Welcome to the “Inner Circle Podcast”, the place where patriot entrepreneurs create, build, and play. Each episode will help you move forward to the place where we all want to be, a place of total creative freedom, personal freedom, and financial freedom.
My name is Mike Fallat and I am your host. I’ve started a bunch of businesses, helped to write a couple of hundred books, and interviewed lots of millionaires. I will be your guide as we enter the Inner Circle.
Mike: This debut episode is here to outline the quintessential entrepreneurial journey and how it's represented in the book/movie, The Count of Monte Cristo. God, I love this movie. I love it, and whether you know it or not, this book/movie will help you in your adventure, so let's get right into it.
I want to preface this by saying how important this movie is, was, will be a part of my life. I know this sounds crazy, but I would watch The Count of Monte Cristo early on in my entrepreneurial days, over and over and over. I would fall asleep watching it all the time. I changed my habits a little bit, but I still put it on from time to time and I’d just watch it because I never want to forget, and it has taught me so much. [02:07.0]
If you guys don't know this book or movie, I’m going to tell you right now, you need to go and watch this, and there's a couple of different versions, but the new one, the one that was done maybe I think it was the year 2000, that's the one you want to watch. There's a great quote I want to start this podcast off with, okay, and if you hear this quote and you don't want to hear it or watch the rest of the movie, then shame on you, but here it is: “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you.” [03:04.0]
That is a powerful quote. Every day I wake up in my bed and it's a cozy bed. I’m telling you, it's the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in. I wake up and it's one of those ones where it's motorized, and as I hit the motor to wheel myself up to pull myself up, so it's in this sitting motion, the first thing that I see every day is a poster of the Count of Monte Cristo and at the top of the poster, it says, “Prepare for an adventure. Count on revenge.” Oh, God. The series of events an entrepreneur runs into in their life is exactly this movie and I’m going to give you a quick little synopsis of this movie, okay? I’ll give you a little background, but you need to watch this thing. You really do need to watch for, from start to finish. [03:56.0]
It's about a man named Edmond Dantès. Edmond Dantès is this dude who is this nice guy. One may call him the beta of the entire group, super sweet, super nice, dating a lovely woman at the time. He's this guy that everybody kind of just likes, but you know what? You just don't like them. You kind of pity them because everybody takes advantage of this dude and he’s sort of this really good guy that people push around, they feel bad and they give them opportunities just because they kind of feel bad for him. There's no pull. There's no macho, machismo. There's no tough-guy antics. There's no confidence.
He's a part of a shipping company, okay, and you could call the shipping company just a basic corporation or a small business, however you want to look at it. I look at it as a corporation, and the shipping company, I guess transports different goods from one country to the other and also is a sort of a courier. [05:01.0]
He does these things all over the world and when he comes back, he meets with his boss and his boss tells him, “Hey, a lot of the guys don't respect anything that you do, all right. They don't care about you. But you know what? I’m going to give you another shot. I’m going to give you manager of this ship.”
Now, his best friend looks at him and he says, “You don't deserve this. Who are you to get manager of this ship?” Now, Fernand Mondego is Edmond Dantès' best friend and I’ll give you a quick little background on him. He's in love with Edmond Dantès' girlfriend at the time.
Edmond Dantès, the nice guy, dating a lovely woman. Fernand Mondego wants the girl. He just sees his best friend get promoted to manager of the ship after they come back. He's jealous. Not only does he have the girl, but he also has this step up. Now, it's not a great step up. It's not like you're making tons of money. It's just a step up above him. [06:11.3]
This pisses him off more than you could possibly imagine and he goes to his other friends on the ship and he says, “Do you realize that Edmond Dantès, the beta male, the guy who gets pushed around, the guy who's just a nice dude, he gets the job. He gets the girl. This isn't right. I deserve all this. I deserve it.” Whether Edmond Dantès is really committed or the nice guy and all this, and he produces results, none of that matters. “But he's a beta male. He doesn't deserve this shit.”
He gets together with his buddies, okay. Fernand Mondego gets together with his buddies and they hatch up this scheme that Edmond Dantès is a traitor to the company and to the country, and it's all about treason and he's talking about how he went behind his back and he did some rotten things and in a different country—and absolutely one hundred percent of it was false. He was pushed around by doing something that he didn't seem as incorrect and he was absolutely at no fault, but they made it out to be that he was the culprit, he was the traitor, he was the evil one. [07:24.2]
Now, what was the reason for it? They wanted him gone. They wanted him locked up in prison. They wanted him removed from this boundary or this territory, this community. They wanted him gone. He represented all that they wanted in life and these scumbags, the three buddies, did everything in their power to kill their buddy, their best friend on paper, right?
This is all on paper, their best friend. Deep on the side, as long as Edmond Dantès never passed them, they thought of him as his friend. In the hierarchy of society, these people said, “I like Edmond. He's a good guy. But if he goes further than me, fuck him. Fuck him. We're going to fucking do everything we possibly can to destroy this motherfucker.” [08:18.4]
They design this coup and they make up some shit. They get the authorities involved. Once that goes to the certain high court, I guess you can call, it goes in front of this individual and this individual is sitting there and says, “I don't see anything wrong with what this guy did. There's nothing wrong. The hell, his buddies are just jealous. Hey, Edmond Dantès, you are absolutely free to go.”
He starts to walk out, and then the judge—I’ll call him a judge. He wasn't technically a judge, just basically a guy in politics that had a lot of pull—asks them, “Hey, who is this note designed for? Who is this supposed to go to?” and he says a name, Monsieur Clarion. [09:03.0]
Now, the politician/judge says, “Oh, my God.” He doesn't say this out loud, but he knows that that person that he's mentioning is his father. Now, the judge/politician, he's fucked also. Now he knows that his father is the guilty one, the real guilty one.
In order to protect his father, in order to protect his name, in order to protect his political ambitions, he has to lock up Edmond Dantès or remove him from society. He actually goes through with the coup and gets him out and they send him in the middle of the night to this prison in the middle of nowhere.
Now, this prison is fucking scary. Nobody knows. This book was written in 1844. This is supposedly right around the Napoleon days, so you're talking about a time where there wasn't a lot of structure. The justice system wasn't what it is today. People could just be picked up and gone and that's it. [10:11.1]
In the middle of the night, Edmond Dantès goes to this prison. His family doesn't know where he's at. His girlfriend doesn't know where he's at. He's just gone. Gone. Now here he is in this prison where it's the worst of the worst. They send people to this specific prison for one reason, to completely get rid of them from society. There is no coming back if you go to this prison.
In the first seven years, Edmond Dantès is beat to hell. He sits there with no hope. He has lost hope. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what to think. He's fucking scared. He’s sitting there all alone. Now his family, his friends, they just think he's gone. They just think he's dead. They hear rumors that he was involved with some type of illegal activity and then, poof, he's gone, so they don't know what to do. [11:15.0]
Before I go further than this, you might be saying to yourself, this has nothing to do with entrepreneurship yet. Oh, yes, it does. Yes, it does, because what you have gone through in your life or what you're about to go through is very similar to that, and I’ll explain my story here in a little bit.
When you start to do anything great, people are going to come for you. People are going to start to bash on you. When you disrupt the hierarchy, when you leave that corporation, when you quit that job and when you go to start your own thing, and if you're the good guy and you do have a pretty girl around you, or if you're a good girl and you have a good guy, there's going to be a lot jealousy there. There’s going to be a lot of haters coming your way. There’s going to be a lot of people who are going to try to rise up by taking you down—and when you go to start your own business, these are the prison days. [12:04.8]
These are the days where you're going to get locked away by yourself. You're going to feel isolated, and when you are pushed into this corner by yourself, you're going to sit there and you are only going to have yourself to rely on. You are going to sit there and you're going to be in this prison for a long time.
I know people start businesses out there for freedom and that is exactly what it's all about, but when you first start a business, first generation, don't know where you're going, don't know who to ask, the people around you are not there to help you and you're on your own, you feel stuck. You're going to have to get training from somewhere. You're going to have to do everything on your own for a long time and it's going to feel like you're completely isolated from the world.
You might go without food for a while. You might be getting beat down with rejection after rejection, just like Edmond Dantès does in prison. You may be able to say, I’m going to be rising out of here. I’m going to get out someday, but you don't know for sure and you don't know how long it's going to take, so this is where the weight of the mind is tested. How strong are you? [13:14.1]
But this is where the development happens. Once you see the dark side of the world, whether it's the friends and the family and all them turning their back on you, maybe some of them go out of their way to hurt you, maybe you're isolated from the world, but that's when you find out what you are made of. I know this sounds scary, this whole prison thing and you going away and being alone, but God Almighty, this is where you are built.
In the hardest days, the most difficult, the scariest moment of your life, this is where shit starts to come together. This is where you start to stand a little taller. This is where you get your backbone. This is where you get your courage and this is where you become the Count, before you're the Count. Now, the Count actually means you're the king, right? This is the transformation period. [14:07.1]
Now, I’m going to get back to the story. He's in there for, I bet, seven years, somewhere in there, maybe 10 years, getting beat, getting malnourished, not being fed. It's terrible, by himself, by the way. He doesn't really speak. Remember he's a beta male. He's a dude who just takes a beating, the nice guy. “How could it happen? I did everything the right way. Wh-wh-what am I supposed to do?” I guess seven years in, all of a sudden, there's a movement on the floor in the brick prison and this man pops up who's trying to escape, his old withered man. His name is Abbé. [14:50.6]
Abbé is an Italian priest, okay, and Abbé’s last name is Faria, Abbé Faria. He’s this Italian priest who is wise. He's just very great at communicating. He has hope. He has Jesus in his life. He's a Christian. He's a believer. He knows something that Edmond Dantès does not know. He knows there's a plan to life, but he doesn't know what that plan really is. He knows there's a plan because God is in control, as the way Abbé looks at it.
Now, Abbé has a pretty dark past also, but he has been a part of many different adventures and he was a part of many different and, I guess you could say, takeovers, and throughout his journey, Abbé was able to figure out where a large sum of treasure was located and it was because of his connections, his ability to communicate his loyalty to a certain tribe or army that he was able to find out where this large sum of treasure was located, and he's the only one that knows where it's located. [16:07.0]
Now, eventually Abbé obviously gets captured and gets locked away, and I guess it's because they're trying to force him to tell them where the treasure is. He never gives it up. Abbé sits there with Edmond Dantès and says, “Listen, you seem like a really nice guy. Will you helped me dig at random times so we can get the fuck out of this prison together?” and Edmond Dantès doesn't really get it. He has no hope anymore. He doesn't care about living. He wants to kill himself. He's in such a dark spot that nobody can communicate to him effectively. By the way, he's not great at communication.
So, Abbé, Abbé sits there and says, “All right, I’ll make a deal with you. I’m going to train you and teach you everything that I know, okay? I’ll teach you everything. I’ll teach you how to fight. I’ll teach you how to speak. I’ll teach you how to have critical thinking. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know to become an effective warrior in life.” [17:11.5]
Edmond Dantès says, “All right, I’ll dig for you if you teach me all the stuff that I’m lacking” and they go to work. I want to keep this short for you guys. Basically, Abbé Faria teaches him everything. He becomes a skilled fucking warrior. He can communicate. He can read. He can write. By the way, he couldn't read or write before he went into prison. Here he is at the mercy of all these cruel sons of bitches and he gets taught everything by Abbé Faria.
Abbé Faria teaches them the whole works, and over the next I think it's about seven to 10 years, so seven years he's in there beforehand, seven to 10 years afterwards, Abbé has trained him left and right on how to flow, how to fight, how to speak, how to lead, how to manage, and he becomes this force to reckon with, this force that is just devastating to the world. [18:08.3]
It's a force that, if it ever escaped, he could be someone that can lead an army. He could take over a country. He could do some serious damage and he becomes a machine. The darkest days led to the right person. The right person led to all the information that you need.
Now, Abbé Faria dies and Abbé Faria is sitting there and Edmond Dantès is alone, but he's a pretty smart cat nowadays. He takes Abbé's body, and before they actually bag them up, he gets into the bag and they think that they're carrying Abbé Faria out of the prison, but it's actually Edmond Dantès, and then at the very end, he escapes the bag. He seeks revenge on the motherfuckers who beat the out of him for the past 18 years, and here he is. Now he's a free man. [19:00.5]
Now, he's a free man for a little bit, right? He's by himself. He still has no money. He still has no connections, but he got out. Now he's free. He's this wild beast now who's ready to take on the role world. He goes and swims out, comes across a bunch of pirates.
The pirates say to him, “Wow, you know what? We just found you here. We could kill you. We could take you back to prison and get some money, or you can do some service for us. You fight one of our guys, give us the ability to look good in front of our team here, and the winner, whoever wins this fight to the death, by the way, can jump aboard our ship, and that ship is going to go and loot lots of treasure and have a wild life.”
Edmond Dantès says, “All right, come on. I just saw the worst side of the world. Give me a knife. Let's go to work here. I don't give a shit,” and there's a confidence in there. There's an arrogance. There's an ability to communicate and communicate effectively, but there's no fear. In his eyes, the fear is gone. It has completely disappeared. He's now a different human being than he was before he walked into that prison, but he can fight really well. [20:07.8]
The pirate goes, “The guy you're about to fight Edmond is the best knife fighter that I’ve ever seen,” and Edmond Dantès says, “Well, perhaps you should get out more.” There's a confidence, but there's such a skill set that he knows. He has been training for years in the darkest prison.
Anyway, it turns into a fight. Edmond Dantès destroys him, and rather than kill him, he does something that's pretty spectacular. He does something that you guys should be listening to and taking note of. He doesn't kill the individual. He doesn't show his alpha qualities. He does something in a way that we call a sigma. It's the transformation where, for the very first time, he goes from a beta to a sigma.
If you guys know what a sigma is, just look it up. It's basically a lot of the alpha qualities of the leaders, but with the skill sets of people who don't need to be front and center, who don't need to be the top dog, who can sit in the crowd and learn, and know when to lead and know when not to lead, when to listen and when to speak. [21:13.0]
Sigma is the absolute most dangerous person on the planet, not the alpha. Sigma tests the qualities of the alpha, the good qualities, but none of the bad ones. If you look at the Elon Musks of the world, he’s not an alpha. I guarantee, if you go into a room, he's not the loudest person. I guarantee, when he speaks, people listen to him more than anything else, and if he wanted to be the loudest person in the room, he absolutely could be. That's the sigma.
If you like what you hear and you are a patriot entrepreneur, go to Mike’sInnerCircle.com. Remember, you are only as strong as your circle. We'll see you there.
Anyway, he becomes sigma. He becomes part of the pirates. He does some dark stuff. I’m sure it's not that good, but he's a different man. [22:05.7]
Now he goes around and does some truth-seeking. He does his own due diligence. He has money now. He was able to build up some money, some sweat equity, and he was able to put some scraps together to actually start to travel and do his own thing. But he still needed to put in that work. You just can't go from knowing all this. You need to put together a crew. Now he has loyalty among these friends.
He has loyalty among this individual that he saved in that fight that he was going to kill, but he didn't. He saved him. He said, “Listen, I’m not going to kill this individual because, if I killed him, you're going to have one less pirate. Why don't you save us both? Your team got entertainment. Your team is thrilled with what just happened. I gave this guy a chance,” and the leader of the pirates and the pirates said, “Okay, makes sense to me.” That's a rare quality right there. But now he has the loyalty of that one person and among all the other pirates. They respect him. They respect his ability to fight, communicate, to lead, to manage, all of that. [23:11.8]
He goes on these adventures with the pirates and afterwards he is free now to go. He has money. He can go and do his own thing, and he has his own little tribe. He has his own worker, his helper, this person who believes in him. I hope you're putting yourself in this guy's shoes right now. There are some times where you're going to have to show who you are. Sometimes you're going to have to really fight to the death. Maybe sometimes you don't have to, but you need to show what you can do to build your own tribe, your own loyalty, your own crew. You're going to need help. You can't just do it and just force people to do things. You’ve got to show that you're willing to do what's necessary, and when you're able to do that, find a tribe. You have this person who believes in you and says, “I’m with you to the end.” [24:00.5]
He goes around with his buddy who is now like his partner almost and he does some finding of the truth. He does his own due diligence, finds out how things work and finds out about the friends who turned their backs on him, about the friends that screwed them over, about his girlfriend who got put together with the guy who screwed him over. Now his family turned their back. They all think he's dead, by the way. This is almost 18 years later. His old girlfriend is now married to his best friend. They have a kid together.
He thinks the kid is about 18 years old and he says to himself, “Man, now is the time that I have to really put a plan together because what drives me is revenge. I need my revenge. Now I need to be able to do something that will get these people back,” and this fuel is a fucking never-ending source of fuel. It never goes away, but it's going to drive him to put together something so insane, it's going to cause him to become someone that he's not. Even more so, it's going to drive him to become the ultimate before he's the ultimate. [25:20.8]
Before the priest dies, he actually told them a couple of little secrets and he told them where the treasure was built. Going back to that day in the prison, he remembers where the priest said the treasure was built or left, and here he is, Edmond Dantès now having a skillset, confidence, fuel, a drive for revenge, the knowing of where this treasure is at, and here he goes. He says, “Okay, now let's get the plan together. Let's go find this money. I’ll use all my skill sets to find it and then once I find it, I’m going to take over everything that was taken from me.” [26:02.7]
Now he goes and finds the treasure. He becomes the richest man in Babylon, if you will. He has all the money you could possibly hope for, and now he goes and he starts seeking revenge on his friends and that politician that hurt him, that destroyed him. He does it in a way that there's so much flair. He could obviously just pay someone to kill these individuals, but that's not revenge. Revenge is taking everything away from them that these people took from him. That's his idea of revenge.
I know you're saying to yourself, “You know what? I don't have that much fuel or hatred ever. It's not about the fuel of the hatred. It's about fuel in general. It's about proving a point. It's about making the universe right. It's about doing what you know is right in your heart and doing it till the very last breath.” [26:57.6]
Anyway, he becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. The richest man comes back. Nobody even knows it's him. He's so different. He speaks so differently. He communicates so differently. He looks differently. Everything that Edmond Dantès was is now dead and everything that the Count of Monte Cristo is now is the opposite of what Edmond Dantès was. It's a complete 180 and here he goes, does the most amazing things, his ability to dance, his ability to lead. The respect he has from the community is overwhelming.
He does get his revenge. He does get all the money, the power, the connections, all that. He does get the girl back. Now he finds out that the girl who had a kid, actually the kid was his kid, so right before he went to prison, he got her pregnant, so whenever he was gone, she actually just had to find someone who would love her by having a kid and turned out it was the best friend. [28:06.5]
Now he gets the revenge. He gets the girl. He gets the money. He gets the power. He gets everything. The only reason he's able to get all this stuff and become the Count of Monte Cristo is because he had to become the Count of Monte Cristo in his mind before it ever happened.
I want to sum it all up for you guys. You're going to be going through this entrepreneurial journey. The haters out there are going to drag you down. When you start to level up in life, they're going to drag you down. They're going to try to push you around and you're the nice guy.
You see, the world doesn't happen the way it should. The nice guy should always get the girl. The nice guy should always get the business to succeed. The nice guy should always … It doesn't happen that way. I didn't write these rules. It just doesn't happen. [28:52.7]
It's impossible for it to happen, because as Jordan Peterson says, and I think you guy have got to look this up, too, but the inability to be cruel does not lead to a good man. Having the ability to be a cruel man, but choosing to be a good man by having the morals, the ethics, and the values, that's what makes you a dangerous man, and a dangerous man who uses all of his force and energy for good is what makes you a good man.
But if you can't be cruel, if you are that guy who is Edmond Dantès on that ship in the very beginning when friends were pushing him around, who could get kicked around, who would get lied to, get pushed around, and you have the inability to be cruel, you're always going to be at the mercy of those cruel people. You just have to have the ability to do some damage, to become dangerous. Not saying to be evil, just have the ability to fight back in a way. Edmond Dantès became dangerous in that prison.
Now, there are the haters and all that, but life pushes you around. You may lose a business. I’ve lost four before the fifth one succeeded. Hell, I’ve even lost some since then. It doesn't matter. [30:02.0]
Great ideas and all that lead to difficult situations. You're going to be pushed around. Life is going to mess with you. Get used to it. You're going to be isolated. Things don't go as planned. Get used to it. But if your mind is strong, that's all you need.
The priest is like the mentor that you find in your life. I’ve had a few mentors. I still have a few mentors. I met a man named Anthony Lawley, who was one of my big clients, kind of showed me how to do some marketing and the power of relationships. I met a man named Tony Whatley, the power of your tribe. A man named Mark Evans DM, the ability to influence other people's decisions instantly.
Mentors are required. Whether it's listening to them on a podcast or going to them in person, or meeting them one time or following them online, it doesn't matter. Mentors are crucial. They're going to teach you how to fight, how to speak, how to stand, how to have confidence, and maybe where to go to find that treasure. You’ve got to listen to them. You’ve got to have faith. You’ve got to have this belief that there is this plan. [31:07.0]
The priest taught them this. The priest showed them that there is some type of hand of God at work. You’ve got to believe, and if the right opportunity arises and something happens and you capitalize on that, that can give you your escape and that escape can lead you to a different group, and that group is going to be able to test you.
Once you have the skill sets and the confidence, and the abilities, you're able to be in a way that shines, that helps you shine. It shows you and others what you're really made of in society, your real value. Then you’re going to gain the loyalty of your tribe. You're going to gain the loyalty of your friends and your family, and all these people who maybe didn't believe.
But you don't earn the money yet. You don't earn money yet. You don't earn your business yet. You have to become this person first. You have to believe in all this stuff first. You have to get the skill set that is required to earn that money and knowing what to do with it once it does come. [32:02.2]
Then, once you find it, it's yours and you appreciate it a whole hell of a lot than when you did before, and now you have all this good stuff—you have the business. You have the income stream, the revenue streams. You have partnerships. You have the team, hell, the people who now believe in you, want to work with you, work for you. You have a tribe. You're building this. You know what to do with the funds. They believe in your actions. They believe in your work.
Now you take all this and you put together a massive plan. You use it for the true vision, and that true vision is different from one person to the other, but maybe it's a fuel to get back that girl, maybe it's a fuel to get back at those people who fucking pissed on you. Maybe it's a fuel to build something so magnificent that it is a complete 180 and a complete reflection of who you were not before. [32:57.6]
You know you're different and maybe it's time to show the world, but maybe since you have been trained, you become the sigma. You skip over the alpha stage. Maybe you skip over all those bad qualities and go right into a stage where you are now able to control things and do things at will. Your ability to be a massive player in this world is elevated. People notice it. They respect it and now you can start to do really good things.
At the very end of the movie, The Count of Monte Cristo, he says, “Now I will use all of this for good.” You see, he had to use something inside of him, a burning desire, a desire to make it right, something inside of him that says, “I need to go through whatever is required to get to that other side, so I could do what I really am intended and what I’m born to do.” If you do that, if you go through those dark days, you need to find that never-ending source, something to draw upon. When things start going wrong, you need to find a way to get angry again and fight back. [34:00.5]
I will tell you right now, I worked in the corporate world. It was like a prison to me. I fucking hated it. In my voice, I hope you can sense that. I fucking hated it with every ounce of my being. I wanted to die—but I used it. I used it to escape.
Whenever the fucking corporation started to say things about “Hey, you can't go there because you signed this non-compete clause. And, hey, everybody else is leaving, but you know what? We're going to go after you to teach other people a lesson,” that's when I fucking was like, Hey, this is like that prison.
They're going to try to keep you inside as long as possible, but you’ve got to use it. You're going to have to get skilled pretty damn fast. You're going to have to get a backbone and you're going to have to fight back. Nowadays, whenever I fucking feel like everything is rolling in the right direction, where's my source of fuel? I have to think back to those days that were not going as planned when people tried to fucking hurt me, when they tried to destroy my belief system, hurt my chances of success, take away what I was building. [35:05.8]
I still think of it. It's a never-ending source of fuel for me. I need to make so much more money, more impact, more influence than they ever thought was possible. There is that drive. I would tell you, it's there. It's never going away. I use it to this day and it's such a blessing. I know this sounds crazy, but it is an absolute blessing, and when you can find the blessing in the hardest shit, in the darkest days, now you can become the Count. Now you become a fucking force to reckon. You are a machine. You can't be stopped.
I was in the worst spot. I remember whenever I had no water, no sewage in my place for a year, and now I was like a leper because nobody was coming around, nobody cared, and my business wasn't succeeding, and you just start sitting there by yourself and you said, “Now is the time to take one of these bricks, move it over here. I’ve got to dig myself out of here. I’m $300,000 in debt. I’ve got to figure a way out.” Oh, you get so resourceful. You get so skilled. You get so confident. [36:11.6]
Then, once you escape and you start getting tested, it just mounts and mounts and mounts. Money doesn't come for a while, but the journey, the journey is making you a better person. You're not ready for money yet. You're not ready for all that. You need to be a skilled person because when money comes, what you do with it is going to be another test. You are the Counts of Monte Cristo. You're at one stage of that journey.
That quote that's above my bed now and it's in front of my eyes every time I wake up, “Prepare for adventure. Count on revenge”, prepare for adventure. It is such a freaking beautiful ride. The dark days become fun. I know that sounds crazy, but everything can be used for good.
It is so exciting to know if you have this skill set, if you go into anything that's tough, anything that's a trial or tribulation, you know something good is on the other side of that. Maybe it's a treasure. Maybe it's a skill set. Maybe it's an ability that you didn't have before. But there is something and you can use it. This is going to give you an advantage in life. [37:15.8]
The Count of Monte Cristo is everywhere. Some people want to stay locked in that prison. Whether it's that corporation, they want to stay there, right? That's comfortable. “I don't know, if I go out, I may die. Food keeps coming. I might as well just stay here.”
Some people stay on that boat in the very beginning and just rat on people, and then they try to screw other people, but revenge is coming for them some way. Karma is coming for them. Some people were trying to save their own. That politician/judge who sent him away just to save his own ass. There are people out there you're going to run into. You’ve got to know how to deal with these individuals. You’ve got to be ready. If you aren't ready, then you're going to be able to know what to do when that storm comes. [37:58.0]
Remember that storm I told you about in the beginning. “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
There's a storm coming all the time. This is human nature. Every business deal you get into, every potential client you get, there's a storm, potentially. It could be big, could be small. What you do when the storm comes is what makes you a man, and I say, man, but it could be man or woman, but what makes you sigma, what makes you a leader, what makes you successful. You must look into that storm and shout as you did early on in your life. Do your worst for I will do mine. Then, and only then, the fates will know you as we all know you.
I hope you’ve got something from this, guys. The journey is wild and there are a lot of storms, but you are the Count of Monte Cristo. It's all part of the plan. Find your priests. Find your fuel. Put it all together and become the Count. [39:17.0]
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