[00:00:00] Speaker A: Wealth.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Our brain thinks about money. It's not about money. It's about all the holistic components of which money is one of the areas of life where wealth is created. Wealth is also about our knowledge. It's about our relationships. It's about the people that are around us. It's about purpose in life.
Welcome back to innovate and overcome. I am joined today with a special guest. I've got Tony D'Angelo with me now. He is the founder of the intellectual capitalist and host of the intellectual capitalist podcast. He's an educational entrepreneur. This guy has been everywhere. In fact, he's presented at over 2800 college campuses. Truly unbelievable. He really is the Kickstarter of chicken soup for the college soul. I'm excited to have you with us here, Tony. You've been helping people transform their ideas into cash flowing assets. You've led an incredible entrepreneur journey. And I'm so gracious that you've joined us on the program to share some of that journey, some of the challenges that you've been faced with, and there has been many. We won't be able to get into all of them today, but I'm excited for people to be able to learn vicariously through your experience and begin to unpack some of the things that you've had to overcome throughout your life. Now, we have a lot of wonderful directions we're going to be able to go today, and I kind of want to dive into this college experience. I mean, you got started very early on in the environment of training and teaching and coaching and mentoring at colleges and becoming an educational entrepreneur. So walk us through maybe how that started. I know that leads a little bit into your first foray into the intellectual property zone, and we could talk through that, and then we can zip back to, uh. I think we'll probably go all the way back to the 911 period, where that created a real interruption in your business. So let's begin with starting down this college training track.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: You got it, Richard. Well, thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. And really, I'm grateful for you, the listeners, the watchers, the viewers at home, because you're really in store for something powerful. And it's this idea that every one of us has the potential to be what we call an intellectual capitalist and an educational capitalist. And so that's part of what I want to be able to do, is not share my journey with you, Richard, and you listeners, but more importantly, for you to hear and discover and uncover your own. How do you go through those obstacles that life is naturally going to bring you? And how do you then innovate from those obstacles to create your bigger, better future? So I'm excited. So you want me to start with the college story, right?
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, let's go. That. I mean, how did you first find yourself speaking in front of college students? Like, where do you all of a sudden you go from? You must, you start at the first college and then somehow you get to 2800. What happened there?
[00:02:36] Speaker A: What happened in between? So, yeah, I was very blessed. So I went to college at a state school in Pennsylvania, a school right outside of Philadelphia called Westchester University. And believe it or not, my academic training was going to be in public health, nutrition, and a voice minor. So of course I was going to become a singing dietitian. Right? But there's no real career path for standing there singing vitamin A, vitamin D. But what I did, that's where I got my degree. But I got my education by understanding how us higher ed worked back in the nineties. And simultaneously, I was really into personal development. Tony Robbins, Dennis Waitley, Brian Tracy. I mean, I was the king of the Nightingale. Conant catalog. Listen to audiotapes constantly. And what I began to understand and see there was something radically different from what I was learning in the classroom and that life outside of the classroom. And I kept scratching my head saying, you know, here I am. And again, it was a state school. I'm from a working class family. It wasn't like I was going to some big ivy league or private school. But, you know, my parents were probably throwing down about 15 grand a year. And I'm like, I'm learning all this powerful, life transforming wisdom outside the classroom. Why is this not being taught and shared in my, whether it be a psychology class or any other type of class? So I said, there's definitely a disconnect here. But at the time, I had no idea I was going to be an entrepreneur. I still can't even spell the word entrepreneur, which is a good sign, by the way, listeners, if you can't spell entrepreneur, you probably be one. All right, so that's kind of set the tone. Go back to it. I got my degree in this field of public health and nutrition and voice, but I was getting my education from outside the classroom, the personal development space. But then I also began to understand the business model behind how american higher education works.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: The business model behind how american higher education works. That sounds really interesting. So, I mean, I think people viewing will automatically start to put the pieces together of their own. But what part of the business model did you recognize was taking place? I mean, fundamentally, the student, is the product, is the consumer essentially right in that environment? So walk us through what were the key discoveries that you had there in that as you started to put all these pieces of the puzzle together?
[00:04:45] Speaker A: Jeff. Yeah, well, lets go back. You said the word so well because this was the mindset in the nineties. Matter of fact, I can remember going to a conference and they would not identify students as students. They literally called them consumers. Now, that makes sense for us entrepreneurs. But if you're in education, nobody wants to be called a consumer. By the way, one of the powerful words we use is a spirit. It's somebody who aspires transformation. So you listeners, you viewers, Richard, you're bringing this community of people who aspire to be transformed. And I think it's first a much better way to look at when you're creating content, when you're creating intellectual property, when you're creating educational capitalism, is you want to view everybody you work with as an aspiring yet rewind. American higher education doesn't do that. Matter of fact, most people don't know this, but only 35% of college students will actually graduate here in the US within four years. Only 35%. Only 54% will graduate in six years.
Yet we don't talk about that in America. We say go to school, get good grades, and you're going to get a safe, secure job and live happily ever after. And everybody knows that dream is a total nightmare. Is that true or false?
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, yeah, the idea is that it's going to solve all your problems and there won't be any more problems after that.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: But matter of fact, it actually creates bigger problems. And so what I began to see back to the business model. So I'm studying all this great personal development information outside the classroom, really engage in the audio learning at the time because that was the primary. I mean, this is, you know, there was no Internet at the time. We're listening to tapes, cassettes. Not to date, myself, but that's where you were really, really able to find this wisdom, unlike you now, get to watch this on the show. And so at the same time, I'm turning 21 and my frat brothers are across the street. They're at the bar doing shots in my honor. Meanwhile, I'm over in the university budget committee meeting with five administrators, deciding where we're going to spend 5 million, $7 million this week, this month. And I began to see how does this business model work? Because higher education in the US alone here in Canada, about 350 colleges here in the US, by the way, the numbers are going down. We're about 20% below the high water mark around 2012, 2010. There are roughly 4000 degree granting institutions and every one of them has an endowment, has a budget, has money, has capital, has resources. So one of the things that you want to understand is that, okay, when you have a market that big, it's quite significant.
So I began to understand what were that inner workings, particularly when it came to co curricular programming to bring to campus. But ill pause there. Am I making sense?
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. And I mean, you said you were at 21 when youre in this budget meeting. This is a period of time for a lot of people. Thats a very pivotal time in their life. And what im curious about is youre doing this in the late nineties as were approaching it, were reaching the turn of the century.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Shortly after the turn of the century, a major event takes place. Everyone knows about it. 911 it's going to be epitomized in everyone's memory. I know exactly where I was when it happened, even being in Canada at the time. At the time I was a third year electrician actually. And I remember I was working a night shift and it happened while I was at work and I came home and I was glued to the television for the next period of time. In fact, I almost missed my next shift at work. You know that, that period of time, you're in this environment of doing events, you're doing training, you're, you really have an event company. And that created a real challenge. Obviously, it was a challenge globally for many reasons. But for you specifically from a business, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, that created a real impact for what you were up to. So, so maybe walk us through that. As you're in this, as you're discovering all this business model of the university education and now you've created a business entity of doing training. How do these things intersect?
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So meanwhile, I fast forward. I graduate and I work for about six months and I say, all right, I'm tapping out on my dream. I need to go live my dream. So I had all, but I think $6,000 saved. I think, oh, that'll get me by for maybe a week, which I didn't realize, but I was 23, I had no idea and just went out there. So I became a very well known platform speaker in the US college market, young adult market. 911 I was in an airplane. I was in an airplane on 911 and I remember the captain speaking over the PA system. He said, ladies and gentlemen, pardon the interruption, but we are being called to land the airplane.
The Pentagon and the twin towers are currently under attack, and there's a threat on the White House. And we're all like, what the hell is going on? Now? You can't. There's no tvs. There's no monitors. This is not. We're not jetblue. Then. This is. This is 2001. So we land, we deplane in Cincinnati, and I get out of the plane, and I'm here from the east coast. I literally, the week before was just in Manhattan. I was at Manhattan Marymount College, right, in New York. And last thing I remember is leaving the city. You see the twin towers. I turn on the. I watch the television at the airport, and I'm like, what the hell's going on? And the guy goes, oh. He goes, I go, wow, is that New York? He goes, yeah. And he goes, he goes, yeah, they hit the building. I go, no, no, that's queens, man. That's queens. Because I. I didn't see the towers. They had already fallen by this point, as they get off the plane. And so he said, no, no, no, they fell down. Like, what? So what did that do for me? Okay, here I am. The whole business is, of course, we're traveling. We're platform speaking, and I'm going all across the country. I had about two other team members that time, very small company, but we were making a big impact. But I said, all right, we need to kind of recalibrate here that if we're going to just have this one pillar of income, as far as live seminar events, which, you know, fast forward to 2020. Right? It hit us again, but we were totally ready as a result of that. So I. The key lesson I would share is that we've both learned from Dan Sullivan is that all the obstacles we face are the raw material of our future success.
All the. And if you can begin to see that in God's divine grace, that there is something bigger that you need to learn. When you're faced with a life situation that could be seen as a tragedy, it's powerful. That's the first thing. The second thing is, my family relative, we call him Uncle Tom. He was the fire commissioner of New York City. And I can remember being stuck in Cincinnati, like, you turned the tv on, and I saw Rudy Giuliani, and right next to him was Tom von Essen, the fire commissioner of New York City. And what that spoke to me is that in times and trouble, you got to stand up and be seen as a leader. And so I remember talking to my wife at the time, I said, uncle Tommy, hes leading the country right now because George Bush was still undercover, and it was him and Giuliani. So thats what I remember. So those two key things, obstacles and leadership, were really powerful for those two lessons. Trey.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Wow. And I mean, you kind of really touched on it briefly. Of course, were going back quite a bit of time here in the past, but you kind of made the connection between a more recent experience, everyone bring up the COVID here. But essentially, thats another period. Wherever outside factors, outside influence, outside of your control. And we were all faced with scenarios that are outside of our control, happens on a regular basis. And you were in a position where you had an event business, and you were no longer able to run those events. I mean, that has a real impact on income. Right. You have to retool, you have to rethink. You have to come up with, how do we take this challenge, the raw material, and turn it into something that's valuable? And you had a similar experience of that in the COVID timeframe when you were also shut down in some business relationship. But you were able to, from the past experience, move through very quickly in the COVID environment. So maybe just touch on that briefly before we head off to our first break.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Well, I will. And I have to share this other thought, because in addition to 911, our offices were in the Princeton area of New Jersey, right, where they were having the anthrax Scarrow. So meanwhile, all the checks that were getting mailed to us were deferred for five months. So cash flow was a huge struggle, in addition to no business. So this other thing is, you got to have the cash. You got to have the cash. You got to have that emergency safety, which I know you talk about utilizing whole life to do that. I highly recommend that listeners, you got to protect yourself with the cash, because there will be another, as Mike Tyson say, punch in the face. That you will need to be prepared for. And that was, of course, Covid. But this time we were prepared. So from that, we learned that we needed to be. We needed to, we were always remote. We never called it remote. We just called it digital. That's how we had a digital based company. And so when, when Covid hit us, we were able to flip on a dime. Our clients were incredibly responsive. Now, we did drop revenue by 80% of the live event revenue, but were able to pick that back up by 60%, flipping everything to digital delivery. And our team was amazing. Thats the piece that I didnt have back at 911. I then went into 2020 with a powerhouse. Remarkable team.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Amazing. Well, on that note, well be right back after these short messages with Tony.
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Welcome back to innovate and overcome. We're here with Tony D'Angelo and we're unpacking these incredible aspects of his entrepreneurial journey. Now, what is so interesting about your experience, Tony, is that you have this breadth of knowledge around intellectual property, but it wasnt always the case. Theres a circumstance that occurred in your life that caused you to reevaluate your understanding of what the value of intellectual property was and how you needed to protect it. So walk us through how you came to this realization that although you thought you were doing everything correct, you weren't fully accurate in that description, and you had to really reposition yourself in such a way where you could protect the great ideas that you'd already had. So what exactly transpired?
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Sure, it's a long story. I'll try to make it as clear as possible, but I'll just bring it back to what you said the very beginning. So I want to come back to it's this evolution of how to become an intellectual capitalist. So let's break that word down. Intellectual doesn't mean iq, it means your understanding. So we all have an understanding. The word capital is surplus. So everyone watching the show has a surplus understanding about a certain subject matter. So if I go back to my early days as a platform speaker, motivational speaking, that was a huge part. I got involved, as you said at the beginning, with chicken soup for the college soul. And that was my first aha moment about intellectual property, the power of a brand through my mentorship with Mark Victor Hansen. And no relation but Jack Canfield, right? Or is there a relation?
[00:16:05] Speaker B: I don't know. Not that I'm aware of being tossed in the same pot as him. I think that's okay.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: It's a great man. Great man. Well, Jack is the shrink, he's the psychologist. And Mark was the stretch, right? He was the motivator. But Mark took me kind of under his wing and I just hung out with him. And I really began to learn about branding, about creating bestsellers, about copyright, that type of thing. Fast forward. I began to do that in my own. I began to publish, I began to have a publishing series very similar to chicken soup. But at that time I was only getting maybe like $2 royalty from my work that I was doing. And the same time I had these talks I was doing and I was, at that time, maybe they were $2,500. So I said, well, I'm just going to take a royalty model based on that. So I had to sit down and write out the show, just like a musician would do with a song, just like Lin Manuel would have to do with a Hamilton musical, right? You write it out. Okay. Now, I was going to act and sing in it. Fortunately, I didn't act and sing, right. I left that behind me. But I did speak, I did talk. And it began to develop a series of educational productions. And with that really developed not only myself, but my capability of my team to do educational performance, just like theater performance, but also the real magic was educational production. So we began to go out and license IP other ideas, like we did a chicken soup version talk, and then we wrote a licensing check or royalty fee to the, to the owner of the IP.
Now, there was a great brand out there. I cannot say this because there was a, another Mike Tyson moment where I got punched in the face and it resulted ultimately in a lawsuit. So I'm not at liberty to tell you who this was, but you can figure this out, listeners, you're smart people. And because of branding and marketing, I was sued ultimately by one of our business partners at the time, one, a person we were licensing content from, and that they were the, they are the number one personal finance author of all time. And on Richard, I know you have a couple books and they're up there, but I know you've never sued me. So it wasn't richer, it wasn't rich.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Although the new book, I mean, we never know.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: You never know. Exactly. Exactly. Well, maybe I won't be able to use that. You won't make that connections, but. So what happened is, back in the day, I would, and this was 2009, I was very tuned into financial education, the lack thereof in higher ed. I'm like, we need a great partner to really introduce financial literacy to the US. College market. And so I basically went out and secured a domain called rich grad, and instead of the brand, was going to be rich grad, poor grad. And so what I did is I went to the trademark office, I secured it, bought the domains. There was actually a young man out of China or Japan who was doing pay per click revenue generation back in the day when that was a huge business model. And I think the site's still active. That's richgrad.com dot. I did not own that.com dot. I own the.org and a whole bunch of other subsidiary domains, which, by the way, listeners, it is one of the foundational principles of intellectual property. Domains are everything in Cloudlandia. Don't forget that. Meanwhile, fast forward. I also secured the trademark. I secured the trademark with the intention that I was going to then give it, which I did, signed it over, gave the deed of the property over to the number one personal finance or author of our time, because I thought it was a good strategic move to be generous, to help and to give that organization the property. And I did.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: To make an investment into a relationship. Really, it was, you know, you're looking at, I'm going to make a deposit, a large deposit into an emotional bank account because of what it can translate to for multiple people, the colleges, the grads that I'm serving and, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats, essentially, yes.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: And. And this man, the person who's a great mentor of mine fantastically, is to this day, a great admiration, respect for him as a teacher and what's capable. But then you're not just dealing with a person, you're dealing with a company and organization. And not everybody in that organization understood what was happening. Meanwhile, we turned that over because the goal was to get a licensing deal out of it. In other words, let me secure the property and let me rent it back to you because I want it to have that brand power of the mentor, kind of like on shark tank, you're gonna. I didn't give up equity. I actually gave the brand over, but I was intelligent enough to hold onto some of the domains. Cause I knew they were valuable, particularly being a gen xer. And remember, this is still early. There's no YouTube. There's no monetization of YouTube at this point. I mean, there's a couple, like, cap videos and maybe the Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, the Janet Jackson Super bowl thing. That was the only thing that was on YouTube. That's the only reason why YouTube existed at that time.
Fast forward to 2014. I get a phone call. We had just finished our rich grad training. We were ready to go out to 136 campuses that we had built over a three year period. The contract was for four years, and I'm a big boy. I know licensing agreements are designed to end and to begin. While this was going to end, it ended prematurely. Got a phone call from the president of the time of the organization and was told, the leader is going to go in a different direction. We're going to end our licensing agreement. I said, that's totally fine, not a problem. Can we please finish out our obligation to these clients that we've committed to these 136 schools? Can we also make certain we get you your licensing fee and your royalty check? It's important for us to do, and we'll close it out by the end of the semester because that's what the agreement said we would do. Yes. Okay, fine. We're out there doing the wait. Well, I get a call. I said, hey, we got this, but you need to give us the domains. I said, the domains. You need the domains. I said, you can buy them from us. Like, no, we're not buying from. You need to give us something. I'm sorry, that's property, and that's property that I bought. That's property I paid for, and that's property I own. If you would like to buy it, you're more than welcome to make a fair market offer to secure those domains. Because what was happening, those domains were getting a lot more traffic than their domains were.
One of the domains was called rich Grad World. We had launched a YouTube channel called Rich Grad World, and it began to take off. It actually began to monetize in the very early days. Wonderful team member by the name of Amelia and Brittany. They ran that channel and it was through the roof. And I think the other folks got a little nervous to see that. Oh, my goodness, we forgot about that really important piece of property.
So then what happened is they said, well, if you don't give them this, we're going to bring the hammer. And they did, and they sued us. And so, of course, being a great student of this mentor, I had a team and I sued back. So I got punched. I punched back.
Long story.
We did not have to go to litigation, went to settlement. They wrote us a check. Hence why I cannot say the individual's name or the brand that the individual represents. But I can tell you the wisdom. I can tell you the story. And it's more important to know that through every tragedy, if you could, cut's not a tragedy. It was, you know, losing my son, losing my wife. That would be tragic. This was like, this sucked, right? This was my mentor, and I get, like, sued by my mentor. Like, what the. What are you doing here? God? I'm teaching you, son. You need to get out, and you need to get out on your own and become free. So I was a very dark time in my life. And I can remember literally, I was standing in my kitchen. I had the lawsuit in front of me, and they were going after everything. Everything, every domain that we had ever secured. And my wife saw that they were going after domains that had nothing to do with this project. She said, you know what, counter sue. And we did. And if it wasn't for my wife, I would have just given up. So you need somebody who loves you more than you can love yourself in your corner. And I thank my wife to this day that she saved that. She totally did. And one of those domains was a little domain called Wealthy Grad, which is now our new education. Not new, but it's our educational platform that's replaced that old program called Rich Grad. And wealthy grad is a much better title because it's about well being. It's about total well being. So again, all the obstacles you face are the ram chair of your future success. Napoleon Hill said in think and grow rich, right in the seed of every adversity is a greater, equal and or greater opportunity. In the Bhavagita, it says, even in the knocks of life, you can find the greater goodness of God. And that's what you want to pay attention to as an entrepreneur. Brian.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah. These challenges, these lessons, it's very hard to see them for what they are in the moment. And so the first step is being able to know that it can be something else. So the the possibility of that raw material being something other than what you currently see it as.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: By being open to that, it can get your brain to immediately begin to shift into a proactive versus a reactive zone. You know, we have a fight or flight response, and our biological nature wants us to be in that, you know, Mike Mike Tyson Punch world or the runaway world. Like, it's a dichotomy we really struggle with. And so it's it's by working on our own brains, working on our own capacity to be able to move through things a little bit quicker. How how do we get ourselves through that stuck state? I mean, we all have these challenges. Everyone faces unique, different problems, and some of them are momentous, and some of them might be small but they might be small in someone's perspective, but they might be monstrous to that individual. And so our ability to kind of shortcut through those things is really the key. And, and the two stories that you've shared with us already, I mean, really, Tony, these are things that I think anyone would consider to be momentous challenges. And so what I'm excited about is learning a little bit more about wealthy grad and specifically, what are some of the things that you're doing with people that you love to serve in helping them uncover and understand more about themselves? Wealth. Our brain thinks about money. It's not about money. It's about all the holistic components of which money is one of the areas of life where wealth is created. Wealth is also about our knowledge. It's about our relationships. It's about the people that are around us. It's about purpose in life. What are the different freedoms that we have as we learn about through the Dan Sullivan organization? And I really appreciate you shouting out Dan, and we love to support Dan on this program and strategic coach, that's how you and I had the pleasure and the chance to meet. And so really the ability to have amazing networks of entrepreneurs coming together. And hopefully, through the power of this show, more and more people seeing it will have the ability to come together for these incredible conversations. So right after these important messages, we're going to be back and talk about some incredible aspects of what Tony is doing with some of the certifications that he has. So let's get to that in a few moments.
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[email protected]. dot welcome back. We're here with Tony D'Angelo and we are hearing some incredible stories about his life's journey, and we only are able to cover a couple of them. But what I'm most excited about in some of the conversations I've had, what Tony and I really connected on is the idea of how we can recognize and be able to increase and truly understand our capabilities. We're always able to build on, add new skills, create capability where we didn't know it existed. But we have certain things that are innate within us that help us achieve that almost a little bit faster. Think of them as little shortcuts that were naturally built to do. And that's where Tony and I really started to connect and bond over things like the Colby a index created by Kathy Colby, a number of other incredible assessments that help us get an in depth understanding of who we are and how we show up in the world. So, Tony, walk us through a little bit about what, where these started to occur for you. How did you know? You're an avid student, you're a guy. You want to latch on to additional knowledge. You have a curious mind where these ideas of having a better understanding about who you are and you're part of operating in the world, where do they start to formalize for you?
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it goes all the way back to that early days when I started the educational business, in the fact that most students at the time, you're focused on your academic GPA, and yet you fail to find out and discover your real GPA, your real genius, your real passion and your real abilities. So I always had this in my mind, seeing this disconnect again. What I was seeing in the US higher ed space, there's 2800 campuses. They were all the same. Whether it was Harvard or Harrisburg area Community College, it didn't matter. Most students graduated with a degree, but not an education. And as Ben Franklin said, by the time they were 27, he said, most people die when they're 27, but they're not buried till they're 77. And so even back then, before millennials, before Gen Z, right, I was a Gen Xer, and I was seeing my peers do this, and I began to formulate and tune in. Now, fortunately, at that time, strengths finder was just coming out. It was happening in the higher ed space a little bit. When Clifton was still separate, it wasn't held by Gallup. It was just the Clifton strengths organization. It was done out of one of the universities in Iowa, I think in Iowa, but in the midwest. And so we began to understand this thing called strengths finder. Now discover your strengths. Marcus Buckingham that whole strengths movement was coming out now. It was constantly, consistently dampered by some of the political agendas that took place in higher education. At the same time that we stopped focusing on student success and we began to focus on all these political constructs that was not about helping students get what they want to need. So fortunately, again, while I was doing the work in the industry, I always made certain I stayed outside of the industry for my continued education. So I don't have anything but a B's, by the way. B's is what it stands for. B's. And don't go get a masters, because then they call that MS, which is just more right. And a PhD is that B's, that Ms piled higher and deeper. So be very careful of where you get your information from here in the 21st century, because one of the principles that you want to be conscious of is psychological warfare. And so, Richard, again, I applaud you. I thank you for bringing this content as an educational capitalist to this community. But one of the tools that you and I are exposed to that really help us uncover it. We didn't have this back in the day. We only have the SAT, right? And now we have things like the Colby profile, Clifton strengths finder. We have the printhead, the print survey. We have a tool that we use at collegiate empowerment called the core genius cultivator to really figure out where do I create value in the world? And if you want me to, I could take you through core genius so you can get a sense of that. But I'll pause there. What do you think, Richard?
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think that'd be great because, you know, our viewers, it's important because, you know, we have people who are watching this that maybe they've, they're in college now, and we have people who have kids that are in college or approaching that age. I think this would be important for them to understand what tools are available to them. And so let's dig in.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Well, I'll start with two premises. Number one, we don't see the world as it is. Rather, we see it as we are. And see you and I, viewers, you and I, listeners, you and I, Richard, we have very unique lens of how we view the world. And guess what? Your worldview is accurate and perfect for you.
So. And then Kathy Colby, that second correlated, she says this success is the freedom to be yourself. Now, if you go back to the early, early ancient Greeks when they talked about education, the most important type of education was to know thyself. So you really can't be successful, pardon me, in being yourself until you really know yourself. And that's where the Colby index, cor, genius print, the strengths finder, those are the four that I recommend for a child, for a parent. I'm the parent of a college student right now, of course, I didn't really give a crap. I mean, yes, I care what his GPA and his SATs are, but I absolutely want to know his Colby. I want to know his print, I want to know his top strengths, and I want to know his core genius, because that's where he's not getting his degree. That's where he's getting his education.
So an education comes from the latin educatore to draw out our children and ourselves will go to the classroom, get plenty of stuff dumped in. But what real transformational education is about, it's about drawing out, as you said at the very beginning of the show, Richard, of who you are, who you want to become, and what you want to give back to the world. So the word we use is, what is your core genius? So there's four words. I'm going to say them. And listeners, try this at home, please. And viewers, you do this at home. Richard, play along with me as well. I want you to pay attention to these four words, and you're going to be naturally attracted to two of the four words, and you're almost going to be repelled or maybe even repulsed by at least one of these words. And here they are. These words are leadership, relationship, creativity and management.
So, viewers, you're playing this at home, but, Richard, we're playing this here and now. What two words are you most attracted to when I say leadership? Relationship. Management. Creativity.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: The first two, leadership and relationship.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: Ah, okay, so what you're telling me, and by the way, we have a tool called the core genius profile, which you can do. This is pen and paper. It's not a digital assessment. It's old school. And what I hear you saying is the way you create value for humanity is by providing leadership. In other words, you provide clarity. You give people a sense of direction, and that's what you're doing with this show, right? You also have this unique gift of relationship as you give people confidence.
So if youre ever looking at where Richard does his best work, and viewers, you know this, im getting to know Richard. I know this. Hes able to give me the leadership, the clarity, and the confidence to actually move forward. The word confidence is a beautiful word. Its latin, Khan means with Fido. Fidelis means faith. So, Richard, you have the ability to get people to act with faith and move forward in this direction that you know is a very clear path for them. All right? So that's your core genius. What about those other two words? We call this your complementary genius. In other words, brother, this is where you suck at, maybe, and your life is too short to do the things you suck at. So what are you willing to say? That's not my cup of tea, Jeff.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Well, I mean, management would probably be the word I would happily toss out.
And management is valuable and important, but being the one to manage others has never been something of interest to me.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: And I think that, and it's actually large to a part why I connected with one of my business partners, Jason Lowe, because he has a gift at that, and he's good at growing and operating an organization. I'm really good at jumping into the meetings, providing some leadership, throwing out a lot of great creative ideas around what we might be able to do, how some systems we can build. But when it comes to actually running and managing the team, I want to be in and I want to be out. You know, let move me onto the next thing. Who's the next group that needs you?
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Want to lead the team, given the vision, but then the day to day. So if we speak and coach speak here, we make it up, make it real, make it reoccur. Once it's made up, you got to get the hell out of the room, brother. All right? And let now bring me to the.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Next meeting where I can figure out that problem and solve it.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Now, if you. This is where I'll go back to. We don't see the world as it is. We only see it as we are. And so I always, because I have high leadership. I'm leadership and creativity. Those are my top two. I always say somebody really high leadership is totally under. Overrated. Totally overrated. I will tell you, the people get the shit done in my organization. Joe Urbanski, he's our managing director. I mean, the man is a machine. He's been with me for 20 years. He's my guard. He's my guide rails. And by the way, his Colby's a high follow through. My wife is a nine in follow through. So part of what you want to do, listeners, yes, success is the freedom to be yourself. But true fulfillment and transformation is realizing that you are incomplete without other human beings around you. And, Richard, I heard your. When you shared your strengths with me, and I looked at your print, your two eight print, and this conscientious, service minded, like, just likable soul. I mean, I remember meeting you, really. We just hit it off right away. And right there, you can see it. You can feel it in your smile. By the way, Emerson said, he said, who you are shout so loudly. I do not hear a word you say. And so, listeners, as you watch Richard, you could see when he was going, talking about his real GPA, right?
Did a client ever ask you what your GPA was, Richard? What was your grade point average in high school?
[00:36:58] Speaker B: I used to tell people that I had a PhD, a public high school diploma.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Jeff. Beautiful. Beautiful. At least you didn't go for the pilot. Higher, deeper bullshit, everybody else. And yet, here's the truth. Constant learning and evolution. You're learning now more than you probably did at any other time in your life. That is that great. So here's the. You go back to the word. You start the segment. Capability. The 20th century, ladies and gentlemen, was about credentials. The 21st century is a pardon. The 20th century was about credentials. The 21st century is about capabilities.
And if you know that, that will make the difference in your life, because AI will kick your ass, I will tell you. But it can't do leadership, relationship, creativity. It can do a little management. So be careful and cautious there. But the management skill is then you have the AI. You have to manage the AI. So this comes back to leadership, relationship, creativity and management. That's at the cornerstone. Then you layer it upon your print of the two, eight and your Colby of this visionary, you know, eight in your quick start, and the three. You don't get bogged down in the details. Get to the chase, cut to the point. Right? Uh, it's just real magic. And then you layer that with your. With your strengths. So let me break it down and throw it back to you if you want to understand these. So, Colby looks at how you do stuff, like, how do you succeed and achieve in the world?
The strengths finder looks at what you do when you are doing your best. Self core geniuses. Where do you create value, leadership and relationship in Richard's case, and, I don't know, yours, viewers. And then the print looks at that. Why? Why do you do what it is you do? So, Richard, we look at your two of the print. Anybody's enneagram familiar? This would resonate a little bit, but print is a little bit more sophisticated than enneagram. The two needs to feel needed and appreciated. So it's going to be constant serving others. So my warning to your brother is, don't become a servaholic, all right? Because you know you will. You'll always give more to others. But then you have this superhero gene of this age of strong and self reliance.
Definitely a superhero energy in front of me today.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the triggers in the print scenario is when people that are working with me, I feel that people are being taken advantage of in some way. That's one of the biggest things that sets me off. And so it's interesting.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Well, listen, I don't know what the rating of the show is, so I won't say the words that I want to say, but the, the, your justice, that eight has this beautiful justice.
Um, and the two has this, like, do not be mean to people. Don't be a jerk. Right.
It's a really very protective, loving, caring, compassionate energy. It's really cool. Really cool.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Love it. Well, this is so much fun. We got to get some more of it into us. Join us again after these quick messages.
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[00:40:24] Speaker A: Now.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Welcome back. We are again here with Tony D'Angelo, and we've had an incredible conversation so far. Now, Tony, I want to hear a little bit more about some of the trends that you see happening in the future as 2024. At the time of this recording, we're thinking about a bigger, brighter future.
The entrepreneurs that are watching us right now, what advice can we give them about where they can seek a way to take hold of that bigger future and really start to craft it in a way that's going to support them as we go into some of the unknowns that are out in front of us.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Jeff? Yeah, yeah. So let's go ahead. Right now, if we look at life, we are at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. We've got 76 more years ahead of us. So I'm thinking from that lens. So that's the first thing I would think about. Out to 2100, and then break that down into 25 year frameworks. So let's just go to 2050 for now. But before you go forward, you got to go back. So go back to the last 25 years and pay attention to where your wins were. Right? Mine. So not only do the obstacles serve as the raw material of your future success, but the success of your past are your building blocks for your bigger future. And I believe, number one, most entrepreneurs undervalue their success. They undervalue, I will say this, their intellectual property, what has happened to them, and they don't see it as real value. If they do, you'll hear entrepreneurs say, oh, if life gives you lemons, make what? Lemonade. But wait, there's more. As Ron Popille would say, if you're going to be an intellectual capitalist in the 21st century, which again, I'm challenging listeners and viewers to see that, that you have a going back to the early beginning, a surplus understanding about something unique to you, something that is part of your real genius, your real passion and your real abilities. It didn't come from you. It came through you. Your ip doesn't come from you. It comes through you. It's divinely inspired. I know that sounds woo woo, but you basically, brother and sister, are like a big Wi Fi router, and you're pulling that all in. So you've had 25 years now, almost, of the 21st century, to pick that stuff up. Now it is your property. Now, don't take my word for it. Here in the US, it's in the constitution. Article one, section eight, clause eight says that you have the exclusive right to your useful ideas and inventions as an author or inventor, also as an entrepreneur. That's called, what we create now is the copyright and patent law. And so it's codified in the constitution. I just want to bring that up so I get very excited. So, yes, I'm not talking about the next 75 years. I'm actually going back to the first 250 years and saying that our founding fathers, both here in the US and Canada, basically anywhere in North America, you have that exclusive right to claim your ideas and utilize intellectual property law. For you to take that useful idea and convert it not just into property, but into a cash flowing asset. And that's the thing, I want you to start to pay attention to that. Okay? Yes, you're an entrepreneur, but more importantly, you're an intellectual capitalist. So I'll stop there. Kick it back with you. Richard, what do you think?
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Well, I think it's important to identify the word property, I think has connotations to people. And the bulk of society hears the word property and they picture a house. Like there's this idea of a physical thing that probably you live in, or a piece of land. So we've had an ability of like, connecting mentally or visually over time, this concept of property as being this physical element. So when we.
And it is, and like, we talk a lot in the work that we do around the infinite banking concept about property, but property in the law of contracts, insurance contracts specifically. And so you can create property in multiple different ways. And the intellectual property zone, sometimes it's more of an idea, it's maybe less tangible as people are often in their perception, able to see it. What would you share with someone who maybe doesnt have a full grasp of what intellectual property can be? Can you give us a couple of examples? Maybe some people that youve worked with? I mean, youve had a ton of incredible people on your podcast. What are some of the golden nuggets that you can pull out of that to give people some core examples of intellectual property?
[00:44:48] Speaker A: Trey, thats a great question. So first we are talking entrepreneurs. So were going to speak, were going to talk about assets, right? Intellectual property is the fifth asset class, right? So you have paper. Thats a major asset class. You have real estate, you have businesses, you have commodities, and then you have this fifth asset class called intellectual property. Now, dont take my word for it. Look at the S and P 500 today. If you look at the S and P 500 today, the valuation of the s and P 500 go back to when I was born, 1972, and youre going to see that the composition of the S and P 500 in the states, if you did the financial statements, you would see that on the balance sheet there would be an asset class. The majority of the assets were tangible assets. I'm thinking Bethlehem steel, factories, machinery, equipment, it's all tangible stuff. And only 10% of that was intellectual property. Goodwill, trademarks, copyrights, patents, that type of thing. Fast forward to 2020 and you will see that chart completely invert. Don't take my word for it. Go to visualcapitalist.com and you can find this IP valuation of the S and P 500. And you will see that it is now close to 90% intangible property. What does that mean? And only 10% of the physical tangible property. So the intangible property, there are eight types of intellectual property. The first and foremost, you had a guest before, Kerry Oberbunner. He has digital smart contracts based on blockchain. So this is the newest form of IP. And by the way, IP flows when the, when the technology and the times change, so does the IP. So the most newest type we have is blockchain based easy IP. It's super cost effective, it's friction free. Hence why easy IP now? By the way, any other type of IP you got to secure, you have to have specimens or to prove it. So it's just a smart thing to do. I want to care. I use Ezip to mark to protect some of my original ideas and thinking the next step is domains. Remember I told the story about the lawsuit? It was over domains. Domains are the property of the 21st century. So when the Internet was created the first domain was sold actually in 1986. Nobody knew how to buy a domain. It was a big corporation that bought it. All the big telecoms had domains. I bought my first domain in 1995. It was like a really big deal to do that back then. But domains are a $10. Think about it, it's like an option on a stock. It's like getting the option on a piece of real estate for $10. It's very specific. So domains then you have copyrights. Copyrights are the oldest. That goes back to 17 hundreds. Back in Europe you had because of the printing press, right? The technology changed so they had copyright protection. Jump ahead. After copyrights you have trademarks. Trademarks didn't come into effect until the 18 hundreds when we had mass distribution from the canals to the railroads both in the states and Canada. And there's types of trademarks, there's trade dress. So think of the Coca Cola bottle, think of the pomegranate palm bottle, think of the Nike swoosh, that type of thing. Those would be kind of trade designs. Then you have trade secrets. Think of Colonel Sanders, think of Coca Cola's secret formula. These are not published, they're hidden in a safe and only a few people know. And then you have patents. Patents are really powerful. They're like the nuclear bombs. If you're looking at these like weapons. That is the 7th type of IP. And the last type of IP is what we're doing right here. Now it's what I call, I call it educational capitalism because the most powerful element of warfare that it will be used for you and or against you is psychological warfare. And I will just say this to any entrepreneur out there, if you don't have an IP strategy for your business you will come into contact with an entrepreneur who has an IP strategy like I did when I got sued, okay? And I fortunately had an IP strategy so I could countersue and win. So you want to use intellectual property going back to the founding fathers. Yes, to protect your exclusive, right? But it also goes way back to biblical, into the book of Genesis where property was designed because God said to Abraham back in the. I won't get too biblical, but basically listen, trust in me, plant your seed here and have faith in me and your children's children. Children will inherit the earth, right? And so property law goes all the way back to Book of Genesis where the chapter after he's ready to kill his son and he doesn't. Well, later on in the story, his wife dies and he gets the first contract to own the cave and a little field that he could farm to make certain that he never left his wife's side as she was buried. So understand this is not just some abstract idea. Well, it is, it's intangible. But your thoughts are real. And think about this, like Google, think about that and you're like, oh, of course. But listen, in 2000, when that thing was coming public, nobody's like, what are you talking about? I don't know about that. It was all about yahoo. Who's Yahoo? But before that it was AOL. Now, then you've got these mega brands. It's carbonated sugar water, ladies and gentlemen. It's called Coca Cola, and it is quite a valuable brand. So I just went through a quick litany there, but don't underestimate the power of the IP.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: Don't underestimate the power of the IP. That's a profound statement. And I think you given a ton of examples in a very short timeframe about not only what IP consists of, but just how important that IP is. Touching back on the constitution, what we've identified is we're talking about the next 25 years, the next 75 years of the future. But in order to assess what that future could be, the possibilities that are out there, we have to do a look back over some past history, the history of the constitution, history of what happened the last 25 years. We can see from past both experiences negative and the wins positive, what worked well and what didn't work well, and then we could say, okay, what are the trends out into the distant future? So I think it's important to recognize time tense. Time tense matters a great deal. There's some people who we tend to maybe spend more time focused on the past and less time into the future. But if you surround yourself with someone who spends a lot of time in the future and maybe not enough in the past, you guys can create a good balance of one another. But things happen in the present. Action takes place in the now. The decisions that we make happen in the moment. So if you want to think about the future and what you want the future to look like, recognize, you can plan towards it, but you need to be able to maneuver through what happens, and that's when the present meets the reality of your decision making process. So if you can understand your own decision making process, the way the how that you go about doing things, we go back to the Colby a index, your instinctual way of doing something. You get clear on how that operates in your own life. You have the capability to make decisions in the present along the direction of a plan that you have going forward. You're using the past evidence to inform you, but you're looking forward to the future that you're hoping to achieve, the thing that you want to create so that you can build the life that you hope and you deserve. How does that sound for you? How does that gravitate for you?
[00:52:00] Speaker A: Jeff, first, a fantastic summary, and that really is the essence of it all, is that. But I find most entrepreneurs are living nine toes in the future and only one toe in the present. And what you want to be able to do is give yourself grace, compassion and patience and be here now, because that's the piece of the time that matters the most right now, listeners. Right now, viewers, what you're doing right now is the most important moment in your life. Right there. That moment. That's it. And when you can begin to do that and truly be present, you always have enough future, and you'll have plenty of past so that you can be here and now. And this has been a real pleasure to be here and now with you. I appreciate it, Richard, very much.
[00:52:42] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much for being with us, Tony, and for our listeners. Take a moment to consider what were some of your most important wins in the last 25 years. Mark them down, give yourself the presence of mind to celebrate, and we will see you back here next week on innovate and overcome.
