In this Episode

• [04:10] – Rich tells us about his coaching background.
• [05:50] – We hear the reason that Rich moved into lifestyle coaching was that he couldn’t simply look at one part of a person; he had to look at the whole person.
• [07:37] – Rich talks about the self-development work he has done to get where he is now.
• [09:44] – He emphasizes the importance of deciding what kind of lifestyle you want and then building a business that satisfies that lifestyle.
• [10:25] – Rich talks about the process of creating JV Insider Circle.
• [13:04] – We hear how avoiding ‘shiny-object syndrome’ and following up on great ideas can set you apart from other entrepreneurs.
• [15:06] – Rich talks about some of the failures he has had and how he has grown from those.
• [21:22] – Rich explains why having strong routines can help you dust yourself off when you fail.
• [23:00] – Rich tells us why he never schedules appointments before ten a.m.
• [23:45] – We learn that no one is immune to pain.
• [24:42] – Rich teaches us the difference between our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
• [27:22] – Rich describes gaining emotional self-awareness.
• [29:19] – Rich tells more about the JVX experience and how it can help grow your audience.
• [31:30] – We talk about the importance of face-to-face interactions.
• [32:07] – Rich explains why you don’t need a huge list to enter into a successful joint venture.
• [35:50] – We learn how to nurture professional relationships and how to know which ones to nurture.
• [40:45] – Rich tells us about the lessons he has learned from dolphins and whales, particularly the importance of being present.
• [43:07] – Rich describes his new book, Blue Laguna.
• [44:30] – We hear Rich’s answer to Orion’s question, “Would you say you play like a dolphin, sing like a whale, and deal like a shark?”
• [47:41] – Rich gets into the details of his offer to give a free ticket to JVX to the listeners of Stellar Life.
• [48:06] – Rich gives us his parting wisdom about being happy and healing from our past wounds.

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. This episode is unique and special for me because I’m interviewing one of my personal coaches and mentor. His name is Rich German. He’s a bestselling author. He is a speaker, a business and lifestyle coach and the creator of JV Insider Circle, a powerful community that supports coaches, authors and speakers in building their business via joint venture partnerships. Rich lives in Laguna Beach and every morning he goes out to the ocean, he’s paddle boarding and encountering dolphins, whales and even just now is publishing a book called The Blue Laguna with the footage from his encounters. He’s a very unique guy; successful, smart, funny, just a great guy overall. He’s going to teach you how to design your life to have that type of freedom where you make a lot of money and you still have time for yourself, you still have time for your spirit and you still have time to go out in the ocean, connect with nature, do whatever you desire because success is not enough, fulfilment is what really, really matters. On top of that, at the end of today’s episode, Rich gave us an incredible gift. He gave you, my listeners, a free ticket to his event JVX. I was at this event last year and it was incredible. I met such lovely leaders and just lovely people overall. It’s done in a different way. You really feel connected to the community. There’s a lot of networking and they facilitate the networking so you can find the right joint venture for yourself and you can create these relationships with those great people. Last year when I went, I had to pay for it and you’re going to get a ticket for free. The link to the ticket is on www.stellarlifepodcast.com. Just find this week’s episode and you can get a free ticket for the JVX event. I am so excited for you. If you’re going to go there, please come, say hi, meet me. I would love to meet you in person and know who you are. I’m so curious to know who are you there that is listening on the other side. I really hope that these episodes are adding some spice to your life and inspiring you. If you got inspired, I also have a little ask to share it. Share it with the world. Subscribe, review, put it on social media. Let somebody else know about this podcast. Don’t keep me a secret. You heard me, share it. Share Stellar Life with your loved ones and people you care about. Now, onto the show. Hi Rich and welcome to the show. I am very excited to have you today.

‏‏Thank you, Orion. I’m super excited to be with you. You’re one of my favorite people so I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation with you.

‏‏That’s wonderful because you’re one of my favorite people. I want to start by maybe you can tell the listeners a little bit about yourself. Who is Rich German?

‏‏I ask myself that question often. My background, really I’ll give you my coaching background. I’ve actually ever only done two things professionally in my life. That is sell real estate which I did for about 13 years back in Florida and what feels like a past lifetime right now. The other thing that I’ve done is coach. I started to sell real estate when I was 21 years old back in Florida and I became a coach in 1999. Originally, I was a real estate coach. I kind of joked that I became a coach before coaching was cool because in 1999, one on one coaching, the whole coaching industry was very, very new. What happened for me was I discovered that I never really liked selling real estate but I really love the coaching aspect. I love the whole personal development part of it. 2003, I became a full time coach and that’s pretty much all I’ve ever done since. Since 1999 I’ve done over 18,000 one on one coaching calls, the honor of helping so many people. At first I was a real estate coach but actually this is I think pertinent to what we want to talk about today. At the beginning of my coaching career, all I did was helping people to sell and I helped them make more money. And this was working for another coaching company and that was all they really cared about was as long as the clients are making money then they can continue to pay for the coaching and everything was good. But for me I couldn’t look at the client just as a sales person. I couldn’t not look at the other aspects of their lives, their health, their relationships, their spiritual connections and all these things. What was the point in making a bunch of money if your marriage is a mess? I don’t care how much money you’re making if you’re 75lbs overweight and you’re walking into a heart attack. All the money in the world is not going to save you. I started really looking at it in a more holistic way and that was the beginning of the end because the company that I worked for, they didn’t want any part of that which is actually really good. It was a painful transition but it led me to 2008 to starting my own company where I could really focus on the whole person and still I’ve always had a business focus but it’s really about having balance. It’s about creating what I call a freedom lifestyle where people have the time and the resources to focus on the other parts of their lives. Fast forward to now, now I’m the CEO of a company called The JV Insider Circle which is something that you know a lot about and now my focus is I coach coaches, authors, speakers, people like Orion, people like entrepreneurs that have a message and I helped them to harness the power of joint venturing, of collaborating with other leaders and other experts that help get their message out there to the world in a big way. It’s a very exciting community. We have our live event coming up very soon that Orion will be at and your fiancé, soon to be husband, will be there also. Happy to talk more about that but there’s a short synopsis of the last 20 years of my life.

‏‏On the way to your freedom lifestyle, what did you do as far as health development, as far as working on yourself to get what you are today?

‏‏I love that question. It’s interesting because people look at me as this guy that lives on the beach, in Laguna Beach, and I spend as much time out on the water, paddle boarding with dolphins and whales and hanging out on the beach. That’s what I’m known for so I think I have this reputation that’s laid back, total laid back dude. That is definitely a true statement. I’m also a pretty disciplined person in terms of how I feed my body, how I exercise, how I meditate. This life of mine didn’t happen by accident. It was a very strategic decision to create this lifestyle. In fact, that was the big decision I made when I started my company back in 2008. I didn’t start with, “Okay, here is my business goals. Here’s the amount of money that I want to make. Here’s the people that I want to help.” I did that, but the first thing that I did was decide on the lifestyle that I wanted. I see so many people that hate what they do, they’re miserable. I knew for me that being in the [9:00] to [5:00] world was never going to work for me. I made that decision long, long ago but even in the world of entrepreneurs that I’m assuming most people listening are in, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that work a lot more than [9:00]to [5:00] people. They’re updated to their business. They’re working 24/7. I know a lot of people that work at a very high level in this industry and many of them they’re burned out. They’re not healthy, their relationships are not what they want them to be. I don’t want that. I want balance. I want freedom. I want my dream lifestyle. For me, that means living on the beach and spending half my time on the water and on the sand and half my time in my home office, working. Travelling and things like that. for anyone listening, first in my mind decide what is it that you want. What is a lifestyle that you want and then create a business that satisfies that lifestyle. Does that make sense?

Decide what is it that you want. What is a lifestyle that you want and then create a business that satisfies that lifestyle. Click To Tweet

‏‏Yeah. It sounds really simplistic and it’s not always like that. People say follow your passion and the money will follow. Sometimes it’s a little more than that. What do you think?

‏‏I definitely do keep things very simple. I think you’re bringing up a great point. It’s having a canopy that’s simple. What’s made it fairly simple for me is that I created a business that is very simple. For me, I came up with a really good idea. My company, JV Insider Circle, was probably the best business idea that I’ve ever come up with. The cool thing is I can’t even take credit for it because it came to me in a dream. I had a conversation with a woman, this is back in 2013, I had a conversation with a woman who was drastically different than me. She’s the polar opposite of me. We were talking about potentially doing a joint venture together and it didn’t make sense at that time to do something together while we’re on the phone and we’re talking. She’s says to me, “Well how did you build your business?” I said, “I built it all through joint venture, basically having other experts promote me.” She said, “That’s cool.” I said, “How did you build your business?” She said, “Through joint venture.” And then we both describe how we go about joint venturing. We realized that we both went about it in a very opposite way. It was the same modality. It was the same technique. Just basically collaborating with other people, collaborating with people that were already talking to the audience that we want to be talking to and having them endorse us, having them promote us. In this conversation, I realized wow, there is something in here because at that time most of the people that were successful with joint ventures were big named people that already had this huge audience, had a huge email list. It felt like anybody else in a lower level, they were excluded from this private country club if you will. I went to bed that night and I was frustrated. I was like, “Man there is something here but I don’t know what it is.” And I went to bed, and at [5:00]AM, I just popped out of bed. Literally just stand up in my bed and like, “I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it.” It came to me in my sleep and that was the idea to create a community of coaches, authors, speakers, experts, any leader that has a message and they’re frustrated because they feel like they’re the best kept secret in town. Nobody really knows what their message is. At least not at a high level. They just want to get that message out into the world. They have a gift just like you. You have a gift and you want people to know about it because you know that you can help them. You know that you can support them. I said if I train people how to do joint ventures and I put them in a community where they can all partner together, it’s basically like a match.com for coaches, authors and speakers without the rejection part. I woke up to this idea and I’m like, “This is a good one.” I think one of the things that maybe differentiates me from some other people is I think a lot of entrepreneurs to have a great idea this week and then the next week they’ll have another great idea and then the next week they’ll have another great idea and then, “What about this idea over here and that idea over there.” The shiny object syndrome where I always have a lot of ideas but what I’m good at is when I come up with what I know is a good idea like I knew this one was is like doubt that it was in my mind and in my body, in my soul and is like this feels really good. When I have one of those, I take action on it. I took action on this idea and I turned it into a program and I as quickly as possible launched the program. This was over three years ago and ever since then the only thing that I promote is this one program. We launch it, we sell it, we bring members in, we have this community. I get to be the face of it. for the most part it’s the interaction of the members which is where the magic happens. I just get to kick back and be the leader of it. That right there, that’s why I don’t have to work that hard. I came up with a great idea, I took action on it, I implemented it, and the fact that it’s a member driven community where it doesn’t depend on me being there, that to me is the magic of it because not only does that help me to live the lifestyle that I want today but down the road if I ever say, “You know what,” which might happen in a few years, “I just want to be out on the ocean all day.” Hopefully at some point in this conversation we can talk about my ocean efforts but my goal ultimately is to spend as much time as possible not only on the ocean but focused on ocean conservation which is my greatest passion. I believe I created a business that I can eventually sell for enough money where I don’t want to worry about money ever again and just focus on that. It’s about coming up with a great idea, sticking with that one great idea, implementing that idea. That’s really how I’ve done what I’ve done. I hope that all makes sense.

‏‏That makes sense. Did you have ideas that failed miserably?

‏‏Oh yeah. I’ve never had a failure in my life, nearly personal. I’ve had ideas that have definitely failed. I’m trying to think this one. This one has been a good run for three plus years. This one has legs so I know that it should continue but I definitely had things before that I put out. In fact, yeah this is funny because I had a very emotional and a very good emotion week last week. I’ve written three books.

‏‏What?

‏‏I’ve written three books.

‏‏I was like that was a good week.

‏‏Let me back up. Since 2008, over the last eight plus years, I’ve written three books. The first book was about the law of attraction and that was how I launched my solo business in 2008 by launching that book on the law of attraction and that book was actually successful. I created a program around that book and that’s how I put myself out into the world. In 2010, I wrote my second book which was called Monetize Your Passion. I come back around to that one because that was the “failure.” And then now this year I’m coming out with the new book. The reason last week was emotional was because the very first copy of the book was mailed to me and I held it in my hands for the first time. I cried live on Facebook. I did my very first Facebook Live. The book came to me in the mail and I opened it up and I said, “You know what I’m just going to go live with this.” I took everybody through the entire book and about 12 minutes into it I just totally broke down. The reason is the new book, I’ll come back to the failure, is called Blue Laguna and it’s a photo book. It’s a coffee table book that is all of my top dolphin and whale photographs. All taken from my paddle board, all taken right here in Laguna Beach. What I figured since 2010 when I got addicted to paddle boarding, and that was six-year period, I calculated that I’ve been out on the ocean right here about 2,100 times. I spent over 5,000 hours on the water. I covered over 15,000 miles of ocean all in the little area of Laguna Beach. The book is my top 95 photos. As I spoke those words, it just hit me. The energy and the passion and commitment that I put into that, it just became overwhelming. I’m super excited about the new book and what’s cool is I’m starting to sell the book very, very soon and I’m getting away all the money to my own ocean cause that I started. That’s all about protecting the ocean. That’s my third book which I’m really excited about. Let’s come back around to that book I was telling a failure.

‏‏I love how warm and you’re so much heart driven and I love that about you.

‏‏Thank you. I knew when I got that book in my hands that I was going to feel something and it was amazing. I love anyone that has passion. I love anyone that just believes in something so much that they’re willing to sacrifice anything for it, at something that’s bigger than them. I think that’s why it hit me. I have my passion on being out on the water. I’ve got this crazy connection with the dolphins. I’m the luckiest dude in the world. I get to be out in the water with them pretty much every day. That alone is enough but to be able to share it with the world, to be able to share it with my friends, with my community, my audience, Facebook, etc. Now, I have it in this book that we’re going to hopefully sell a ton of copies of. It was overwhelming in a really good way. It was awesome. Let me talk about the failure though because I don’t want everyone to think, “Oh, this guy just has the magic touch.” Because I failed way more times than I’ve actually succeeded. I came up with Monetize Your Passion in 2010.

‏‏Were you not passionate about it as much?

‏‏No, I was. I totally was. The book is all about how do you figure out what you’re most passionate about in life and then turn it into a business so that you’re basically doing what you love all the time and that passion of yours is funding your dream life. I still 100% believe in the concept. That’s what I want for everyone. What is did was I put this book out. I did this big launch. What I screwed up was the product that we sold during the launch kind of sucked. I slapped together a program based on the book and it wasn’t good. I didn’t have a good strategy on how to sell it. I did this whole launch. We built this huge email list of 28,000 people during the launch. I was convinced that was going to sell the heck out of it, make $1,000,000 and it was going to be the greatest thing ever but the sales were barely anything. We put so much time, effort, energy and money into it only to basically make zero money. I was totally depressed. I was frustrated. I was ready to quit. I was so upset. To me, that was a huge failure. There were actually some good things that came out of it. The main one was I built a list of 28,000 people from the launch but to not make any money on that, that was a really, really hard thing. I picked myself off the ground and dusted myself off. I have great friends and support and then I just came up with another idea. I put it out there. That’s what I do. What I have now will be something that sticks for many years but I’ve been through many things that it’s just one example that absolutely didn’t work. We can spend hours on the failures I’ve had in my life, in my personal life. I definitely had my share.

‏‏What do you do to dust yourself off?

‏‏That’s a great question. I have routines. Here’s how I do my day. I wake up in the morning and I have a morning routine that I call the sunrise energize. I do a combination of exercise which mostly for me is I get up and I go out in the ocean and I paddle board, it’s exercise. I also do yoga, go to the gym and run out but I’m pretty well addicted to the ocean. If the weather is good, I’m out in the water. I do some form of exercise then I do hydrotherapy which is basically for me just jumping in the ocean. If you don’t have a cold body of water you could do it in the shower or just take a hot and cold shower. There’s a very healing thing to be in the ocean. It just resets your brain chemistry. To me, jumping in a natural body of water is the best thing but a hot and cold shower has the same impact so hydrotherapy, and then I meditate. I meditate which is just my way of connecting with my source, whatever it is you believe that to be. That’s how I get my energy in the morning.

‏‏How long is that?

‏‏I go out in the ocean for two to three hours at a time normally but not everyone’s going to do that. I mean if you exercise for 20, 30 minutes, if you do five minutes of hydrotherapy and a good 15, 20, 30 minutes of meditation, even five minutes of meditation some days. I think everyone could do this routine within an hour. Giving yourself that hour first thing in the morning to get yourself ready for the day physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally is a really good thing. Have that routine. Remember, I’m a lifestyle guys. I never schedule any appointments early in the morning. The earliest I ever schedule anything is [10:00]AM. Some days I won’t schedule anything before [11:00]AM or [12:00]PM or even later because I like to have that time. I got to get a few hours in the morning just for myself. I have that routine in the morning then I’ll go work all day. Do whatever I’m doing and then I’ll end the day with another routine of exercise and meditation. Like later today I will go to a yoga class, then I’ll meditate and then I’ll go home good to go for the day. Your question was how do I dust myself off? Those routines are the answer. Nobody is immune to pain. We all have pain, be it physical pain, emotional pain, whatever it is. I’m hopefully as good as anyone I’m allowing myself to feel pain. No one’s immune and I don’t believe in numbing myself with things so that I avoid the pain. I don’t think that’s a safe thing to do. When things happen, and they do, they do to everybody, I allow myself to feel what’s going on. What I try never to do is let it go more than one of those routines. Something might happen tonight and I’ll feel like crap and I’ll try by the next routine. I want to be back to myself. I don’t want to be today and then leaves in tomorrow and the next day and the next day. It’s got a hold of me.

‏‏You deal with your emotions and then you let them go.

‏‏For me it’s been a process of learning what I call the language of feelings. Really learning the difference between our thoughts, our feelings and our emotions. I don’t believe most people know the difference between the feelings and their emotions. To me that’s really an important lesson. To understand how to feel, allow yourself to feel but not to get overly emotional. The distinction I made between feelings and emotions is this. I can observe a feeling, a feeling is an example of something happens. You say something to me and it doesn’t feel good.

‏‏I don’t like your shirt.

‏‏I’m wearing a cute shirt. What are you talking about?

‏‏I’m going along.

‏‏Orion says, “I don’t like your shirt.” At that moment, I can do one of two things. I can react to her or I can respond. I can react which is typically out of anger and saying, “I don’t like your shirt.” Or, “What do you mean you don’t like my shirt? I love this shirt. You’re an idiot.” I can react which is what most people do or I can respond and the response is to feel. “You know what, Orion when you said that, I felt kind of sad. I felt a little frustrated. I felt hurt by that and my intention in our relationship Orion is to just feel total love and connection with you and when that happened I felt hurt.” That’s a response. That’s not a reaction and that’s staying in my feelings where if I were to get angry or the other day a lot of people do I they won’t say anything. You don’t like my shirt? Alright I’m going to remember that and then she does something else I don’t like and I build it up and I build it up and I get emotional and then I erupt like a volcano and I just vomit all over you. The difference in my mind between a feeling and emotion is that I can observe my feelings. I can witness oh you know right now I’m feeling hurt. I’m feeling disrespected. I’m feeling sad where an emotion is like I am angry. I’m pissed off and when you get emotional it’s like it’s taken over you. I don’t know about you but when I’m emotional it’s hard to act in a way that you’ve want to be acting. It’s really learning the difference between your thoughts, your feelings and your emotions. I love how this came up but I love that it did because to me this is the real work and I’ve spent all years and really focused on learning this language of feelings and do my best to really implement into my life.

‏‏I was about to ask you if it’s something that comes natural to you?

‏‏No.

‏‏No?

‏‏No. I think I’m like most people. Most of us, we were raised to think. I was totally raised to think, nobody until the last five to seven years of my life, I didn’t know about being about emotional self-awareness. I knew a lot about how to think. I feel like I’ve gotten to where I have gotten in my life through thinking, through hard work and action but to me there’s got to be more. That’s when I moved more into the spiritual realm. I learned a lot about spiritual self-awareness and then I realized even that would only take me so far. The next level beyond the spiritual was more beyond the emotional self-awareness. It’s one thing that spiritual self-awareness is to sit, meditate all day long which I’ve done by the way but I came through that thinking and feeling like, “You know what, that’s great.” But it’s about integration, how do I integrate these spiritual principles into this material, physical world that we live in. I don’t want to be a monk in the cave meditating all day long. I want to be out in the world. I’m here to make a difference. I’m here to make an impact. I’m here to love and connect with other people. I’m not meant to be the monk in the cave. You say how do I dust myself off? When something happens, I go into my cave and I go into meditation and I do my best to surrender to spirit and say, “Alright help me with this situation. Take this off for me. I don’t know what to do.” I’ll go into my cave only so I can come back out into the world and hopefully be a good man.

The next level beyond the spiritual was more beyond the emotional self-awareness. Click To Tweet

‏‏That’s beautiful.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏You had the dream and JVX was born. This is something that was very new. How did you go about it? How did you launch about that new business? How did you increase the release and created interest and got people into your mastermind? How did you get people into your event? What was the process for you?

‏‏Awesome. The business model is pretty simple but the company is called JV Insider Circle. We do a live event every year that’s called JVX, the JV Experience. It stemmed from that it was a good idea and then, “Okay, how do I get this idea out there to the world?” What I did, very simple, which is exactly what I teach my clients to do, is I connected with other people that support the coaching world, meaning they have a list of people that are authors, coaches and speakers. I went to them and said, “Hey, I’ve got this program. I’m going to launch it. Will you support it?” They looked at it and they said, “Oh wow this is a great idea. My people need it.” They knew it would be a good value to their audience. There is also a commission structure so they promoted to their audience. People sign up for my program and then I share the revenue with the JV partner so I’m just creating a win-win situation. What I do every year is I do a big launch. We do a big launch in the spring where I have all these people promoting the program all at the same time and then we get all the new members that come in. We train the members, and then the finale of the year is everybody comes together in person because when they first come in it’s all done online. We do training calls, we have a Facebook group, we have a database which I said before is kind of like match.com for coaches, authors and speakers but without the rejection. They go on there and they say, “I’m a relationship coach. I want to connect with other relationship coaches and see who wants to collaborate.” Everything’s done virtual. The reason everybody loves the live event JVX is they’re building these relationships online which is good but let’s be clear nothing can replace that face to face contact, that face to face connection. That’s really what JVX is. Everybody comes together in person and we have this kind of just JV love fest where everybody’s there, they’re meeting, they’re connecting, they’re forming joint venture partnerships right on the spot. It’s a party. It’s fun. It’s educational. They actually leave, they go home with actual JV partners that can promote their next big thing. It’s cool. I love talking about it because every time I talk about it, it is a pretty damn solid idea.

‏‏How do you go about it if you don’t have a big list and you don’t have much to offer to the other JV?

‏‏I love that you asked that question because I think everybody can agree that the joint venture model is powerful. In fact if you were to talk to every leader in our industry that has the big audience, joint ventures are their number one strategy. Everyone I know, that’s the number one strategy they’ve used to create their big audience. People agree and this is a good way to go. And the first objection we always get is just what you said, “How do I do it if I don’t have a big list and I don’t have anything to offer?” Number one, you don’t need a big list to do joint ventures. You really need two things, you need passion meaning you have energy and passion about who you are and what you do. Everybody’s attracted to people with passion. Number two like I gave the example of, you need a good idea. If you have a good idea that the world needs, people will want to spread your message.People will want to promote you. They’ll want to promote you a, because it’s a good idea and b, if it sells they’re going to make money. There’s definitely a monetary side to this for the JV partner. That’s how it answered that. I also want to address Orion you mentioned they don’t have a list, they don’t have anything to offer a partner. I really question that right there because if you’re listening right now, you have something to offer. You have a gift. In fact, I’m willing to bet if you are a coach, an author, a speaker, any kind of a leader, I’m willing to bet and Orion I know you, I know you’ll answer this one just like it is for me, I’m willing to bet that something happened in your life, most likely something very painful happened and in that painful thing you learned something, you came up with a solution. Maybe you were dramatically overweight and you figured out how to lose the weight and keep it off forever and you went through that painful thing and, “Oh my god now I have the solution and I want to tell the world.” Or maybe you went through tragedy, you went through a horrible divorce and it was awful. You came through it and now you’re happier and you’re whole and now you found the love of your life. You have a formula for how you did that and you want to share with the world. I’m willing to bet anyone that does what we do, you’ve gone through something painful. You’ve had those failures and then on the other side you came up with the solution. Why do I bring this up here? You have something that people need. If you have a big list, will it be easier to do joint venture? No doubt, absolutely. That’s why people come to me is because they know I can help them to grow that big list. Once you have a bigger list, your business becomes much, much easier but in the meantime I want you to think about what is it that you can offer someone. Maybe you’re a healer and you can offer healing sessions to people. Maybe you’re a website designer and you could go to someone that you want to partner with and say, “Hey, let me review all of your marketing materials, your websites and whatnot for free. I’ll see if I can help you improve what you’re doing.” Don’t stop until I don’t have a list that can do this. What is it that your gift is that you can take to other people and support them? Does that make sense?

‏‏Yeah. My following question is how do you nurture those relationships. What happens with – that I go to so many conferences and I meet so many people that I want to be in touch with all of them. They’re all amazing. And then the next week I have another conference, another 30, 40 new people. I have stacks of cards and maybe I email them once or twice. What’s your system to your relationships?

‏‏Think about joint venture relationships is no different than a relationship you have with a friend or an intimate problem. It’s all about connection and intimacy. If I were you, if you go into an event and you meet a bunch of people, it’s hard to follow up with 40, 50, 100 people. I look at it this way. If I can go to an event and I can leave I met two or three people sometimes even one person, that’s all I need. In fact, this happened. This is funny that we’re talking about freedom lifestyle a couple of weeks ago now. I went to an event in Palm Springs. My buddy put on this event and he invited me to come and it takes a lot by the way to get me to leave the beach and go to the desert because there’s no ocean or dolphins in the desert. I looked it, I couldn’t find them. He sent me a text message. He says, “Rich, I’m putting you on this event and I want you to come. I’m going to give you an award. It’s called the Entrepreneurial Lifestyle award. I want to honor you for being someone that really practices what he preaches. Everybody’s out there selling the entrepreneurial dream of working less and earning more and making an impact.

‏‏The four-hour work week that turns into reality.

‏‏It’s funny you bring that up because I read that book a decade ago now, maybe not even a while ago. I remember reading that book and I took that book to heart and like, “Yes, that’s what I want.” I actually did it. He gave me this award to honor me. At first I was like, “Oh man why would I drive all the way up to the desert.” But how can I not, of course so I said, “Absolutely, I would come.” I go to the event and there’s like 40 people there. It’s a small event and one of the people there is a woman by the name of Michelle Patterson.

‏‏I know her. I love her.

‏‏I’ve never met her before but I heard of her. I go up on stage and he presents this award. I do a little talk and I’m looking at Michelle sitting in the front row the whole time she’s like pointing at me and she’s all excited. After my talk, she comes up and oh my god by the end of the night we’re like best friends to the point where she said I want to promote your live event. You have JVX coming up in November. I’m going to promote your event.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏Now, let’s be honest. Michelle, if you don’t know Michelle, she runs the California Women’s Conference which is coming up in December. Imagine this, my event will have about 300 people which to me is a good sized event, her event in December she’ll have 10,000 women there. She says, “Rich, I’ll promote your event.” Which I said, “Yeah, you could.” Because her reach is tremendously huge.

‏‏You need another venue mister. You need a bigger venue.

‏‏I know. That’s my goal. Everyone will be oozing out of the doors because they can’t fit in. Then she says, “Will you come to my event in December?” And I said, “Let me think about it. You’re going to have 10,000 women there, I’ll be there.” What’s my point? I didn’t go to that event hoping that I would connect with every single person there. If I can meet in that case one person that can have a positive impact to my business and I can have a positive impact on hers, I’m happy with that. To your point you go to an event. You meet the people you’re supposed to meet. You leave with their card and to me what I would immediately do when I leave is I’ll call them or text them or email them and say, “Hey, it was so great to meet you. Let’s get on the phone this week for 15 minutes and see what we can do to support each other.” Get them on the phone immediately. Literally be saying, “Hey, what do you got coming up? What are you working on? How can I support you? I’ve got my book coming up and I’m doing a launch. Can you support it? I’ve got this live event. You can help drive people to it.” Whatever it is that you got going on and then nearly try to get them to support you and you support them and create a relationship. Sometimes it will happen immediately like with Michelle, sometimes it will take months like any relationship. You really cultivate and build that trust. It’s just a constant focus on connecting with people who are in alignment with what you’re doing.

‏‏I love your approach to everything. It’s a very holistic approach. I really like what you’re doing in business and what you’re doing in life. What are the best lessons you learned from dolphins and whales?

‏‏This is great. Last JVX a year ago, this woman, a beautiful, blonde, middle aged, her name is Kimberly. I actually know how old she is but I won’t say it publicly. I’ve never seen her in my life. She says, “Do you know why the ancient mariners have showed up in your life?” And by ancient mariners she means the dolphins and whales. And I said, “I can’t say that I do.” She goes, “Well you’re in the middle of your event.” But she goes, “Let’s get together and if you want I’ll share it with you.” A couple of months later, she comes to Laguna Beach and we’re at my favorite spot on this cliff overlooking the ocean and she starts telling me why they showed up in my life. I thought she was going to say this big profound thing like I am supposed to be their messenger, I’m going to save the world, I’m going to save the ocean.

‏‏You’re a descendant of Poseidon.

‏‏Right, that’s what my ego wanted to hear. And she looks to me and she says that they showed up to teach you presence. She said, “How do you feel when you’re with them?” I said, “I feel totally present. I feel totally in the moment. I don’t think about anything when I am out in the water with them. I don’t think about my business. I don’t think about what I got to do later. I don’t think about what happened earlier. I’m right there in the moment with them.” And she says this to me and like, “What more profound lesson could there be than learning to be present like most of us and I’m not immune by any stretch, we spent the vast majority of our time thinking about something that already happened or worried about what might happen later on. And we don’t spend enough time right here, right now in the now, in the moment. I’m going to stick with her answer. That is what these animals have taught me. It’s the most amazing gift. There’s never a time where I’m out there that I take it for granted. It’s a total blessing and that’s why I have in the book. I’ll talk about the book for a second. For years now, I’ve been going out on the water and I take photos and I post videos. In fact, you just go on my Facebook page, Rich German, just look me up. You can see for the most part I’m just posting photos and video of dolphins and whales and for years everybody on Facebook was like, “Dude, make a book. Make a book. Make a book.” And I’m like, “It’s one thing to share these photos but the ocean is my church. It’s my sanctuary and also if I’m going to sell a book turn it into a business. It felt like it didn’t feel right. The way that I justified it was now I’ve started a nonprofit called Project O. I said, “Alright I’m going to make the book. I’m going to donate a significant part of the proceeds to Project O and the goal of Project O is to help protect the ocean. That’s how I justified any kind of a business thing with it. Now, it’s all falling into place. I’ve got the book. We’ve got big plans for documentaries and all these kinds of things coming up. The book is really the launching point. This is an exciting time for me. Having the book come out. At JVX, we’re going to do a fundraiser the first night where it will be the first time publicly that I’ll release the book so hopefully we’ll sell a bunch of them and people get them right there on the spot.

‏‏I’m going to get one.

‏‏You better. I’m going to sign you.

‏‏Or three. Would you say that you play like a dolphin, sing like a whale and deal like a shark?

‏‏I would say that my goal, I can’t say that I do it, but my goal is when you’re with the dolphins, the dolphins to me represent pure love, joy and play. All day long they just play and play and play and they swim and they jump and they just look so happy. They’re smiling, they’re just pure love and joy. The whales are a whole different energy. You guys need to come down and I’ll take you out on the water.

‏‏You will? That was my next question if you can take me paddle boarding with you.

‏‏Will you like to paddle or we’ll go out on a little boat. We’ll get you out there. The dolphins are just love and joy and play. And the whales are much deeper energy. The whales represent wisdom. The whales and dolphins will hang out together and I’ll see the dolphins just playing and then all of a sudden, this happened recently, a humpback whale pops up and all of a sudden it was like a whole different energy and feel when the whales show up. Hopefully I can play like a dolphin. Have the wisdom of a whale and I don’t want to be known as a shark however it’s funny that you mentioned that because at JVX we do our version of shark tank. We have something called the JV shark attack where I bring in this panel of industry experts, people that are like my top JV partners like Christian Mickelsen and Justin Livingston. We bring in people like Loral Langemeier, she’s a shark for sure, Suzanne Evans. We have this panel of intimidating people and they get to be the sharks. We have this contest where people get to pitch their JV programs to the sharks with the hope that they will promote them. Orion, I know you’ll be the there, Stephan will be there. I want to offer. Hopefully we have a minute here before we wrap up. I want to offer everyone listening a ticket to come to the event and they can witness our shark attack. They’ll get the dolphins, the whales and the sharks all at once.

‏‏What are you offering?

‏‏Our event is November 3, 4 and 5. It’s in Newport Beach, California. I don’t know where you live.

‏‏They can take a plane.

‏‏There’s a good chance in November if you live somewhere cold, the weather in Southern California, as Orion because she lives there also might be better than where you live and as a gift to Orion and to you listening I want to offer you a free ticket to come experience the live event.

‏‏ Wow.

‏‏I’ll give you a link Orion where people can sign up for free. It’s really meant for any coach, author, speaker, expert, leader, entrepreneur. Like I said if you have a message and you believe in collaboration and you want people to support you and you want to support others in getting that message out there into the world, this is the place to be and it would be an honor for me to offer your free ticket and come hangout with us for a few days.

‏‏Wow, that’s amazing. That’s a huge offer.

‏‏No, you’ll be there also so they get to meet you. So it’s a win-win.

‏‏Come meet me. Come meet Rich. Learn from him. He’s incredible. Before we finish, what are your three super quick tips to living a stellar life?

‏‏Oh wow. Three tips to a stellar life. I say start with lifestyle first. Two, figure out what you love to do and spend all of your time doing it. And three, this is the hardest part. Do whatever healing that you need to do. I think the goal of life is to be happy and I think the reason that we’re here is to heal. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have wounds. I never met anyone that was raised by a functional family. I’m always hearing of the people that say they were raised in a functional family. We’ve all been hurt. We’ve all been wounded. The goal is to be happy and I don’t think we could truly be happy until we heal our past so the goal is that we heal the past and we bring the whole conversation together. The goal is that you want to heal the past so that you can live in the moment and move powerfully into your future.

The goal is that you want to heal the past so that you can live in the moment and move powerfully into your future. Click To Tweet

‏‏Beautiful.

‏‏I want you to have your dream life. I want you to do the things that you love. For me doing this interview right now with Orion, this is not work. This is pure play. This is joy so my work is play. My playtime is play. I deal with crap just like everybody else and I share some what do I do to move through my crap and I heal it so I can move forward and I think those will be the three things.

‏‏Thank you Rich. That was amazing.

‏‏Thank you Orion.

‏‏Really appreciate you.

‏‏I can’t wait to meet you again. I’ve met you before. I can’t wait to see you and give you big hug and I’m hoping you listening will be there also and I’ll give you a big hug also.

‏‏Thank you, Rich, and thank you so much listeners. Find your bliss. Live in the moment and create a stellar life. I’ll talk to you soon.

‏‏Thank you.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ What would a freedom lifestyle look like for you? Start doing things that bring your closer to this lifestyle, such as only taking calls after 11am to give you back your mornings.

✓ Go check out JV Insider Circle to learn more about sharing your passion with others.

✓ Do you have ‘Shiny-Object Syndrome’? Do you chase after every new idea? Make yourself a commitment to follow through on one of your great ideas.

✓ Create a quality morning routine and evening routine that work for you.

✓ To be a success in a joint venture, we need passion and a good idea. What are the things in your life you are most passionate about? What draws people to you?

✓ Come up with ideas that fit your passion.

✓ Rich German gave us three tips to live a stellar life: figure out what you love, spend all of your time doing that, and do whatever healing you need to do. How are you doing in each of these areas? What can you do to improve and embrace your stellar life?

✓ Look carefully at your past traumas and wounds. Find ways to help yourself heal those hurts. Ask for help or advice, if you need it.

✓ Think about the things you have overcome. Can you use your story to help someone else, and coach?

✓ Take joy in helping a worthy cause, and get an amazing book in the process. Pre-order your book at http://richgerman.com/blue-laguna/.

✓ Check out this link http://www.easywebautomation.com/app/?Clk=5546766 to get your free ticket to the next JVX event on November 3-5, 2016.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

About Rich German

Rich German is one of the top business and life coaches in North America. His company, True Wealth Unlimited, creates products that help people to live abundant, happy, and fulfil-ling lives. He lives in Laguna Beach, California.