Chip founded one of the fastest-growing boutique hotel chains in history, Joie de Vivre Hotels, at age 26, grew it to over 30 properties.

He recently left the company, in great shape (both him and the company!) to pursue a full-time passion teaching about how human development fits into management and business growth – starting out with this fantastic book.

I could try to explain emotional equations myself, but probably the best explanation will come from watching the super cool, short animated book trailer Chip put together below. (I promise you’ll learn something new about your emotions by watching it.)

Chip’s basic idea is that most emotions can be understood by breaking them down into their component parts.

For example, here’s one of my favorite of Chip’s equations from the book:

Anxiety = Uncertainty x Powerlessness

Now think about that. Kind of makes sense, right?

If you’re uncertain about something (such as you’re not sure what exactly is going to happen during an adventure trip) but you feel empowered to deal with whatever challenge arises, then you’re not going to feel anxiety, you’re going to feel that tingle of thrill or excitement.

But take the same uncertainty, and add a sense of powerlessness in the face of it, and don’t have thrill, you have that familiar hobgoblin of all entrepreneurs, anxiety.

With these equations, you can actually gain some control (or at least major insight) into your emotions. So, for example, with anxiety, now that you know it is the product of uncertainty x powerlessness, the remedy is simple. If you’re really anxious about something, Chip recommends making a list with four columns.

• First, what you don’t know about it.
• Second, what you do know about it.
• Third, what’s in your power to change about it.
• Fourth, what’s not in your power to change about it.

This exercise, if you try it, will do two things for you:

1) You’ll actually realize you know a lot more about the situation than you thought (there is less uncertainty), and that you can do more about it that you realize (you are more empowered).

2) By focusing your attention on the columns of certainty and empowerment, you’ll noticeably begin to feel less anxious about the situation.

Try it!

Chip’s book is full of wonderful equations like this, and simple exercises which can change your life. It’s one of the most novel and intriguing takes on our emotions I’ve ever read.

I hope you’ll join us tomorrow, Tuesday, January 17th, at 1pm Eastern, 10am Pacific, to hear Chip tell us all about Emotional Equations, and how you can use these fast, simple techniques to enjoy a better life at home and in your business or workplace.

To register, fill in the form below, and you’ll be given access info instantly.

See you tomorrow!

–Michael

You will be conducting web research, outreach, and relationship-building with journalists and writers on topics related to my recent book The Education of Millionaires. Topics include the student debt bubble, revolutionary innovation and disruption in the education field, out-of-work college graduates (perhaps you are one?! :), #OWS as it relates to student debt and disgruntled college graduates, debates over the value of higher education, and the rising trend towards youth entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurial self-education.

Depending on your success with the above research and outreach, the apprenticeship can then get into deeper aspects of the entire process of book creation, writing, pitching, and marketing. Learn about researching book ideas, writing proposals, pitching projects, writing and editing drafts, and designing future book launches.

You Must Be….

The skills required for this apprenticeship (and which you will develop massively by participating on the team) include:

• networking savvy (tact, grace, social intelligence, strategic thinking)
• writing skills
• web research
• social media savvy (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn for professional networking)
• graceful and diplomatic email manner (one of the most valuable and most difficult-to-master career skills I know of!)
• initiative in coming up with your own ideas related to our projects

You will get my absolute commitment to your own professional and career development and success beyond this apprenticeship. People pay me a lot for my coaching/consulting/guidance, and you’ll be getting a lot of it if you demonstrate ambition, initiative and engagement. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out.

I will also provide marketing/sales guidance and mentorship for your career, and quality connections and referrals among my vast network, where appropriate.

This is a particularly valuable opportunity if you are looking to break into (or advance a career in):

• PR/Publicity
• Digital marketing
• Writing/book publishing
• Blogging
• Journalism

My expectation is that you commit a minimum of 5 hrs/week (more is welcome). Because it is totally flexible, you can do this apprenticeship from anywhere with an Internet connection, though I want at least a few on my apprentice team based where I live, NYC. So extra brownie points go to those in the NYC area.

You will be managed by my rockstar Brand Manager Rachel, with plenty of facetime (or ‘Net time) with me each month.

How to Apply

Fill out the form below with as much of the requested information as possible (required fields marked with *asterisk.)

And, since this is all about questioning the status quo of higher education, here’s a fun twist:

Do not mention your educational credentials anywhere in this application. I want you telling me about your real-world experience, not resting on your theoretical laurels.

I could care less if you have three MAs, two Ph.Ds and an MBA from Harvard to boot—all are fine. But what I really care about is your enthusiasm, and your real-world chops. If you mention anything having to do with your formal educational credentials anywhere in your application on this page, your application will be deleted immediately. 

Not that I have anything against formal higher education or anything ;-) I just prefer hearing about your real-world experience, not your classroom experience.

I will be judging your application based on your enthusiasm and passion for the apprenticeship, your motivation, your already-existing savvy with social media, and the amount of fluency, grace, and personality (yes, personality!) you convey in your writing in the application.

Does this apprenticeship sound fun? Does it sound educational? Does it sound valuable? Get to it!

Applications are rolling until the apprentice team is full. Due to volume, I am not able to respond to all applications personally. If I think we’re a good match, you’ll hear from me within 2 weeks. If you don’t hear from me within 2 weeks, assume that for whatever reason I felt other applicants would make a better match. Thank you!

–Michael

Listen to me in a teleconference with Dale Stephens, founder of Uncollege.org and “Chief Educational Deviant” of the Uncollege movement. This movement is liberating young people from constrictive views—foisted upon them by parents and  teachers—about how they should educate  themselves.

How to Deschool Your Mind: A Dialogue With Dale Stephens & Michael Ellsberg
You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download; CTRL-click on a Mac)

I was excited about this call, because I got to focus less on the typical “how to” stuff that I write and talk a lot about, and instead got more philosophical. We talked about the ways traditional education can “school” our minds into conformism, and how to counteract these effects by “deschooling” our minds.

“Deschooling” means learning to value innovation over conformism, an individual path to development in your life over one-size-fits-all curricula, and real-world practical intelligence over classroom learning sheltered away from real-life experience.

You might think this is all airy-fairy new age stuff. On the contrary, in today’s uncertain, entrepreneurial economy, in which chaos and upheaval are the new normal, the rigid, bureaucratized, rule-following ways of thinking that you typically learn in school—in which all creativity and on-your-feet practical thinking is beaten out of you for being too unruly and disobedient–can be harmful to your economic health.

Listen to me and 19-year-old Dale Stephens, one of the leading lights in the world questioning traditional broken models of formalized education, in a wide-ranging live discussion. We had plenty of time for answering audience questions lon the line. We ventured deep into controversial and usually-unspoken topics around the rebellion against the bureaucratic mind-narrowing of traditional education, and the new revolution in self-education and life-long learning in America and across the world.

We’ve got for you a raucous, unscripted, uncensored dialogue about how to deprogram your mind from bureaucratized, overly-formal education, and find freedom in self-education.

How to Deschool Your Mind: A Dialogue With Dale Stephens & Michael Ellsberg
You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download, CTRL-click on a Mac)

I believe our current notions of education, and degrees people believe they need in order to succeed, are instead keeping people in chains: keeping them tied down to insane student debt loads, taking time off from work to continue full-time studies for ever-more degrees, and feeling inadequate with their own ability to succeed without the right societal punch-cards.

So, I wanted to take the opportunity to have a free-ranging, raucous, controversial, open dialogue about how to rebel against this insane system, and take your education into your own hands, with my friend Alexis Neely.

Because Alexis, more than most other successful people I know, embodies a full-on commitment to achieve her success while also living a life of freedom, on her own terms, without chains or societal pigeonholes.

We be talked together in dialogue on for 90min live on a teleconference.
You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download, CTRL-click on a Mac)

Here are some amazing things about Alexis, your co-host for the dialogue: She was a driven mom entrepreneur who has built two million dollar-plus businesses in the past 6 years (and another two 6-figure businesses at the same time).

A once highly respected lawyer herself, she now trains lawyers in a new business model she invented for her own law firm that clients love, wrote a best-selling book of her own and appeared on all the top television shows across the networks.

Alexis has done all of it without sacrificing her own freedom, lifestyle, or self-expression.

Here’s another side of Alexis: She has several tattoos, lives on a farm, writes about freedom and lives a Burning Man life all year long.

Back in 2003, she left the security of a $185,000 (and increasing annually) paycheck to build her own law firm with two little kids and a stay at home husband to support, and went on to make millions while living life on her terms.

Today, she is leaving the fame and fortune focus behind to put her attention on her children, her personal growth and her spiritual practice while the companies she built continue to operate behind the scenes of her life and support the Great Work she does with lawyers and entrepreneurs.

While Alexis went through the highest halls of traditional education, you don’t live the kind of life and career Alexis has had without a lot of additional, street-smart self-education. These companies (and the unconventional life they support) were built on the backs of exactly the real-world type of education we are sharing about on this call.

That’s why I wanted to have this dialogue with Alexis—because our current educational credentialing system is about living life on other people’s terms (teachers, parents, professors, resume screeners.) I talked with her about how we can all sidestep constrictive societal binds and live life on our terms.

If you’re feeling anxious about your educational credential status, or are thinking of going back to school to beef up your resume, you’ve bought into this system of living based on other people’s expectations of you.

In this call, we’re going to be talking about how to start living life on your terms via real-world, street-smart, practical self-education. The truth is, most of the education you’ll need to be successful, you didn’t learn in college. So take your education into your own hands, and learn the street-smart skills that will set you and your career free.

Taking Your Education Into Your Own Hands: A Dialogue With Alexis Neely and Michael Ellsberg
You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download, CTRL-click on a Mac)

Talk soon,

–Michael Ellsberg

P.S. Our intention with this call is to completely eliminate the stress you may be feeling about whether you have enough educational status on your resume in order to succeed.

We help you live life on your own terms by showing you how to gain street-smart skills which actually advance your career, inexpensively through self-education.

Ultimately, this call is about promoting your own career freedom and liberation.

The second Victor opened his mouth and started talking, my jaw hit the floor. It stayed there pretty much for the next several hours (I did eventually shut my jaw, after he stopped talking.) I had never heard such a nonstop blitzkrieg torrent of brilliant, counter-intuitive, specific, street-smart “Why didn’t I think of that??!!” business advice, delivered with such precision, confidence, authority and clarity.

Well, on Thursday, 9/22/11, I had the privilege of sharing his insight for 90 minutes live on a teleconference, on the topic of my own upcoming book The Education of Millionaires (which he’s featured in).

We  had e a free-wheeling, shocking, highly-caffeinated, no-holds-barred, controversial, angry-making dialogue together, packed with counter-intuitive, real-world, street-smart career development, education and and business growth strategies that they DON’T teach at Harvard Business School. It will get you riled up to take your career success to the next level.

Here is the link – click through this link to play it immediately, or right-click (CTRL-click on a Mac) to download it
(Note: the recording didn’t catch the first 30 seconds, so it opens mid-sentence.)

–Michael

Here’s some additional info Victor sent to his own list before the event – “straight from the master himself”:

—————————-

From: Victor Cheng
Subject: What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School

In an upcoming teleconference with Michael Ellsberg,  I’m going to focus on how to have a successful career over the LONG TERM in any field.

While everything I have written in the past about in terms of resumes, cover letters, GPA’s and the like are indeed quite important in getting your first job. The value of these type of credentials diminishes quickly after the first job.

Your success depends increasingly on “What have you done for me lately?” than what you did when you were in school.

Here’s another example, if you look at Harvard Business School alumni from 20 years ago and where they are today.

A few are Fortune 500 CEOs.

A few are unemployed.

While people in both groups had the same education, clearly SOMETHING separated them…. and YOU knowing what these differences are today, can help your career tomorrow.

Let me give you one simple example.

In my opinion, one big factor that separates the successful from the rest is one’s ability to sell… whether that’s selling a product, a service, an idea, a engineering design, or a vision.

If you look at the Profit & Loss statement of any business, you realize that without any sales, it’s impossible to have a profit.

Yet, a few years ago, I checked the combined business school course catalogs of Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton to see if  ANY of these schools had a course on “sales”… which I define as “sitting face to face with a prospect and having them buy something from you.”

Out of roughly 400 courses, there wasn’t even ONE course on ”sales”.

I found that quite remarkable… and actually ridiculous.

Ask ANY CEO of any company (that’s successful anyways) if the ability to sell effectively is important to the success of their company, and I’m certain 100% will say “yes”.

Yet, it is NOT taught in the top business schools. By the way, several years ago, I shared this story with former client and friend Michael Ellsberg.

I had forgotten that Michael had recorded our conversation on sales from a few years ago. I guess it left a big impression on him because recently asked to publish excerpts from that impromptu sales training I gave him in his forthcoming book, ”The Education of Millionaires: It’s Not What You Think and It’s Not Too Late”

The premise of the book (which I very much agree with) is that the skills needed to have an extremely successful LONG TERM career are NOT taught by academic institutions. They are the skills learned AFTER formal education ends.

In the consulting world, I’ve consistently said you get hired by the top firms based on your “book smarts” (academic performance), you get PROMOTED based on your “street smarts”—namely soft skills such as empathy with clients, ability to sell, listening skills, conflict resolution leading teams, networking, building relationships, leadership, etc…

In researching his book about these “street smarts”, Michael spent two years following around nearly 40 millionaires and billionaires who never graduated from college.

His focus was to DEFINE the 7 SPECIFIC skills that make someone “street smart” (in addition to, or in some cases instead of, “book smart”).

I’ve already mentioned one of them, the ability to SELL effectively.

Another one, is the ability to build a PERSONAL BRAND.

This is something that I have focused quite extensively, especially over the last 3 years. It is also something that occupies an enormous amount of my attention these days.

That should tell you something of the importance I place on this in today’s world.

As someone phrased so eloquently, “Google is the new resume of the future.” That’s increasingly true with each passing day.

In an upcoming LIVE (and free) Web-Event, Michael and I will be comparing notes on how to develop strong sales skills, build a personal brand, and the other “street smart” skills.

Listen in as we both provide our latest insights on topics quite relevant to your long term career success.
(Play the recorded teleconference via the link above – or right-click to download – CTRL-click on a Mac)

I hope to see you on the call for what I’m certain will be a provocative and insightful conversation.

Thanks,

–Victor Cheng

[Note: For the full Introduction to the book, click here.]

A twenty-one-year-old singer, songwriter, and guitarist named David found himself in a hospital in Paris one night, being treated for malnutrition, in 1967. The reason he was malnourished was that he was not making a lot of money and couldn’t afford proper foods, as he played gigs at bars, nightclubs, and dances across France and Spain.

No gig tonight, no eat tomorrow.

Two years before, he was in his sixth form in Cambridge, England (equivalent to the last two years of high school in the United States). David simply stopped going to his A-levels, the series of exams that determine university entrance in the UK. All he really cared about was rock music, and he dove fully into it, playing in local bands and eventually living by his wits, gig to gig, in France and Spain. Had you seen him in that moment in Paris, sickly in the hospital at age twenty-one, lacking funds to feed himself properly, you might not have thought he had made a good choice leaving his A-levels, or that he had any decent prospects in life.

And while that judgment may be correct for most starving artists, in the case of this particular artist—who was starving not just figuratively but literally—such a judgment would be as off the mark as you could get.
David returned to the UK, and later that year, a drummer he knew named Nick Mason asked him to join a little band they were putting together called Pink Floyd. The band went on to sell over 200 million copies of its albums over the next forty-plus years. The Dark Side of the Moon, the band’s most famous album, has sold upward of 45 million copies worldwide and ranks among the greatest-selling, most critically acclaimed, and most influential albums of all time. As lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and songwriter for the band that produced so many hits for over forty years, David Gilmour is easily one of the most important musicians in the history of rock.

I count myself as a fan. I thank David personally for providing the soundtrack to so many blissful nights in university, philosophizing about the meaning of life or making love instead of studying. Some of the most educational parts of my college experience, truly. And the music still brings joy, inspiration, and awe to my life—and surely to millions of others—a decade out of college. David Gilmour has made a massive difference to the lives of many people on the planet. The world would be a much poorer place without him and his music. He has lived—I would say—a deeply meaningful life.

Yet, there is something profoundly unsettling about his story as well—and indeed, about the story of just about anyone who has made a great difference in the world.

A year before he became famous, David was roughly the same musician, with roughly the same musical gift, and the same die-hard determination to make an impact on the world of music and live a meaningful life. At that time, however, the world didn’t care much about whatever impact he wanted to make on it or what “meaning” he wanted to create within it; in fact, in exchange for his musical gift, the world barely rewarded him enough to keep himself alive. One of the most monumental musicians in the history of rock nearly died as a starving artist, before he and his band got “discovered.”

All of us—at least the most idealistic among us—want to make a difference in the world, whether it’s in business, the arts, politics, philanthropy, science, or technology. At the very least, we want to make a difference in our communities. This is what feels meaningful to us: making a difference, having an impact, living for a purpose.

Yet, there’s a paradoxical aspect to “making a difference” and “having an impact.” The world doesn’t always care whether we want to make a difference or have an impact on it. In fact, it can be downright hostile to us when we try. The world doesn’t automatically open its arms to us just because we have good intentions. It may laugh at our great sense of “purpose” or, more commonly, simply yawn and turn its head to something else.

At the highest levels of success, there’s a capricious aspect to making a difference in the world and living with purpose, which we must come to terms with squarely before we start talking about “secrets to success,” “success skills,” and so forth. Indeed, I asked David about the secret to his success, and he gave me a frank answer: “I got very lucky. Luck plays a big, big part in the kind of success I’ve had. They say you have to make your own luck, but I’m not too sure of that sometimes. There are a lot of people I know who had the same determination I had, followed my same path and threw their lot into the music business without going to university, and didn’t end up making a successful living playing music. They were thereafter stuck in jobs which were fairly hand-to-mouth. They were not doing what they could have done with their lives if they continued with their studies. It’s absolutely not a course I would recommend to anyone, unless you were absolutely 110 percent convinced that your passion was something you had to do and you would be willing to forsake a lot of other things for it.”

Very few of us, when we dream about the kind of impact we want to make on the world, dream about things we could achieve with little risk. Very few of us dream of staying anonymous middle managers, or paper pushers lost in sprawling bureaucracies for the rest of our lives. That doesn’t feel like much of a purpose at all.

No, our dreams and purposes are the stuff of romance, adventure, and excitement. We dream of becoming famous, wealthy, of making a big mark on the world. We dream of becoming rock stars. If not literal rock stars, like David, then some other kind of star: a famous athlete, actor, writer, filmmaker, artist, politician, lauded scientist, CEO, or millionaire or billionaire entrepreneur (such as some of the entrepreneurs I interview in this book). Or we dream of making an impact in a traditional profession, such as law, medicine, or academia, or making a great impact in our community in a position of leadership or charity. Perhaps we dream of being a star teacher and making a difference in hundreds of children’s lives.

Yet, such dreams of making a difference always involve risk. The more you want to be a star in your respective field—whether it’s being a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, or an artist, musician, or entrepreneur—the more risk you will have to take in your career choices. Few people become stars in their industry, make a difference to the lives of lots of people, or find a sense of purpose in their career simply by sticking to the script and hewing close to well-trodden paths.

You can take a stadium full of highly talented twenty-one-year-olds with lots of drive and determination, all passionate about making an impact on the world in the ways young people dream about, in fields such as music, art, writing, acting, filmmaking, politics, policy, science, technology, media, philanthropy and charity, or entrepreneurialism. Out of this whole stadium of talent, only one or two of these young people will become superstars in their respective fields, on the level of a David Gilmour.

Many in that stadium will end up flat on their asses, broke. That’s a terrifying prospect. In response to such prospects, out of fear, many young people in that stadium will stop sticking their necks out in their careers, clinging to safe scripts in their careers, where there’s little risk of failure and equally little risk of achieving anything truly remarkable.

What distinguishes these one or two superstars who reached their dreams and made a huge difference, from the rest of the talented, ambitious, idealistic individuals in that stadium?

I’ve asked many superstars their secret for success. While they all mention talent, persistence, drive, determination, believing in yourself, never giving up—the standard chestnuts of the self-help literature—the most honest and self-aware of the superstars, such as David Gilmour, add an additional factor to the list. They also pay respect to the role of serendipity, synchronicity, and random chance. The stars shone on them. The gods smiled upon them. The right place at the right time. Simple, blind luck.

They don’t call it a “lucky break” for nothing.

If there wasn’t risk involved, and the fear that accompanies that risk, we wouldn’t be dreaming about it, we’d have already done it. (The grocery store is always hiring checkout clerks. If your dream was to become a checkout clerk, you could be living your dream right now. But I’m willing to bet that’s not your dream.)

So, how do we reconcile our deepest dreams of making a difference on the world—our dreams of leading a meaningful, impactful life, a life of purpose—with the stark reality that the world doesn’t always care what kind of difference we want to make or give us an A for effort?

Navigating these rocky existential waters is one of the most important aptitudes you could develop. Err too far in either direction, and it’s very unlikely you’ll end up happy in life. Err too far on the side of reaching for lofty dreams within your career, without any attention to existing market risks and constraints, and you may end up, as David did at twenty-one, in a hospital for malnourishment, at least metaphorically speaking. And few people who end up in that place of starving-artist-hood have the fortune to get out, as David eventually did.

Yet, err too far in the other direction, giving in to fear and sticking to the safe path, without even a nod to the larger impact you want to make, the greater purpose you want to achieve, and you may end up feeling like you missed out. You may enjoy some level of predictability or security in your income, but it won’t feel very satisfying to you inside. Few people would call this “success.”

Therefore, at the outset of any discussion of success, what you need is not another motivational rah-rah lecture on “believing in yourself” or “never giving up” or “working harder,” the standard fare of other books. What you need is an honest discussion of how to navigate gracefully among dreams, risk, and ruin in the real-world marketplace.

Next: The Conflict of Making an Impact versus Living a Predictable Life

[Here is the full Introduction to my forthcoming book The Education of Millionaires. Since this piece is being made available here a month before the book is being released, Penguin has asked me to include the following proviso: "

You’ve been fed a lie. The lie is that if you study hard in school, get good grades, get into a good college, and get a degree, then your success in life is guaranteed.

This might have been true fifty years ago. But it is no longer true today.

If you want to succeed now, then you must also educate yourself in the real-world skills, capabilities, and mindsets that will get you ahead outside of the classroom. This is true whether you’ve been to college or not.

This book shows you the way.

Why Practical Intelligence Almost Always Beats Academic Intelligence

A thirty-seven-year-old Harvard MBA and a twentysomething college dropout, the latter a few credits shy of a film and theater degree from USC, are sitting across each other in a job interview. The MBA is wearing a crisply pressed three-piece suit with a yellow tie. The twentysomething is wearing jeans and a pullover sweatshirt, with no shirt underneath. The twentysomething is unshaven, and the state of his hair suggests that not much grooming had occurred between his departure from bed that morning and this interview.

The interview is going very, very poorly. The interviewer is entirely unimpressed with the academic background the interviewee brings to the table, and feels the interviewee doesn’t have enough experience to provide tangible value in the chaotic environment of a real-world start-up.

Bryan Franklin, the dropout theater major, decided to hire someone else that day for the $10-an-hour administrative and data entry job he had posted on Craigslist a few days before.

Bryan had started a sound design business in college and got too caught up in building and running the business to finish his degree. Eventually, over three hundred feature films were edited or mixed at his studio, including Gladiator, The Last Samurai, and Artificial Intelligence. Bootstrapping the business from the ground up and never once taking on investor money, he eventually sold it in 2000, after Dody Dorn was nominated for an Oscar for editing the film Memento, which she cut at the studio. The sale of the company “bought me a house on Lombard Street in San Francisco,” as Bryan put it with a smile.

Now in early 2002, he was on his third self-made, self-funded, profitable business, and he needed an assistant, so he posted an ad on Craigslist, Bryan told me. “Within twenty-four hours, I had two hundred responses. Most of them had BAs, but there were also many masters’, several with JDs who had passed the bar, a few PhDs, and around six MBAs. The Harvard MBA got me curious. I put him on a shortlist. He was one of the ten or so I interviewed.

“He came to my house in a three-piece suit. I was talking to him about the website he was going to be doing data entry for at ten dollars an hour, and he was stuck in a very 1999 mentality about the Web. I don’t think he said the word ‘IPO,’ but I’m pretty sure he said the word ‘liquidity’ at some point in the interview.

“And I’m like, ‘Look, I’m looking for data entry and customer service. I want to make sure that when a customer calls, they feel taken care of.’

“And he said, ‘Well, you know, I think that we need to be strategic about which relationships we can leverage . . .’ And that’s kind of how the interview went. At one point he started saying, ‘So, there’s obviously several disparate paths involved and different priorities, so one of the things I’d do in my first week is build a priority matrix, so that we could reference . . .’ And I just had this picture in my mind of him building his priority matrix while I was doing all the work.

“I ended up hiring a young African American woman. She was a high school dropout, but she had a great work ethic and lots of street smarts. She ended up doing a terrific job over three years. She got several raises, and at one point was managing three people.”

Next: What you will learn in college, and what you won’t

“The Entrepreneurial Mindset vs. the Employee Mindset”:
A Live 90-Minute Interview With Michael Ellsberg
You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download, CTRL-click on a Mac)

This call focused on the central theme of The Education of Millionaires: It’s Not What You Think, and It’s Not Too Late. Much of what I initially learned about topic of this call, I learned directly from Bryan and Jennifer (and I credit them in the book.) So it’s an honor to be interviewed by them on this.

So what is “the Entrepreneurial Mindset,” and what is the “Employee Mindset”?

And why should you mercilessly kick out any last remnants of the latter from your mind?

Well, the top question I’m getting about the book is, “What’s the one thing all these self-made, self-educated millionaires and billionaires you’ve been interviewing for the past two years have in common?”

In this call with Bryan and Jennifer, I spilled the beans and shared the answer.

You see, the best way I can understand what sets apart the self-made millionaires and billionaires I’ve been meeting and interviewing over the past 2 years, is that they all intuitively follow a simple concept I actually learned from Bryan and Jennifer.

It’s called “The Entrepreneurial Mindset vs. The Employee Mindset.” (And no, it has nothing to do with whether you’re actually an entrepreneur or an employee – it’s about your mindset.)

The uber-successful entrepreneurs I’ve been interviewing naturally and intuitively put this concept into practice on their own, and THAT’s what appears to be driving their success. This basic concept we’re about to explore with you in this call—I have come to believe—is the DNA of success.

No, this is not the usual “motivational” fluff, or “affirmations” or “visualization” or “positive thinking” or “law of attraction.” You’ve all heard about that stuff plenty, and it may or may not work, but that’s NOT what this call is about. Promise.

Rather, this is about a hard-nosed, no-nonsense, no-BS mental distinction which I personally observed in action in nearly every super-successful self-made entrepreneur I interviewed these last 2 years for my book. It runs through their very veins—and I believe it the common key that sets them apart from unsuccessful people (including unsuccessful people who have fancy educations!)

(And if you think, “Oh, I’m an entrepreneur already, I’ve already got that nailed”… WRONG! We all have hidden, insidious vestiges of the employee mindset still mucking around in our brains and messing things up without us even knowing it. This call helps you identify them clearly and yank them out.)

I’m not going to get into more detail here about what this mindset is, and what the distinction entails—for that, you’ll just have to listen to the call yourself.

You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download, CTRL-click on a Mac)

Who are Bryan Franklin and Jennifer Russell?

Let me tell you a little about the two people who interviewed me on the call.

First, Bryan Franklin is one of my dearest friends. He officiated my wedding ceremony. (That’s him, in the middle, as I recite my vows to Jena, about to put the ring on her finger – that’s my mom looking over from the right!)

My book is about self-education in street-smarts, and I feel I have learned more real-world value studying with Bryan (informally and in a yearlong program I took with him) than in my entire college and high school years put together.

That’s a strong statement, but I believe it.

Bryan is one of the most successful executive coaches in Silicon Valley. He has earned $1 million per year coaching for the past ten years straight, all with no college degree. (He is self-taught, and his amazing story of self-education is in my book.)

He has coached or consulted at very high levels within the executive ranks of some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including LinkedIn, Google, Apple, Cisco, and Logitech. In my experience learning of his work with A-list clients, it seems he can take pretty much any business situation from $1 million to $10 million to $100 million to $10 billion and show the way forward to massive growth. He’s also one of the most advanced practitioners of high-value corporate sales on the planet and has often been brought in to save $400+ million deals that were going south, talking to dozens of people on each side to save it. It has been a profound honor to study from this man and soak up his wisdom during the past several years.

Jennifer Russell, Bryan’s business partner and fianceé, is one of the most kick-ass (literally, she has a black-belt in several different martial arts!) business minds and facilitators I’ve ever met. Do NOT even think of coming to her and rehashing your tired BS excuses for why you think you can’t get the business results you want—because she shows absolutely no mercy for BS in her clients: she holds them to higher standards than they often hold herself.

Jennifer is a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur, having worked exclusively in high impact start-ups, most recently as president of an environmental chemical company, bringing over 40 new technology products to market.

Whether its guiding a cancer drug through the arduous process of testing and development or guiding an entrepreneur through the harrowing process of creating their business, Jennifer’s insight and inspiration are bar none.

Listen to Jennifer, Bryan and me in this special 90-minute call.  You can listen to the audio of the call here. (Right-click to download, CTRL-click on a Mac)

The challenge of coming up with brand promise, for both companies and individuals, is finding the sweet spot between overpromising and underpromising.

If I were to say something like, my brand promise to you is that “I spread peace and love wherever I go,” that would be overpromising. I may be able to deliver on such a promise a few minutes in a given day, but if I had to go to a 7AM breakfast meeting, and you had to meet me there, I guarantee you would not experience me as delivering on such a promise! (My brain doesn’t usually come on line until about 11 AM, and you really really don’t want to meet me before that hour.)

Yet, if I were to say something like, my brand promise is that “I’ll usually be friendly and helpful,” that would probably be true, but it would also be underpromising and underwhelming. No one is going to get excited about meeting a person with such a weak brand promise.

Well, folks, I feel I’ve finally nailed it, a brand promise for me that gets it exactly right . . . what you can reasonably expect when you come into contact with me.

I shatter limited thinking.

I promise to you I’ll always give that to you.

Here’s what I mean by this.

I find that most people are either heavily weighted towards the practical/monetary/material side of life, or the philosophical/spiritual/existential side of life. For some reason, I pick up on this dynamic very quickly, and whenever I meet someone, I sense where they are on this spectrum, I start talking to them (and introducing them to ideas and perspective) from the other side.

If you’re all buttoned-up, goal-oriented, achievement-obsessed (the kind of people I tend to meet in NYC) usually I will start talking to you (and trying to get you interested in) meditation, or Buddhist philosophy, or psychedelic music, or shamanism, or systems theory, or Burning Man.

If you’re all into finding your purpose, and finding your true self, and expressing your “deep, innermost authenticity,” and other spiritual/existential pursuits, usually I will start talking to you about making more money, starting a business, learning about marketing, sales, copywriting, and so forth.

Thus, most people who meet me and spend time with me—whether they are hard-nosed businesspeople or neon-clad Burning Man freaks—tend to experience me as expanding their horizons, introducing them to unfamiliar ideas and perspectives, and shattering limited thinking.

And that is my brand promise to you.

I shatter limited thinking.

Why (and How) to Find Your Own Brand Promise

Why should you find your own brand promise?

• It helps focus your attention and efforts. You have a clear, simple reminder of why you’re here on the planet, what impact you want to have on others, why you wake up every morning and get out of bed.
• You don’t necessarily need to use it as a “tagline” on your site, cards, etc. (that can be cheesy at times), but to the extent you do verbalize it, it helps others put all your work, efforts, energy in context—it helps them see the *story* of you—how all the pieces of your life and activity fit together.
• It helps you get in touch with the ways you are a unique presence on the planet, not just another faceless office drone.

So *how* do you go about creating your own personal brand promise?

It’s simple.

As I mentioned, a brand promise is a dance between overpromising and underpromising. You want to get in that sweet spot right in the middle.

First, come up with a promise you’d like to be able to make to people, but you know would be *way* overpromising if you made it. Like, “I lead people to cosmic bliss every where I walk.” (In fact, I’ve met many people in my life in SF who say similar things about themselves.) Sadly, few of us on Earth, except perhaps the Dalai Lama, will ever be able to deliver on such a promise. So if you make such a promise, people will think, “Yeah right,” and you lose credibility.

But, just for the exercise, come up with a totally overpromising promise.

Now, go to the other extreme. Come up with a line that describes a brand promise that you know you can keep, but which isn’t very exciting and isn’t going to get anyone all that juiced up to spend time with you or meet you. Something like, “I will always be a pleasant, agreeable person.” This is an underpromise.

Now, keep ratcheting up the underpromise, notch by notch, to bolder and bolder promises, in the direction of your overpromise. Keep going, coming up with bolder and bolder, more and more exciting promises… Until you get to the point where you’re stating the boldest, most exciting promise you can make, which you also have confidence you can deliver all (or very nearly all) of the time.

If you don’t shoot high enough, no one gets excited. But if you shoot too high, you begin to sound like a flake, and your brand promise loses power because it loses credibility.

What is your brand promise?

Let me know in the comments section! Tell me what you come up with, using this method I’ve described. You may want to share the “overpromises” you came up with in the exercise, then the “underpromises,” and then the perfect, just right brand promise that went DING DING DING in your mind when you know you nailed it!

Go for it!