Chris: Welcome back to The Total Freedom Show. My name’s Christopher Duncan. I’m here with a new friend. Someone I think I’m really going to connect with. We have a mutual friend, like many of my guests, and Govindh Jayaraman is here with me. Govindh, I’m excited because one of close friends has said to me, “That guy is like the modern day Napoleon Hill. He’s going out there creating some awesome change,” so thank you for joining on the show and welcome.

[00:00:52]

Govindh: Thank you, Chris. That mutual friend said that to me too, and it makes me blush. It’s a great thing because Napoleon Hill, to me, is the person who created the original movement around people manifesting what they want in their hearts and seeing it come to life. The one thing that I think is radically changed from when Napoleon Hill wrote the book, which was “Think and Grow Rich”, is our definition of rich has changed.

Govindh: Our definition of rich and wealthy has changed over time and I think that what my work does and the movement that I’ve created around my work is entirely based on the fact that wealth is measured in more than just financial terms today. It can be your impact on other people, it can be your place in the world, where do you leave your community after you’ve left? All those things that the bigger cause, the higher purpose for which you serve, the people for which you serve, all of those things can be part of what we consider to be wealthy today.

[00:01:54]

Chris: Right. Right. It was such a good book. I don’t know many people who are, quote unquote, successful that haven’t stumbled across it or looked at it, especially in the business and entrepreneur world.

Chris: Let’s start off by finding what is it that you’re really focused on now? I know that you’ve had a varied background but what is the thing that you’re really excited and focused on now?

Govindh: Well, it’s the same thing that I think, and it’s growing people. It sounds very simple. It’s the small changes that make a big difference so that together we can change the world and if I can help people unlock that small change, whether that’s in my teams, in my company, the people that are in my company and if I can help make a small change, if it’s people out there in the world, other entrepreneurs, people on your show, Chris, if it’s those people that can make a small change, I believe that we can collaborate and inspire to create a better world by all doing these small changes together.

Chris: I couldn’t agree with anything more than that sentence. It basically sums up my whole being right now and I massively appreciate that. You’re an author, a speaker, you’re doing so many different things, your book, “Paper Napkin”, looks amazing. I can’t wait to read it but where did you start from? What’s the journey? Nobody gets to where you are in one jump. I would love to hear about the journey and maybe some of the ups and downs.

[00:03:16]

Govindh: Chris, you said no one gets there in one jump. I don’t think anybody gets there in one fall either. I think one of the things that we … The greatest quote I ever heard on stage about any speaker ever was an entrepreneur, he’s a famous guy and I’m not really fond of him but his name is Kevin O’Leary. He’s on Shark Tank, he’s the dragon up here in Canada and he said the best thing I’ve ever heard a keynote ever start with, he said, “Successful entrepreneurs owe it to the next generation of entrepreneurs to pay forward their failures, not their successes.”

Govindh: I was like, “Whoa, this is going to be amazing. This speech is going to be the best ever,” and then he just shined his head for the next forty five minutes. I mean, he just literally told us how great he was. He never shared any of those things. Why I share that story off the top is because my journey as an entrepreneur started looking for other people, other entrepreneurs and it was such a joke, actually, even when I was in high school.

Govindh: I was in high school and my idols … Everybody else had pictures of hot girls on the back of their doors. I had those but the articles that I read were all about entrepreneurs and I’d read things in the paper and there was this one entrepreneur, this local entrepreneur, from my city, Ottawa, Canada, who went on to do really big things but he was an uneducated guy from a town called Ontario and his name was Robert Campeau. His company, Campeau Corporation, built repeatedly the best houses that have ever been built in my city.

[00:04:49]

Govindh: To this day, when people buy a Campo house, it’s like, “Wow. That’s a well-built house.” He said this thing years ago that just captured my imagination. He said, “You have to understand I’m a perfectionist about my houses because I employ hundreds of people and they take care of thousands of people and because I’m responsible for them, we have a high standard about what we do.”

Govindh: I was like, “Whoa. I want that responsibility.” I was like, hand up, “I want to do that. I want to be that. I want to make that difference. I want to,” so I started sort of stalking him, the way that people did back then which is cut out articles in the paper and send him hand-written notes that said, “Hey, I’d really love to meet you,” and I met him as a sixteen year old. I drove to his house. He had this twenty five million dollar mansion and-

Chris: Wow.

Govindh: He met me and I went for lunch with him in a strip mall food court. It was bizarre-o. My journey started really looking at the stars and saying, “Hey, how do I make that impact in the world and how do I align with that? How do I get into that world?” Then, I joined [inaudible 00:06:03], I went to school like you’re supposed to and I went to university like you’re supposed to and in university, everybody was playing Vice President and President, right? In our business school, not unlike any other business school, we have all these textbooks and it says, “Okay. You’re Vice President or President of this organization. What are the decisions you make?”

[00:06:23]

Govindh: They don’t tell you anything about the path. They don’t tell you how you get to that way. I decided to start an organization called “The Entrepreneurs’ Club” and, ironically, today they’re going to celebrate their twenty fifth annual business dinner. We founded this business dinner where we put people next to professionals in the fields they wanted to be in and now I wanted to be an entrepreneur so I surrounded myself with entrepreneurs, people who created things. This was my opportunity to get in that group, right?

Chris: Wow.

Govindh: Get in with them.

Chris: Right.

Govindh: Then, I started a painting company but not just any painting company. I started one of those student painting franchises, again, because I wanted to learn from people who had done that before. I knew that there were things I needed to learn but I wanted to learn it from people who were like me. My journey always started out with, “How do I get around the people who are way more successful than me?” Right? “But are doing exactly what I want to be doing?”

[00:07:16]

Govindh: It just so happened that the organization that I met up with at the time was called “Student Painters” and then turned into “Student Works”. The guy who was the President of the company at the time, his whole mission in life, get this alignment, Chris, like you and I were talking about alignment before and how we’re like kindred spirits and the person who introduced us was also a part of that. We all share a heart, we share this pulse that we have with the world and we really are connected to that. This guy, his mission is to create entrepreneurs. He does this painting thing so that he can show people how they can take control of their life, how they can understand that they are their number one asset and by holding onto the wheel, they can steer where they want to go.

Chris: Wow.

Govindh: He’s done it for hundreds of people, hundreds of people, over the years. Amazing, right? My journey started with a paint brush as an entrepreneur and I became a student painter and did really well in my first year and learned a very valuable lesson that year: that success is an awful teacher.

Chris: Yes, it is.

Govindh: I got pretty excited about how smart I was because I did so well and set a bunch of records and did it very profitably and I didn’t hesitate to tell everybody that I had figured it out. Life has a way of throwing a few challenges along the way after that. The ditches that followed, I think, is really where I did some work.

[00:08:43]

Chris: That’s really interesting. There’s a few things that you’ve said there that I want to explore and the first one is the question that you ask yourself. I think that in life we’re defined by the questions we ask more than the answers that we seem to be given and the question you asked and I think it’s important, which is, “How do I make my impact?” I think that’s such a good question and it’s going to lead people to a different way. Now, people think about entrepreneurs who aren’t entrepreneurs who make a lot of money. Sometimes they think of us the wrong way.

[00:09:14]

Chris: I would like you to explore that question and what’s the truth about being an entrepreneur? Is it really about making an impact or is it like what we see maybe in the Oval Office? Just about making all the money and having other people suffer. What’s it truly for you? In your opinion, what’s the truth about being an entrepreneur?

Govindh: I think the truth about entrepreneurship and I think the thing that drives that entrepreneur gene or that entrepreneur stance within all of our souls, the thing is that we can’t help but try to leave a legacy. When we think about legacy, legacy is the cumulative effect of the love and faith that we have in things and people around us, right?

Govindh: Think about that for a second, Chris. That’s a big concept, right? Because I just said entrepreneurs are about love and I mean that because entrepreneurs, the whole sense of entrepreneurship … And I also want to come back to this in a second, because love is a tricky word and I want to come back to the word but I think that entrepreneur part of us, the thing that makes us do the things that we do, the uncommon things that we do and the uncommon results that we drive, is out of a love and a passion for things that can’t be quantified or seen until we see it and the legacy of its existence, its mere existence, is what we strive for. That occurs through people, through our faith and love for people that we can’t see or touch. It’s something that we can only realize after the fact.

[00:10:51]

Chris Duncan: That’s beautiful, brother. It’s like entrepreneurs are the true magicians. We really are. We’re the true artists. We see something, like this podcast, like your book, I saw it and now it’s here and I think it’s huge that you’ve just said that. That’s a big deal. Thank you.

Govindh: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Sorry?

Govindh: No, no, no. Yeah. Think about that thing of legacy. Legacy doesn’t mean “ego”, right?

Chris: No.

Govindh: It’s actually the opposite of ego. Legacy is the thing that exists without you, right? The great sayings of Confucius around leadership, “Good leaders are hated by those who follow. The great leaders are respected. The truly exceptional leaders, their follows say, ‘We couldn’t do it without them.’ But the best leaders? Their followers say that we could do it ourselves.” Right? The best entrepreneurs are almost invisible in the things that they do over time, right? Because the legacy is without them. That’s the power of it.

Govindh: I think that’s the thing that people forget is part of this and you said the creative part of it and the artistry and the magician part of it … I think that we’ve gotten wrapped up in this sense of entrepreneurship and needing to be this commercial thing and we talked off the top of Napoleon Hill, “Think and Grow Rich” to now. One of the great things that’s changed is our definition of what wealth is, what success is.

[00:12:18]

Govindh: I think maybe we all saw “It’s A Wonderful Life” and, at the end, saw the bells ring and cried and said, “Oh my gosh. You know? Wealth is in friendships. Wealth is in relationships. Wealth is the impact that you have on people who you don’t necessarily know how to measure.” That’s the legacy piece that we hunt for. That is an artisan piece. That is a magician. By its very nature, we are artisans but I think that sometimes we get trapped in that too, right? I think, as entrepreneurs, the word is a French word by origin. It means, “One who undertakes challenges.” I think we get wrapped up too much in this whole thing that we’ve got to be the one who undertakes challenges all the time. It doesn’t have to be that challenging all the time.

Govindh: The act of entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be this constant, “I’m going to be the one who takes on challenges.” After we create an organization, our roles have to necessarily change. We have to take on these other roles, right? CEO is one of them. Share Holder is one of them. We have to nurture the organization that supports all the people around us. That Robert Campeau quote off the top where I said he had to take care of the organization because that’s what supported everybody else around him.

[00:13:28]

Chris: Wow, brother. This is incredible. There are so many amazing things you just said and I just want to recap this all for the listeners. One thing I really got out of this is that leaders are invisible. What a massive, massive nugget that is because you’re so right, man. The amount of people that are out there just talking about how great they are but someone else is doing it. They’re too busy doing it. The other thing I loved was that legacy’s a thing that lasts without you. That felt so good. Huge, man!

Govindh: Huge. Think about that. Chris, just think. Close your mind right now and think of the people who are most important to you. Right? Who made you who you are and I’m not talking about the business, Chris. I’m talking about the human being, Chris. Are those people who are up on some podium, are those people who are celebrated in any place more significantly than your heart? Right?

Govindh: The reason why you’re able to do the things you do is because of that celebration that we feel for them, right? Because of the doors and there’s this really great idea and I got this off one of the conversations I had for “Paper Napkin Wisdom”, is this concept of leadership, that leadership is the person who opens the door and holds the door open for you to walk through. Again, it’s a thankless task. You’re the last person through the door, right?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Govindh: We think about being that and I don’t mean doing the stuff that is associated with being a leader. I mean being a leader, truly being of service to the people around us, being a servant leader. If we’re really focused on being that and doing the things that’s consistent with being a certain leader, we will have the impact we want but if we’re focused on the impact, if we’re going to be out there with our YouTube videos and our Facebook videos, “Hey, look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”, being a great self-promoter, it’s going to be difficult to be that door opener.

[00:15:26]

Chris: Right. Right. What an insight because I feel that we’re in a tidal wave of people wanting to be it, not actually be doing it. It’s, “Hey, look here I am! Look what I’m doing.” They’re trying to shortcut stuff that you just can’t short cut.

Govindh : Yeah. “Look at what I have.” Somehow, by some magic, we’ve forgotten things like “Death of a Salesman”, right? When Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman”, he talked about this character who associated the externalities of success with actual true success. He forgot about his … He lost his way along that path. When we think about all those stories, all those great tragedies, all those great stories that teach us these things, I think we’ve forgotten about it. Now, in the ten, fifteen second veneer.

Govindh: I mean, Facebook measures success on a video by the number of your ten second views. Are you kidding me? A ten second view determines success on a video? No. What happened to connection? True connection? The connection that comes from eye-to-eye, belly to belly conversations, the ones like we’re having right now, right? That’s where we make impact, guys. That’s where we make connection. That takes longer than ten seconds and it’s awkward and it’s hard and it’s muddy and sometimes we don’t know what to say and we get it wrong. We might stall or stutter or get it wrong. That’s okay.

BREAK: [00:16:51]

[00:17:54]

Chris: Feels good to meet someone that’s talking about this and not just tactics. There’s a lot of depth in what you’re saying. I feel like we’re just kind of swimming across the surface. You mentioned your book, “Paper Napkin …?” What’s the-?

Govindh: “Paper Napkin Wisdom”.

Chris: — Last part? “Paper Napkin Wisdom”. I knew there was another thing but I’m just like listening to everything you’re saying. I’m kind of caught up in it. Would you share with our listeners a little bit about your book and where, maybe, they can get it? Not in a self-promotion way, of course, but just because I think, just based on what we’ve been talking about, I think it’s something that I want to read so I’d love to hear about it.

Govindh: Yeah. Chris, the book came out of one of those ditches in my life, right? Really. I found myself, after 2009, like a lot of people, in a lot of trouble, in a lot of hurt. My business was really hurting and I was in a ditch, six million dollars down, no way up but I had this idea and this notion, again, because I had always been surrounded by entrepreneurs, I had this idea that, “Hey, I heard someone whose been able to do this before,” right? “I think I can do it. I think I can get out of this. I think I can make this right.”

Govindh: I went around saying, “Hey, that trouble that you had, how did you solve it?” And no one answered that question really well. No one answers the question of, “How did you get out of the ditch?” Really well. Maybe it’s like a lot of things. When we go through pain, we tend not to remember the pain. We don’t remember the steps we took to get out of pain but we remember what we did afterwords so I’d hear a lot about what happened afterword but not a lot about what happened during. When you’ve got a knife to your throat, you’re on your knees, a gun to your head, what do you do first? Do you take the knife off your throat? Move the gun away? What do you do first? I didn’t know what that looked like.

[00:19:37]

Govindh: I think that … “Paper Napkin Wisdom” evolved from a place where I needed to figure out a way to get out of where I was and so I started asking people to write down their most important pearl of wisdom on a simple paper napkin and share it with me and then we’d talk about it. We’d have a conversation like the one you and I are having right now and I’d have a bunch of them and, after about a thousand napkins, I’m a slow study, Chris, took me about a thousand napkins, I started to recognize these patterns that were happening, you know? And their stories. The book is about that journey that I went on as I discovered patterns and it’s designed to take you and the reader on that same journey.

Govindh: It’s not a conventional book. It’s not, “Here’s your five-step plan to life and business success.” You’re just going to … Take a bath in it, wake up, take the shower and then go off and forget about it. That’s not what the book is about. The book is about something a little bit better than that. The book is designed on a weekly journey and you don’t have to do it every week but you do it sequentially where you go through every lesson I learned to help build, really, three essential muscles in your entrepreneur brain or your entrepreneur body, any way you want to look at it.

[00:20:55]

Govindh: There’s focus, alignment, action. Right? It really comes down to that: focus, align and act, FAA. In the book, with a co-author, Jack Daly, he’s scaled several hundred million dollar companies and exits from zero to a hundred million dollars over and over and over again. He was my validator, that, yes, this was the right system because there are very few people who are automatically exponential.

Chris: Yes.

Govindh: By “automatically exponential” I mean, we start at zero, go to hundreds of millions of dollars three years later and exit. There are very few people who sit in that category. He’s one of those people.

Chris: Wow. Right.

Govindh: He could only think that way so if he saw the pattern as being one that’s been in his life, that was a good one for me, right?

Chris: Yes.

Govindh: It was really important to have him alongside me on that journey and validate the things that I’d heard. In the book, the five steps are your secret weapon, understanding your mindset, the path, not just where you’re going, not just the goal but meaningfully understanding the twists, the turns along the way, the resilience factors that you need to have built in. Not your Plan A, B and C but your plan right to Z. Right?

Govindh: The fact that there’s no other way but just the path that you’re going. How do you build that path? Number three: the playbook. How are you going to measure progress along that path when things get dark? When the night hits you? When it’s the cold, dark winter and you’ve got no North Star, how are you going to measure progress along that path?

Govindh: Finally, how are you going to align the key players in your life around it? Now, if you’ve got a business, it’s a lifestyle business and you don’t necessarily have a team around you or you don’t want a team around you, that’s fine but, still, how do you assign the key players and align the key players in your life, in your business with that playbook and, ultimately, with the path?

[00:22:49]

Govindh: Then, finally, how do you feed action? Right? As a leader, feeding action, we talked about this off the top, feeding action is different than being action. Being action is just doing a bunch of stuff and we talked about how right now there are a bunch of thought leaders out there that are going around doing a bunch of stuff and saying, “Hey, look at me. I’m a thought leader. I can do this stuff,” but there are other people who are supporting the actions of others. Right? There are other people who are standing behind them and pushing this supportive structural leadership forward.

Govindh: Then, finally, the last step is results. I call that “life and business by design”, right? When you break down these five steps plus the bonus, which is “life and business by design”, it sits nicely into focus, align and act. There’s an internal and external component to each one. Focus: the internal component is my mindset. That’s my secret weapon. External component is where I’m going. The mission, vision values, a goal. My unrelenting commitment to where I’m going to be.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Govindh: Alignment—the internal component—is “How am I going to measure my progress? How do I know that I’m making progress? Because otherwise I’m going to shut it down.” Here’s what we do: Somebody along the way who wasn’t an entrepreneur said to a bunch of entrepreneurs that every goal has to be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound … But here’s the idea, Chris. You’re going to go and do this thing that you’ve never done before in your life, it’s never been done, right? Because you’ve conceived it in your mind, this vision that you have that you can see that you want to bring to life, but it has to be time-bound.

Govindh: What do we do? We get partway down the path, we say, “There’s no way we’re going to make the time.” We feel like we’re a failure. We shut it down and we quit on ourselves before we quit on our dream because our dream never goes away. That’s the legacy. We were born to give birth to that. It never goes away and it eats at us. It can make us do bad things. It can make us be distracted. We could behave very badly. We could behave in destructive ways when that happens but the reality is, again, when we align ourselves with how we make progress along that path and then, align our key players with that—

Chris: Yes.

Govindh: –it becomes easier, right? We know how we’re making progress, we can feel that momentum at all times and, when we can feel that momentum, we can align other people with it and we know how … We can differentiate the people who are on our side and the ones who are off our side. Then, the external and internal parts of taking action is being a cheerleader, feeding your organization and people with heart, right?

[00:25:27]

Govindh: And being regular about it and understanding that there’s a predictability to it. Often what we say as entrepreneurs, “Ah, man, you know, I’m my boss. I’m going to do my own thing. I’m going to be wildly unpredictable,” and there’s certain leaders in the world right now that are behaving that way and it’s like, “Whoa. What’s going on?” But truly predictable success is … Predictability is the greatest leading indicator to predictable success, right? Having success is being predictable and being predictable to the people around you. You have to show up the same way to them all the time.

Govindh: How do you do that? That’s the internal component of action. The external component of action is an unrelenting commitment to results, an uncommon commitment to results. An uncommon commitment to results is the product of an uncommon focus, uncommon alignment and uncommon action.

Chris: That’s so badass, dude. I’m loving so much of what you’re saying. It’s incredible. The one thing I love about your focus, align and act is that you have the internal and the external. I think that the align section was really, really, really important.

[00:26:30]

Chris: One thing I’ve noticed about entrepreneurs that grow big is they have their own terms or word that they don’t need to tell anyone else about and they just have this number. In fact, I have the number that I tell my staff and then I have my number that I’m really going for and that’s really big, man.

Govindh: Chris, you have this other thing, too. You have this other thing. It’s like this barometric pressure indicated thing that you can feel if today’s going to be a day that you can move forward. Right?

Chris Duncan:      Yeah.

Govindh: You can feel in the morning, before you do anything else, you know, bam, “This is going to be a day. We’re going to jump forward.”

Chris: And nothing fails.

Govindh: It happens.

Chris: Yeah.

Govindh: That’s that calibration of that internal alignment. When you calibrate that tool, you can feel it and you can take advantage of it because not every day is like that. Right?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Govindh: Then we can understand that smart, that t has no basis in our lives because we’re creating stuff that’s never existed before. We have to replace t and smart goals. Instead of time, it’s transparency of teams. Then you have transparency with a team of people to accomplish great things.

Chris: Transparency’s huge.

Govindh: We need to volunteer to be accountable with the things that we’re saying, right? It’s not being held accountable. That’s BS. We have to volunteer to be accountable and give trust so we can get trust. We have to give trust. We have to let people fail in our presence and be there to pick them back up so we can create problems that we can solve together.

Govindh: That’s what the modern leader needs to look like. I think that’s what the leaders have always looked like but now we just know.

[00:28:25]

Chris: Brother, this has been huge. Gosh. I don’t even know where to start on where to go next because I’m looking at everything that you’ve said here and there is so much density in this. HEre’s what I feel: I feel that we need to have another show. There’s only one other person and you know him that we’ve had another show with because, listeners, I feel like you right now. There is so much to consume that we nearly need to listen to this again. Gosh.

Chris: ‘ve got two questions that I love to ask. I ask everybody that comes to the show. I’m going to skip to that and then I think the next time that we talk, we need to go deep into some of this stuff. I’m going to have the show notes written up but here are my questions. This just comes out from such massive respect, the amount of … This is incredible. So, first, thank you so much. Really. This has made a difference to me today. The uncommon commitment? That just feels so good.

[00:29:17]

Chris: Anyway, let me ask my questions. Here’s the questions coming and you’re a freaking rock star, man. The first question is this: If today you lost it all, relationships, money, everything. You’re basically out on the street, you know nobody, you can’t contact anybody in your past, you just have what’s inside your head, how do you start your business and how do you go up to a million again?

Govindh: I’m going to ask you a clarifying question. I’m going to break the rules, right? Entrepreneur? I’m going to be a typical rule-breaker.

Chris: It happens most times.

Govindh: All right. Right. Caveat: Do I have my wife and my family?

Chris: Oh, yeah.

Govindh: Okay. You said everybody, right?

Chris: Yeah.

Govindh: If I had—

Chris: Business relationships.

Govindh: If I have Stacy and the kids, I’m not worried about a thing.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Govindh: Righty? They, all of them, are able to measure if I am … I’m going to use this terminology really carefully—if I am myself or not and if I am myself, if I am being Govindh at all times and I just happen to fail and by failing, I just get something wrong and fall down again, right? They’ll be there to pick me and I’m going to be okay because I won’t lose track of myself.

Govindh: As long as I am me, I have everything I need because then I can start again with focus. The first thing that I’ll do is truly and deeply … And I know this because, when we’re in the ditch, what we tend to do is focus on the terrain right around us, right? We’re just looking at that bumpy, crappy ground, the ditch, the sinkhole that we’re about to step into and we’re looking down. We end up looking down at this problem. We never take the time to look up and if we’re surrounded by people who we love, right? We can be the person that they see, right? Then, we get to look up.

Govind: As long as I have that, I have everything I need to restart and it’s the focus around that starts everything. It sounds like a soft skill but the first place that I start was training myself to look up.

Chris: Hmm. I like it.

[00:31:42]

Govindh: It’s not easy. And I know simple and easy are inversely correlated in every way except for their effectiveness, right? This is simple but not easy to do—

Chris: Wow.

Govindh: –because when you’re being beaten up, here’s what the world is telling you, the world will tell you, you got to fight—

Chris: Yeah.

Govindh: The world will tell you, you’ve got to dig. Dig deeper, right? I’m going to say that you’re going to surrender a little bit to where you are. And remind yourself who you are. Not where you are. Remind yourself of who you are.

Chris: Thank you. I love it. Here’s the second part of the question—

Govindh: I almost cried there so thanks for that.

[00:32:32]

Chris: Yeah, that was deep, brother. I appreciate it. Everything you’re saying is making an impact today. The second part of the question is this: If you could go back to the beginning of your entrepreneur journey and you had two minutes to share some advice, just advice, what advice would you share with the old version of you?

Govindh: What advice would I share? I think it would go to focus. I think that I let myself be unfocused. I lost track of who I was and got addicted to my … Temporary success and let that define me. Success was such an awful teacher to me and I let that success define me for too long and that made me dishonest. That made me destructive. That made me unkind and I truly believe that there are no failures, there are opportunities to grow and I’m grateful for them all today but the thing that I would ask my younger self to do is to focus.

[00:33:47]

Chris: Listeners this has been an amazing episode. I think that’s the best place to finish, brother. This is … yeah. This is really special. I’m going to leave you with the opportunity of how you’d like to finish off today’s episode. What’s in your heart that you’d like to share? But, if I was to try to recap my three pages of notes here … I’m going to try in a second but I’ll let you share a parting message with everyone that’s tuned in today.

Govindh: The thing that started me on this journey, Chris, and I’d like to end here, is … The thing that started me on this journey was an email and an email, it was like the original “Paper Napkin Wisdom” but it was email and it was the way someone signed off to it. It was the greatest most invisible leader, mentor, the person in the back, that I have ever met. You know? He’s phenomenally successful as an entrepreneur but, remarkably, against self-promotion. He ended the email to me when I was asking him for help, he said, “You have so much to give. You had better start now.”

Govindh: I dismissed the statement at first. I said, “Wow. What a great hook. I need that at the end of my emails.” I say “Best regards” or “Sincerely” when I really meant it. He said, “You have so much to give. You had better start now,” but he caught me in my lie because I hadn’t really started.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Govindh: I would say to people listening, “No matter how much you’re doing right now, remember, what more can you do? You have so much to give. Start now.”

[00:35:32]

Chris: This is an amazing episode from your book to leadership is opening the door, to the invisible leadership, to legacy is the thing that will last without you to talking about mentors, your story, your quote from Kevin O’Leary. This has been really special. Listen, I hope that you really listen to this again. Brother, this has been really cool and thank you for your time. I know time is our most valuable asset that we have to give and thank you for giving so much today.

Chris: We look forward to sending this out to as many listeners and, listeners, if you go to my website christophermduncan.com/podcast, you’ll be able to fully track down Govindh. We will also have links to his book and all other things so you can stalk around the internet if that’s your wish. I just want to say this to everybody: live with total freedom. Free your mind, free your time, free your life and do what matters most and do it right now.

Chris: Thanks, brother. Everyone out there, like and subscribe and share this episode and I’ll see you very soon.

Govindh: You got it.