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Hey everyone, welcome to get unruly. This is Kim Bolourtchi, your host, and this week, Frankie Russo is my guest.
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Frankie is an entrepreneur with a proven track record for using innovative methods to unlock rapid growth and competitive advantage. His keynotes and master class experiences are full of actionable insights for fostering a culture of authenticity, imagination and generosity to unlock breakthrough innovation, extraordinary transformation and to keep growth going. Plus, he's just an amazing human Frankie, I am so beyond excited to have you on the podcast. When you said yes, my entire week got better.
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Thank you for being here, friend. All right. Well, that's no pressure, right there. Hope I don't let you down, but at least you had a good week. In case this goes sideways, yeah, it won't go sideways. So any story you don't know, when I started speaking and I went to my first event, I was so nervous and I didn't know anybody, and I was feeling completely out of sorts, and I said to one person, like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, and I don't know what is going on, and I don't know who to go to for help. And he said, Do you see that guy over there? And he pointed to you, and he said, That's Frankie Russo. You need to talk to him.
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You just need to talk to him.
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He's the best. He will help you.
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He will tell you whatever you need to know. Go talk to him.
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True story. I didn't know where you were going with that story, okay, yeah. And so I found you at the next break outside, and was like, help. I need help. And you were so unbelievably generous, just instantly interested and engaging and generous. And you didn't know me from anybody. And I think there was maybe even a line of people waiting to waiting to talk to you, but, but, seriously, one of the things I really want to talk to you about today is that generosity, because in the speaking world, particularly, it's incredibly busy and it's competitive, and, you know, people like to say that they're generous and it's a community, and everybody is helpful, and I think that a lot of people would like to be, but you actually are, and there's not a bone of scarcity in your body. So, and I find that to be really you're making me tear up over here.
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Well, it's true, and I find that to be really unruly, because that's not the norm. So tell me about where that comes from. Oh, I like this topic. Okay, so it comes from when I was five years old, we packed up from Louisiana, and my parents moved us to Pittsburgh, and from then till I was 18, we served in homeless shelters full time.
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That was what we did. So I am a purebred, I guess, missionary at heart, and that's the facts. So I have this deep need. I don't know if it's a need, I don't know what the fuck it is, but it's a deep sense of like, ingrained purpose of helping people that ask for help.
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So I want to get this out of the way early in the conversation.
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Part of the reason I can be so generous is because I'm I only help people that ask.
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This is a very, very, very important thing that so many people that try to help everyone, and they have this amazing heart, and they burn out, and then they stop. It's because if you go back and you look at who you were helping, a lot of times, we were doing a lot of helping, and they didn't ask. So this is especially so I work a lot with codependent people. Okay, I'm a codependent myself. Codependency is not what most people think. You think it's, you know, somebody that's in this abusive relationship that they can't escape and like, you know, they just keep taking it. And this is abusive guy, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's, it's way more than that. It's, in fact, the only requirement for membership of codependency is the is a desire for loving and healthy relationships. So if someone has a heart to help other people, and they're asking me for help on how they can help other people, I'm all in. I'm all in because what I have found is a couple things. So first things, first like you asked, yeah, okay, that that, that's a big deal.
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Why do I do it? It's twofold.
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Why I do it? Okay, well, it's really threefold. The first fold is what I told you.
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It's ingrained into my childhood, like helping the poor, helping people really in need. Okay, that's number one, so it's ingrained. So I have a special upbringing that most people didn't have. Now, that upbringing also was difficult because we were all so poor, so when you help the homeless, you're one notch above homeless.
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So I ran from that for a while, and I ran into money and ran into mortgages, which is you.
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In the mortgages we were doing were creating homeless people.
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So that's a whole nother story we can get into later if you want. But in reality, that's number one, is that it is, it's ingrained in a way that, like not everybody has that experience as a child. So that's number one. Number two, I have seen the the long game of abundance and giving without expecting anything in return. I've seen that pay out.
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So in my mind, you've got to pick a lane. Either lane, you can become successful and wealthy.
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Now, after success and wealth, I can't make any promises, but if you're looking for success and wealth, you have two lanes, radical scarcity and closeness or radical openness and generosity. Those are your two lanes if you want wealth and success. Now, if you're looking for wealth, success, freedom, acceptance, serenity and hope and some other things like joy, then you're going to have to go the other route. You're not going to go the scarcity route and that route. Yeah, and so I have played the tape out. So abundance is a strategy.
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Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat that now, even with the first two deep inside and like ingrained into my DNA, it was still not enough. I still was missing some of these pieces because there's a the real gold of generosity and abundance is genuinely expecting nothing in return. That's the true gold.
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Now that's difficult when you have six kids and multiple businesses, two wives and god knows what else you know, I've got 99 problems, and it's like, what? So as an adult, I lost this thing for a while. So what got me to the to the third one, and this is the real gold I have uncovered in this world was actually drugs and alcohol.
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So drugs and alcohol brought me to a bottom. In fact, Saturday in two days. This is a recording, but April 12 will make 17 years from the moment.
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I'm about to tell you about 17 years, but no drugs alcohol. And the thing about drugs and alcohol, first off, is that, like they're fucking great, they're not a problem. Their solution. Drugs and alcohol are a solution, okay? And they're great. If you do if you drink, you do drugs, all for it. I'm here for it. Okay? Wish I could.
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But at some point, if you're like me, and you do things radically or to extremes, you will hit a bottom. I hit a bottom, and I stayed at that bottom long enough for it to stick, see, I went on this journey for 10 years after getting out of the homeless shelter deal into only having one objective, and that was wealth and success and money. That was it. And when that's your only objective, that is a very, very dangerous place to be, especially as a young person.
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And I accomplished it, and I was a shell, and drugs and money had become my god. Had lost everything that I had red kid. I didn't know where to I was.
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So that brought me to this crossroads. Now, what I didn't know at the time, and a lot of people don't know this, is that getting sober and staying sober are two very, very different things. Lot of people get sober, but it's a much lower fraction of people that stay sober, and there's only one reason that happens. You can call it all kinds of stuff, medicine, rehabs, different steps, blah, blah, blah, but there's one common denominator of every single person that has long term sobriety, and that is that at some point early on in their sobriety, they flipped from being the suffering drug addict or alcoholic to being the person that's helping the drug addict.
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Wow, crucial for me, and it fit because I had been looking for a way to not have to be full blown in Africa or full blown in a inner city missions. But I also wanted to, like, be in business, and I wanted to make money, and I couldn't put it together. And I finally found it. I found this place where I could help poor people four or five times a week while I had a career. And I thought I found it. I freaking found it. And to a degree, I did now that has matured to where it is now, where like now, I've gone even deeper into this calling, where I've come full circle and found a way to live out my mission, which is what I'm doing now, without having to take donations from from donors, which was the only way we made money before, and that was part of the issue. Okay, so without getting into all those details at the end of the day.
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I had finally found a way to to scratch that itch again, like I had a purpose again, because I was helping other drug addicts and alcoholics. Now here's the kicker. So the thing about drugs and alcohol, if you're a drug addict, you're an alcoholic, and some people listening might might be wondering if they are, or some of you might know you are. Either way, you never stop loving drugs and alcohol for for the main reason that you like the effects of it. So we drink, we do drugs because we like the effects of it, okay? And that's why I do and I will never have, never lose that want to have something that gives me an effect. So here's the third piece in my journey to find the perfect drug, the perfect eye, the perfect arc of like whatever, I finally found what I call the limitless drug.
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So the third component to a life of abundance is the limitless drug, and here's what it is. And I didn't know this till after years of doing this, so I'd already sponsored probably 300 guys in sobriety before I figured out that there was science behind what I was talking about. It's an actual science. In the 80s, they started studying this. It's called the helpers. Hi, have you heard of this? I have heard of it. Okay, so the helpers, hi, for those who don't know is that there's a chemical that's released in the brain that's the same chemicals as drugs. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but it checks out, because I've tested this shit a lot the same chemicals that drugs now call can release to the brain when you help someone unconditionally. Now the hard part is that in this world, everything is so fucking conditional, right? So you have to be actively choosing to make it unconditional. So that unconditional piece is the trade off.
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So Kim, I've already been on the phone with three other people this morning, thought leaders that are trying to change the world, helping them change the world, and not for anything in return. Okay, why people are like, Why are you doing so? Like, yeah, upbringing to I have an abundance mindset, and I'm on a quest to reform capitalism with the new world of work, but that, but don't bullshit a bullshitter. I do it because I want to get high straight the up. I gotta tell you that, like that's the key, is that I want the limitless drug, and this is the part that helps me, because I'm not a saint, I'm not a saint, I'm not a priest, I'm not Mother Teresa.
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Do I like helping people? Yeah.
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Do I want people to get help?
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Yes, and I want to get high. So I'm upfront about that, and that's why it works, because it can take a selfish person like me and flip that selfishness into something useful, and that's all we can ask for.
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I love that. And I mean, I would not characterize you as selfish at all, and I think it's so cool that you're so candid about what it does for you, because I agree with you that the unconditionality of of being in service is the most important, and it's also the most difficult. Like I remember teaching my kids, by the way, the second I get paid, it's great because I got paid, but that's the payment, right?
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Gifts,
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correct? Because it comes it becomes transactional, yes, as opposed to unconditional. And I remember when my kids were little, teaching them, hold the door.
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You hold the door because you want to hold the door, not because you're expecting a thank you, right? And you know seeing the pissed off face when someone would walk through and not say thank you, and trying to teach that lesson of you're holding it because you want to, and if you don't want to, then don't hold the fucking door, right? But it's that, and that's really hard for humans, we're conditioned, I think, to look for some kind of trade off, even when we don't want
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to. Yeah, and you know that's really critical when you're looking at all this, is that you the unconditional part is kind of hard to find. You have to, you have to find it.
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That's why I got excited about like so I got to impact 11, which is where we met, and I didn't know how I was going to handle it, because I was like, how am I going to handle this?
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I've already got all these spawn sees. I've got all this stuff at home. I got these kids and all.
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I've got so many things. Where am I going to find space for this? And I'm going to tell you what happened early. Early on, I made a decision to treat everybody at impact 11, anybody that asks, I decided that with this group, I was going to treat them the same as I would if somebody asked me to sponsor them or help them get sober. And that was it. And that's what I did. I brought that spirit. I brought a spiritual program into the rooms of impact 11, and that's what you.
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Witness. That's what you follow, that's what that's what you're seeing. It's, it's, it's that simple, and it's, and it's what I plan to do with the new world of work, this new world of work movement, I plan to borrow from some of the best things I've learned from that spiritual program to create a movement that's not for money, that's not organized, that I'm not the leader of that can truly make a difference, because you can't kill it, because there's no LED screens. There's no conferences for ourselves. If we do a conference, it's for people like it's not it's the movement that I honestly got thought I was setting up for when I did some of these. And look, it's all good. I I love these other things, but they're businesses, and a business can't fix a business. It has to be something else.
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You know, I had a moment 2020, before I sold my company. It was out on the mountains. I was at this like off the grid experiential therapy. It's called on site. It's pretty incredible. And a lot of the work I do around love your weird and the whole unlocking the genius inside each one of us being that five six year old, a lot of that work came from my divorce and on site, and the deep work that they do with reconnecting with your five six year old self. It's where the love your the love your weird thing didn't come from some think tank trying to figure out a great brand or some crap. It came from being in deep experiential therapy, coming off of my divorce, realizing that I had lived in this weird and I didn't, and that was years ago.
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I didn't even talk about it for five or six years, but I knew it was in there, and it was so sacred. I didn't want to talk about I didn't want to do what I normally do in like branded or whatever, and something happens.
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It's like my third time doing this. This is like three years after the love, your weird lightning and struck, and I'm sitting on the mountain, and I had this vision. And the vision was showed me that the universe, whatever you want to call it, it created a a thing that fit both of the needs I had. So I had this deep need to like, not have to be in this financial insecurity that I felt as a child. That was the that was the hard side of what we did, and it was for a good cause. But when my dad got kicked out of his own mission by the board because he went to government money when I turned 18, it kind of put a bullet in all that. It's why I went so hard the other direction, yeah.
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So I realized in that moment that like, universe, God, whatever you want to call it, had allowed for me to spend the last two decades building a track record and equity in a company that I would sell the next year, so that I could be self supporting, and I could do my work for this impact and helping reform a space that is the most important space to reform in America right now, which is capitalism, And to be able to do it self supporting. It was two pieces, because selling my company the next year allowed for me to be self supporting, to build a this new movement the way it needs to be built, and not make any exceptions or compromises. But then the other part was I was allowed to do what I've done the last 20 years, so that I fit the bill to be welcomed in. Yep, okay, you and I have talked a lot about the concept of the Trojan horse. Yep, at those two decades, gave me the Trojan horse to be able to be a person that genuinely could go into something like the matrix of capitalism, and with the help of many of my friends on the same mission, collectively put a dent in that shift.
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Absolutely so.
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So I have a theory. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this, listening to you talk about how you are positioned to do the incredible work that you do in the world. And what I truly believe is that when we when we know what we really, really want to do, and we feel it in our bones, yeah, we are supported by the universe however you want to, however you want to call it. It's like we say, this is what I'm going to do. I feel this. I feel strongly about this. I know this is what I meant to do. Things line up, and we're positioned to do that work. Yep. What do you think about that?
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I think it's true. I but I do think it starts with a conviction.
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Absolutely, it starts with a conviction, and that conviction usually comes from a break. So my first book was called The Art of why, and I realized years later that that's bullshit.
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There's no art to why it's and so I wrote a follow up book called.
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BREAKING why? Because, if you're finding your purpose and you're finding your why, it's a breaking, a rebuilding, a hacking, a messy process, I wrote art of why before divorce. I wrote breaking y after divorce, if you're wondering. But anyway, the fact is, is that there has to be a conviction. That conviction does not happen without pain, it does not happen without failure. It does not happen without a lot of difficult, uncomfortable things.
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That is the fire that forges what we're talking about. But once you find that conviction that's unwavering and honest and true to you, regardless of anybody else, that creates a force that is in line with truth, that is outside of space and time, and is and and that's the thing you're talking about. We just can describe it a lot of different ways, and a lot of different cultures and people and countries in different perspectives try to explain this thing, this experience, this this truth, and everyone explains it a little differently, but it's unified in the sense that, like yes, it will align if it's true.
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You know, does it always it does. It always, does it always come from, from some kind of pain or or adverse experience.
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I've thought a lot about this, and I would love to say that it doesn't, but I I don't know that you can get there without some it's the it's the hard part about the first part of our lives before we experience it. Like, I mean, they told me, Don't write a book till you're 40. I was 35 I said, screw that. I'm writing it. And like, I hate the book. You know what I'm saying? If it didn't give me two bestsellers, I would have scorched the earth with it, like truth be told, like, so if you're if you're Googling me now, just skip the ROI and go to break it away, but that's a fact. Like, I like, I wish I could tell you that failure and pain weren't part of how you evolve, but I it's not that's a lie.
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Like, think about evolution.
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Like, if you believe in evolution, I don't really care what you believe about you. Big Bang. It all happened in a moment. Like, whatever it was, it was powerful, it was painful, and it was transformational. And Trent we talk about evolution and transformation? Like, is this fun fucking slogan for an event or some shit, evolution is, like, legs trying to pop out of a fish. You know, 100 years and, like, grueling freaking like, what do you call that conditions? Like, careful what you wish for. Yeah, you want to be someone that's that is transformational. You want to be someone that does puts a dent in the universe, whatever the heck you think you want to do. Know that that process is proven to be a very, very messy, painful process, careful what you wish for, you know? And you know, it's the reality. It's kind of like when, when Neo wakes up in the matrix, okay, and you realize that the real world is this shitty space full of machines and porridge. And like, that's the real world. And like, there's this temptation to want to go back into the matrix, but you can't, you can't unsee it. I talk about this with people, like, the fact is I can't unsee what I know.
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Even if I wanted to, there's not enough drugs in this world that could make me unsee what I know.
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And I tried.
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And the fact is, is that for some reason, I'm not dead, and here we are. So can you without some pain and some failure?
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I don't think so. Now, does that mean I have to keep doing the same one every time? No, and are my bottoms as deep as they used to be no but that's because I wake up every day, as hard as this is some days, and I eat change and embrace failure for breakfast. Okay, I've been doing that for a long time. I'm wired in a very weird way that allows for me to do that. Not everybody's that comfortable with it, but it is allowed for me, and as a result, I'm where I am, which is an interesting thing, because I'm not going up, I'm not trying to go up. Okay, honestly, I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going and it's not about up, and it's not about down and it's not the bottom is about realizing that failure is a gift.
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And because, I mean, a big part of my work now is like people come to me because they want to know, how did you grow a company 60x in three years, right? How did you become the fastest growing companies in America with two different companies, two different industries, eight years in a row? Right? That's why they think they're.
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Calling, and they are calling for that.
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But the fact is, is that, you know, most people think it's about success, like, I don't even talk about my accolades or my success or my awards or my accomplishment from the stage, not one after they read that intro to the stage. That's fucking it. That's the end of what you're hearing about my fucking successes. And that's because, like, success taught me fucking nothing, nothing.
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Everything I learned was from failure. People think that that growth, continuous, limitless, growth comes from success. It doesn't. Yeah, growth comes from failure.
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I love I love that we're talking about this so much. And one of the reasons I love it is I love it for people who are thinking about their next level and thinking that it's supposed to be this, you know, beautiful path of just, you know, moving through the next thing. And it's so much more complicated than that, but I'm also loving it because I think about people who have kids, I have kids, you have kids. And there's a tendency in the world, really, a tendency to protect everyone from pain and to keep people from feeling anything bad, and to sugar coat everything and to find the silver lining. And listen, I was the queen of silver linings for a really long time. Like I didn't even know how to sit with sadness. I had to learn that about a year ago, like how to sit and just be sad, like to be an adult. And have to learn that skill is embarrassing, but, you know, not that easy. It's not it's it's freaking hard. But when you're taught like, you always have to find the find the good, find the good side. It's all okay, and it's not that bad to be able to sit here and say, Listen, the gift is in those hard times. The gift is when it freaking sucks and when you don't know if you can take another step, the gift is falling on your ass and learning something from it, and we're depriving an entire generation of the ability to do that. And I think sometimes depriving ourselves, yes, yes, because we want comfort and we want pleasure. It's the it's, it's the American way, Western way we want pleasure. And what I have found is that you can have pleasure, but you have to figure out where you're going to get it from. It goes back to limitless drug, okay, I want pleasure like the next person, same, but I, I was finding in the wrong places.
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The thing is, is that you don't have to always go to bottoms. If you're an adult, you're going to get one probably every seven years. So if you're young and you're listening to this, just like, write that down on a calendar somewhere, it's like, every, every seven years, roughly, you're going to get one. And, like, start looking for it, you know. And like, I had one not that long ago, where I transitioned full time into speaking from, like, my super Kush cash cow that I sold, and then there was some golden handcuffs, and then that fell off last year, and a lot of people just fall off, and it's like, oh my god, what am I going to do? And like, I'm going to find my next gig, or blah, blah, blah. And I just fucking skipped it. I skipped it because I I prepared for that one. So you get better at preparing for these things, and then you start to realize that, like, failure is a myth and pain is a myth because it's so good on the other side of it, that, like when pain comes, you know it's you have to feel it. You can't ignore it. You you embrace it.
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Because if you don't like pain, the fastest way to get away out of the pain is not to mute it okay, not to ignore it, not to be in denial about it, not to act like it doesn't exist, but to go ahead and feel it like, the faster I feel it, figure out what was my part in all of this, and then recalibrate, the faster I'm going to get through this. And I don't have to feel the pain as long, but it's painful. Like, I had to make adjustments. You know? I had to make changes. Like, that's the other thing. Like, you don't just not change. If a lot of us are holding on to this idea, like, practically speaking, I'm in, I'm in one of our houses that I bought at first with the company. It was so cool. It's like, man, bought a second home, and it's on a lake and blah blah blah, right?
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And I felt like this is a a milestone for me, right? Was always poor blah blah blah. And like, dude, like, we're here this week to Airbnb the damn thing. Like, I could easily been like, you know what?
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No, I'm going to, hold on. I'm going to Airbnb this. What we're Airbnb my house, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's what my ego wants to tell me. Is that, like, No, you're Frankie Russo. You need an Airbnb.
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Shit you're gonna come out of this, like, blah, blah, blah.
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You don't need to make adjustments. Like, you always come out on top. And that's how you get fucked up, right there.
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That's how you get fucked up. I talked to a guy yesterday. His mind was like, Dude, I needed to talk to you so bad. Oh my god.
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I've been paying so much money the therapist and all sort of shit, and you just fucking changed it for me. And I because he had five exits, he had five exits, and he just got slammed, lost $6 million ironically, fighting the same company that I sold to. So we knew the same people, and I knew what he was feeling, and it was fucking dark. And I said, Brother. I said, you want to get that six mil back. You ain't getting it from them. You lean into this shit because you lost that six mil because of your five exits.
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Straight up, you lost that $6 million because of your freaking accolades. And I could do the same right now. I could be like, What?
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What? Nobody tells me how to make something fast grow. That's how you get fucked up. It's causes success, I mean, and it's over and over again, and so it's become my work. And I told him yesterday, I said, Dude, this is your work, brother. And he was just like, Oh my God, and he's gonna fucking go out and change the world. Because, look, he was the first black of four different things he's known for. This stuff. He's plugged in. He's got all these actors. He's like, he's a badass man. And I'm always saying mention that he's black, because he was the first of some things that which, which was really great for him, and he's got an amazing credibility.
00:31:30.799 --> 00:31:46.299
And I'm like, you rest on that shit. You hold on to that tight, and you're fucked. And that's what happens. We hold on tight to whatever the fucking success is. Like, no, you fucking Humble yourself. You slaughter that.
00:31:43.779 --> 00:32:17.759
And I don't know how to slaughter that, other than what I told you earlier, is, if I keep helping people, it keeps me out of well, what's in it for me? You know what I mean? And like, Whoa, this is a no, if. I If, because I am on a one track one trick pony train right now, and that is, I have one objective every morning, and that is to be a maximum usefulness to the people around me, and maximum usefulness to my calling. That is it full stop.
00:32:17.819 --> 00:33:07.799
Everything else is details. So if that means I gotta Airbnb this fucking thing, we're Airbnb it. If I gotta sell this thing, we're selling it. I don't give a shit, because I'm not sitting here trying to prove to myself in the world that I'm the fucking man. Okay? And ironically, there are a lot of people out there that I have a deep, connection with that I'm genuinely helping, and they probably do think I'm the man, but not because I want them to think I'm the man or I give a shit. And that's the irony of this life, is that the second we give up on all this bullshit we're chasing, we get it. That's the irony. I'm not saying you got to live a life of poverty either, but like the focus matters, the objective, the motive and the decisions we make and why we make them, it does matter.
00:33:09.180 --> 00:34:03.480
Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's an interesting thing, right? Because the less attached you are to the outcome, and just the more you are in that space of generosity, what I hear you saying is, the more generous you are, the more in service you are, and the less you're attached to what's coming to you, the more it comes to you. And I see this over and over. I see evidence of this all the time. When leaders reversal, yeah, when leaders are like, I need to increase the bottom line and I want to hit the number on the spreadsheet, and that's their focus. It's It's so painful, right? But when they're like, I want my people to be better. I want them to thrive. I want everyone to feel better here. How do we make that happen? How do we get more creativity and innovation and just like, make life better for people? Guess what? You do that you focus on making it better for people. And that bottom line goes through the roof when you're not even watching it.
00:34:00.779 --> 00:34:59.920
It's right. It's so counterintuitive, though. Yes, you and that's the problem with business is that you're chasing these outcomes, you're chasing these KPIs, you're chasing these OKRs. And this is the whole thesis of the new world of work, is like helping more of these people that are in power understand that you can have your outcomes, you can have your KPIs, you can have your K your OKRs. In fact, you can make those sustainable if you stop leaving so many dead bodies behind you, right? Like, that's the thesis. It's like, Dude, we're missing it. Like, listen, it's for the whole like, love, your weird, unruly, the genius, all the stuff we talk about that we're on basically the same mission on is that, like, look, we are trying to help reform something that's broken, because we think that all these little tips and tricks and like basically grinding and brute force are the solution to finish strong on the quarter. It's like, dude, just because it worked before doesn't mean that if we go harder on.
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:05.699
That same thing that where it's going to work, like, that's not actually what what happens.
00:35:02.460 --> 00:35:11.639
That's the quickest way to get disrupted. I've seen it over and over again. I've studied this stuff. I talk about this stuff.
00:35:08.340 --> 00:35:19.920
I've been it. Yeah, my company was demolished the day I got sober, I walked to work after driving a sports car for a year.
00:35:14.340 --> 00:36:15.420
Okay? Like, luckily for me, at 27 I got to learn that instead of 47 on CNBC, okay, I got lucky that I failed. That was what I early on. I got the I got the gift of knowing that, like, dude, failure is the shit. That's the shit. What I'm saying, it's like, if you're out there you're feeling failure, congratulate fucking relations. Yes, yes. So if you want to give people one piece of advice, I know it's always it's always hard to come up with one but one, one way that people who are listening could genuinely go be in service of each other today, right now, one way we could increase our connection and do number three, unconditionally, just just giving. I don't ever tell people to try to solve a problem that they don't also have.
00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:52.960
Somebody came to me after a talk a couple weeks ago, and they said, how do you help people be more creative? And I jumped straight to like, oh, it's curiosity. And like, giving yourself permission to have an imagination on like, solving that problem. And she was like, no, no, no. How do you know which problem to solve? I was like, oh, okay, that's different. So first of all, a lot of people out there, this was a, this was like an innovation summit for a Fortune 200 right? And what she was really asking was, like, what company should I start, or what industry should I go after?
00:36:52.960 --> 00:36:57.940
Like, what tech should I build?
00:36:52.960 --> 00:37:06.300
I was like, first of all, never try to solve a problem, whether that's with tax service, business, whatever, or or with your friend. Never try to solve a problem that you don't also have.
00:37:07.440 --> 00:37:17.940
That's the tip of the day. Don't try to solve a problem that you don't have experience with, love that that that's it. So fine.
00:37:18.900 --> 00:37:34.940
Look at your problem you're having and go walk next to somebody that has the same problem, and for the only benefit to yourself that you're going to get to be a part of the journey of figuring this out, not alone.
00:37:36.380 --> 00:37:37.400
That's where I would start.
00:37:38.480 --> 00:38:26.539
I love it. Pure gold. You're such a gift, my friend. I love it. This is so fun. This was awesome. Thank you because I forgot half the stuff. I say every time I do this, it's absolutely recorded so you can listen back, and we're all going to listen back probably more than once. Thank you for taking the time today. Hey, is my pleasure. It's been amazing watching you on your own journey, and I'm so excited to continue to help anything I can, to spread the unruly movement, because it is so fucking important right now. Thank you so good. How do people connect with you? I'll put I'll put it in the show notes. But if people want to reach out, or they want to connect with you. What's going to connect with me? Go to your favorite AI tool and start having a conversation about me.
00:38:27.440 --> 00:38:42.099
All right, complexity, Chad, don't go to Google. You can go there, but don't. I'm telling everybody that wants to like Augment, so they're not left behind in the AI revolution, which is a whole nother problem for another day. If you're worried about that you should be.
00:38:43.119 --> 00:38:52.599
So don't go to Google. Screw Google. Go to your favorite chat, perplexity, Claude. Chat, G, P, T, deep sea. Man is I don't really give a shit. And have a conversation about me.
00:38:52.599 --> 00:39:01.079
See what, see what they say. See if they like me, see if they hate me. But that's that they know where to find me. We love that. Okay. Awesome. Thanks.
00:38:58.420 --> 00:39:04.980
Frankie, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Of course, you.
00:00:00.029 --> 00:00:07.320
Hey everyone, welcome to get unruly. This is Kim Bolourtchi, your host, and this week, Frankie Russo is my guest.
00:00:07.559 --> 00:00:41.579
Frankie is an entrepreneur with a proven track record for using innovative methods to unlock rapid growth and competitive advantage. His keynotes and master class experiences are full of actionable insights for fostering a culture of authenticity, imagination and generosity to unlock breakthrough innovation, extraordinary transformation and to keep growth going. Plus, he's just an amazing human Frankie, I am so beyond excited to have you on the podcast. When you said yes, my entire week got better.
00:00:38.070 --> 00:01:15.750
Thank you for being here, friend. All right. Well, that's no pressure, right there. Hope I don't let you down, but at least you had a good week. In case this goes sideways, yeah, it won't go sideways. So any story you don't know, when I started speaking and I went to my first event, I was so nervous and I didn't know anybody, and I was feeling completely out of sorts, and I said to one person, like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, and I don't know what is going on, and I don't know who to go to for help. And he said, Do you see that guy over there? And he pointed to you, and he said, That's Frankie Russo. You need to talk to him.
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You just need to talk to him.
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He's the best. He will help you.
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He will tell you whatever you need to know. Go talk to him.
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True story. I didn't know where you were going with that story, okay, yeah. And so I found you at the next break outside, and was like, help. I need help. And you were so unbelievably generous, just instantly interested and engaging and generous. And you didn't know me from anybody. And I think there was maybe even a line of people waiting to waiting to talk to you, but, but, seriously, one of the things I really want to talk to you about today is that generosity, because in the speaking world, particularly, it's incredibly busy and it's competitive, and, you know, people like to say that they're generous and it's a community, and everybody is helpful, and I think that a lot of people would like to be, but you actually are, and there's not a bone of scarcity in your body. So, and I find that to be really you're making me tear up over here.
00:02:17.180 --> 00:02:42.889
Well, it's true, and I find that to be really unruly, because that's not the norm. So tell me about where that comes from. Oh, I like this topic. Okay, so it comes from when I was five years old, we packed up from Louisiana, and my parents moved us to Pittsburgh, and from then till I was 18, we served in homeless shelters full time.
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That was what we did. So I am a purebred, I guess, missionary at heart, and that's the facts. So I have this deep need. I don't know if it's a need, I don't know what the fuck it is, but it's a deep sense of like, ingrained purpose of helping people that ask for help.
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So I want to get this out of the way early in the conversation.
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Part of the reason I can be so generous is because I'm I only help people that ask.
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This is a very, very, very important thing that so many people that try to help everyone, and they have this amazing heart, and they burn out, and then they stop. It's because if you go back and you look at who you were helping, a lot of times, we were doing a lot of helping, and they didn't ask. So this is especially so I work a lot with codependent people. Okay, I'm a codependent myself. Codependency is not what most people think. You think it's, you know, somebody that's in this abusive relationship that they can't escape and like, you know, they just keep taking it. And this is abusive guy, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's, it's way more than that. It's, in fact, the only requirement for membership of codependency is the is a desire for loving and healthy relationships. So if someone has a heart to help other people, and they're asking me for help on how they can help other people, I'm all in. I'm all in because what I have found is a couple things. So first things, first like you asked, yeah, okay, that that, that's a big deal.
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Why do I do it? It's twofold.
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Why I do it? Okay, well, it's really threefold. The first fold is what I told you.
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It's ingrained into my childhood, like helping the poor, helping people really in need. Okay, that's number one, so it's ingrained. So I have a special upbringing that most people didn't have. Now, that upbringing also was difficult because we were all so poor, so when you help the homeless, you're one notch above homeless.
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So I ran from that for a while, and I ran into money and ran into mortgages, which is you.
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In the mortgages we were doing were creating homeless people.
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So that's a whole nother story we can get into later if you want. But in reality, that's number one, is that it is, it's ingrained in a way that, like not everybody has that experience as a child. So that's number one. Number two, I have seen the the long game of abundance and giving without expecting anything in return. I've seen that pay out.
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So in my mind, you've got to pick a lane. Either lane, you can become successful and wealthy.
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Now, after success and wealth, I can't make any promises, but if you're looking for success and wealth, you have two lanes, radical scarcity and closeness or radical openness and generosity. Those are your two lanes if you want wealth and success. Now, if you're looking for wealth, success, freedom, acceptance, serenity and hope and some other things like joy, then you're going to have to go the other route. You're not going to go the scarcity route and that route. Yeah, and so I have played the tape out. So abundance is a strategy.
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Like, I'm not going to sugarcoat that now, even with the first two deep inside and like ingrained into my DNA, it was still not enough. I still was missing some of these pieces because there's a the real gold of generosity and abundance is genuinely expecting nothing in return. That's the true gold.
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Now that's difficult when you have six kids and multiple businesses, two wives and god knows what else you know, I've got 99 problems, and it's like, what? So as an adult, I lost this thing for a while. So what got me to the to the third one, and this is the real gold I have uncovered in this world was actually drugs and alcohol.
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So drugs and alcohol brought me to a bottom. In fact, Saturday in two days. This is a recording, but April 12 will make 17 years from the moment.
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I'm about to tell you about 17 years, but no drugs alcohol. And the thing about drugs and alcohol, first off, is that, like they're fucking great, they're not a problem. Their solution. Drugs and alcohol are a solution, okay? And they're great. If you do if you drink, you do drugs, all for it. I'm here for it. Okay? Wish I could.
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But at some point, if you're like me, and you do things radically or to extremes, you will hit a bottom. I hit a bottom, and I stayed at that bottom long enough for it to stick, see, I went on this journey for 10 years after getting out of the homeless shelter deal into only having one objective, and that was wealth and success and money. That was it. And when that's your only objective, that is a very, very dangerous place to be, especially as a young person.
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And I accomplished it, and I was a shell, and drugs and money had become my god. Had lost everything that I had red kid. I didn't know where to I was.
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So that brought me to this crossroads. Now, what I didn't know at the time, and a lot of people don't know this, is that getting sober and staying sober are two very, very different things. Lot of people get sober, but it's a much lower fraction of people that stay sober, and there's only one reason that happens. You can call it all kinds of stuff, medicine, rehabs, different steps, blah, blah, blah, but there's one common denominator of every single person that has long term sobriety, and that is that at some point early on in their sobriety, they flipped from being the suffering drug addict or alcoholic to being the person that's helping the drug addict.
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Wow, crucial for me, and it fit because I had been looking for a way to not have to be full blown in Africa or full blown in a inner city missions. But I also wanted to, like, be in business, and I wanted to make money, and I couldn't put it together. And I finally found it. I found this place where I could help poor people four or five times a week while I had a career. And I thought I found it. I freaking found it. And to a degree, I did now that has matured to where it is now, where like now, I've gone even deeper into this calling, where I've come full circle and found a way to live out my mission, which is what I'm doing now, without having to take donations from from donors, which was the only way we made money before, and that was part of the issue. Okay, so without getting into all those details at the end of the day.
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I had finally found a way to to scratch that itch again, like I had a purpose again, because I was helping other drug addicts and alcoholics. Now here's the kicker. So the thing about drugs and alcohol, if you're a drug addict, you're an alcoholic, and some people listening might might be wondering if they are, or some of you might know you are. Either way, you never stop loving drugs and alcohol for for the main reason that you like the effects of it. So we drink, we do drugs because we like the effects of it, okay? And that's why I do and I will never have, never lose that want to have something that gives me an effect. So here's the third piece in my journey to find the perfect drug, the perfect eye, the perfect arc of like whatever, I finally found what I call the limitless drug.
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So the third component to a life of abundance is the limitless drug, and here's what it is. And I didn't know this till after years of doing this, so I'd already sponsored probably 300 guys in sobriety before I figured out that there was science behind what I was talking about. It's an actual science. In the 80s, they started studying this. It's called the helpers. Hi, have you heard of this? I have heard of it. Okay, so the helpers, hi, for those who don't know is that there's a chemical that's released in the brain that's the same chemicals as drugs. I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but it checks out, because I've tested this shit a lot the same chemicals that drugs now call can release to the brain when you help someone unconditionally. Now the hard part is that in this world, everything is so fucking conditional, right? So you have to be actively choosing to make it unconditional. So that unconditional piece is the trade off.
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So Kim, I've already been on the phone with three other people this morning, thought leaders that are trying to change the world, helping them change the world, and not for anything in return. Okay, why people are like, Why are you doing so? Like, yeah, upbringing to I have an abundance mindset, and I'm on a quest to reform capitalism with the new world of work, but that, but don't bullshit a bullshitter. I do it because I want to get high straight the up. I gotta tell you that, like that's the key, is that I want the limitless drug, and this is the part that helps me, because I'm not a saint, I'm not a saint, I'm not a priest, I'm not Mother Teresa.
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Do I like helping people? Yeah.
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Do I want people to get help?
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Yes, and I want to get high. So I'm upfront about that, and that's why it works, because it can take a selfish person like me and flip that selfishness into something useful, and that's all we can ask for.
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I love that. And I mean, I would not characterize you as selfish at all, and I think it's so cool that you're so candid about what it does for you, because I agree with you that the unconditionality of of being in service is the most important, and it's also the most difficult. Like I remember teaching my kids, by the way, the second I get paid, it's great because I got paid, but that's the payment, right?
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Gifts,
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correct? Because it comes it becomes transactional, yes, as opposed to unconditional. And I remember when my kids were little, teaching them, hold the door.
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You hold the door because you want to hold the door, not because you're expecting a thank you, right? And you know seeing the pissed off face when someone would walk through and not say thank you, and trying to teach that lesson of you're holding it because you want to, and if you don't want to, then don't hold the fucking door, right? But it's that, and that's really hard for humans, we're conditioned, I think, to look for some kind of trade off, even when we don't want
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to. Yeah, and you know that's really critical when you're looking at all this, is that you the unconditional part is kind of hard to find. You have to, you have to find it.
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That's why I got excited about like so I got to impact 11, which is where we met, and I didn't know how I was going to handle it, because I was like, how am I going to handle this?
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I've already got all these spawn sees. I've got all this stuff at home. I got these kids and all.
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I've got so many things. Where am I going to find space for this? And I'm going to tell you what happened early. Early on, I made a decision to treat everybody at impact 11, anybody that asks, I decided that with this group, I was going to treat them the same as I would if somebody asked me to sponsor them or help them get sober. And that was it. And that's what I did. I brought that spirit. I brought a spiritual program into the rooms of impact 11, and that's what you.
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Witness. That's what you follow, that's what that's what you're seeing. It's, it's, it's that simple, and it's, and it's what I plan to do with the new world of work, this new world of work movement, I plan to borrow from some of the best things I've learned from that spiritual program to create a movement that's not for money, that's not organized, that I'm not the leader of that can truly make a difference, because you can't kill it, because there's no LED screens. There's no conferences for ourselves. If we do a conference, it's for people like it's not it's the movement that I honestly got thought I was setting up for when I did some of these. And look, it's all good. I I love these other things, but they're businesses, and a business can't fix a business. It has to be something else.
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You know, I had a moment 2020, before I sold my company. It was out on the mountains. I was at this like off the grid experiential therapy. It's called on site. It's pretty incredible. And a lot of the work I do around love your weird and the whole unlocking the genius inside each one of us being that five six year old, a lot of that work came from my divorce and on site, and the deep work that they do with reconnecting with your five six year old self. It's where the love your the love your weird thing didn't come from some think tank trying to figure out a great brand or some crap. It came from being in deep experiential therapy, coming off of my divorce, realizing that I had lived in this weird and I didn't, and that was years ago.
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I didn't even talk about it for five or six years, but I knew it was in there, and it was so sacred. I didn't want to talk about I didn't want to do what I normally do in like branded or whatever, and something happens.
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It's like my third time doing this. This is like three years after the love, your weird lightning and struck, and I'm sitting on the mountain, and I had this vision. And the vision was showed me that the universe, whatever you want to call it, it created a a thing that fit both of the needs I had. So I had this deep need to like, not have to be in this financial insecurity that I felt as a child. That was the that was the hard side of what we did, and it was for a good cause. But when my dad got kicked out of his own mission by the board because he went to government money when I turned 18, it kind of put a bullet in all that. It's why I went so hard the other direction, yeah.
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So I realized in that moment that like, universe, God, whatever you want to call it, had allowed for me to spend the last two decades building a track record and equity in a company that I would sell the next year, so that I could be self supporting, and I could do my work for this impact and helping reform a space that is the most important space to reform in America right now, which is capitalism, And to be able to do it self supporting. It was two pieces, because selling my company the next year allowed for me to be self supporting, to build a this new movement the way it needs to be built, and not make any exceptions or compromises. But then the other part was I was allowed to do what I've done the last 20 years, so that I fit the bill to be welcomed in. Yep, okay, you and I have talked a lot about the concept of the Trojan horse. Yep, at those two decades, gave me the Trojan horse to be able to be a person that genuinely could go into something like the matrix of capitalism, and with the help of many of my friends on the same mission, collectively put a dent in that shift.
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Absolutely so.
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So I have a theory. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this, listening to you talk about how you are positioned to do the incredible work that you do in the world. And what I truly believe is that when we when we know what we really, really want to do, and we feel it in our bones, yeah, we are supported by the universe however you want to, however you want to call it. It's like we say, this is what I'm going to do. I feel this. I feel strongly about this. I know this is what I meant to do. Things line up, and we're positioned to do that work. Yep. What do you think about that?
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I think it's true. I but I do think it starts with a conviction.
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Absolutely, it starts with a conviction, and that conviction usually comes from a break. So my first book was called The Art of why, and I realized years later that that's bullshit.
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There's no art to why it's and so I wrote a follow up book called.
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BREAKING why? Because, if you're finding your purpose and you're finding your why, it's a breaking, a rebuilding, a hacking, a messy process, I wrote art of why before divorce. I wrote breaking y after divorce, if you're wondering. But anyway, the fact is, is that there has to be a conviction. That conviction does not happen without pain, it does not happen without failure. It does not happen without a lot of difficult, uncomfortable things.
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That is the fire that forges what we're talking about. But once you find that conviction that's unwavering and honest and true to you, regardless of anybody else, that creates a force that is in line with truth, that is outside of space and time, and is and and that's the thing you're talking about. We just can describe it a lot of different ways, and a lot of different cultures and people and countries in different perspectives try to explain this thing, this experience, this this truth, and everyone explains it a little differently, but it's unified in the sense that, like yes, it will align if it's true.
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You know, does it always it does. It always, does it always come from, from some kind of pain or or adverse experience.
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I've thought a lot about this, and I would love to say that it doesn't, but I I don't know that you can get there without some it's the it's the hard part about the first part of our lives before we experience it. Like, I mean, they told me, Don't write a book till you're 40. I was 35 I said, screw that. I'm writing it. And like, I hate the book. You know what I'm saying? If it didn't give me two bestsellers, I would have scorched the earth with it, like truth be told, like, so if you're if you're Googling me now, just skip the ROI and go to break it away, but that's a fact. Like, I like, I wish I could tell you that failure and pain weren't part of how you evolve, but I it's not that's a lie.
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Like, think about evolution.
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Like, if you believe in evolution, I don't really care what you believe about you. Big Bang. It all happened in a moment. Like, whatever it was, it was powerful, it was painful, and it was transformational. And Trent we talk about evolution and transformation? Like, is this fun fucking slogan for an event or some shit, evolution is, like, legs trying to pop out of a fish. You know, 100 years and, like, grueling freaking like, what do you call that conditions? Like, careful what you wish for. Yeah, you want to be someone that's that is transformational. You want to be someone that does puts a dent in the universe, whatever the heck you think you want to do. Know that that process is proven to be a very, very messy, painful process, careful what you wish for, you know? And you know, it's the reality. It's kind of like when, when Neo wakes up in the matrix, okay, and you realize that the real world is this shitty space full of machines and porridge. And like, that's the real world. And like, there's this temptation to want to go back into the matrix, but you can't, you can't unsee it. I talk about this with people, like, the fact is I can't unsee what I know.
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Even if I wanted to, there's not enough drugs in this world that could make me unsee what I know.
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And I tried.
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And the fact is, is that for some reason, I'm not dead, and here we are. So can you without some pain and some failure?
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I don't think so. Now, does that mean I have to keep doing the same one every time? No, and are my bottoms as deep as they used to be no but that's because I wake up every day, as hard as this is some days, and I eat change and embrace failure for breakfast. Okay, I've been doing that for a long time. I'm wired in a very weird way that allows for me to do that. Not everybody's that comfortable with it, but it is allowed for me, and as a result, I'm where I am, which is an interesting thing, because I'm not going up, I'm not trying to go up. Okay, honestly, I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going and it's not about up, and it's not about down and it's not the bottom is about realizing that failure is a gift.
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And because, I mean, a big part of my work now is like people come to me because they want to know, how did you grow a company 60x in three years, right? How did you become the fastest growing companies in America with two different companies, two different industries, eight years in a row? Right? That's why they think they're.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:01.680
Calling, and they are calling for that.
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But the fact is, is that, you know, most people think it's about success, like, I don't even talk about my accolades or my success or my awards or my accomplishment from the stage, not one after they read that intro to the stage. That's fucking it. That's the end of what you're hearing about my fucking successes. And that's because, like, success taught me fucking nothing, nothing.
00:25:23.240 --> 00:25:36.319
Everything I learned was from failure. People think that that growth, continuous, limitless, growth comes from success. It doesn't. Yeah, growth comes from failure.
00:25:37.400 --> 00:27:34.519
I love I love that we're talking about this so much. And one of the reasons I love it is I love it for people who are thinking about their next level and thinking that it's supposed to be this, you know, beautiful path of just, you know, moving through the next thing. And it's so much more complicated than that, but I'm also loving it because I think about people who have kids, I have kids, you have kids. And there's a tendency in the world, really, a tendency to protect everyone from pain and to keep people from feeling anything bad, and to sugar coat everything and to find the silver lining. And listen, I was the queen of silver linings for a really long time. Like I didn't even know how to sit with sadness. I had to learn that about a year ago, like how to sit and just be sad, like to be an adult. And have to learn that skill is embarrassing, but, you know, not that easy. It's not it's it's freaking hard. But when you're taught like, you always have to find the find the good, find the good side. It's all okay, and it's not that bad to be able to sit here and say, Listen, the gift is in those hard times. The gift is when it freaking sucks and when you don't know if you can take another step, the gift is falling on your ass and learning something from it, and we're depriving an entire generation of the ability to do that. And I think sometimes depriving ourselves, yes, yes, because we want comfort and we want pleasure. It's the it's, it's the American way, Western way we want pleasure. And what I have found is that you can have pleasure, but you have to figure out where you're going to get it from. It goes back to limitless drug, okay, I want pleasure like the next person, same, but I, I was finding in the wrong places.
00:27:36.380 --> 00:28:49.900
The thing is, is that you don't have to always go to bottoms. If you're an adult, you're going to get one probably every seven years. So if you're young and you're listening to this, just like, write that down on a calendar somewhere, it's like, every, every seven years, roughly, you're going to get one. And, like, start looking for it, you know. And like, I had one not that long ago, where I transitioned full time into speaking from, like, my super Kush cash cow that I sold, and then there was some golden handcuffs, and then that fell off last year, and a lot of people just fall off, and it's like, oh my god, what am I going to do? And like, I'm going to find my next gig, or blah, blah, blah. And I just fucking skipped it. I skipped it because I I prepared for that one. So you get better at preparing for these things, and then you start to realize that, like, failure is a myth and pain is a myth because it's so good on the other side of it, that, like when pain comes, you know it's you have to feel it. You can't ignore it. You you embrace it.
00:28:45.039 --> 00:29:34.579
Because if you don't like pain, the fastest way to get away out of the pain is not to mute it okay, not to ignore it, not to be in denial about it, not to act like it doesn't exist, but to go ahead and feel it like, the faster I feel it, figure out what was my part in all of this, and then recalibrate, the faster I'm going to get through this. And I don't have to feel the pain as long, but it's painful. Like, I had to make adjustments. You know? I had to make changes. Like, that's the other thing. Like, you don't just not change. If a lot of us are holding on to this idea, like, practically speaking, I'm in, I'm in one of our houses that I bought at first with the company. It was so cool. It's like, man, bought a second home, and it's on a lake and blah blah blah, right?
00:29:34.579 --> 00:29:49.420
And I felt like this is a a milestone for me, right? Was always poor blah blah blah. And like, dude, like, we're here this week to Airbnb the damn thing. Like, I could easily been like, you know what?
00:29:46.839 --> 00:29:59.920
No, I'm going to, hold on. I'm going to Airbnb this. What we're Airbnb my house, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's what my ego wants to tell me. Is that, like, No, you're Frankie Russo. You need an Airbnb.
00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:02.039
Shit you're gonna come out of this, like, blah, blah, blah.
00:30:02.039 --> 00:30:06.599
You don't need to make adjustments. Like, you always come out on top. And that's how you get fucked up, right there.
00:30:07.140 --> 00:30:12.240
That's how you get fucked up. I talked to a guy yesterday. His mind was like, Dude, I needed to talk to you so bad. Oh my god.
00:30:12.240 --> 00:30:45.880
I've been paying so much money the therapist and all sort of shit, and you just fucking changed it for me. And I because he had five exits, he had five exits, and he just got slammed, lost $6 million ironically, fighting the same company that I sold to. So we knew the same people, and I knew what he was feeling, and it was fucking dark. And I said, Brother. I said, you want to get that six mil back. You ain't getting it from them. You lean into this shit because you lost that six mil because of your five exits.
00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:55.779
Straight up, you lost that $6 million because of your freaking accolades. And I could do the same right now. I could be like, What?
00:30:56.920 --> 00:31:30.799
What? Nobody tells me how to make something fast grow. That's how you get fucked up. It's causes success, I mean, and it's over and over again, and so it's become my work. And I told him yesterday, I said, Dude, this is your work, brother. And he was just like, Oh my God, and he's gonna fucking go out and change the world. Because, look, he was the first black of four different things he's known for. This stuff. He's plugged in. He's got all these actors. He's like, he's a badass man. And I'm always saying mention that he's black, because he was the first of some things that which, which was really great for him, and he's got an amazing credibility.
00:31:30.799 --> 00:31:46.299
And I'm like, you rest on that shit. You hold on to that tight, and you're fucked. And that's what happens. We hold on tight to whatever the fucking success is. Like, no, you fucking Humble yourself. You slaughter that.
00:31:43.779 --> 00:32:17.759
And I don't know how to slaughter that, other than what I told you earlier, is, if I keep helping people, it keeps me out of well, what's in it for me? You know what I mean? And like, Whoa, this is a no, if. I If, because I am on a one track one trick pony train right now, and that is, I have one objective every morning, and that is to be a maximum usefulness to the people around me, and maximum usefulness to my calling. That is it full stop.
00:32:17.819 --> 00:33:07.799
Everything else is details. So if that means I gotta Airbnb this fucking thing, we're Airbnb it. If I gotta sell this thing, we're selling it. I don't give a shit, because I'm not sitting here trying to prove to myself in the world that I'm the fucking man. Okay? And ironically, there are a lot of people out there that I have a deep, connection with that I'm genuinely helping, and they probably do think I'm the man, but not because I want them to think I'm the man or I give a shit. And that's the irony of this life, is that the second we give up on all this bullshit we're chasing, we get it. That's the irony. I'm not saying you got to live a life of poverty either, but like the focus matters, the objective, the motive and the decisions we make and why we make them, it does matter.
00:33:09.180 --> 00:34:03.480
Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's an interesting thing, right? Because the less attached you are to the outcome, and just the more you are in that space of generosity, what I hear you saying is, the more generous you are, the more in service you are, and the less you're attached to what's coming to you, the more it comes to you. And I see this over and over. I see evidence of this all the time. When leaders reversal, yeah, when leaders are like, I need to increase the bottom line and I want to hit the number on the spreadsheet, and that's their focus. It's It's so painful, right? But when they're like, I want my people to be better. I want them to thrive. I want everyone to feel better here. How do we make that happen? How do we get more creativity and innovation and just like, make life better for people? Guess what? You do that you focus on making it better for people. And that bottom line goes through the roof when you're not even watching it.
00:34:00.779 --> 00:34:59.920
It's right. It's so counterintuitive, though. Yes, you and that's the problem with business is that you're chasing these outcomes, you're chasing these KPIs, you're chasing these OKRs. And this is the whole thesis of the new world of work, is like helping more of these people that are in power understand that you can have your outcomes, you can have your KPIs, you can have your K your OKRs. In fact, you can make those sustainable if you stop leaving so many dead bodies behind you, right? Like, that's the thesis. It's like, Dude, we're missing it. Like, listen, it's for the whole like, love, your weird, unruly, the genius, all the stuff we talk about that we're on basically the same mission on is that, like, look, we are trying to help reform something that's broken, because we think that all these little tips and tricks and like basically grinding and brute force are the solution to finish strong on the quarter. It's like, dude, just because it worked before doesn't mean that if we go harder on.
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:05.699
That same thing that where it's going to work, like, that's not actually what what happens.
00:35:02.460 --> 00:35:11.639
That's the quickest way to get disrupted. I've seen it over and over again. I've studied this stuff. I talk about this stuff.
00:35:08.340 --> 00:35:19.920
I've been it. Yeah, my company was demolished the day I got sober, I walked to work after driving a sports car for a year.
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Okay? Like, luckily for me, at 27 I got to learn that instead of 47 on CNBC, okay, I got lucky that I failed. That was what I early on. I got the I got the gift of knowing that, like, dude, failure is the shit. That's the shit. What I'm saying, it's like, if you're out there you're feeling failure, congratulate fucking relations. Yes, yes. So if you want to give people one piece of advice, I know it's always it's always hard to come up with one but one, one way that people who are listening could genuinely go be in service of each other today, right now, one way we could increase our connection and do number three, unconditionally, just just giving. I don't ever tell people to try to solve a problem that they don't also have.
00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:52.960
Somebody came to me after a talk a couple weeks ago, and they said, how do you help people be more creative? And I jumped straight to like, oh, it's curiosity. And like, giving yourself permission to have an imagination on like, solving that problem. And she was like, no, no, no. How do you know which problem to solve? I was like, oh, okay, that's different. So first of all, a lot of people out there, this was a, this was like an innovation summit for a Fortune 200 right? And what she was really asking was, like, what company should I start, or what industry should I go after?
00:36:52.960 --> 00:36:57.940
Like, what tech should I build?
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I was like, first of all, never try to solve a problem, whether that's with tax service, business, whatever, or or with your friend. Never try to solve a problem that you don't also have.
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That's the tip of the day. Don't try to solve a problem that you don't have experience with, love that that that's it. So fine.
00:37:18.900 --> 00:37:34.940
Look at your problem you're having and go walk next to somebody that has the same problem, and for the only benefit to yourself that you're going to get to be a part of the journey of figuring this out, not alone.
00:37:36.380 --> 00:37:37.400
That's where I would start.
00:37:38.480 --> 00:38:26.539
I love it. Pure gold. You're such a gift, my friend. I love it. This is so fun. This was awesome. Thank you because I forgot half the stuff. I say every time I do this, it's absolutely recorded so you can listen back, and we're all going to listen back probably more than once. Thank you for taking the time today. Hey, is my pleasure. It's been amazing watching you on your own journey, and I'm so excited to continue to help anything I can, to spread the unruly movement, because it is so fucking important right now. Thank you so good. How do people connect with you? I'll put I'll put it in the show notes. But if people want to reach out, or they want to connect with you. What's going to connect with me? Go to your favorite AI tool and start having a conversation about me.
00:38:27.440 --> 00:38:42.099
All right, complexity, Chad, don't go to Google. You can go there, but don't. I'm telling everybody that wants to like Augment, so they're not left behind in the AI revolution, which is a whole nother problem for another day. If you're worried about that you should be.
00:38:43.119 --> 00:38:52.599
So don't go to Google. Screw Google. Go to your favorite chat, perplexity, Claude. Chat, G, P, T, deep sea. Man is I don't really give a shit. And have a conversation about me.
00:38:52.599 --> 00:39:01.079
See what, see what they say. See if they like me, see if they hate me. But that's that they know where to find me. We love that. Okay. Awesome. Thanks.
00:38:58.420 --> 00:39:04.980
Frankie, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Of course, you.
