- Hey everybody.
Welcome to the Tom Ferry Show.
I'm going a little crazy on this one.
If you're 45, you're too old for this show.
(rock guitar music)
Hey, welcome to the Tom Ferry Show.
I get asked a lot of questions from people on
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you know, you name it
email, text, DMs, and I thought what I would do today
and my team set aside for me were four questions
from people that were 19 to early stage millennials.
And I know as I say that maybe you're watching me right
now on YouTube and you're like, you know,
you're old, you're 40.
What I'm going to encourage you to do is listen to
the answers through your filter of the world or
maybe, just maybe turn this off and go to the next one
or better yet maybe send it to somebody you know
who is in their twenties.
So the first question I got asked was from,
and I'm totally gonna mess this up on Instagram,
YogiD I'll just call ya,
suggestion for a 19 year old with no money.
So I can remember being 18 in a very similar situation
so it wasn't that long ago.
The difference though is today
if you're sitting here today, you're 19, you're 29
you're 39, you're 49, you've so many more ways
you can make money today than certainly when I was 19.
First and foremost I'd say to you, I don't know,
can you get Uber, can you become a Lyft driver?
Is that an option for you?
Gary Vaynerchuk talks about going to garage sales,
buying stuff on the cheap and selling it on Ebay.
That's certainly an option.
But you know, I'm gonna assume you're somehow
in the real estate space or you know someone,
maybe your parents are in the real estate space,
I don't know but I know this.
In certain states around the world,
certain countries around the world, you can go work for a
real estate professional where you can make phone calls
on their behalf and get paid as an ISA if you took the
time to get licensed and maybe you are, I don't know.
You can become their full time appointment setter
where you're working for an extraordinary agent
who's able to show you the ropes and help
you mature into the business and get paid in the process.
So the deal is today, there's an unlimited way
of making money in real estate and other industries.
You just gotta be resourceful.
Now I'm gonna flip the switch though on you,
and I'm gonna tell you, I don't think I've ever shared this.
My mentor Bill Mitchell passed away last September
and just mentor of relationship and life
and marriage and so much more, was the safety net
when I started my company 15 and a half years ago.
I remember sitting down and when I was probably 20,
21 years old and you know, like you, ambitious
thinking about my goals, thinking about dreams,
aspirations for greatness, and I remember asking Bill
like what should I be focusing on right now?
I really wanna make a lot of money and he actually
pulled me aside and he kinda put his arm around
my shoulder and he said, "Tom, don't think about money
until you're above the age of 30."
And I remember thinking here's this guy wildly
successful, retired multiple times, and he's telling me
as a young sales guy, don't think about money,
don't think about commissions, don't think about deals.
And I was like you're out of your mind.
And then he said, "Tom listen to me.
Think about becoming the kind of guy
that can be worthy of making the money that you desire.
Spend the next couple years just on improving yourself,
delivering your service, honing your craft,
honing your message, becoming the kind of person
that would be worthy of the money."
He said your peak earning years are when you're
in your fifties and sixties.
That's the reality, look at the studies.
He said so you're thinking about money at 19.
You're thinking about money in your early twenties.
His advice would be make sure you get enough to
take care of your life, but don't be so focused
on those crazy ambitious goals perhaps.
But instead think about who do you need to become?
Because Jim Rohn, another one of my mentors, said,
"Your income is in direct correlation
to the value you deliver to the marketplace."
And perhaps at 19 or 20 or 23, you haven't figured out
how to deliver the value to the marketplace that you need
because maybe you don't have the skills.
So that's my first answer for ya
to kind of an interesting question.
I also got, kind of randomly, from Ranelwarrior2016,
"How can I get more like and follows
on Facebook and Instagram?
I'm trying to change the world over here."
Now, there's a lot of people out there that
are experts in Facebook and Instagram and Twitter
and all this stuff and you know,
I pride myself on being relatively savvy.
I'm still very old school and I do it all myself, right.
My team will do some videos and stuff on my Instagram page,
but I'm the one that responding 'cause you know,
'cause it's emojis, it's arms, it's you know,
the heart and the little poop thing.
Here's the thing I know: If you play the game with
the hashtags, things like #followme, #like4like,
there is a ton of hashtags that you can add to your post
and other people are out there and they're gonna follow
you cause they're following that post, and of course
they're going to be expected to be followed in return.
So that's an easy simple hack that anybody can do.
The second thing I'd recommend is why don't you first
find all the people that you know and follow them.
And send them a DM and like their photos.
The way I got started early on Facebook, which now feels
like a million years ago, is I would literally spend
a day off all day going through Facebook figuring out
who do I know, who do I not know,
who knows that I know that who doesn't know that I know
and I'm making friend requests and it was totally ghetto.
I remember my wife saying to me, you're spending a lot
of time on Facebook, and my response was,
yeah, but this is where all my clients are,
this is where all my friend are,
and this is where all my prospects are.
And I will tell you the early stages of doing that
kind of scaling the unscalable gave me a tremendous
advantage 'cause people knew if they sent me
a private message it was me responding,
and I was engaging on that level.
So the thing I would tell you beyond the obvious:
create interesting content, bring value to others,
follow the hashtag trends, that's really important.
On my team they'll just copy and paste the 7, 8, 10, 15
most important hashtags that we want to pay attention to
so every time I do a post, bam,
I could just auto-post it, copy, paste,
and play it out there.
So that's super easy, but the big one is engage
with the people you want to be friends with.
Send them private messages, follow them,
like their comments, make comments about the things
that they are doing, and everyone else
that maybe likes them as well will follow you as well.
So that kind of an easy one.
Okay this one is kind of heavy.
Overwatchmerchant, I love these names right?
By the way here's just a little simple strategy.
You might want to own your own name
on all the social channels.
Overwatchmerchant, I know that means something to you,
"Tom what advice do you have for millennials
that haven't figured out their life's purpose yet?"
Well that's a question that has a lot of meaning to me.
I don't think, how do I say this best?
There's like multiple kinds of people on this planet.
There's people that don't have the self-awareness to
ever even think about what is my life's purpose,
why am I on this planet, and then there's a group
of people that are constantly saying
I don't know what my purpose is,
I gotta figure it out, I don't know what my purpose is.
And then there's this small segment of the population
that understands why they are here,
and they just go deliver every single day.
Not all of them are in business.
Some of them are teaching, some of them are doctors,
some of them are counselors, some of them are coaches,
some of them are real estate agents.
Like they've figured it out.
And I will tell you, another one of my mentors,
this kind of feels like one of the mentor shows,
was a guy named Mike Vance, and you probably
grew up on his products as I did.
He was the first dean at the Disney University.
He was Walt Disney's right-hand guy
for the last eight years of Walt's life.
If you read any of the books on the Disney stories,
you'll constantly see this name Mike Vance.
He was in charge of ideas and people development
for the Walt Disney corporation.
He launched Orlando after Walt passed away,
and then eventually left the company.
And out, sort of speaking about his experience
of working with Walt Disney and doing these
amazing things, 'cause he was an incredible guy.
He was sitting one day in a seminar
in Santa Monica, California, and a nice guy walks up
and he says, "Hey I just watched your presentation,
totally amazing.
I got this 19 year old kid that I'm working with.
He's building this computer and I think he's really
into Disney, and I think we can do something together."
You should Google this guy's name.
His name is Mike Markkula.
He was the first investor in a little company
called Apple Computer.
Yeah, he did okay, and guess what?
When Mike ended up working with Steve Jobs,
which he did for several decades,
consulting and coaching and developing and mentoring,
he always had the same process with everyone he worked with.
When I hired him for the first time in 2002,
I remember flying out to Miami and,
you know, I'm flying over there,
very expensive coach consultant, you know,
this guy's big time right, so man I'm focused.
I got my notepad and I'm writing
all my questions I want to ask him.
And I probably had about 25, 30 questions
that were, you know, how do I do this
and what would you recommend here and how do you do this?
And I remember asking him the very
first question which is, you worked with Walt Disney.
You worked with Steve Jobs, Jack Welch.
You invented the salad bar and Mother Teresa
was someone you talked to on a regular basis.
Like just the context of the conversations,
the arc of perspective you have is insane.
And I remember saying to him,
what do all these people have in common?
Like what is it that makes them tick?
And you know, Mike was very tall, big hair,
lots of energy, big smile and he said,
"They've all answered the five fundamental questions
and they live by them."
And I was like, okay.
And he's like, "What's your next question?"
Well of course my question was,
"What are the five fundamental questions
that these extraordinary men and women live by?"
Now whether you're 55, 85, or 18,
and you're watching this, consider these five questions.
He said to me, "Number one Tom, they've answered
the question, what is my purpose?"
Which you could say, what is your calling,
what makes your heart sing,
what would you do just every single day
because it just means something to you,
it matters to you, and he said
the essence of it might not be perfect,
but you kind of know, like you know.
He said, so the first thing is they've all answered
the question, what is my purpose?
What's the essence of what I want?
Who am I, why am I on this planet?
And just shut up and listen.
And then he said the second question is,
they all answered, what are my god-given talents?
What do I do so well that it's effortless,
that I could do it all day long,
whether there was money or not.
It feels good to do it, it makes a difference when I do it,
and I'm really good at it.
What are your god-given talents?
Or just, what's your natural DNA?
What were you built to do?
And then he said question number three,
they've all answered, what are my values?
Now think about that question.
I don't mean like do I value honesty,
integrity, truth, justice, whatever it may be.
Though all of that is a part of it.
He said, if you don't take the time to answer,
what do I value, you never take the time to say,
what is the filter I'm going to listen through
and therefore everything that gets presented
to you could be a really good idea.
He said, what made these people extraordinary
is because they were so clear on their values,
what mattered to them, and even a priority
of what mattered to them, that when they were presented
something, something was offered to them, a meeting.
Do you want to meet this person?
Do you want to start this new business?
They could say yes or no based upon their values,
which means their life was easier.
Things were simpler.
They could make decisions faster.
Really important one.
And then he said number four,
they'd all taken the time to answer this question,
it's five or 10 or 20 years from now,
how is the world experiencing you?
Now think about that question.
You're 19 or 20, you're 22, you're 85, right?
It's five years from now, it's 10 years from now,
it's 20 years from now, how is the world experiencing you?
As he's asking me these questions,
you could imagine, I went from all these questions
that I wanted to ask him, I am now just writing
and writing and writing and writing and writing,
and thinking about, and by the way,
I couldn't answer that first one, what's my purpose,
but I was able to answer the question,
how is the world experiencing me
in five years, 10 years, 20 years.
I was like New York Times bestseller.
I barely got out of high school,
and now I'm like, I'm gonna be a New York Times bestseller?
Check, did that one.
I'm gonna have this business where I help
all these people all over the world?
Check, did that one.
I'm gonna touch hundreds of thousands of people
on the internet and all these different ways.
I had no idea what I was talking about
in 2002 when I was talking about this,
but I was writing all that stuff down
like I hope you are as well.
But then he asked me the most important question.
He said, "Tom, they all figured out one thing.
They all answered, who would I be if I was already there?"
And I was like, I'd never heard it like that before,
so I said, "What do you mean, be?"
And he said, "Tom, there's an old model of the world
that you've probably lived in,
which is people tell you if you do a lot,
then one day you'll have a lot,
and then one day you could be happy,
you could be successful, you could be of value."
And he said, "In that model of the world what happens is,
right before you die, you finally get there."
And he said that model of the world
is not the model of the world that Walt Disney lived in,
certainly not Steve Jobs, certainly not Mother Teresa,
and even Neutron Jack, Jack Welch.
He said, "They all live in this model of the world: be."
Who do I need to be?
Why not be happy now?
Why not be grateful now?
Why not be of service now?
And then the doing part was natural and automatic,
and the have was just the natural result
of the being choices they were making
and all the actions they were taking,
so the results were just a natural by-product.
So, if you think about these five questions,
and this might be heavy for you,
and I don't know maybe you're 18, maybe you're 23,
I have no idea, but I know I was in my early thirties
when I finally took the time to do the self-discovery
process to answer those questions.
And the purpose got clearer and clearer
over about two years for me.
And I just kept journaling and writing,
and you know, why am I here, and what's my natural gifts,
and what's my DNA, and what do I value,
and then how do I see myself in five, 10, 15, 20 years.
And what happens is when you start doing all of that
and then you answer, who would I be if I was already there,
then all of a sudden I was like,
I'd be energetic, I'd be more passionate,
I'd be more of value, I'd contribute more,
I would have less constraints on time
and more focus and concentration
on the people I'm with in the moment.
And you start writing all these things down,
and then the doing, the activities become more natural.
So I know your question was, how do I discover my purpose?
I don't know, go to India, smoke weed,
and meditate for a month?
I don't know other than asking yourself over ...
I don't know if I've ever said "smoke weed"
on the Tom Ferry Show before, that could be really fun.
I can't wait to read the comments.
It's in California, it's now legal in all of Canada,
so that's kind of nutty, but check it out.
There's no simple way to do it
other than to take the time to write and to think,
and to ask yourself over and over and over,
and when your mind's like, I don't know,
say if you did know, lie to yourself, what would it be?
Why are you on this planet, why do you exist?
And when you keep saying that over and over again
and you ask it in a way where you expect a result,
it's gonna get clearer and clearer and clearer.
And again, whether you're 19 or you're 95,
once you know everything in your world shifts,
and life just becomes a whole lot more fun.
So, kind of a funky Tom Ferry Show,
hanging out in a Presidential suite here in Baltimore
with my two guys sitting across from me
and my buddies over there ready for dinner.
I hope I brought you some value.
I know this was a different show.
You might want to send this to your 19 year old.
You might want to send this to your 15 year old.
I don't know, but by answering these questions,
what I do know is they will become
a part of that very special, small percentage
of the planet that know why they're here.
Thanks so much for watching.
Can't wait to see your comments.
Remember always, your strategy matters,
and now more then ever, passion absolutely rules.
Hey, it's coach Tom Ferry.
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