Legacy Focused Leadership Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Insights podcast with Co-Fanancial Group. I'm your host, Chad Coe. Success leadership isn't just about the decisions we make today. It's about the legacy we build for tomorrow. On this show, we talk to the leaders from around the country who are open to sharing their wisdom, insights to help us become better. Today I'm excited to have Randy Gage, who is known as the Entrepreneur's Whisperer, a speaker, Hall of Famer, best-selling author of 15 books, and one of the most respected voices on prosperity and success today. From a jail cell as a teen to global thought leader, Randy helps people and companies rewrite the beliefs that hold them back from wealth and fulfillment. His books, including Risky is the New Safe, Mad Genius, and Radical Birth, have been translated in more than 25 languages, and you're going to find them on Amazon, where I suggest that you all go out and get them today. Randy's been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Fox News, and Success Magazine. He shared the stages with icons of business and personal growth around the world. He challenges the audiences to think critically, asking questions about their conditions and how they are and how they go through life. And today we're going to be able to talk to Randy and just see what this is all about. Thank you so much for being here today, Randy.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Hey, Chad, great to be in with you. And I appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

So with the love of the fact that I've been following you for a very long time, and I really love the insights you have around life, mastery, and abundance, let's just go back to the very beginning of my introduction where it talked about the fact that you were in jail. How do you go from being in jail with a mindset that allows that to being where you are today, if you can?

From Jail To Personal Agency

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Well, that's a journey from entitlement mentality to agency mentality. I was in jail for armed robbery at 15 years old. And I think for most kids who are in jail at 15 years old, they're there because they're angry, they're frustrated, society isn't working for them, or they don't fit it in society very well, which is certainly the case with me. And we have a lot of people there, and then we have a lot of adults, right? Who are maybe they're not in jail for our robbery like I was, but they're kind of in a prison of their own creating because they think life happens to them, or they think someone else, something else, the government, the economy, their boss, the president, somebody is responsible for their future. And how I got to where I am today from where I was then is now I have agency. I'm what I call a sovereign operator, which is a concept I work with people in my uh entrepreneur accelerator program. To be a sovereign operator, to recognize you have agency, you can create your own destiny. And don't look at the external stuff for success. Look at what you can do to create success.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

So it's really kind of fascinating because you know, we all have childhoods, you mentioned it, and I go back to my childhood where I started out in a special ad, and when I'm in remedial, I'm around the bullies, the fighters, the people that might do things that aren't, you know, going to the library to read. And you could get caught up in stuff that's not you. You're kind of getting caught up in stuff where someone plants a seed and you're like, well, what's the worst thing could happen? Well, some pretty bad things. So you've been able to grow up, and while you're growing up, you talk about prosperity questions. You like to ponder. And I like to hit on this pretty early on in our talk today because people do not ponder prosperity. I think people ponder negativity and scarcity. What are your thoughts around that?

Why People Default To Scarcity

SPEAKER_02 4:27

That's the entire basis of my work. My mission is I want to make the world more prosperous. And to do that, we have to make people more prosperous, individual people. And we're not gonna do that, I don't believe, with just charity. I love charity, biggest expenditure on my tax return, biggest line item every year, right? But that's bandages, that's treating the symptoms, and so that's not gonna make the world prosperous. And entitlement programs are not gonna make the world prosperous, right? To make the world prosperous, we have to make people prosperous, and to make people prosperous, we have to change their thinking, we have to empower them to create that agency we were just talking about, where they feel, okay, yeah, I have a say in this. I there there is steps I can take to create a better life for myself. And if we lose that, we lose everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

And and I, you know, I think we have to start with goals. So, you know, abracadabra, if we could see it and believe it, we can make it happen. And the idea, I think, for a lot of people is they don't see it. They don't believe that they could be the chosen one, they don't believe that they could excel. But as I listen to podcasts and I read books, it happens all the time. I have a client right now who got promoted at work and she was overweight and uncomfortable with herself. She lost weight and she started to focus on goals that matter to her. And then people responded and gave her promotion. And today she's loving her job and she's loving life. And I think that it has to start, as you agree, with goals and with being able to see your future and maybe even taking baby steps to get there. Uh, do you think that people think that it's like giant steps and they forget to take the baby steps to get there?

SPEAKER_02 6:36

I think I'd go a different direction completely, Chad.

The Self Identity Glass Ceiling

SPEAKER_02 6:39

I I it isn't even a goal thing. To me, it's a self-identity issue. Okay. What I described, you know, we met because of Bill did a program, a mutual friendly uh Bill background, did a program with me on my latest book, which actually behind me there, Wealth Without Apology. So that's kind of a contrarian take on wealth, that book. It gets people thinking about buying a whole new thing. And one of the precepts in that book is this self-identity, because I believe you will never out-earn your self-identity, right? So I have people come to me, and in their mind, their self-identity is to make $80,000 a year. Right. So when I talk about how you become a millionaire or multimillionaire or even a billionaire, they don't even know what I'm talking about because they have this glass ceiling there that says, that's not me, that's not relevant to me. I don't do that, I can't do that. People like me don't do things like that. That's right. You have to change their self-identity. Part of that book, and you mentioned radical rebirth of one of my earlier books. The the big theme of radical rebirth is to get people to go back and discover the programming they have. Right? I believe my my here's my positive, Jack. All of us have an operating system. Some people have a prosperity operating system, some people have a poverty operating system, and you can equate it to health and disease, health and sickness, happiness and depression, any area of prosperity. You either have an operating system that works well for you, or you have an operating system that limits you. The deep dive I did in the radical rebirth book was showing people the six main areas in our life that we create beliefs on as children. They happen by the time we're eight years old. So all the important areas in our life: money and success, marriage and relationships, health and wellness, we create all those beliefs by the time we're eight. Most people never question them again. They just they grow up, they kind of created the belief that money is bad, rich people are evil, and uh the poor people done a better shot to get into heaven, or nirvana, or bliss, or the afterlife, or whatever their particular belief system is. But they created this foundational belief that being poor is noble or virtuous. Well, if that's your self-identity, we can set all the goals, we can buy all the $497 e-books, we can watch all the gurus and do all the cold plunges and dishonest and the affirmations and the daily journaling and all that bullshit. And I shouldn't say bullshit because there's value in all of those things. But if we take those things that treat symptoms or maybe help correct course correction stuff, they won't work unless we get to the bottom of the core foundational beliefs, the core foundational operating system. So, like the new book, Wealth Without Apology, people never thought about money that way. Like, oh yeah, do I do I have people in my life who won't run rackets on me because I'm wealthy? Because people do that, right? They guilt you for being wealthy, and they will guilt you for being healthy, and they will guilt you for being happy. So we've got to deal with that at a coordinational level, which is we've got to get everybody on earth to recognize you were born to be healthy, happy, and rich.

The Hidden Payoff Of Victimhood

SPEAKER_00 11:04

So, what are some of the habits? Because what you're saying is you have to see yourself a different way. And I have a I have a belief that some people don't want to see themselves a different way. They want to go through life being miserable, upset, and and scarce and and not shift or change. Is that a give up attitude, or is that just something that the way they're wired, we're we we just can't get them to shift?

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Well, it is the way they're wired because it's that operating system, I just read. They have that poverty consciousness operating system. So the result of what happens with that, and I know because I did this for 30 some years, I was what I call a professional victim. That's what I that's who I was. That was the core essence of my being, is I was a professional victim. So of course I had health challenge after health challenge, dysfunctional negative relationship after each other, business failures. And if you ever met me and we had a cup of coffee, you said, Hey, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 12:16

Oh, you can't believe the landlord just put a two-day eviction notice on my door, and those SOBs that the power company cut off my lights last week, and you know, those meat spoiled in the refrigerator, and I didn't have money to turn it back on, and then my ex did this, and then the president did that, and the economic situation, and I was just victim, victim, victim.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

And then you say, Well, why would somebody do that? Well, there's a lot of different reasons, and obviously, in both those books we talked about, I deal with a lot of them. In my case, it was my self-identity, it was my low self-esteem. I had worthiness issues, and I was so messed up that I couldn't accept love. Right? I didn't come from a family where people said I loved you. We didn't hug each other, we didn't kiss, we didn't hug. When I met, when I would meet my grandfather, who I called George, by the way, his name, it was George. I would say hi, he would say hi, Randy, and stick out his hand, and I would shake his hand and say, Hi, George. Okay, that's my uh brain. So we could do like you know 27 episodes on that, but we don't want to go down that hole, right? But so I couldn't accept love. So what I substituted in its place was sympathy, attention, be it so that's the question we always have to get to is you say you hate being poor, but what are you getting out of being poor that keeps causing you to stay there?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

You say you don't like to be sick, but what are you doing that keeps you sick? You say you don't want to be depressed, but what are you doing that's keeping you in that scenario?

SPEAKER_00 14:17

So I just love the idea that abundance is future thinking about personal, professional, and financial. I don't just talk about abundance being money. I think about abundance as a way of being. And I choose to have a way of being that's a positive spirit, trying to solve problems that I think are my problems to overcome and then do something about it. So when you talk about people think that the opposite of success is failure, but it's not, let's talk about this for a little bit. Because if some people could take from this show the attitude of, I'm gonna shift one thing, and it's gonna be that I'm gonna try every day to do the little things to get where I want to go because I want to be like Randy, I want to be like Chad. I don't want to be self-deprecating, not fun, not optimistic person. Maybe we could talk about that for a minute here.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Yeah,

Using Failure As Feedback

SPEAKER_02 15:13

failure is part of the process. That's part of their failure is the stepping stones on the journey. Literally, I'm actually one of the things I was doing this morning is I'm outline outlining one of my next YouTube videos that I'm gonna record in a couple of days. And the whole show is based on failures that I had along the way. And then what is the what are the lessons I learned from those failures? Because though that's why I say those are the stepping stones. Now, if you just want to be a professional victim all your life, then you don't learn any lessons from those. Because you don't want to learn lessons, you just want to stay a victim because that's how it gets you the feedback you're looking for. Yeah, but if you actually at some point in your life, you will reach the stage idea where you say, okay, I can be a victim or I can be a victor. Choose mindfully because you can only choose one, right? It's either or you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't be, you know, it's you gotta pick one. So at some point, when you choose victor, then you say, okay, I opened up this business, I took a second mortgage on my home, I spent three years of my life, I've invested all this money and it failed. What is the lesson for me? Okay, I blew up my marriage, okay. I fell prey to this addiction again. Well, you know, if we ask ourselves, okay, what is the lesson I'm supposed to learn from this? Because if you don't learn the lesson, the universe is very neutral. The universe just says, Okay, Chad hasn't learned that lesson yet. Let's send it to him again and see if he passes the test the next time.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Yeah. Well, I love that.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

We can do that, right? The test just 100%.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

So I have a list that I used to speak at the university of all my failures, which is abundant, but one of them translated for me, which is I had a 500-seat bingo hall, and it was a nonprofit. And I failed miserably. And the guy I hired to run it didn't tell me, but he had a gun in his car, so we couldn't get our license. And it was one thing after another. But I filled out the paperwork to have a nonprofit. And then years later, two years later, or three years later, I created a nonprofit called Special Kids Network that raised over five million dollars. But I take it that because I took the time to fill out the paperwork and do it myself, I learned the process to be able to do something that was a way for me to be able to give back to society.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

I love it. I love it. Yeah, you you learned the lesson. You said the lesson from this to be the stepping stone on the way because I know the outcome I ultimately want to get it to. So, where do I have to? What skill do I need to learn? What personality characteristic do I need to change? What new habit or routine do I need to develop? Where, what wisdom do I need to gain? And where can I gain that? Like we ask those kind of questions, which are the empowering questions.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

You know, empowering questions are great. And anyone taking the time to watch this video, I believe, wants to be empowered and wants to live a bigger, stronger, more energetic life that fulfills them. And the bottom line is we have to start somewhere, and then it's stepping stones and it's a vision.

Curiosity Beats Outrage Every Time

SPEAKER_00 18:53

So when the core beliefs are changed, try being curious instead of furious. I I use the word curious and no, not curious, but I use the word asking questions all the time because I think that it's so important for us to be able to do that. And I think curious is is is a basis of asking questions.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

100%. It's curiosity is a superpower for success.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Superpower. Maybe go a little deeper for me on that because that's you know, when we have superpowers like cottage cheese is a superfood, I want to hear more about superpower.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Okay, so instance, send Avo, buddy, we back and forth on WhatsApp a lot. So I sent him a link and I said, Hey, I'm listening to this podcast. Really intriguing. I think you might appreciate it. So it was the it was Steve, Stephen Barnett, Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO podcast. And he had Daniel Priestley, who's an author that I've read, I think all of his books. I really respect him. And co-founder of Amazon back in the early, early days with Bezos, Nick something. And it's like a two and a half hour podcast. And they talk about Bernie Sanders, who says we should take 50% of all the AI companies and create a sovereign wealth fund. And, you know, how do we get more middle class and what's gonna where are we getting to the point where poor people are gonna grab pitchforks because the disparity of income between the wealthiest and the poor people is getting worse? And it was a really thought-provoking podcast. And he said back, why do you send me this shit about Bernie Sanders and social and you know, so I wrote back, well, I thought the podcast would be really helpful for you because it would cause you to question some of the things you believe. And just so anybody watching knowing, I'm not suggesting socialism. I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist. Socialism is just communism with lipstick. So that that dog don't hunt with me. I am a free enterprise capitalist. But I could listen to a debate like that and say, well, I happen to know that Norway created a sovereign wealth fund with their oil, and that made them one of the most prosperous countries on earth. And I have many clients in Norway that have done 20 different events there, been there so many times. The people are wonderful, society is good. People are happy there, people are healthy there. So I could say, hey, is there this idea which on the surface sounds crazy from Bernie? Is there some workable thing there? Is that something we should look like? Wouldn't it be great if? The U.S. created a sovereign wealth fund that you know created an income for the citizens. And when they reached 18, 19 years old, they were had part of this thing. Biggest problem in the world today is people, poor people don't own anything. Right. They don't own their car, they're leasing it, they're upside down. They don't own a house because you can't afford to buy a house. My generation, we could own things. That's why we became wealthy. We learned how to create assets. And right. So I send this podcast to the guy. Bottom line, and it's a long detour to your answer of your question, but he got furious instead of curious.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Right. So, you know, the bottom line is I think curious is the answer to so many things, and I agree with you on that. And you know, you're definitely a very curious person, which is why you've written so many books. And so maybe talk a little bit deeper.

Wealth Without Apology And Guilt

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Why did you decide that this was a book to be able to write? Wealth Without Apology.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Yes, so two funny stories. First, I have to tell you because you know Bill Backrack, who's written like three books on financial planning. He's just a brilliant guy. So we've been friends for a long time. And I sent him a galley proof of the book. And I said, Hey, would you be one of my galley readers? Check it out. Give me your comments, your thoughts, whatever. He reads chapter one, and he says, Oh my god, Brandon, we have to get this book in the hands of every young person in the world. They gotta, this needs to be the graduation present they give for not just college, they need to give it in high school. He's typing all this in the WhatsApp. And then he said, Not even high school, it's too late. These kids need to learn this when they're 12 or 13 years old, they need to learn these principles. So I ran back. Well, Bill, you know, I do drop a few F bombs in the book, and you know, my language isn't the green, you know. I are you sure you want kids that young to be reading this? He's like, they know what that word is. They need to do this. Okay. So I'm thinking, yeah, it's a really, you know, because I do believe we've got to get the message of prosperity to kids sooner, right? Particularly at-risk kids, inner city, poor education systems, things like that. Then he finishes chapter two. He writes me, I'm gonna tell all of my clients who, as you know, are all financial planners of some sort, like you are. I'm gonna tell all my clients they have to buy a hundred copies of this book and give it to all of their clients and tell their clients they're not gonna work with them unless they read this book. Right. And then a little later he write me and he said, I'm gonna tell them they should give a copy of this book to every wealthy person they know, and just that they would like to have as a client. And don't even pitch, just give them the book and say, Hey, I know you're a wealthy person and you probably would get some value out of this book, right? So that's those stories I think kind of show the other story that is that was not the title of this book. It had nothing to do with ontology. It was just supposed to be a book about how to win the prosperity game.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

How to win the money system that you know, because people think, oh, this this nice credit card company, I owe them $4,000, and they say, you only we love you, so we're only you only need to send a minimum payment of $81 this month. No, they don't love you, they're enslaving you. If you set up our minimum payment, you're gonna be paying for 40 years, and it's gonna be you know gazillion more than that. So you gotta learn, so that was the the the main impetus for the book, and then as I got into the chapters about writing, about the programming that people get, how they get brainwashed, how these limiting beliefs turn into self-sabotage. Then I next chapter was on guilt, and how which you and all of your wealthy clients will have already discovered this. Once you get money, and I mean money with a capital M, you will be the most popular person all of a sudden. You will be getting wedding invitations, graduation invitations, bar mitzvahs, birthdays, whatever. And you're like, who's this again? Oh, this is the guy who installed the cable. You know, who is the oh, isn't this the bad boy at the supermarket? Because they say, Oh, you know, Chad is rich. Let's invite him to the wedding and we'll send him the registry. Maybe he'll buy us the microwave, right? And then so you get and the same thing with your charity, right? Whatever charities you support, you have friends and family. They're like, Why do you give money to that charity? I have this charity here that I think is where you should be spending your money. They want to tell you how to spend your money, and then they guilt you when you don't do that, or they guilt you if you don't give them money. So I as the book developed, I was like, this title I got doesn't work. And I actually, so I put all my chapter titles and the first draft into Chat GPT, and I said, I'm not sure this is the right title for this book, but you read the book and then tell me what do you think the title should be? And Chat GPT is actually the one that came up with that title.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

I love it. I'm a big fan of the title, and I'm a big fan of pushing people to help them get where they want to go. So, Randy, as we kind of come to a close here a little bit, you know, you're working, you're writing, you're working, you're doing, you're speaking, you're hall of

Life Outside Work And Coaching

SPEAKER_00 28:22

fame. They could find your book at Amazon. They could find a lot of your books at Amazon. What's something, what's one or two things you do when you're not working?

SPEAKER_02 28:31

I'm a baseball guy, so I love to play softball. I played right up to a couple, I'm 67 now, so I played right up to a couple of months ago, but I played in my last World Series. And, you know, my father, I have uh some congenital conditions in my spine, and so the pain was getting to be so much. So I'm not playing actively anymore, but I'm coaching new teams, young players, people who just want to learn the game. So that's a real that's my hobby passions, you know, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

I love it. So, Randy, Powell's the best way for people to

Where To Find Us Next

SPEAKER_00 29:12

find you. I I think you could go to the website and I think they could go to your LinkedIn. Uh again, I think it was awesome today to be able to communicate with you and share some of these stories. So go back to how what's the best way for them to reach out to you if they have a question or they want to hire you as a speaker?

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Yeah, randygage.com. That's kind of my Starfleet command site. That's my podcast, my uh entrepreneurial coaching program, speaking programs, all of that, all that stuff is there.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Thank you so much. At Cofinancial Group, you just go to our website or do the barcode. You go to cofinancial.com and you'll be able to download my book, Your Financial Dream House. It's right there on the front cover. You can make time to visit with me. You could chat with uh Eli, our new web chat. Just so many ways. I'm happy to speak with all of you. I'm happy to connect you and just be there as a support role. LinkedIn, Instagram. You could find me again, Randy. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Appreciate you very much.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Peace.