that is built upon this information collectively, and that there really is no such thing as truth, because it’s almost impossible for there to be that because it’s just so degraded and, and so broken down as it’s, as it’s being permeated through society.

Dan Henry (01:12:14):
And so like I was last night, I was, I was I don’t even remember what I was doing. You know, I was chilling out for the night, smoked a bowl, chilling. And I read, I saw this post and it had all these predictions. Right. And it was predictions from the past 20 years. That came true, like all kinds of crazy stuff, like, you know, stuff about the NSA spying on us. Right. And then at the bottom it says, do you know who made all these correct predictions, Alex Jones, and you, you know, who Alex Jones is. Right. And, and, you know, when I heard it, Alex Jones, I was like, all right, well, this guy is just obviously using fake media to produce ad revenue and, and traffic and, you know, just people off and get people crazy. And he sells survival products, you know?

Dan Henry (01:13:05):
So if you think about it, it’s the great, yeah. Oh, he did not. Yes. On info wars, he, he will talk about all this doomsday stuff and then he’ll pitch survival products. Wow. Yeah. If you think about it, it’s such a good time. It’s actually quite genius. But so I just always assume the guy was completely full of crap and then, and whatever, you know, do, do, do your thing. I mean, the media is always full of crap anyway. And then like, I started seeing all of these things that he said would happen and maybe he just got lucky, but they all came true. Not all of them, but a good portion of it came true. And I just, and then I thought about that video, the social construct. And I was like, dude, what if like, there’s a bunch of crazy people that we just think are absolutely bat out of their mind. Crazy, but they’re actually right. And they just sound crazy. And we’re actually the dumb ones for not listening to them only because they don’t know how to articulate themselves in a believable way. But have you ever thought about stuff like that?

Eric Toz (01:14:00):
Do it all the time. I think about how stupid the food pyramid that we grew up with,

Dan Henry (01:14:05):
But these are the people we’re supposed to believe that the people are full of. Right? Yeah.

Eric Toz (01:14:09):
Like if you didn’t believe that the food pyramid is right, cause it’s made by the USDA department of agriculture, you’re like, you’re an idiot if you disbelieve them. Right. But then like 20 years later, we’re like, literally that we could flip this entire thing upside down and it’s, you know, now we’re finding out it’s correct. Right. So I think like, honestly I think we have to just, people seem to ask more questions and they don’t need to like get attached to certain conspiracy theories. They don’t have to get attached to, to things cause nobody knows the truth, but people just need to like the question. Yeah. You always need to ask more and like get out of their own minds a little bit. That’s why I think, you know, sometimes like, you know, doing some psychedelics occasionally, like not crazy, but just in a little bit, just kind of untangling the wires sometimes meditation is yeah. Same thing. It’s like taking a ball of yarn and kind of like, have you

Dan Henry (01:15:02):
Done psychedelics yet?

Eric Toz (01:15:04):
Yeah, a little

Dan Henry (01:15:05):
Bit. You’ve done an Iowasca

Eric Toz (01:15:07):
Done Iowasca twice. I’ve done, you know, mushrooms a few times would even microdose occasionally with some mushrooms not to like go crazy, but it just kind of helps break, break the wiring sometimes if you’re really like right for a few months in a row, been going really hard and you’re kind of really engaged and wired. Sometimes you need to like loosen that up. Sometimes if you go away to like a vacation or a beach or something that might not even help you learn, you need to, and even therapy might not even help.

Dan Henry (01:15:38):
Do you, do you honestly want to know my opinion on that? And when it comes to like entrepreneurs and thought leaders yeah. And I could be completely off base on this, but you know how you see a lot of thought leaders and people who are out in the public on social media and they’re always preaching these like sort of white picket fence standards. Like you should do this and you should do that. And you should be this perfect model human being. And it’s like, you’re so full of because I’ve met a lot of those guys and they’re full of. They smoke weed, they do shrooms. They go to strip clubs. They’re full of. I’ve met them there. Okay. I’m not going to like put anybody on blast. But the same people I see with their stupid little Instagram meets going, you know, this is not cool.

Dan Henry (01:16:17):
And it’s like a Lamborghini and like a girl with, with boobs, you know, because girls do have boobs. I know that people, people seem to be offended by that these days, but there’ll be like, this is not success. This is success. And then they have like this, you know, minivan and their family, when they got done, you know, the portrait, they got John at JC penny or whatever. And they put that out there and then you meet them in real life. And they’re like smoking weed, doing shrooms, going out. And it’s like, dude, you’re so full of. And it’s, it’s that, you know, I have never once met a person that is at eight or nine figures who we sat down on the table and he’s like, yeah, the secret is, you’ve got to write down your daily affirmations. Like I’ve never heard that ever.

Dan Henry (01:17:02):
Just like, you know, I’ve heard tons of times, like we’re talking about right now. I mean, there’s one prominent figure. I’m not going to name him. But I asked him, I said, you know, you’re, you seem to be very into focus and against drugs and alcohol, you know, what are your thoughts? Oh yes. You shouldn’t do drugs and alcohol, but every quarter you should trip on LSD because that’ll open your mind. Like a lot of high-level entrepreneurs, whether they want to admit it or not, they do mind altering and expanding substances. And that’s not to say from a recreational standpoint, because if you have done any research on things like DMT or Iowasca most people who do them, they don’t do them to have fun. No, they do them as a form of therapy or, or, or, or enlightenment. They’re not out there getting drunk, you know? Exactly. You know what I mean? And people don’t think about that.

Eric Toz (01:17:50):
Exactly. People like classify psychedelics with just like, oh, this is a drug it’s like, it’s not a, it’s not a drug. It’s not like a party drug. It’s not like to have fun. It’s to honestly make a lot of times make you a better person. Yeah. Right. And so I think, I think with stuff like that, I think that like the highest level entrepreneurs, they, they, they go, they go in and out where there’ll be really consistent with something. And maybe their home life is rock solid and their businesses are rock solid, but then they’ll actually need to go into some inspiration mode modes for, for a few months or a few weeks or something like that. But they can’t stay in that forever. And they can’t stay in a super structured, like, you know, backend life forever either. I think it’s good mix to constantly be going in and out of those things and getting inspired and then always like reinventing yourself too. I always think about this concept of like, I could totally reinvent myself today if I wanted to, like, I really could, we all have the power to do that.

Dan Henry (01:18:50):
I think that’s a and giving up money to do that is another, I mean, let me ask you, we’ll take some calls, but let me ask you a question. What do you want to be known for like in 10 years? What do you want to be known for?

Eric Toz (01:19:06):
Well, I think it’s man, I think we may, we may actually have a lot of similarities in this, but just helping, helping as many people go from, you know, zero to super successful people. If I can be like, if I can inspire a few people, few hundred people, maybe a thousand people at shine on, if we could create a thousand millionaires, that would be like incredible on so many levels. And it’s not about the money it’s like helping them go through that journey too. Right. And then they’re going to inspire other people to do the same thing like later.

Dan Henry (01:19:44):
Yeah. It’s like a web effect. Yeah. Yeah. Brandon, do we got any callers?

Brandon (01:19:49):
Yeah, let me work on getting somebody on.

Dan Henry (01:19:51):
Alright, awesome. Awesome. I want to like reach over in that camera and turn up their average terrible. Oh, this is fun,

Eric Toz (01:20:01):
Man. I’m having way fun right now.

Dan Henry (01:20:04):
Way fun. Yeah, I dig it. I dig it. Yeah. We, we, you know what, you know, one of the reasons I decided to do this was because I I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for so long and I don’t know just

Eric Toz (01:20:17):
How long?

Dan Henry (01:20:18):
Well, successfully or unsuccessfully,

Eric Toz (01:20:22):
Let’s say the beginning of success to now

Dan Henry (01:20:24):
Well I started in 2009 and I don’t think I had any like actual success success until maybe like 2000. And I mean, success is so variable. I mean, you could call me opening a bar successful. That was like 2015 or no, maybe that was 2012. I’m terrible with time. But you know, the last five years has really taken off and I mean, it’s so weird because the majority of my career, I mean nothing. And then all of a sudden I make 25 million in a few years and I’m like, whoa. You know, and it’s just you know, for that length, the way that we, that we, that I ran or I run get clients.com, it’s very, you know, unless I get there in there and shake it up, it can be very automated. It can be very, you know, just, you know, you, you, you do this and you do this and you make the right decisions and, and you get clients, dah, dah, dah.

Dan Henry (01:21:25):
But I wasn’t really having fun with it. Like I had fun with it when I did that yacht music video, you know, but I was just getting sort of sick of talking about the same thing. And so that’s why I wanted to do the show because I want to talk about different things. I want to have fun with my business. Again, I want to build a new brand and have fun with it. And the beautiful part is this time I don’t need money. You know what I mean? Like this time I can do whatever I want and if it makes some money, I’m sure it’ll make money, you know? But it, it doesn’t have to make me millions. I can just do it for impact. There’s no chip, no

Eric Toz (01:21:56):
Chip, the, like the F the chip got you started a major successful, but who knows, like maybe what you’ve already done is nothing compared to what you’re going to do next. And like, it could be totally different and it may

Dan Henry (01:22:08):
Not be measured in dollars.

Eric Toz (01:22:10):
And your legacy might, you know, might be a totally different thing than you’re known for right now. And you’re known around the world, like,

Dan Henry (01:22:17):
Yeah, well, I don’t know about all that, but but I, I hope you’re right. Definitely. I’m definitely, definitely doing my best. And I think this would be, I think this is a cool start and I love the fact that you were able to come on and be the first guest, I didn’t know, actually, really couldn’t think of anybody else that I would have been comfortable with being the, being the first guest, to be quite honest with you. So

Eric Toz (01:22:39):
You always remember your first one. Yeah. The first time. All right, guys, with that being said, we do have our first color. If you want to take this

Dan Henry (01:22:47):
Call, all right. Who is this?

Eric Toz (01:22:51):
Just give me one second. And our caller is on. Can you hear?

Dan Henry (01:22:58):
Yeah. She’s a little bit loud, but yeah. Yeah. How you doing? Who is this?

Laurie (01:23:03):
Sorry about all that of enthusiasm. This is Laurie in Nashville. And I, and then my second year of business officially, thanks in large part to your hosts, Dan Henry.

Dan Henry (01:23:16):
Oh, oh, well, well, awesome. Awesome. I appreciate that. Wait a minute, hang on a second. It’s this? It’s this the Lori, I think it is. Hey, how you doing? How’s it going? I haven’t seen you in a week.

Laurie (01:23:31):
I know it’s been since like Sunday, I know, Friday or whatever it was listening to that I caught you from the very beginning. This is show is absolute fire. It’s my favorite thing right now on the internet. I wouldn’t know why no battery. And I keep thinking, I know I’m not kidding. I legit.

Dan Henry (01:23:51):
I’m not looking at the comments. So I have no idea if we’re bombing or not so

Laurie (01:23:57):
Incredible people. I want to share it with no, seriously. So I have a question and I keep thinking about the entrepreneurs, survival guide book, and as a new business owner, someone who’s really only been in business for just under two years as a legit business owner. What is the major pitfall that I should avoid? And if you want context, I’m also a single mom with three kids. So, you know, my life’s crazy counts, but what would you recommend? I try at all costs to avoid going forward.

Dan Henry (01:24:32):
You, you want to, you want to tag team this to let you go, and then I’ll go. Sorry. She can’t hear the, I can’t hear her. You can’t hear her talking. Oh, oh, okay. So I’ll repeat what she said. Maybe Brandon can in the, in the, in the control room can, can fix that. But so, so what, what she said was that, you know, she’s an entrepreneur, she’s a mom of three. And she, you know, the entrepreneurial survival guide that re that rung out to her that the, the book that you’re gonna the book that you going to write, and she said, what is the biggest pitfall that she should be looking out for right now? She’s been in business for two years. She she’s, and I, I know Lori, she’s a a book editor. She’s fantastic, but she edited my book.

Dan Henry (01:25:20):
Nice. And our secrets. So if you need a book editor, oh, there we go. Yeah. Then this, this is the one she will, she will edit your book better than you will want your book edited and we’ll annoy the crap out of you about it, but it’ll come out. Amazing. So but so her question is, you know, as someone who’s been in business a couple of years, what is the biggest pitfall that she should watch out for? And Brandon, are you able to get, get her audio on, on Eric’s headphones? I believe so. I dunno if yeah, I believe so. I think it’s set now. Lori, can you say something?

Laurie (01:25:56):
Hi.

Dan Henry (01:25:57):
Oh, you got it. Okay, cool. Cool. So, so did I articulate your question? Good enough, Laurie.

Laurie (01:26:03):
It was like, what is the thing that I should avoid at all costs? I want to continue down this path of being an entrepreneur, having the time, freedom, you know, growing my income, yada yada yada single mom, three kids. What, what should I avoid at all costs based on your entrepreneur survival guide?

Eric Toz (01:26:12):
Hmm. Well, I think all humans are always doing like risk analysis in their mind. And so like me, like me literally saying, I’m going to burn all the ships. I’m going to be doing this no matter what. You know, it’s I had no girlfriend at the time I had, no, I had no, no girlfriend at the time I had no debt. I had no anything. I had nobody to report to. I could literally curl up and just do work 24 7 if I wanted to. So for me, when I’m thinking about like risk versus reward, like it was kind of all reward for me to go all in. There was nothing I could really lose. I think people are at they’re all at certain things in life and they need to sometimes protect what they have. And so the thing about making decisions, whether I should continue something or stop something they’re both good. And the reason is because we’ll never know the truth to the, the other decision, you know? So there should be comfort in just being decisive in general, I think. Hmm. Hmm.

Dan Henry (01:27:38):
So I’m going to take it down a little bit different path. And I honestly, Laura, I don’t know if you have this problem. But for me, there was a mistake that I made repeatedly. And, and, you know, if you, if you make a mistake and you know, it’s a mistake, and then you continue to make that mistake, it’s no longer a mistake. It’s a decision. And I made this decision many, many times. And you know, it’s something that a lot of people do. I think you get some success, you get some money, then you get this big idea and you say to yourself, well, I’m going to build this big thing and I’m going to go all in on it. But I’ve yet to really determine where my superpowers are, where my zone of genius is get the proper education that I need to.

Dan Henry (01:28:24):
And so you end up sort of taking, and it goes back to goal setting, right? Like when I was younger, I did the dumbest thing I learned how to do to code PHP, you know, programming language. And in my brain, I was like, okay, well, I know how I know some basic PHP. So now I’m going to build a social media site. So I like literally spent all my money on trying to do this. And of course it ended with this, this website that was just a bunch of notepad documents and code that didn’t make sense and didn’t connect. And I didn’t think about like security and accepting payments and profiles and, you know, all the, you know, all the like compliance. And I just was like, I know PHP, I’m going to build a social media site. I didn’t think of anything else.

Dan Henry (01:29:10):
I didn’t think of how I was going to get it out there. I didn’t think about how I was going to follow the rules for, you know, all the rules that there were two, two, and this was years ago. This was, this was my space days, you know? And so I wasted a good chunk of my life on something because I said, well, I have this skill. This is cool. Let me go build this, this huge thing. Let me go be the next mark Zuckerberg all because I learned some fricking PHP and that was stupid. And I did that. I did things like that several times until I got to the point where I realized that, you know, if I’m going to go all in on something, I need to go all in. But at a level where I understand that I need to understand it deeper.

Dan Henry (01:29:51):
You know what I mean? Like if I was really all in on that, I would have researched those things compliance and like, you know, I would have asked myself the questions, like, how would I have got it out there? You know? And I, would’ve probably ended on the answer that I don’t need to be the one doing PHP code, right? That’s just like one nut or one bolt in this big machine. And what I need to be doing is designing the machine. What I need to be doing is, is figuring out how that machine is going to make wheels, turn, not sitting there designing one bolt and thinking that all of a sudden that’s going to flourish into this big thing. And I think a lot of times we get ahead of ourselves and we try to overshoot the runway, you know, like we have, and it goes back to goal setting, right?

Dan Henry (01:30:35):
Like we have this, I’m not going to say unrealistic goal. I’m not going to say that I’m going to say an, a goal without the proper due diligence, you know? Cause like, imagine that you are going to be a doctor, right? You say yourself, I’m going to be a doctor. That’s my goal. I want to be a doctor, but you don’t ask yourself, Hey, am I willing to get up at 4:00 AM? Hey, am I willing to study 16 hours a day? Hey, am I willing to give up alcohol and partying throughout my college years? And, and just focus on this, Hey, am I willing to do all these things that require me? My am I willing to, for our time, you know, clean out of people’s underwear at, at the, at the hospital or whatever, like, am I willing to do all this to be a doctor? Is what is the answer to that? Not just, Ooh, I’m gonna be a doctor. And then you start going all in on it. But you never think about the process. You never think about the road, you know? And I think a lot of people don’t think about that. And so they, they, they go in on something and then they give up or they, they get left with, you know, an unfinished project because they didn’t think about that. They didn’t think about the process,

Eric Toz (01:31:40):
A successful new business or a successful startup. There’s like three phases. Right. I think of phase one is like you’re hacking through the jungle with a machete. Okay. And so sometimes you’re you, that might be a couple of months. Sometimes it might be a couple of years, but you’re trying to find this product market fit. You’re just trying to get traction. And then eventually if you hack through the jungle long enough, you’ll get to this dirt road. Right. And so maybe you see a donkey or something on that dirt road and you know, it’s getting a little easier, but you still don’t really know where that road is going. And if you fall the dirt road long enough, and I would say, you know, my company, we’re probably tail end of the dirt road, but then the last step is sort of the super highway.

Eric Toz (01:32:25):
And it’s like, this is the system that works. Like you put $1 in, you pull the lever and you get $3 out. And it’s just like totally systematized. And now you’re on the super highway. So I think you, like, people need to ask themselves, are you willing to sign up for that adventure? Right. And are you willing to go through those three phases? And a lot of people like they, they don’t want to spend the time to hack through the jungle, especially if they’re supporting their family or something like that. They’re not in the hacking phase of their life and that’s okay. But yeah, I think, I think the best business ideas, like they, they take one thing that works already and they do it in a different vertical or like a different niche. So like me, I was like, I want to do Teespring for jewelry. And then there’s some businesses are like, I want to be door dash for sporting events or something like that. Like there’s the model there’s models that work. And

Dan Henry (01:33:23):
You thought that through.

Eric Toz (01:33:24):
Yeah. I knew that the model worked like I was inspired by a model that worked. So I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think if you can just take a random idea and, and truly believe in it, unless you have some anchor of success, some someone else has done it before and something similar, but different. You

Dan Henry (01:33:41):
Gotta do your due diligence on your dreams.

Eric Toz (01:33:44):
Yeah. You just need to find the model that works, I think.

Dan Henry (01:33:46):
Yeah. Does that help Laurie?

Laurie (01:33:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Actually be mind if I put it in a nutshell and repeat back to what I think I heard you say. Okay. So begin with the end in mind. Be humble enough to know that you don’t know what you don’t know, model at work and understand it’s going to be a process.

Dan Henry (01:34:09):
Yeah. And try to fall in love with the process more than the goal. That would be the, I would add it in there.

Laurie (01:34:15):
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I love that.
Dan Henry (01:34:17):
It was nice talking to you, Laurie. Thank you so much for calling in.

Laurie (01:34:21):
It’s cool to be part of what you’re doing.

Bye Lori, Brandon, we got anybody else.

Brandon (01:34:31):
I believe we do, but I have to learn how to filter them out as we,

Dan Henry (01:34:36):
Oh, you can’t hear Brandon now. Oh, okay. So we got some tech stuff to work out in CA but we’ll, we’ll figure it out. So, so now Eric, can’t hear you, Brandon.

Brandon (01:34:46):
No. Nope. There we go. Yeah, you should hear me now. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. First episode. Still trying to figure it out. Yeah.

Dan Henry (01:34:51):
We’re trying to do that. We’ll we’ll get it done. I’m sure. If you went back and looked at like Joe Rogan’s first episode, it was horrifying and he probably doesn’t want to watch it himself. And you know, it’s still probably pretty good from a content perspective, but you know, now he’s got this fancy, have you seen his new one as a comedian before? That’s true. He had a, he’s an unfair advantage. He was he was funny. I’m just funny looking so but yeah, his new studio is, is really nice. I dig it. I dig the, the wood vibe he’s got going on. So so while Brandon’s working on another another caller, I see, what time is it? Five 40. So we’ll, we got about another 20 minutes. At least that’s, you know, until my bladder explodes. So

Brandon (01:35:39):
We do have one

Dan Henry (01:35:40):
More callers. Sweet. Okay, awesome. Let’s let’s do and let’s do a little intro. Tell me tell me the name of the caller before we, we bring them on. That would be fantastic. And maybe where they’re from, if you know, oh, we have Ruben

Dan Henry (01:35:52):
Coming on and Ruben, where are you from?

Ruben (01:35:56):
I am calling in from Manhattan. This is Rubin Conure. Brandon, right?

Brandon (01:36:00):
Ruben from Invested Talent

Dan Henry (01:36:06):
Man. Hey, what’s up? How you doing?

Ruben (01:36:09):
Good. Good. I missed you guys last week. Question as we’re talking about the, how to things and, and we’re talking about short-term goals versus long-term vision. My question is how do you structurally have it planned where you insert new goals as you get new information and how you show the current goals and how do you know when to say the court along the journey? Right. And I’m thinking long-term. So, in other words, how do you keep the short-term plan versus your long-term vision and how do you, how do you show and how do you add on as you get new information along the journey?

Dan Henry (01:36:57):
So for me personally, maybe Eric has a different view on this. Cause you know, I guess a lot of it depends on, on where you’re at in your life and your business model. But for me, I’ve always, I don’t like goals. Like I’m, I’m weird. I’m very against goals, right? I am more about one goal in that is forward, you know, one direction forward, regardless of what, like, because if you think about it, you, whatever goal you have, it’s down the road, right? Whether it’s 10 feet down the road, a mile down the road, 10 miles down the road, a hundred miles down the road, it doesn’t matter where it’s at. You’re still going to be moving forward to get there. So your wheels, your direction is still moving forward, regardless. So for me, I like to, you know, like a lot of people, they focus on systems, right.

Dan Henry (01:37:44):
But they never focused on the skills to fill the systems. So they’ll say, well, if I learn this system, I’ll be great, but they don’t, you know, they don’t wanna, they don’t want to like, imagine you were a speaker. Okay. Yeah. And you said, well, I’m going to learn a speaking script or a format of speaking that will allow, you know, th th th these big time speakers use. And I want to learn that format. I want to learn that way of speaking, but then you never focus on articulation on learning and flection. You never study great speakers and learn how, you know, you, you, you might say the right words, but you’re kind of talking like this and you’re bringing, you never learn how to actually articulate yourself in a way that, you know, keeps people’s attention and use different tones of voice. And you never worry about the skill of speaking.

Dan Henry (01:38:27):
You worry about the system. So I see a lot of people do this. And for me, I think that when you learn new skills, the outcome of that and the by-product of that replaces goals. So, you know, if you say, okay, I’m going to get my company to a hundred million, well, what do you have to do to get you to your company? A hundred million? Let’s just say that you have to focus on strategic partnerships, or you have to focus on sales or selling or whatever, like for my company for free get clients.com. You know, for me, I had to focus on being as persuasive as possible and learning how to shift people’s perspective, because in that business, a lot of people have a lot of limiting beliefs. And so they don’t, they want something like, they want to buy something. They want to educate themselves, but they don’t because they don’t believe in themselves. So I had to get good at helping people believe in themselves and showing them away in our tea and articulation. I didn’t worry about how much money I was making. I didn’t worry about where I wanted to be. I worried about getting good at that. And those things happened as a result of it. Oh yeah.

Eric Toz (01:39:34):
You know, so, you know, there’s a lot of Silicon valley companies in venture venture capital backed companies who they have this mission statement and they have this goal of going public or getting acquired and changing the world or whatever. But a lot of these companies, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re tracking all these different KPIs, which is just a fancy word for different metrics. And a lot of the time over time, they figure out there’s only one or two numbers that actually matter to drive the entire business forward. And it might be like engagement per user. It might be how many times did they log back in to the software per month? Right. So it’s all about finding the truth of like only the top one to three most important things that you can influence in the business and only focusing on like those things.

Eric Toz (01:40:31):
So I think the goal would be the most important goal is actually finding the right much metrics, finding the right things to focus on in the business. And so I’ll just give you an example for us at shine on when sales are slow. I’m like, I don’t, I don’t care cause engagement’s way up. Like, I know that the money will come, I know sales will come. Let’s just keep it in sharing that engagement per user is up. Like they’re interacting in our Facebook group. Like they’re logging into the app, like right. X amount of times per month. So I think just finding those business, like the most successful business people, they’re, they’re true seekers. They’re just trying to find the truth and there’s all this complexity and there’s these clouds of inf different information. And if they can simplify and boil it down to just the most important thing, then they’ll sort of be a guiding light for, for everyone in the business. 80,

Dan Henry (01:41:26):
20 rule Pareto principle. Yeah,

Eric Toz (01:41:29):
Yeah, absolutely. 80, 20 a hundred percent. Yeah.

Dan Henry (01:41:31):
Yeah. There you go. 80 to 80, 20, a hundred percent. So, so that’s I mean, what you said about like finding the truth. I experienced that my business, you know, I built get clients.com up to dude. I never said, I want to make $25 million 25, 26, 21, 27, 18 15. What we use are just numbers. You know what I mean? I just want it to be successful. And so one, one of the reasons I started this and I started how to think.com is because I realized that a lot of people would pay me a ton of money for business advice. I mean, tens of thousands of dollars for, for business consulting. And nine times out of 10, if not 9.9 times out of 10, I would not get a business question. I would get a mindset question. I would get a critical thinking question. I would get a, a question that really came down to decision-making or how you thought not a business or marketing or sales tactic per se. And that was the lion share of the questions that were those questions boiled down and how those questions turned into something that actually led to progress in their business, was learning how to think about things. And I did this for four, almost five years now. And I’ve been on

Eric Toz (01:42:49):
You’re a psychotherapist because that’s what a good therapist will do. They ask question and they’re like persons like holy crap.

Dan Henry (01:42:55):
Right. And, and I would get on these calls. I mean, I haven’t been on, I’ve been on thousands of coaching calls. Right. And I would get on these calls and I would have to ask questions because, you know, if you knew the exact question you needed to ask, you probably wouldn’t have the problem. And so I would dig and I would find out that these issues really came down to things like confidence and believing in yourself and understanding how to think about things and how to critically think through things. And so I thought to myself, okay, I would really like to create a company, a movement, a brand that was dedicated, not just to mindset, but teaching people how to think about things so that they could achieve more in their life, because it really comes down to, to the lens in which you see the world and not having to charge them tens of thousands of dollars to do that because these same principles apply to anything in life.

Dan Henry (01:43:46):
And that’s why we started how to think.com, which by the way, is our, our sponsor is us. And if you’d like to get daily mentoring from me and a host of other amazing human beings and, and business owners and entrepreneurs, you can go to how to think.com and sign up. We are launching soon, very, very, very, very, super affordable. Yeah, it’s, it’s the daily mentoring session downloaded to your app, right on your phone each and every day. The sessions are just five to eight minutes, which everybody has time. And you know, the other thing about that, and this is just my personal gripe with the personal development industry, is that in the personal development industry, there seems to be this pattern where it’s like, Hey, attend this five day event or this 16 hour course, and you will fix your mindset.

Dan Henry (01:44:36):
You’ll fix your confidence. You fix your motivation. And the truth is I believe that that’s not the best way to do things. This is what happens when you go to those events, you come home and, you know, you feel great. And then all of a sudden it all goes away. The truth is that the law of marginal gains to me, and from what I’ve seen is the best way to improve your mindset and how you think about things and your belief system and, and, and getting rid of limiting beliefs is because you just have to get 1% better each day. If you have five minutes, a day to work on your mind, just five, you will make far more progress. You make compound, you will get compounding results over time. Then if you go to a three or four or five day event, all at once, you’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re trying to absorb everything. And then you forget everything. You go home instead, work on it. Just, everybody has five minutes a day. And that’s why I created this company, because I believe that’s the best way to fix your mindset and improve, improve it, not fix it, but improve it and, and have a growth mindset and achieve things in life is by just working on it a little bit a day. And, and following the law of marginal gains, the 1% rule. And that’s why I started this. Yeah. So

Eric Toz (01:45:42):
I love it. Another, another thing too, that there’s an information side of, of growing your knowledge, but another way to become more successful too, is just focusing on your brain health, like your lyrical physical brain health, because if you can increase your brain health by 30%, all the other stuff you’re going to take in, that’s just compounded gains. So like, I personally take my research brain health all the time. Like all the meditation, all the supplements, all the cool stuff they’re doing with different types of like fungus supplements and different mushroom supplements, not like psychedelic ones, but just for focus and health and the

Dan Henry (01:46:22):
Added bonus. But

Eric Toz (01:46:24):
Yeah, ice baths, saunas, like all this stuff, like

Dan Henry (01:46:29):
Wim, Hof breathing and all this there’s a lot out there. There’s a lot out there that in, you know, it could be because I see a comment, oh, cause I can see, how can I sign up for this five minutes a day coaching. I’ll just go to how to think.com sign up for the waiting list. We’ll be, we’ll be launching it very, very soon. I think we forgot about our color. Ruben. Did that answer your question? Did that end up hanging out? Yeah, we’re just, we’re just sharing, man. This is a vibe session.

Ruben(01:46:59):
Absolutely. The recap. Here’s what I got an audit law that focus on a skill. But as let’s say, if you’re a public speaking focus on that, focus on the crap and then based on what you said as well is then measure the most important KPIs where that specific skill, and then focus on the law of marginal gains of 1% better every single day on those KPIs and make sure that your brain is healthy so that you can execute on that skillset.

Dan Henry (01:47:33):
I mean, you just wrapped up. Yeah, that was a good, that was a good, yeah, that was a good summary. Yeah. Now you got it. You got it. And you, do you know what that law of marginal, you know, where I heard about that law of marginal gains? By the way, thank you, Rubin. I hope that was, I hope that was helpful. Yeah. It’s all about asking the right questions. The book atomic habits. Yeah. Oh, I got to read that. You gotta read it. Okay. You here, listen, you, you, you, you had me read making friends and influence people, which is th that is probably the hardest stuff to implement, like all of them, because you, you forget about a lot of those things, you know, just simple things, but this right here is an amazing book. And it talks about how there was a British cycling team that was like the bad news bears.

Dan Henry (01:48:13):
They were like the worst team in, in cycling. And they brought on a new coach. And the cut with the coach did, was he, he did, he did all these crazy things just a little bit a day. He would get different pillows. He would literally test different pillows so that the athletes got a better night’s sleep, different helmets that were more aerodynamic different bike seats. So they were more comfortable. I mean, just, just these tiny little things, these little teeny tweaks. And he would just do them constantly. And every single day, he tweaked one thing and he did this and I think it was over the course of one or two years. It worked so well that they went, they ended up winning like five toward the different differences, Frances, whatever. And they, they won tons of Olympic gold medals and they became the dominant force in cycling because they focus on just 1% better each day.

Dan Henry (01:49:09):
And that’s actually how I, I’ve always, you know, how a lot of times in, in our industry there’ll be trends and, you know, people will try to change their, their system of marketing based on whatever the flavor of the week is. I’ve done the same thing for the last five years, the same exact way of marketing and generating sales. And I’ve just tried to get better and better and better at it and tweak it 1% each day. And I’m still able to pull crazy numbers and maintain an eight figure company doing the thing that everybody else says a hundred percent doesn’t work anymore, or it’s too hard or whatever story people tell themselves due to give them an excuse for their one bedroom apartment. You know, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you’re trying to make money and you’re giving yourself excuse after excuse, and you’re saying, well, you know, it’s because this is too hard.

Dan Henry (01:50:00):
It’s because there’s too much competition, you know, it’s because you know, of all these things and you never admit the fact that it’s because of you not focusing and not getting better, what you do, that’s when you deserve that one bedroom apartment. Okay. Yeah. But, but I believe everybody can be deserving of everything. Everybody can become deserving, you know, and, and, and this sounds harsh, but I learned that from some mentors of mine, they said, listen and this was a real harsh truth. I’m at a met, I’ve met I’ve been fortunate enough to meet three billionaires in my life. And one of them why I’ve actually, all three of them have given me some very similar advice, but one of them gave them, gave me a different perspective. It was a little harsh. It was a little hard to swallow because at the time I was poor and I had that one bedroom apartment.

Dan Henry (01:50:48):
And he said, listen, here’s the deal. If you’re, if you don’t have a nice house, if you don’t have a nice car, if you don’t have a nice life is cause you don’t deserve it. And the key is not to sit there and tell yourself you don’t deserve it. And that’s why you don’t have it. It’s to make yourself deserve it. It’s to Cru it’s to become the person that does deserve it. So think about where you want to be in 10 years. Think about what that person looks like. And then think about how that person behaves, think about how that person conducts, you know, life, think about how that person, their habits, and just do that. You know what I mean?

Eric Toz (01:51:23):
All the time I asked myself, would Tom Brady be doing this right now? Right? Like all the time. That’s usually Tom Brady. I don’t know why I just

Dan Henry (01:51:33):
Crazy discipline. Well, because I mean, it’s Tom Brady breath. Yeah. But I mean, think about this. If you go out every night and you drink and you get drunk and the next day you can’t focus on building your legacy, right? Yeah. You don’t deserve. But if in 10 years you were this, this amazing person and you, you and you built this amazing thing and you did what you want to do. Do you think that person would be out drinking every night? No. It’s because that person, that future version of yourself deserves all of that. And your current version of yourself doesn’t so you look at the future version and you said that person deserves it. How do I be like that person? And that person does not go out and drink every night. And what those

Eric Toz (01:52:13):
Let’s say, you’re drinking every night and you’re not getting the results you want. Most people will they’ll bail on their original idea. Or they’ll like, try to diversify, oh, I’m going to diversify in these other product lines. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Go back to your core business idea and quadruple down on that, because you already have some traction on that. Some people will get flustered and they’ll get anxious and they’ll want to diversify. But I think every successful billion dollar business would say that they started by just doing one thing. Like really well.

Dan Henry (01:52:45):
Yeah. And that’s, that’s absolutely true. And, and due to, I think a lot of us become guilty of that. I’m guilty of that. And then I reel myself back in and I go, wait a minute. And that’s the, that’s the other thing, man, is a lot of people think, and I want to be clear here. You, you can make mistakes and you can still be successful. I mean, I’ve made a ton of mistakes. I’ve made a recent, stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes dude. Like I made a mistake recently that cost me $500,000 fix like in 45 days. And I didn’t even know I was losing it and, and I’ve made two other mistakes, very similar to that, but I still, I still have. And all those mistakes were outside of my zone of genius. That’s the thing. I shouldn’t even have been there. I shouldn’t been there, bro.

Dan Henry (01:53:33):
Like I had no business in that part of town, you know what I mean? Like I shouldn’t even have been there. And, and so, so you can still make crazy mistakes and still be super, super successful. I still go home and, and I was talking to a good friend of mine Myron you know, Myron golden. And I T this had to do with stocks. I basically hired a company to manage an account in it. And in 45 days they drained the account almost zero. Yeah. Like stealing, no, just being really bad at what they do. I made more money and I’m not even an experienced stock trader. Like I’m I’m okay. But I just, I wanted to focus on my business. So like an idiot, I was like, oh, I’ll, I’ll hire this, these traders to manage this account because they seem like they have a good track record and they drain the account. And so I talked to my, my friend Myron and he’s like, that was really stupid. And I’m like, I know it was stupid. I know it was really tough, but he goes like this, this is me. He says he says well, here’s the thing. You only lost money. You didn’t lose your skills. You know, I go out and make that back like that. No problem. You know? And, and, and that’s because I have the skills. Yeah.

Eric Toz (01:54:44):
I’ve made mistakes where I would think about them six months later, I’m like, man, if I only did this and I have to like slap myself, you’re fantasizing about something that was never even there ever. You still are the same person with the same skills. Actually. You’re probably a better person for going through that because you learned a bunch in the process. So you’re actually stronger in a way.

Dan Henry (01:55:04):
Oh, and that’s the thing is it’s all about how you view it. Because like, if you think about it, I could sit there and say, I could beat myself up for the next six months over that dumb decision, put myself in a negative state. And then when I go to take actions in my business, growing this company, whatever, because I’m in that negative state, I am now going to do worse at that. I’m going to cost myself even more money. That money is gone, right. That money’s gone. But the thing about it is, is that dude, we’re both young and you know, we’re going to make mistakes now yesterday, tomorrow. And the thing is, you can’t let those mistakes carry with you because if you let those mistakes carry you, you will create more mistakes. You’ll create more failure. They on tilt. Yeah. It didn’t need to ever happen. You know, you just got,

Eric Toz (01:55:53):
You know, this term on tilt. It’s like a poker term,

Dan Henry (01:55:56):
Almost like

Eric Toz (01:55:57):
Player. If you play like a, let’s say you take a bad beat, you know, you go all in or something and you have a bad beat. Then in their next poker game, they’re on tilt. They’re like, it’s, they’re all screwed up in the house. And so you can’t get on tilt, like when stuff like that happens. And sometimes to make me feel comfortable about bad things that happen. You know, I think about like the big bang and everything, moving outwards at predictable rates and like how mathematically we can predict everything that’s going to happen. This Adam’s gonna move this way based on X, Y, Z. And I’m kind of like, yeah, you know, there there’s literally no other way it could have happened. This was just going to happen in your life no matter what. And so that kind of gives me comfort sometimes, you know?

Dan Henry (01:56:46):
Yeah. So it’s like predetermined, it was going to happen. And the best thing you can do is learn from it. And you can share, I mean, think about this. If I didn’t do that, if I didn’t have that experience happen and that, and one of maybe a hundred other experiences, I would not be able to share that with my audience and other people and perhaps prevent them from making those mistakes. So there’s always a purpose. There’s always a half glass full, you

Eric Toz (01:57:11):
Know, it’s totally a gift.

Dan Henry (01:57:15):
Yeah. Experiences, a gift. Mistakes are a gift. Failure’s a gift. Why? I always say that there’s no such thing as failure. Failure is simply the data required for success.

Eric Toz (01:57:27):
I love that. I think, I think about sometimes too, like in your decisions, you only need to be right. Like 51% of the time, like in blackjack, if you’re right, 51%, if you do keep doing it long enough, you’ll actually be a winner. But then like with these improvements, you’re talking about daily 1%, maybe you become fit. You make your right 52% of the time, and then maybe you’re right. 60% of the time. And then maybe 20 years later, you’re right. Like 80% of the time. Imagine that.

Dan Henry (01:57:58):
Yeah. Well that’s the thing is I think business in life is all about decision-making right? If you make more good decisions and bad, your life will turn out a lot better than if you make more bad decisions than good. And that’s, I mean, we, we sit there, we fantasize. What’s the meaning of life. What’s the secret to life. That’s it? That’s it. I mean, to me, it’s just that, like, you just make more good decisions. Why don’t you, don’t got a complicated, you know, like you make more good decisions in bad. Your life turns out better than if you make more bad decisions and good to learn, to make good decisions.

Eric Toz (01:58:30):
I love that. That’s how you think that

Dan Henry (01:58:33):
Maybe it’s six o’clock and I’m eyeing this bottle of water right here. Thinking I could fill this back up right now. So I think this is a good note to end cause I, you didn’t care, man. You’re just like, I can go to the bathroom.

Eric Toz (01:58:46):
Sorry guys. I was quick as

Dan Henry (01:58:48):
Though you were, you were, I mean, I mean, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m surprised there’s not a dribble trail coming down here. Cause that was, that was super fast. But dude thank you so much for coming on today and sharing. And can I, can I, can I make a selfish ask for you? Yeah. For me. Okay. I have a feeling that a lot of people who listen to this could have a lot to learn from you. And I think that it would be really cool cause it seems like, you know how to raise money and you also know a lot about e-commerce. I would love to have you host an audio course on our, how to think platform which let me just explain how this works for anybody listening. W you know, right now, how to think it’s just seven bucks a month, super cheap, right?

Dan Henry (01:59:36):
You get the daily mentoring for seven bucks a month. And then we have you know, these, these we have these other courses that you can purchase on the platform. Yeah. I guess instructors, well, you could purchase them or you could get them for free because if you share your link right from the app and you refer somebody to join, you earn think coins and you can buy those courses with things so they can be free. I’d love for you to host a course, either on e-commerce or how to raise money. I’m an audio course. Oh man. That would be amazing.

Eric Toz (02:00:10):
We’ll find it right in here. I M I D for anyone listening, I do have a, I wrote a free article called you know, how to raise venture capital on my site, Eric Taz, T O z.com. Oh, sweets six easy steps or raising venture capital. And it’s it’s

Dan Henry (02:00:28):
So we can do a six part audio course and just dive real deep into that.

Eric Toz (02:00:32):
Oh, that’d be, let’s do it, man. If he can’t wait, go to my site.

Dan Henry (02:00:36):
Oh yeah. Go to Eric’s house. You just search it.

Eric Toz (02:00:39):
Yeah. Eric with a C thomas.com.

Dan Henry (02:00:41):
Okay. And what’s the name of the article?

Eric Toz (02:00:44):
Six easy steps to raise venture capital. Okay. Yeah.

Dan Henry (02:00:47):
I’m going to go read it because I love reading stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. So go check out that article if you’re interested in it, but we definitely need to get you on to do an audio. Let’s do it.

Eric Toz (02:00:57):
I had so much fun, man. I could, I could do one of these a day, honestly, but you’re a great host. Like honestly, you are,

Dan Henry (02:01:03):
I’m not going to lie to you last night. I Googled Joe Rogan interview secrets and how to be a great interviewer. I stayed up all night, smoking weed, trying to learn how to be a world-class interviewer and do hours. I don’t know if I did. I don’t know if I, if I did a decent job yet, I’m sure I’ll get better. But I would love, I, we need to get a badge or something that usual suspects, because you’re local. I think we should get like you and some other guys that just come on regularly. You can be my you can be my Eddie Bravo, you know my brother-in-law and we can just have just, you know, just on, on, on some of this stuff and get like three or four people in here. And that can be the guy in the overtime.

Dan Henry (02:01:44):
Maybe it’ll be the color guy in the background saying, whoops, shouldn’t have done that. Just don’t let’s not let something that go down the flat earth theory, rabbit hole. I’m just kidding. Thank you, man. So much. Thank you everybody for listening. And also if you enjoyed this show, please do me a solid tag, somebody in it, share it. Just tell more people about it, so that, so that we keep doing it and we don’t get bored and yeah, can’t wait for the next one. I don’t think I can get bored after I just bought all these lights that we there, that the batteries don’t last, the whole show. We need to plug these in because these do not last the whole show, but I, I give it to you. It’s it’s it’s it’s the first show. I just, I noticed it like right in the middle of we’re talking when I put it off.

Dan Henry (02:02:31):
But but yeah, I dig it. I dig it. Get a vape pen in here next time. Yeah, that, that would be awesome. Yeah. Maybe real conversations like the last third of the show we’ll get through the first half and then we’ll, we’ll dive down the rabbit hole. Yeah, I’m ready. Awesome, man. Thank you so much, brother. I appreciate it. I gotta get, I gotta get a narrower table. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. And once again share comments, subscribe and if you are interested in getting daily mentorship and learning from some amazing entrepreneurs like Eric here himself join how to think and go to how to think.com and sign up. See you guys later. So you guys.