How Ordinary People Can Build Extraordinary Wealth With Quantum Leap Advantage Methodology with Dan Peña

 

Dan Peña is known worldwide as a leading high performance coach. Few have accomplished his level of success in coaching and in business. Working with high-performance entrepreneurs and corporate professionals alike, Dan has created over $50 billion in equity and in value with his mentees, earning him the title of “The 50 Billion Dollar Man.” Starting his career with only $820, Dan made an incredible $450 million within eight years. His success grew from there, and for the past twenty years, he has impacted the lives of millions around the world through his Quantum Leap Advantage Methodology and coaching. Dan’s insights are as interesting as they are powerful in transforming ordinary people into high-performance, wealthy individuals.

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How Ordinary People Can Build Extraordinary Wealth With Quantum Leap Advantage Methodology with Dan Peña

I have the privilege and honor of introducing you to a gentleman who’s had a huge impact in my life and the lives of millions of entrepreneurs worldwide, the $50 billion man, my mentor, Mr. Dan Peña. Dan, welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time to do this interview.

It’s my pleasure and you’ve made me proud the last years.

When I made my dream list of who I want to interview for episode number one, you’re the only person that’s on my list. I’ve learned so much from you when it comes to business and when it comes to life. I’m extremely grateful to introduce you to my following and my audience. For our audience who don’t know, this is the second time I interviewed Dan. The first time I interviewed Dan was in 2004 when I was getting started in my career. I was a young punk kid, as Dan would call me.

You’re still a kid to me.

Dan, maybe for those who don’t know you, what’s your claim to fame in business?

My personal claim to fame is that I’m happily married and I’ve got three successful kids. From a business point of view, it’s that I took $820 and I turned it into a $450 million in about seven or eight years in a collapsing market. That was a long time ago. I took a $60,000 and turned it into a $100 million in 100 days. The thing that I’ve been doing in the last years is I’ve been coaching and mentoring high-performance people and I’ve created over $50 billion with my mentees in equity and in value. That’s not my money, that’s their money. We’ve created a lot of people, even billionaires. We’ve got a 100% track record in the seminar that I gave here at the Castle. As you well know, I don’t sell products anymore. I give it away free. You kindly approached me and said, “Dan, what I’d like to do is to put everything under one roof. I’d like to have all your product on one side, which I will put together and I will sponsor.” That happened. That came to fruition. We’ve had a lot of positive response to that.

Instead of people having to go to Torrent to get my product, they can now go to one site. All the product that’s on my site is free. I have hundreds of pages of content. With the site that you put up, it’s virtually everything that has been said about me, written about me, videoed or taped about me is free on the internet. The last big step in that project was you’re putting my stuff on the internet. Part of that claim to fame, and I don’t like to use those words, is that the QLA methodology doesn’t just work for entrepreneurs but also works in business life. My most successful, non-entrepreneurial mentee is a guy named Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld who is the CEO and Chairman of Alcoa. He came to me as a middle manager at Siemens, which was the twentieth largest company in the world at the time. In seven years, he became CEO of the twentieth largest company with 400,000 employees and at that time about $100 billion in revenues. We’ve worked with entrepreneurs, making them very successful, high-performance people and we worked with a lot of corporate people.

Dan, which is more difficult, making money for yourself or helping your mentees make more money?

Helping mentees make more money.

 

Why is that?

Because I can lead you to the trough of water, but I can’t make you drink it. The things that take my mentee six months, I could probably do in six weeks. The things that take my mentees four or five years, I could probably do in eighteen months. I’m experienced. I’ve had hundreds of transactions completed and I’ve done tens of billions of dollars in deals. Whereas you have to think about, “Let me see what’s the best alternative I have. What’s the business?” It will come naturally to me because I’ve done it so many times. That’s why people ask me, “How come you’ve only done $50 billion with your mentees?” I feel like slapping them in the face and saying, “You don’t know how hard it was doing $50 billion with these kids.” I get a lot of pleasure out of it, just like I get a lot of pleasure out of seeing your success. I’ve been up to seeing you a couple of times up in Vancouver. I’ve seen your career grow and prosper and it gives me a lot of pride.

Do you think the entrepreneurs now compare to the entrepreneurs ten or twenty years ago? Do you think there’s a difference? What do you think of the young entrepreneurs now? Also what do you think they need to work on the most?

I don’t think they compare for a couple of reasons. Number one, the internet has made everything easier. A lot of guys in your generation and younger don’t have the interpersonal skills to deal with people. All they know how to do is Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. or tweeting things. When you don’t have those interpersonal skills, those communication skills, it makes it harder. You may be able to finance it, but you don’t necessarily find it any easier to buy the assets. You sure don’t find it easier to manage the assets. When I started the seminars in 1993, from about 1993 until about 2003 or 2004, the kids, even though the internet was around, there weren’t as many tools. They didn’t have Google Analytics. They didn’t have Google in the beginning. They had to go and use what I call shoe leather. Go and get on a plane, just like you got on a plane to meet me. You could fly down and have breakfast with me in Los Angeles and that doesn’t happen. I still have on my desk that frog that you gave me. The brass frog that’s on the stone that you gave me at breakfast that day many years ago.

It’s a frog because I believe you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs. You never can get tired of looking for business opportunities. I equated those kissing frogs and when Dan first met me in person that time, that was probably years ago, he brought me this brass frog, which is very nice. Getting back to the kids from fifteen, twenty years ago, understood that there was more sacrifice to be paid. The kids now because of the internet think that they can get it done much faster. They look at Zuckerberg, who’s done a terrific job. They look at how Zuckerberg bought Instagram from some kids when it was less than two years old and they only had ten or twelve employees. They look at a lot of these examples, which is true. For every one of those examples, there are millions of kids who failed. They didn’t have the Zuckerberg Facebook successes fifteen, twenty years ago. There was Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Allison and a couple of others, but they took years to build up their networths whereas Mark Zuckerberg did it in a relatively short period of time. That’s the biggest difference between then and now.

Be the first one in the office and the last to leave. Click To Tweet

Does it drive you crazy when you see that kids nowadays and they still complain about how hard it is to do QLA? How hard it is when you think about it compared to many years ago? Meaning what’s there to complain about?

It does make me crazy. I was on with the production show because I’m in the process of negotiating two different reality shows, one in the UK and one in US. My US production show called me up to go over some ideas. This young kid, he’s about your age, he wasn’t complaining. He was telling me about the difficulties that we would have. I said, “None of these are difficulties. What you’re describing to me now is just business.” It’s not hard. My daughter puts it best. She said her generation feels entitled. They think that they should step right out of school and make $100,000. They should do this or they should do that and only work 35 hours a week.

She works for a Fortune 500 company and she’s got a great education. She went to two grade schools for her degrees. My advice for her, “Honey, be the first in the office and the last to leave.” She’s got one promotion. She’s only been there for about six months. She’s got a huge responsibility for a young kid in my judgment. I don’t know if being the first in the office and the last to leave the office has enhanced that career but I know for sure it doesn’t hurt. It’s tough to find kids who work long hours and who are willing to put in the time. I read a little quote from Mark Cuban, the guy that owns the Mavericks, the guy from Shark Tank. He said, “What the kids don’t understand is it takes a lot of sacrifice. They want the Mercedes but they don’t want to work hard for it.”

I remember many years ago, when I went to the Castle Seminar. One night I was sitting in a library and you came in and we were just talking. I was talking about, “Dan, can’t you just do this through email and stuff?” You kicked my ass for it. I remember you said, “No high-performance people hide behind their computers. They always do face-to-face.” At the time it was like, “I didn’t quite get it,” but once I got into the business world, then all I can see now is what Dan was talking about. That’s why I went on to work on my public speaking skill, my people skills because at the end of the day this is about people. For you guys that may not know Dan for as long as I do, his communication skills, I won’t say are 50 times better now, but they’re at least ten or twenty times better and that’s because he’s practiced. I learned from all these speakers and it gives me a huge advantage. Even though I do internet business, it gives me a huge advantage when I can communicate, when I can speak to groups with no fear and no stage fright. I cannot emphasize that enough. I want to thank you, Dan, for kicking my ass for that.

I was on one of my Zoom conference call with one of the guys, this kid who has done very well. English is his second language. He speaks German. He said that when he mastered his communication skills, even 10% or 20% better, and he spoke virtually no English when I met him. He says, “The Pandora’s Box opened up the opportunities.” Even the people in Germany, they thought, “This guy must be an international businessman because he can speak English.”

How does someone go about to develop their communication skill then? What’s the best way?

Some of the recommendations that I give the kids is number one go out of your comfort zone. Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future. You’ve got to find people that have better communication skills than you. That’s number one. Number two, you can join Rotary, Kiwanis, etc. and you can become part of their public speaking programs or part of their young management programs. Number three, Dale Carnegie still gives a great sales course that I took years ago and Warren Buffett took years ago. Next, you can join Toastmasters. With some of the kids, they go to improvisation. It’s like minor acting classes where they put you in situations, which is very similar to the role playing that we do here at the Castle. Then always think before you talk. I can answer the questions that you give me without having to process them because one, I’ve been asked them hundreds and thousands of time. Number two, because I have almost 50 years of experience to rely on. You’re going to make enough mistakes out there without stepping on yourself and putting your foot in your mouth. Think before you talk but when you do talk, talk with great enthusiasm.

 

I’ve never seen a part-time high-performance person and I’ve never seen a high-performance person who wasn’t enthusiastic. There are two ends of the management continuum. There’s the general patent Dan Peña end of the continuum and then there’s the politician, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Klaus Kleinfeld end of the continuum. Most of the people who are successful or high-performance are not at my end of the continuum, they’re at the other end of the continuum. You don’t have to be an alpha male animal to be a high-performance person. What you need to have is great communication skills. I tell people that even if your communication skills is only 5% as good as mine, you’ll be extremely successful. You’ll be way down the road to being a super high-performance person. You’ll make money that you’ve got into load into trucks instead of bank accounts.

I can see a lot of people, even the email that I got from the people asked me about QLA. They’re like, “I’m not like Dan. He’s outrageous. He’s an alpha male. I’m not an alpha male.” Most of us have a limiting belief. They have a lot of objections of why this won’t work for them because they’re not an alpha male. What’s your take on that?

My take is that they lack self-esteem because they’ve never tried to expand their comfort zone. People, especially the computer nerds, if all you’re used to is communicating sitting behind a computer screen, how do you develop in any way, shape, manner, form your communication skills? You’re writing emails or you’re texting and that’s no way. I counter that by telling the person they’ve got to step out of their comfort zone because self-esteem is the rock-bottom core for being a high-performance person. Unfortunately, political correctness doesn’t teach that. Political correctness is nothing more than a manifestation of a lack of self-esteem. Everybody’s so damn politically correct. I’m not saying what Donald Trump said was right. He got thrown up at in NBC. Donald Trump is a guy who says what he thinks. I’m sure that he may want to rethink that statement he made or part of the statement. The bottom line is he doesn’t pretend to be anybody else. Even though I don’t agree with all his politics, I would suggest that he’s not a bad person to pattern after. Say what you believe in and do what you say and say what you do. For those people who have known me for my almost 50-year career, they realized at the very least, I’m not going to BS them and I’m going to always do what I say.

Besides communication skill, what do you think are other skills that good entrepreneurs must have?

They have to have passion, commitment and perseverance. They have to understand and those things are couple together is they have to know that there’s a pay price to action. I quoted Mark Cuban, he says, “What the kids don’t understand is the sacrifice.” There are no free lunches. You are who you hang around with. I make the analogy. If you’re a 25-year-old kid who likes to go to sports bars, belch from drinking beer and fart in the sports bar and all your friends think it’s funny. You show me your friends and I’ll show you your future. I’m not telling you, you’ve got to be in the Library of Congress reading books. What I am saying is that if you’re not exposing yourself to people of reasonable intellect that have big ambitions. I don’t personally like President Obama’s politics, but the one thing I do admire him for is setting big bodacious goals. When he said when he was a twenty-year-old college student that he was going to be the first black president, that was a big goal. Since we hadn’t had any. It’s pretty outrageous for him to say that. Unless you’re being around people who have big bodacious goals, unless you’re being around people who think highly of themselves, then it’s less likely for you to be a successful entrepreneur.

What I want you to be is not just an entrepreneur, I want you to be a high-performance entrepreneur. My market people ask me, “Dan, why isn’t your market bigger?” My market is not big because I’m only after the top 1/10 of seven billion people or seven million people. That’s my market. At the very most, that’s the only amount of people who are going to be willing to make those big sacrifices that Mark Cuban alluded to. I’ve learned after years of coaching and having given hundreds and hundreds of seminars before I stopped giving them all around the world. The last ten years, I only give them here at the Castle, most people aren’t willing to make the sacrifices. They grossly underestimate the sacrifice. If you’re not willing to do those things, then the likelihood of you being a high-performance success are pretty remote.

Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future. Click To Tweet

A few years ago, you weren’t into all the social media or YouTube, now you’ve launched your own podcast, The 50 Billion Dollar Man. You upload more videos, the videos are of better quality. What’s your take on social media now compared to a few years ago?

It’s not easy, but social media can make it much easier. LinkedIn is a great tool. I don’t have the basic tool, I’ve got a premier tool. Even the basic tool is a great tool to reach out to high-performance people. Quite surprisingly, I’ve only been on LinkedIn and these things, they respond to you. It’s quite extraordinary when you think about it. I’m not such a fan of Facebook. I don’t try to sell anything on Facebook, although I’ve got about 35,000 or 38,000 followers. I am a proponent of Twitter and LinkedIn. My favorite is LinkedIn for making contact with people. With Twitter, you can get your message out. It’s a great medium for communication just like all the sports stars and all the politicians. Even the Pope’s got a Twitter account. These are all great. They should be used and even on a fundamental basis, they should be used. Although I had marketing people and technical people who know much more about social media than I do, but I’m a believer. In my case, I answer all the stuff myself. Up until about a year and a half, two years ago, I had somebody answer for me but they weren’t answering the same way that I would answer. I took it away from them, although they were doing a good job. When you see something for me on Twitter other than the promotions that we do for my ringtones or something like that, I’m giving it to them too to add to Twitter and in LinkedIn the same thing. They’re great tools.

From your experience, these change that you have many years ago, what do you think is the best way to create massive wealth in this day and age?

You need to find something that you’re passionate about irrespective of whether it’s the internet or healthcare. I still think the two areas that you can maintain or not maintain, create the most wealth are telecommunications, which is the internet and I said this years ago and healthcare. My generation doesn’t want to get older and then we don’t want to die. Your generation has been raised with the idea of staying healthy, eating right, exercising, etc. Find something within the healthcare. For example, I probably have 200 or 300 mentees that are all involved in healthcare in different areas. We’ve got hospital administration. We’ve got pharmaceuticals and I can go on and on. There’s enough differentiation for you to still stay in healthcare.

For the internet, which you understand better than I, the internet is changing every minute. Not every week, but every minute. There are vast opportunities. These kids who are developing software. There are kids who are developing hardware and various things. Unless you love it, it’s not like a holiday for you every day as opposed to being a job, it gets old. You’re not willing to make those sacrifices. You’re not willing to put in those long hours. My wife and I just got back from Greece. We beat the bankruptcy of Greece by a couple of days. Even when we were there sailing around in the Greek Isles, we were on the internet four, five, six hours a day keeping in. That’s the great thing about the 21st century is you can continue to be in business and go enjoy yourself. Whereas 25 years, up until maybe eight or ten years ago, I didn’t go places because I couldn’t be close to my business interest and now I can. That’s a big difference. It’s still telecommunications i.e. the internet and healthcare. Those are the places you can still get wealthy and accumulate massive wealth.

When I first met you many years ago and compared to now, I noticed you’re traveling more with Sally. You’re taking more time off, you’re bungee jumping. People see on the internet, they see some of the videos and they might think you’re like, “Dan is so harsh. He’s so mean,” but I don’t know if it’s good for the reputation but from my perspective, you’re very kind.

I can be very generous. Most high-performance people who have accumulated a lot of wealth are generous. Even Donald Trump, I know some stories about Donald where his generosity will just floor, but he doesn’t advertise them. Mine are more advertised because Sally and I support three orphanages. We support a mission in Sri Lanka. We support a school in Rwanda. We support scholarship funds in America, which I’m not patting myself on the back or anything, but you have a responsibility to give back. Although that’s not part of the QLA. My message to kids is to go out and create wealth and then do good. I have more choices. Gates has more choices. Jobs had more choices. Allison had more choices. Zuckerberg has more choices because they created wealth. Then they went and did well with their wealth. Whereas a lot of the kids bitch and moan about what should be done on the planet, but they haven’t done anything themselves on the planet. I totally disagree with that whole thought concept or idea.

 

A lot of time I can see coming from you it’s tough love because you do give a damn about our success. We all know you don’t need to do this. I could see you mentoring a bunch of kids as you always referred out to punk kids. It’s not easy. It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. How do you look at life now? What do you think life is about? Let’s say 35 years ago compared to now?

Forgetting the financial crisis we have, Puerto Rico’s going bankrupt, Greece, etc. but there’s always something like that. In my long career, there’s always been something like that. The super high-performance people that I’ve had the privilege of being in business with directly or indirectly, don’t focus on that in life. What they focus is on the opportunities. Somebody smart is going to go to Greece and make a fortune based on the unfortunate thing that the banks are going through. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s called capitalism. The biggest difference is there’s more money on the planet now chasing fewer deals than ever before in my almost 50-year career. If you can’t get your deal funded, it’s because you haven’t tried and/or you’re not looking in the right place. I tell everybody and I have since 1993 when I gave the first seminar, anybody’s stupid deal can get funded. It’s a number’s game. We just had a mentee that closed a little deal. It was $2 million. He called on 24 financial institutions. He got 21 noes and then he got four yeses in a row and he was able to pick the best of the four.

Part of the reason he got 21 noes and if he were on this call, he’d tell you that the first ten or fifteen of his presentations were shit. He was practicing and he was making mistakes left, right and center. Then the last ten were okay. The last four or five were great and he closed four out of the five even though he got 21 noes in a row. When you talk to him on the phone, the confidence he’s got is not comparable. It’s like he won the Super Bowl or he won the World Cup. His whole attitude has changed. Just as the first high-performance thing I did wasn’t a deal. It was when I graduated from the Officer’s Candidate School during the Vietnam War and I became an officer and a gentleman just like the movie An Act of Congress. It was the first high-performance thing I ever did. Then I realized that I could compete.

Most of the kids have been trained not to take the risk, don’t stick your neck out. I tell people a turtle can’t move forward unless it sticks it’s neck out. We’ve been taught to be in a defensive mode. There’s a huge geometric difference between a claim to win and playing not to lose. For anybody that’s ever started a business and they did $50,000 in revenue, that’s geometric growth because you’re starting from zero. Everybody that has ever started a business and has generated revenue in the first six to twelve months knows how to have geometric growth. What happens is after you do that, then you stop playing to win and you then began to start playing not to lose and there’s a huge difference. It’s like being a turtle and trying to move forward without sticking your head out. You can’t do it.

There are some businesses that they should just turn a key. They are not meant to be a scalable business. They’re not meant to be a big business. When you look at a business, what do you look for? How do we know if we’re doing the right thing or we are in the right business or you have the right business model?

The first thing I look at the individual is he has a passion for it. I would rather have a guy who has a passion for a mediocre model that we can ultimately scale with, than a guy who’s got a terrific model and has no passion for it. The first thing I look for is their passion. The second thing I look for is, are you first in this business model or if they’re not first, are you different? The problem with the internet is there is no barrier to entry. A little housewife in Bangalore, India with a thousand Mobit debit card can compete against him. Number one, passion. Number two, are you first? If you’re not first, are you different? Is it scalable? Are you filling a need? I forget which one of the billionaires here said, “You find a business that you can help a billion people, you’ll make a billion dollars.” I’m not an internet expert, you are.

What I see is people all the time come up with an idea on the internet and they haven’t tested it. They haven’t done anything. They think because they like it, somebody else is going to like it. The simple things for an internet model, for example, have you split tested it? Have you done this? Have you checked the various buttons? Are your creative stuff above the line or below the line? There are all kinds of things that are simple that not everybody does. What I do and what I suggest that my kids, let’s say they have an idea. Let’s say it’s a book. You run a test for the title of the book and see if you can drive traffic to it. You don’t have the book written yet. If you drive traffic, the internet doesn’t lie. If you get clicks, impressions, etc. you’re not converting anything. I’m not saying you sell something you don’t have. If you can drive traffic to it, if you get 100,000 impressions or hopefully, you get a million impressions, you’ve got a product. Then go hire somebody to write a book.

Think before you talk. When you do talk, talk with great enthusiasm. Click To Tweet

To verify the concept, to challenge your own concept if there’s a market for it. It sounds to me that you’re not a big fan of the whole niching concept, find a little niche because you want to be able to serve millions and millions of people.

If I make $10 million, it’s not going to change my life. If I will make $100 million, it’s not going to change my life. Like I told the movie guy, “What are the chances of me making a billion on this project?” He goes, “None.” I said, “That’s my point. It’s not going to change my life. If we have the most successful show in the history of mankind, I’m not making a billion dollars.” The guy says, “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.” I said, “That’s because you’re talking to starving talents that got no money. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it big.” I’m not that interested in filling niche markets. There’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve had kids come to the seminar. We had a fifteen-year-old kid here the last seminar. We had three students, two twenty-year-olds and one fifteen-year-old. The fifteen-year-old was the son of a guy that has come to the seminar eleven times. He is one of my superstars. For them to do $20,000 a month on the internet is a big deal. I wouldn’t care for $20,000. That’s the difference. I’m not the market. Making $20,000 a month when you’re a senior in high school is pretty good.

It’s a life-changing money for them and it’s only their first deal.

I had two kids who started with QLA when they were thirteen. One of them when he was thirteen years old and made $100,000 in a year. His parents told him to give it up. They turned down $20 million for 5% of their company.

What you’re saying is we want to look for a business, an industry where we could be the market leader in that particular industry. We could be number one or in a few years, we could be number one.

If it’s not new or first, are you different? It’s got to be scalable. The great thing about Facebook is Zuckerberg understood that if you put a billion people on Facebook, he was going to have a marketing power, etc. Bill Gates said when he started, he wanted to put a computer in every home in America. Now, he wishes he said that he put a computer in every home in the world. That’s a whole other subject that we set our goals too low because of our own belief system blocks that we have. You want it to be scalable. All these models are going to morph. It’s going to pivot. It’s going to change. Very few of these successful models end up with the same thought process that they were started with. That doesn’t make them failures. It means that you have to adapt to the marketing nuances. I don’t know if somebody’s going to replace the internet. In my lifetime, I don’t know but I do know it’s possible. Anything is possible.

One thing I learned from you over the years is you also like high-profit margin business.

I like the high-profit margin. I like 20% to 40% margins and people ask me, “Why, Dan?” We’re all shitty managers. When we’re operating on a 2%, 3%, 4% or 5% margin, we have very little room to mess up. I may have worked with five world-class managers in 22 years. One of which is Klaus Kleinfeld who’s the CEO and Chairman of Alcoa and maybe two or three others that are of that ilk, but most people are stupid managers. For the first transaction, I like the low hanging fruit. Low hanging fruit means a motivated seller. You want a motivated seller that’s wanting to be part of the finance. To take back paper, to give you a note so you don’t have to find as much equity to buy your first company if you’re buying companies. Once you have one transaction under your belt, the second one gets easier and the third one gets easier, etc.

From my understanding over the years, I’ve studied the Quantum Leap Advantage very thoroughly, to summarize QLA in one word, it’s about leverage. It’s OP.

Other people and other people’s money.

Other people’s credibility and other people’s experience. To me, that’s what the whole QLA methodology is all about. I do have a marketing question for you. I can see other people see you as the finance mogul. Many see you as a marketing person because you always talk about perception is a reality. Your name Dan Peña, it is a personal brand. What do you think of your brand first of all and how do you cultivate your own brand?

 

If I had known I was going to be building a brand 22 years ago, I would have done some different things fifteen, eighteen years ago. It’s developed into a brand. More people know Dan Peña than they know Quantum Leap Advantage. What my goal is I want to be known 100 years from now when I’m dead in the ground. I want people to have known me just like Napoleon Hill with Think and Grow Rich. Even though I’ve helped millions now, I want to have helped tens of millions by that time or hundreds of millions. I want to be known as the guy who memorialized, you can start with nothing, $820 is pretty close to nothing and you can build hundreds of millions. It’s all about the credibility that you alluded to, the dream team and the leveraging of other people professionally in an honest, moral, ethical, legal way so their reputations accrue to you. What most people don’t understand is they are more than willing to help you. People want to do business with you now because they see the energy. They see that you’re willing to make the commitment. They see that you’re focused. They see all the things that I’ve described as a successful high-performance person. They also say to you when they were younger.

It’s like you have your mentees and then I have also my little group of young mentees. It’s quite interesting because I follow you very closely and how you do things. I see myself in them as well.

When I see these kids who have real great energy and when I see these kids who are willing to make the sacrifices, I see myself from 25, 30, 35 years ago and that’s fine. The other senior people that are coming onto these boards, whether I’m involved or I’m not involved, they don’t see them and me because we’re more or less the same age. What they do is they see the young founder. The you in the deal. They see, “That’s how I was 30 years ago.” Many times they say, “You’re fortunate to have met Dan now than talking to somebody. I wish that I had met Dan years ago.” It’s never too late. We had a 65-year-old guy here at the seminar. He’s not the oldest. The oldest we’ve had is 77 back in the ’90s who came with his daughter and his granddaughter. We had three generations in the same room. It’s never too late.

We have 100% track record for the seminar of gaining success, whether you move five yards down the field towards your goals or you move 90 yards down the field or you get past the goal line. You’ve succeeded and you’ve succeeded geometrically. That’s what the seminar and what the methodology and that’s what my hopes, desires and goals are based on. To bring as many people across the goal line as I can humanly possible. I feel like Forrest Gump in the movie when he’s carrying all those people to safety and he gets the Medal of Honor and Lieutenant Dan doesn’t want to be saved, “Don’t save me. Leave me here to die.” He still pulls him to safety. That’s why I have arthritis in my back because I’ve carried tens of thousands of people across the goal line over the years. I enjoy it. I get a great deal of pleasure out of seeing these people, especially the ones that subconsciously didn’t think they could become a high-performance person because they’ve been told by their parents, “Just fit in, get a job, pay your bills.”

Self-esteem is the rock bottom core for being a high performance person. Click To Tweet

When I went to the Castle Seminar, Dan never offered the one-year mentoring or anything like that. He’s only doing that in these couple of years I believe.

2005 is the first time I did this.

How do you coach people? What’s it like working with you and being mentored by you?

When you finish the week-long seminar, eight days, we have now twelve months of the mentor program, which is free, which also means if you don’t perform or you don’t do what I say, I can throw you out. You have weekly reports and they’re very copious reports where I make you accountable for your time for the week. Then once a month, we have a Zoom call where I had 22 people from the last seminar on the call. The call took over three hours. We go through what you did, what you accomplished, what you failed at, what you were successful at. How you could do it better, etc. We go through all 22. It takes between three and four hours. We hold your hand a little more gingerly in the first two or three months. We don’t hold your hand so gingerly in the last two or three months because I expect you to have learned something by that time. Not everybody is on an acquisition mode.

Most of the people want to find low-hanging fruits that they can buy companies. Some just want to build their own company up more and that’s fine. A lot of people use QLA for that. We hold their hand and take them through the process for twelve months. I’m still assisting people that came to my first seminars in 1993, 1994. Not as active but I’m still helping those guys. I give five or six seminars a year. The next one is the August Seminar. It starts the last couple of days of July, which is prior to my birthday. All the former alumni of the Castle Seminar are invited to my birthday. It’s going to be a black-tie event, quite formal. It will be a lot of fun. I’ll have an opportunity to thank a number of people that have helped me. Unfortunately, most of the people who have helped me are all dead, but there will be a few that haven’t passed on, that are still healthy enough to travel on a plane to get here. Most of them are gone, which is sad, but that’s all part of life and growing older. There will be a lot of my young mentees that had a lot of success. My success rate, even though it was very good in April of 2010, when I gave the first year-long mentor program, the success has been astronomical. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, I have no idea why. None of you marketing geniuses suggested it to me. The important thing is I do it now.

 

I’m sure there are some of them who can take the accountability, who can take the pressure that, “I’ve got to report to Dan on a weekly basis.” For some people, it’s a lot of pressure. I could see that. For the high-performance ones, it’s absolutely priceless. What’s your daily routine? What time do you get up? Maybe it’s very different from many years ago. How do you stay productive?

The only difference is now I sleep about one to one and a half hours longer than I used to. I got up at 8:00. I came down and I did my initial emails. I verified my schedule. Thank you, Dan. This call was changed three or four times. I apologize for that. I have five of these calls, one of which was three hours long. I went and got a haircut. I didn’t have time to work out in the gym because I have so much to get done. Now is not a good day to compare it to. Sometimes I have lunch, I never have breakfast. I have a light lunch. I had dinner with my wife where I had a fish salad. When we get done with this call, I will finish up my emails. I will also pack for tomorrow because we’ll leave early. On the way to the airport, I will have the other podcast Reflections and Confessions of The 50 Billion Dollar Man in the back seat of my Phantom Extended Rolls that my wife gave me for my birthday. She gave it to me early. It came a few months early. The kids, when they come to the seminar, we have all our cars parked in front of the Castle. As I look out the window, I see the black Phantom 2015 Extended. Next to it, is a Bentley. Next to it is an Aston Martin DB9 and next to it is a Ferrari 458. They’re not there to impress the kids. I don’t care about that. When they see those cars, one of those cars will resonate with them. Normally, it’s either the James Bond DB9 or the Ferrari, one of those two cars. The older guys resonate with the Bentley or the DB 9 but very few guys lust after the big Rolls that weighs 10,000 pounds.

Why do you think that is?

It’s because you’re not setting your goals high enough. I’ll film an episode of that. Then we fly through Paris to Barcelona and I have a meeting with a QLA devotee at the hotel. I’ll try to see mentees and guys who are interested in QLA, just so I can talk to them and keep a pulse on what they’re thinking. I see one late before I go to bed. Then I see a couple more the next day. Sally and I have been to Barcelona many times. I don’t think we’ll be going on any tours. Then the next day, I get on a cruise. We’ll cruise through Italy and through some of Spain. Then we’ll come back and I’ll get ready for another Castle Seminar.

I’m always pretty much contactable as you well know. Normally, it doesn’t take me too long to get back to you. Because of Skype and Zoom and that kind of thing, we’re ready for it. This is a day of instant communication. If Donald Trump had said that ugly thing that he said years ago, it might not have even gotten into the news, but now it’s probably been in front of 25 million eyeballs.

People talk about it and people tweet about it but also it was part of publicity. Maybe it’s not good publicity. What do you think of Trump running for president?

I don’t think he’s running for real. It’s just a publicity. Donald’s got a big ego. There’s nothing wrong with that and so do I. He likes to be married to beautiful blondes, which I can relate because I’m married to one too. We’re about the same age. I’m only about a year older than Donald. It’s part of his marketing brand, part of Trump. When you think of Trump, you think of big hotels, casinos and his real estate projects, etc. You also think he’s got a big mouth. He’s articulate. He’s not a stupid guy, he’s a bright guy. He’s been very successful. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t know him well-enough to say that he’d like to retract what he said. I don’t know if he would retract it at all. Apparently, he’s standing by what he said. Not a lot of high-performance people do back down. There’s a very little chance he’s going to be president. You’re a Canadian citizen. You’re not a US citizen?

I’m Canadian.

There is about as much chance of you being president as him.

Go out and create wealth, and then do good. Click To Tweet

With Trump, just love him or hate him, it doesn’t matter. We pay attention to what he’s saying. I want you to talk a little bit about the Castle Seminar. If you could travel back to the day when you were getting started, a younger you to communicate any lessons you’ve learned over the years with the intention of saving yourself the mistakes and headaches. What would you tell your former self?

I was asked in The 50 Billion Dollar Man questions, “What is the best advice you didn’t take?” Without a doubt, it should be in the Bible. It should be the eleventh commandment, “Focus on the few, not the many.” Costa Gratsos has told me that years ago and I didn’t believe him. Costa Gratsos was one of my mentors who was the CEO of Onassis Shipping Lines. He is a friend for 60-plus years of Aristotle Onassis and I had the privilege of him liking me and mentoring me. I was with the Onassis Group for a few years. People are always asking him, “What are the three things that you learned and this and that?” He says, “Mr. Peña, this is the only one that I want to leave you with.” This was before he got sick and died. “Focus on the few, not the many.” Clausewitz, the famous Prussian General said the similar thing in battle, “Focus on the few, not the many.” We always try to do too much and we wind up not doing any of it well. When people send me their plans before they come to the seminar because you have to fill out a lot of paperwork.

I’ve got people that their corporate structure looks like General Motors. I’ve got a Canadian partner, his name is Brian who’s in the engineering business. When he sent me his schematic, I thought we had the 25,000 employees. He had eighteen companies. He had this, he had that and now we’re down to a mere five or six, which is probably still two or three, too many. Focus on the few kids and then give it your all. It’s the best advice that I didn’t take from Costa. I wish I had, but nothing I can do about it now other than giving him praise. He gives a couple of examples. I’m going to give you one example that he talked with the Onassis people. They had 107 ships all paid-for, no debt and a Panamanian flag. He said, “When we make a lot of money, everybody told us we should diversify. We started Olympic Airlines. We had Olympic Airlines for five, six, seven years. We didn’t know how to run it and we gave it back to the Greek government. We built this Olympic tower, Mr. Peña. Right now it’s 60% empty, 40% full. Everybody said, “Why should we pay rent on 260,000 square feet of office space better than we pay ourselves?” What they didn’t tell us is who are we going to rent the other 60% of the building to?”‘ He went through five or six examples like that. He said, “What we should have done is just bought ten, twenty or 30 more ships because we know how to run ships. Focus on the few, not the many.”‘

There’s a genius in simplicity. Many years ago you said, “If you cannot put your business model on a napkin, you don’t have a business.” I now do the same practice even with any business partner, any mentee. We would draw the whole thing on a napkin and if we can’t explain it in less than a minute, then we know it’s too complex. For those of you who want to learn more about Dan or get access to materials, you could go to www.DanPenaQLA.com. You can get access to all of Dan’s materials, which a lot of people, including myself, would pay thousands and thousands of dollars for. You can get access to it for free. Dan, if we want to find out a little bit more about the Castle Seminar, like the upcoming date, where can they go?

Go to www.DanPena.com. That’s got hundreds and hundreds of pages of free content, blogs, newsletters, etc. The stuff that Dan Lok didn’t put on his site that I already had, it wasn’t product is on that side and go to the seminar page. I wish you guys all the good fortune you deserve through hard work. If there’s any way that I can ever be of assistance, you can contact me personally or you can contact me through Dan Lok. I want to thank you for this opportunity and I couldn’t be prouder of you Dan.

Thank you so much, Dan, for inspiring us with your story and your wisdom.

It’s my pleasure. God bless.

Important Links:

• Dan Peña
• Alcoa
• Castle Seminar
• The 50 Billion Dollar Man
• Think and Grow Rich
• www.DanPenaQLA.com
• www.DanPena.com

About Dan Peña

Founder and Chairman of The Guthrie Group; Founder, Former CEO, Chairman of the Board of Great Western Resources Inc.; Co-Founder, Former CEO, Chairman of the Board of J.P.K. Industries; Bear Stearns & Co. Successful: Former Chairman of various US/European/Asian companies including venture capital, IT, internet, property, insurance, food distribution, health care, manufacturing, pub and restaurants, financial services, construction, telemarketing, publishing, amongst others; high level negotiator with many governments and multinational firms including equity providers, insurance companies, investment banks, international law firms and all “Big Four” accounting firms.

Mr Peña is an extremely dynamic and powerful speaker, motivator, and entrepreneur. His Quantum Leap Advantage™ (QLA) coaching – mentoring and business success seminars have been in demand in the US, Canada, Asia and Europe, since 1993! His seminars have been sponsored by various US and foreign universities and corporations such as Dell, as well as The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).

In recent years, since retiring, he has given keynote addresses, workshops, seminars and conferences on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, on building businesses exponentially and has been recognized as a “super success business coach” and mentor. He has also given away almost all his products and materials for FREE and gives pro bono talks around the globe. Some of his recent talks over the years were at the Oxford University, University of Toronto and University of Florida.

He was the recipient of the “Order Of St John” appointed by Her Majesty The Queen at the Washington National Cathedral. His complete list of awards and recognition is listed on the “About” page on his site.