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Welcome to the High Level People Podcast with your host PJ Cursunzo. This is the show where every week we go inside the minds of modern market leaders. These are world-class entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and ministry leaders who are making a generational impact on the world today. The question is, if you're going to compete, why not compete at the highest level possible? And that's what this show is designed for, to give you a playbook for your life so that you can to climb levels week after week. This is the High Level People Podcast, and welcome to today's episode. Welcome to the High Level People Podcast. Today I have Dr. Greg Pursley, where if you're in his immediate circle, you may get the privilege of calling him Dr. G. He's helped, uh, coach, lead, and build multiple 7-figure small businesses. He also has a growing practice. He's helped, uh, people in the medical field that want to grow their practice in his line of work grow. Um, he is a father, a husband, somebody who has an incredible track record even with publishing books. So I'm super excited today to have Dr. G on the show. Welcome to the show, brother. Thanks, PJ. Appreciate you for being here and for doing what you do and helping your audience out. I hope I can be value, you know, to you and them. Yeah, absolutely. So other than my 30-second introduction off of a brief connection from a mutual friend and Sebastian and a almost creepy description of AI of how much it knows about all of our lives. Who is Dr. Greg to the audience if they're not familiar with their work or your work if they've never met you before? That is a really great question. Well, at the core, I'm somebody that loves to help others. I love to help people. I hate disappointing people. I like to provide more value where I can. And, you know, it always— it hasn't always been like that. I kind of came to that realization later on because in the beginning, when you're in your 20s, I feel like maybe even 30s, you're like in a hustling situation. You want to be, you know, you want to impact so many people's lives, but you also want to make a lot of money so you can take care of your family, so you can, you know, do the things you want to do or whatever. And so there's a lot of chasing money back then, but now it's just about value and implement and helping others. But Quick background. In my early 20s, I graduated as a chiropractor. I was 23 when I graduated. I have— when I graduated, I had a wife, a daughter, and we moved about an hour and a half, 2 hours away from our family and started a practice when I was 24. And then a couple of years later, had our son. So those are our 2 kids. Ran a chiropractic practice for 15 years. And I say ran it because I was the only one running. I was the only one producing. And so what I found out was I owned a job. And so in my mid to late 30s, I decided, you know, in order to provide the life I want to provide for my family, I need to figure out how to actually build a business. And so we took our chiropractic practice, turned it into a regenerative integrated medical practice, and learned— I learned how to pull myself out of that day-to-day. You can see it right here, PC Medical Centers. which is why I'm able to do things like this. And in doing that, it turned into a coaching program for two reasons. The first one was I was playing golf on a Wednesday and my buddy saw that I had put a story on Instagram and he said, "Hey, how are you playing golf? Like, would you shut your practice down today or what?" I said, "No, man. I have systems now and people that run those systems and therefore, I can be out here." And so it turned into a coaching program because of that. The other thing was when my second child was born, he was born with dwarfism and we— there were a lot and had a lot of medical complications. And then there was a lot of emotional issues over that time, like emotional— I don't say trauma, but baggage that we had to overcome. Challenges. Challenges, let's say. And so I learned how to manage your emotional and your beliefs in your life. Therefore, you can make the best of situations. And so that's what I do. I help people do those things. And my goal is to, you know, impact as many lives as I possibly can. We say we want to impact over a million lives, but really, that's just an arbitrary number. I want to impact everyone's life in a positive way. And do it in a way that helps them not just make more money or grow a practice or achieve their goals, but to really find fulfillment. That's all. Wow. And just the introduction, I jot down about 7 questions that I want to extract from everything you just described. So we'll just go in numerical order. We'll go top to bottom. Walk me through the relationship with disappointment Because this is something I struggle with as an entrepreneur. I'm so committed to honoring my word and my commitments. I think there's this aroma or atmosphere of people pleasing that can come into that because you're so committed to doing well by others. So how have you learned to either disassociate, delineate, create space and boundaries around wanting to impact every single person's life but still being there for your wife and your kids and yourself? What does the relationship between those two things look like for Dr. J? Well, there's only 4 things you can actually control. And as much as I want to help someone, I can only help them as much as they want to be helped. Hmm, that's good. So the 4 things you can actually control are your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions, and your actions. Wow. What a simple framework. So guys, let me just say that one more time. If you're listening to this podcast, because I think sometimes you can get an information overload, right? There's so many strategies and ideas and podcasts and books and audiobooks. So what Dr. G just said was there's 4 things that you can actually

control: 6:18

your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions, and your actions. Super powerful. Love that framework. All right, continue. Right. So disappointment really comes into projecting the way you think something is going to go. And if it doesn't go the way you think it's going to go, then you're disappointed in the outcome of the way it went. And so we set goals, we set targets, we have North Stars that we are aiming towards. But there's no way you're going to predict all the things that will occur from now until that goal is met. And so you really— I developed a mindset of it doesn't matter what happens. We will figure out a way to overcome whatever obstacle to move towards the next goal. And I can tell you in multiple times in my career, it doesn't mean I make all the right decisions. It means that I learn from every decision I make, whether positive or negative. And that way we can continue to, to build on top of the actions that we take. I think a lot of people get into analysis paralysis when something doesn't go their way. And if you really think about it, I think a majority of that disappointment or fear, it's simply a thought process in your mind of what might happen. But you can do the same thing on a positive light as well. So most people tend to what might happen, they think is negative, but You can also— what might happen as a positive. And if you train your brain to think that way, then that's the way you see it. And that way you are more excited about the challenge as opposed to depressed or, you know, pushed down by the challenge. I love that. It reminds me of two things before I go to the next question. One is, as you describe that, kind of reminds me of that book, The Fourth Agreement, where they're describing a scene where you have four family members, the same exact thing is happening to all of them. But one sees a horror, one sees a comedy, one sees an action movie, one sees a romantic comedy. Same set of facts. It's just the way 4 different people are internalizing what's happening. It's almost as if it was 4 different scenes. And then another thought is what you're talking about when you think about thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and action, and you attach that to disappointment. Is—

I recently heard this quote, which I just shared on a call before this podcast: 8:44

the present and the future are only tools for the present. So, or your past and your future are only tools for the present. So your past should just be a filter that empowers you in the current state. And then your future should just be a filter where you set your desires, your dreams, your goals, but you do it in a way that filters the decisions you make today. So like there's no future anxiety about what's going to happen because you're using it to create where you want to go. And then your past, there shouldn't be this trauma and baggage because you overcame it, you went through it. So it should be a source of empowerment. To be where you're at today? Yeah, it's all about perspective. It's all about perspective. So, you know, a lot of times in my presentations or talks, I'll do something like I'll hold up a book and like I have a book here, it's all the same color, but I'll hold up a book and one side will be black, one side will be red, let's say. And, you know, to the audience, it looks like a red book. And I'll say, hey, you know, what color is this book? And they'll say red. And I'll say, no, I don't think so. Are you sure the color's red? What color is the book? And they'll say red. And I'll get them to kind of yell it a few times. But when I say, oh yeah, well, let me check and see if you're right. And I'll flip the book around and then the other side's black. And I'm like, oh, you're right, it is red. And I'm like, what color is the book now? Is it red? And they go, no, it's black. So the point is perspective changes everything. In the mindset side, you have to look at the things that have happened in your past. And instead of living in the past and dwelling in the past, which will make you sad, depressed, emotionally triggered for the most part, because that's the things you're going to go to in your past. Instead of looking at that as things that happened to you, look at it as these are events that occurred and I chose the meaning. Therefore, you're in control of changing the meaning. How practically? So I'm going to go to another part of your story just to skip ahead, because I think this correlates. You talked about the birth of your son, it being a challenging time in your life. I'm sure from a practical standpoint, some of these mental exercises you're now coaching on, you had to work through yourself. What did that journey look like from what the initial narrative was how it impacted you and your wife, to how you view that perspective today, and then how would you encourage somebody else that's going through, you know, another difficult time to do what you did to kind of persevere and make it through? Sure. Yeah, something that helped me actually during that time was something that Tony Robbins actually taught. I spent a lot of time in a lot of different books trying to learn about what I was experiencing and how I could actually be better myself, you know. And he talked about the secret to happiness, which everybody's like, oh, perks them up, you know. Secret. Yeah. I'm like, I want to know. Yeah. He says the secret to happiness is actually pretty simple. And he put it in a formula. It was when your life condition equals your blueprint. LC equals BP. When your life condition or the way your life is in a certain area right now equals the way you thought it would be or the blueprint that you've created, then you are happy. And if you look at your relationship with your spouse, LC equals BP, happy. If you look at your financial situation, LC equals B, okay, you get it. Your health, your, your, any of it. But the opposite occurs when your life condition does not equal your blueprint, then you are unhappy. So You have two choices when that occurs. If you recognize, does my life condition equal my blueprint? If it doesn't, and you say, well, I'm unhappy, if you don't have belief that it will change or improve, then you are depressed. If you believe it's going to be like that forever, then you are now depressed where you have no hope for improvement or change. So then the choice, the choice is simple, then it's, do I change my life condition or do I change my blueprint? If you break it down, it becomes actually empowering because you only have two options. So there's like, you're either going to change A or B, which is actually super freeing to operate. So most people get, most people get overwhelmed with the emotional side because they're simply, um, stuck in the reactive mode instead of controlling their thought process on it. And if you make it really simple, okay, My son was born. He had some medical complications. He ended up, by the way, having a trach and a vent dependent for 8 years. He had on and off and was dependent upon that for 8 years. And so my life condition wasn't really an option to change unless I just left. And I didn't feel like morally that was the right thing to do. So then my blueprint had to shift my— the way I thought it was going to go Wow. So I had to ask myself, what's good about this? What is good about this change? And in an emotional state, in a negative emotional state, you're going to say, well, nothing's good about this. But if you get yourself to a neutral state, then you can actually work through it and say, well, there are a lot of good things about this. Potentially, we've met a lot of amazing people. He's still here. He's fighting. It brought certain things closer to certain family members, closer, whatever. But there's always a positive side, which is that silver lining in every cloud. But you have to train yourself to look for those things. And the more you train yourself to do that, which is controlling your thoughts, then it turns into a belief of I am someone that looks at the positive, or I am someone that looks at all the possibilities before I get emotional or make a decision. And when you start to train yourself, all of a sudden that becomes who you are. The hard part is, is we live in a very negative world where we are taught and trained to look at the negative side of things and basically freak out in fear about all the possibilities that might happen. But only one thing will happen. There's only one thing that's gonna happen. So why not overthink about the potential of the positive that might happen and move into that direction, as opposed to overthinking the negative that might happen, which will move you in that direction? Can you educate me on— like, again, my medical expertise is about as shallow as it gets from a professional standpoint. What does the condition of your son look like, and how has it impacted your relationship with him? Like, what is the relationship like today? You said 8 years. He was on and off. He said ventilation. So, and again, forgive me if I'm an amateur. Oh no, you're good. Yeah, ability to communicate, speak. Like, just kind of fill me in on, on how his personality has still been able to shine amidst what he's gone through. So it impacted, uh, you know, everybody in the family individually. Like you said earlier, um, you know, everybody has their own perspective and their own filters from their past. Uh, our daughter was 2 and a half when he was born. So, you know, we're thinking we're going to have a son and you have an idea of what that's going to look like, just like I had when my daughter was born. And then, you know, the day he was born, they're like, hey, he has a form of dwarfism. We think it's something called achondroplasia, which is the most common form of dwarfism. Dwarfism is a random genetic change in the third trimester. There's really no history in the family. 80% of kids born with dwarfism have no history. And for the most part, the form achondroplasia, that form of dwarfism, doesn't have any major medical complications for most people born with dwarfism. But in his case, he ended up having a lot of pressure on the first part of the neck here, the foramen magnum, where the brain exits and goes down into the spinal cord. And he had a lot of pressure, which was affecting his ability to breathe and suck and swallow all at the same time. So he would actually breathe in food, which is called microaspirations. Well, that turned into pneumonias, chronic pneumonias, put a lot of mileage on his lungs. And so therefore, in the first year, he was 9 months old, he ended up having a trach put in with a vent that helped him breathe. Now, once again, we could take this and say, well, woe is me and you know, how terrible is this? But we were able to get him a surgery. We were able to bring him home on a trach and vent. We had resources that helped us pay for those things. We had resources that helped us with nursing to help get him well. And now he's 18. Wow. Daughter's 20. You know, and wow, they're, they're doing very well. So I look at it from the perspective of we are able to meet people we never would have met. We have traveled all over the place in the country to go to his Little People of America convention, which happens once a year. If you remember the Roloffs, you remember them? The— yeah, Little People, Big World. Yeah. You know, they're friends of ours now because we went to those events. We've hung out with some major celebrities over the years at random. Met Dennis Rodman, hung out with him for a little while. And him and my son hit it off really well because they are very different. And so he actually made a comment to my wife. He said, you know, your son and I are very similar, a lot alike. And I'm like, okay, but he was just saying we're different and therefore people look at us differently. How has that experience equipped you to serve somebody that you weren't equipped to serve prior to going through it? Well, once again, it wouldn't have necessarily equipped me if I didn't train myself to use it as a positive experience that I can now help others with. I believe nothing happens to me. Everything happens through me. Wow. Nothing happens to me. It is all coming through me, which means I have the control over what I choose that experience to be. Mm. That's amazing. Nothing happens to me. Everything happens through me. Okay, so I want to transition to the world of business, but I'll cap this conversation in this thread just to kind of capture the idea of training. To somebody that's never trained their mind, right? Like, I think as you continue on in entrepreneurship, you realize how small the community is of the people that are willing to implement and apply. Everybody wants to sign up, everybody wants to learn, but it's that implementation period. It's that practice. It's the reps. So what's a word of encouragement you would give to somebody who's like, I don't even know what that means. Train my mind. Use this as a positive. Like, how would you coach that person that's like, man, I'm going through a really tough season and I'd love to, but I don't I don't even actually know what that looks like. Sure. When you are in a state, when you have an emotion, the emotion is telling you what your thought process and your beliefs really are. So if you're in an emotional state, you know, let's say you're going through a rough patch like you said, which turns into an emotion, anxiety, worry, depression, sadness, fear, You name it. Okay, so you have all these potential emotions. If you understand that emotion is just an indicator for your thought process and how close or how far away it is from your spirit or your soul. Right? If you think about, if you think about your soul, and the purpose of us being here on Earth is to take the gift that you've been given and let that light shine to the Earth or to others, your emotional state, the further you are away from that alignment, the further your emotional state goes to a negative place. The more aligned you are with that, the more you do activities and get yourself into the emotional, into the alignment of that spirit, of the activities you do. It's almost like if there's an anchor. I mean, I literally just drew a picture. It's like if you even in the lighthouse, right? I mean, think about your soul as a lighthouse. When you're close to the lighthouse, it's really clear what's around you and what's happening. The further you drift, the harder it is to see the light. And that would make sense from a positive versus negative dynamic, because when you start getting depressed and sad and angry, you don't see clearly. Like, when I'm angry, I'm not seeing the field clearly. Well, there's a statement that I learned a long time ago. It's high emotion equals low intelligence. Wow. When you have very high emotion, whether it's positive or negative, you're not going to do things very intelligently because you're reactive to that, whatever that emotion is. That emotion becomes the controller. So if you understand, you know, how the brain works, your thoughts are under your control, you just don't know it. If you don't pay attention to your thoughts and what you're thinking, you will repeat thoughts And what those thoughts are based on— fear, anxiety, and, you know, whatever, or, you know, hope and gratitude and potential— depending on that will depend on your beliefs, because a belief is nothing more than a thought you have repeated over and over and over and over to yourself that now it's on autopilot and you don't think about it. It's just, wow, go-to. And then that turns into your, your emotions, because If you are repeating a thought of, this is something that is going to teach me how to be a better individual, you will get more of an excited emotional state about it than if you repeat a thought of, this is really going to hinder me, or why is this happening to me, or if you repeat a negative thought to yourself. It's really hard for me to even go there because I've trained the other way so much. You put it in the wraps. As you talk, I think about a concept that I've never even really— it's never came to my mind before, but as you talk, it comes to mind, which is the idea of emotional preparation. Like, how often do we prepare ourselves emotionally for knowing what's going to happen, knowing there's going to be adversity and tough circumstances, are we priming ourselves with another word from Tony Robbins vocabulary to see the light, to respond in that way? I mean, I don't know, I don't know if a lot of people intentionally are getting ahead of how they're going to respond when adversity happens. Well, you got to look at it once again from perspective. So the question you asked earlier, the experience I had with my son and my family and all the things we went through with that, Now, when a business issue arises, which it always— there's always something that you're going to be working toward, right? When a business issue arises, the experiences I've had in the past have weathered me or sharpened me to the point of I don't have to react as much because I'm like, this isn't If I compared reviving my kid from losing oxygen and doing CPR on them and a business issue that I'm dealing with that may or may not go well and I may lose money or make money, that takes the sting or the emotional power out of, well, I may or may not lose money. Well, I can always make more money. I mean, so good. Once again, it's perspective. How old was your son when you transitioned? So when you went from, I'm really owning a job versus owning a business, where was he at? It was after he was, he was about 9. It was after he was healthy enough where he was, we, we weren't fighting every day of like, is he going to make it type deal? How long did you fight? How long was the fight? Well, for the first 3 years, it was day by day. I mean, it was like, we don't know. Wow. I mean, he had a— he had a trach and vent that had oxygen and a vent that was helping him breathe. I mean, it was— it was day to day. If he disconnected from the vent, you had about 15 seconds because he had no reserve. So— wow. And he got better for a little while. And we thought, oh, when he was about 3 or 4, he's going to— we'll be able to take this thing out. Then at about 4, he had an RSV, which then sent him backwards quite a bit. And then he got better again until about 8, and then finally got strong enough to where we could actually get that thing out. And then when he was 9, he got it closed up. So, well, man, kudos to the stamina of you guys being able to— I mean, obviously when you're in the situation, you're not thinking about anything other than what's in front of you, but still, when you look back on 18 years, you'd have a lot of stamina to continue to put yourself in a mental place that was productive, right, while dealing with this tragedy. Because I think a lot of times, even doing this podcast and seeing different people in my life, um, you know, I think my mom shares her story, but her father had a sudden death, and you see different people in the family that react very differently to these traumatic events. You know, it could paralyze you or it could propel you, really. It's like one or the other, right? Life's either a teacher or a tormentor. All right, so I want to— but once again, once again, You have the choice between those two things. Is this teaching me or tormenting me? You know, which one do you decide? Are you going to be the victim and it's tormenting me and woe is me, or is this teaching me and, oh crap, I won't make that mistake again because I learned these lessons? You know, I was listening to an interview with a billionaire not too long ago, and the person interviewing him said, well, how'd you get to be a billionaire? And he said, making all the right decisions. And they said, well, how did you know to make all the right decisions. He said making all the wrong decisions and learning from them. I mean, it's about as simple as it gets. All right, so let's go into the world of simplicity, because from what you're describing— systems, people managing systems, the framework of thoughts, beliefs, actions— it would seem to me, only 28 minutes into a conversation, in our first in-depth conversation, simplicity is something you value in business and helping business owners scale and how they think and how they operate. So let's dive into the world of entrepreneurship. I'm an entrepreneur that comes to you. Run a small business, from the small business owners that I know, life tends to be very chaotic. Businesses tend to be very chaotic. So what does it look like to start on the path of simplicity and simplifying and building systems? Like, what is my first step if I'm like, Dr. G, I have no idea what I'm doing. My hair's on fire all day long, but I want to do more and be better and go to the next level, go to higher levels, you know, in the spirit of your coaching in this podcast, what does that look like? Well, the first thing you have to do if you're in that position where your hair's on fire and you're running around like crazy is you need to take note of your current situation. So, the first thing I would do is I would do an audit. I would have someone write down all the things, all the activities that they do on a daily basis. Oh, man. I checked my emails. Called these people, I did sales calls, I set up Google Ads, or, you know, whatever. I don't know, whatever your list is, but you write down this list. So you do an audit, and if you did that for about a week, you'd really see where a lot of your time gets spent. But if you do that audit and then you ask yourself a simple question— so let's say you did the audit and you have this list of things that you did, all these activities, um, Before I tell you the next step, I want to introduce this idea of leverage. Yeah, please. Okay, leverage is simply amount of effort you put in versus the output. Okay, so the idea for the business owner is to maximize the leverage of their time, so less input on their end and more output or production on the backend. And if you don't focus on that, if you don't have any north star of at least saying, I'm going to work on maximizing my personal leverage, well then you become reactive to the business and we don't want to be reactive. We want to be proactive. And by the way, I know these things because I did them for about 20 years. I mean, I've done, yeah, I understand these things now. I've been through the ups and downs for the most part, right? And it's never perfect, but you do gain a sense of calmness when you have at least an idea of where you're headed, okay? So if I'm in that situation, small business, let me go into how a small business owner generally starts their business. Most small business owners, know how to do a thing, photographer, chiropractor, dentist, marketer, whatever. They know how to do a thing, a plumber, HVAC. I know how to do this thing. I have a skill. So I'm going to start my own business because I want to be my own boss and I want to have freedom and I want to, you know, have more time, which is like saying I'm going to keep my marriage together by having another baby. That's not going to work. So they know how to do this. Yeah, that's right. You might want to fix the underlying internal problem. So the individual says, I know how to do this thing. So they start telling people, hey, I started a business. I know how to do this thing. And then people go, oh, I want to do business with you. And then they pay them to do the business. And then they have to perform the business. They have to do the thing that they were paid to do. Well, then enough people start to do that. They're like, oh man, I need more business. I need to explain. I need to tell more people. So then they're like, I'm gonna do some marketing, which they're not a marketing expert. They don't know how to do marketing, but then they hire someone like an agency or they'll hire a local TV reporter or somebody and say, hey, I wanna do these ads. And they'll say, produce my ads. Well, they're selling you the whatever commercial, they're selling you the fact that they're gonna produce—

The 5: 32:17

30 news, hey, we're gonna advertise your local small business. Right, so you're like, hey, you do that. They're not marketing experts for the most part. It's not like they are— I mean, yes, they want you to do well, but what their job is, is to sell you the advertising for the most part, right? All right, so you got you who doesn't know the marketing side, and you got the marketing company that doesn't really, you know, for the most part know the marketing side. Even if you hire an agency, well, the agency is, you know, they've got other clients they have to service, so there's a lot of disconnect there. And so you're hoping that they solve your problem by doing this marketing thing, and you spend money on it, and it does kind of work, but it really doesn't work as well as it could. So then it kind of works and you have more people and then you're like, well, man, I'm getting busy. I need somebody to help me like take all these phone calls. And then you hire somebody and then now that person's in your company and they generally, if you don't have a direction, they don't have a direction. And then that process kind of repeats over and over and over. You hire people or you hire agencies to solve problems that really aren't defined that well in the first place. So what happens is it creates, like you said, chaos. Okay. So it's inventory of where are you currently at? How are you spending time? A lack of understanding of the skills that you're not equipped to do, bringing people into your world that also aren't equipped to do those skills. Now you have a multiplication of a lack of excellence all over the place. Basically, yeah. And if, you know, the company doesn't really have a solid mission, they don't have typically a solid vision for where the company's headed. So if you don't have a solid mission or vision, how are you going to share that with the employees that you're hiring to say, hey, are you aligned with this mission that we're— of what we're doing? Or are you just looking for a job? So good. They're just looking for a job. They're just going to do the bare minimum to keep the job. Um, so all of that being said, I, I just— I've laid all that out so you could really understand. So if you're in that, that in the beginning thing, you need clarity. So pull yourself back, write down all the things that you're doing, and then you're going to write down what are the things that I can do that only I can do that drive this business forward? What are the things that I'm great at that I love doing that I started this business for in the first place, that other people can be hired to support that. And so you write down whatever that is and circle it. Everything

else on your sheet can be put into 5 categories: 34:55

marketing, sales, HR, operations, finances. Sure. So then you categorize everything else on that sheet— marketing, sales, HR, operations, finance— and then you say, okay, which of these things that I'm doing is my least favorite, and who can I delegate these things to? This group, this section, this Circle this thing. So if it's financials, I hate doing the books. Okay, cool. What is a solution for that? Let's come up with solutions for that. I hate doing this one thing. Great. What's the solution? Well, most people go, well, I can't hire a bubba. That's a can't. That's not a solution. Tell me solutions. Write down solutions. Well, I could find a local bookkeeper. I could hire somebody part-time. I could, delegate this to my internal staff, I could— solutions. And lo and behold, one of them will pop up and go, I bet you this is the one. I bet you this will work. That's— implement that solution and then see, monitor if it works. If it works, double down on it, create a process. And now you have your process for that thing. Wow. You know, so as you're saying this, I'm writing all this down. I hear Number 1, I need to understand my time. Number 2, I need to understand my talents. Number 3, I need to understand my team. Number 4, I need to understand the available solutions. And then number 5, I need to understand my system. That seems like a regurgitation of the frameworks you just described of even I love the 5 departments, marketing, sales, HR, ops, finances. I think about myself personally, right? What do I love doing? Sales and marketing. What can I not stand doing? HR and finances. Okay, well, who's overseeing those two departments, right? Good thing we have an incredible team because if I was responsible for HR and finances, it wouldn't be as good as marketing and sales to say the least, right? Let's just put it that way. Um, all right. So I got a couple final questions for you. I think that in and of itself is a mini masterclass for any entrepreneur or sales professional leader who says, man, my hair is on fire. I don't have clarity. I'm not ensure what I need. And you know the other thing I love about this? I think there's a lot of solopreneurs who dabble between, I have a small business versus I have a 1099 job. What I love about the 5 departments is it takes you away from being the product and it actually makes you evaluate your business as a business. When you think about marketing, sales, HR, operations, finances, if you're a one-man show, it'll expose the fact that you don't have a team, you don't have the departments. You just have a cell phone and generate a lot of noise. So it's time to put the pieces around you that can really help you scale. Would you say that's accurate, what I just described? Yeah, that's totally accurate. Now I want to pull that back to one step before all of that is, uh, one of the things you can add in those 5 things you wrote down, which is actually another T, is targets. So Targets need to be very specific in the fact that if you have— if you can do the math, you can have— you can see what— how many people you need to reach out to, how many contacts you need to make, how many deals you need to do at what value with what profitability or profit margin. So therefore, you can hit your target. What I typically see when I work with individuals, and I was there and even when I work internally with my team, is if you have somebody set a goal or a target, generally it's vague. It's, um, I want to make more money, um, I want more time, I'm going to be quality, I'm going to read more, uh, I'm going to, you know, increase my calls. Okay, by how much? Like, like, what do you mean increase? Or if they set a target for the scalability or growth of their company, let's say for the year, and they're like, oh, hey, we're going to grow 20%. I'm like, well, where'd you pull that number? Like, why 20%? Why not look at it and say, my target is to, let's say there's the, my industry that I'm in, in my area has, you know, $100 million worth of revenue coming through it per year based on the stats of the area. Well, why not say our target is to hit at least 10% of that $100 million, so $1 million. So, a lack of specificity, a lack of specifics is preventing people from even really getting there. Because then it becomes easier. You work backwards. You're like, okay. So good. Then once you set that target, I like to ask why. Like, you know, people say all the time, I want to make $1 million. I'm like, why a million? Like, why? Because I want to, you know, almost no business ever reaches a million dollars. Okay, cool. So you want it like the emotional connection of I am great and I did over a million dollars. I just, I like to really pay attention to those statements that are vague or that just got pulled out. If someone, if you say, hey, I want to hit this target and you go, why? You should have— they should have a quick because. They should have a quick— so good— because we are going to do this. I need to make 20 calls this today. Why? Because my 20 calls at this close rate will cause— at this revenue per, you know, close is going to cause this trickle effect, and it's going to affect the company in this way. Okay, great. Every why should have a because. That's beautiful. And if you don't, then think twice about the why. Is it even the right why if you don't know? Because most people don't even ever think about why. They just have a vague pie-in-the-sky thing, you know, I want to make more money, you know. So anyway. So, Dr. G, two questions from you or two final questions from you. So, number one is you were the guy who owned a job and then turned it into a business. You've helped other entrepreneurs and business owners create some systems. You've overcome a lot of adversity and been able to see the light on the other side. After this, you know, 20-year journey, decade, year journey, what are some non-negotiables or best practices that Dr. Gee tries to hold himself to today to stay at a high level and keep leveling up as you continue on in your journey? Non-negotiables, number one, um, I put my team first, take care of my team, do everything I can for them. Um, you know, I, being that I have a medical background, I look at a business kind of like I look at a body, an individual body. You know, when you start a business, you're starting— they call it an entity, which is kind of like an individual person that has a soul. And so I like to look at a business as, as, as a, as a person, as an individual. And so when you look at the employees within that business, those employees are the organs of that company, of that soul. The cash flow is the blood. Of that individual. So, if you take all the cash flow and pull it over here and suck all the money away from all the individuals, well, now, you're starving the organs. Wow. That's actually a really good framework. The team is the body and the cash flow is the blood. I love that. And the entity, the mission and the vision and the values of that company are the soul of that. That's the spirit. You know, if somebody does something, you know, Jaguar, not that long ago, they rebranded and they did all this stuff, or Bud Light, they rebranded, they did this marketing campaign. And it didn't match the spirit of that brand. And what happened? It cost billions and billions of dollars for both of those companies. So, you know, when somebody does something, an individual, a friend of yours does something that is different or odd from how you know them, they're acting out of character. That's not who they are. Like, well, that's odd. Why would they do that? Well, the same thing happens in the brand. The brand is basically the character of the company, who they are. And when they do something out of brand or out of character, then that's, that's what ends up happening. People get confused. They're like, well, I'm not, I'm not buying that. I'm not, I'm not going to hang out with that person. They're weird. They're doing something off authenticity and everything. The soul's got to align with the body and the blood. That's, that's beautiful. All right, so let's say you help your last business owner. You've just created the, the ultimate system The body, the soul, the blood are aligned. We've helped thousands go to the next level. We've impacted a million lives. When it's all said and done, what does Dr. G want to be known for? Well, I, I want to be known for someone that strived to be the best that I can be, to make the biggest impact I can make, somebody that never gave up. You know, I had this conversation I had this conversation with my accountant a long time ago, but he said, "When do you want to retire?" Which is like that old mentality of like, I'm going to work 35, 40 years at one company and then I'm going to retire. And I said, "Well, what do you mean by retire?" And he said, "When do you want to stop working?" I said, "I don't know. I'll never stop working. I may reach a point where— not may, I will reach a point where I don't have to work. I get to work." I don't feel like I'm there yet, but that point is not that far into the future where I'll feel that I get to, not have to. So good. And how do you get to that point? Well, you invest in yourself, you consistently learn skills day in and day out, you invest into your team, invest into your systems, and All of a sudden, at some point, you end up with an asset that is running that the people that work within that asset are getting paid than they can work anywhere— being paid more than they can go anywhere else and work. They have a culture that's better than they can get anywhere else. They have more potential than they can get anywhere else. So those employees aren't going to go anywhere. The company is now secure. And you have the asset that you can then take the cash flow that is being produced that's excess and give it to more assets, and you can then give it towards bonuses and things for the production and the wins or the successes of that company back into the people that serve that company, and when you do that, it snowballs. So what I want to be known for is simply I worked to become better every single day, and it's not always perfect, but when it didn't go my way, I didn't stop and cry and whine. I said, well, what's the solution? How do we figure it out? And as long as you keep doing that, you cannot beat— you cannot— if you have two people and they are competitors, you cannot beat the person that refuses to stop. It's impossible. If you refuse to stop and you have belief that things will work out eventually for the best, guess what? You won't be beat. And that's where people generally stop. They get afraid. It didn't go my way. It didn't happen like I thought. And so guess what? I Quit. And that is the only true failure, is quitting or stopping. Well, Dr. J, I'm glad we asked that last question because you just gave the title to this podcast, which is From Survival to Solutions. So, uh, thank, thank you so much for your time, brother. Congrats on everything you've accomplished. Congrats on having the mental fortitude to kind of make it through some of those storms you were in to help other people see the light. It was a pleasure to meet you. I'm glad Sebastian God has connected, and I'm excited for everyone to hear this message. What's the best way to connect with you after they listen to this episode? If you want somebody to connect with Dr. G, what's the best way to do that? Best way is Instagram, @drgregpersley. Uh, and if they're interested in any of our programs, they can just comment "next level," because that's what we always do. We help people get to the next level, and we'll, uh, you know, we'll be able to share what's going on in, in my world and how we can help you take these frameworks and put them into action. I love it. Dr. G, thank you so much for your time, brother. Hope you have a blessed day, blessed week, and let's go. All right, thanks, Peter. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the High Level People Podcast. If you learned anything from today's content or if it made a positive impact on your life in any way, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite platform. More importantly, If you think there's somebody in your life who would benefit from today's episode, please shoot them a link. Encourage them to do the same. Encourage them to subscribe because every week we're committed to adding value. I look forward to seeing you soon. Hope you guys have a blessed day, blessed week, and let's go.