Full transcript: Elliott Hulse on London Real
0:11 Brian Rose: When you think of the word successful, is there a person that comes to mind, even if it’s a person that’s dead or a person that’s alive, but you know that word, who would you associate that with?
0:27 Elliott Hulse: Nobody comes to mind.
0:28 Brian Rose: Would Osho or Jung be successful or is that a different word?
0:33 Elliott Hulse: Doesn’t. Nobody comes to mind. I think successful is so subjective. It’s like happy.
0:40 It’s one of these things where it happens when you decide it happens. Right? I mean, you’re successful when you say you’re successful. If where you are and what you have and what you do right now resonates deeply with you, then you’re successful. But you could have and be and do everything that the world has told you to do and be famous about it and still be deeply unsuccessful because you’re not moved at a visceral level.
1:08 You don’t feel it in your heart. So that’s why I can’t really visualize anybody because I would have to have a deep and profound conversation with that person and find out like, are you really at peace with yourself and everything you’ve created and are you happy? Like you can be a waitress at a restaurant and not have much material wealth to speak of and be really successful because you love what you do. You love serving the people that you see every day and you get joy out of serving them. That’s a successful person to me.
1:44 Brian Rose: Do you have a lot of clients that come to you that are kind of quote unquote successful? You know, they have the businesses and the money and then there’s something that feels missing. I’m guessing that’s a very typical person that comes to you.
2:00 Elliott Hulse: The people that I’ve attracted into my life that are quote unquote successful, they are successful. When I talk to them, I think I learned a lot from them.
2:10 The successful men that have made their ways into my life, especially like you mentioned at my gym, they taught me a lot. They taught me what I just said, I think, because they truly felt successful in themselves regardless of what they have. I mean, I’ve got a couple of guys that are really stupid and wealthy and you know that they’re happy. There goes that whole like, rich people are miserable. I think of one guy in particular, I’m like, nah, he’s happy and he likes his life and he’s smiling and he loves his family.
2:44 Brian Rose: I once heard that what you do, how you do one thing is how you’re going to do everything. You bring yourself to everything you do and if you’re going to be successful, you’re just going to be successful. You’re going to be successful at everything you do because there’s an attitude less than an achievement. How do you determine if you’re going to work with someone? Because you let them in your life a little bit, even if you’re going to train with them.
3:09 I was wondering if you ever train with them once and just see how they react. Hicks and Gracie is a famous Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor. It’s funny, when you first were talking today, I thought about what Hicks and Gracie says in the movie Choke. He’s this martial artist in the beginning. He’s like, people say I’m not scared. He’s like, I’m scared of everything.
3:26 I was thinking about what he said in the beginning, but his son says he will always roll with someone in jiu-jitsu and he said he’ll know so much more than he’ll ever know talking to the person for a month because you just get to know with what kind of person they are. Will they do this, will they do that, how do they feel, how does their body feel, all that stuff. Do you train with someone before you, do you get to know them that way or how do you choose who to allow in your gym and your life?
3:49 Elliott Hulse: Well, I don’t do that much coaching right now. I do one-off coaching, meaning I charge above and beyond what the going rate is, mainly because my time is really spoken for. So at this point, a lot of the clients that come in work with Chris and my other trainers who have taken on a lot of the attributes with regard to training and coaching that I taught Chris and so on and so forth. And I’m always pleased to come in the gym and see what an incredible job they’re doing and how happy our clients are.
4:26 I can’t charge enough for what you just described is worth for me to have happen. In fact, I don’t think it’s, I can put a monetary price on it, it has to just happen. So in other words, you’re saying like what kind of people do I develop relationships with? And that’s just one of those things like falling in love, you know. It’s going to happen with the right person at the right time and it just feels natural.
4:54 And I couldn’t charge for that, I wouldn’t want to. It’s love.
4:59 Brian Rose: Right, right. Okay, that makes sense. Does anything keep you awake at night these days?
5:05 Elliott Hulse: Anything keep me up at night? Yeah. Oh man, I don’t think it even keeps me up, but what scares me, and when I use that term scared, it’s not like I’m petrified, it’s like what am I concerned with? And it’s whether or not I’m doing a good enough job. You know, I talked about providing value before, and the marketplace decides the value based on what they’re willing to pay you for it, but I want to give over deliver.
5:33 And am I giving enough when I do give? Like I’m here this week and I’m going to do the talk on Sunday, it’s not really a talk, it’s a lot of what you just saw here.
5:43 Brian Rose: Good, I’ll be there, I bought a ticket.
5:45 Elliott Hulse: Yeah. I need to do a lot more of that.
5:47 And am I giving enough? And is what I’m giving valuable enough? And that’s really what it is. I think if something was going to keep me up at night, it’s am I providing enough value?
5:58 Brian Rose: Okay, you said the body is the mind.
6:00 My body is 44 years old now, and I’ve watched it over the last four years when I’ve been doing London Real, and it’s changing, and I’m trying, but it’s changing, and I’m making peace with it. But at the same time, the whole concept of strength training, in my opinion, is pushing the body to do the things that it would normally do. And how are you dealing with your aging process? And how do you make peace with the fact that that vehicle that affects your mind is changing, and I guess it’s breaking down, right?
6:31 Elliott Hulse: Well, breaking down is one way to put it.
6:33 Brian Rose: You’re 36, so it sounds like breaking down.
6:36 Elliott Hulse: Well, you’re right, it doesn’t function in the same way. It requires much more upkeep. I’ve got to be much more cognizant of the way I treat it.
6:44 I can’t abuse my body anymore. You mentioned before, like, going out and drinking and partying up late. I mean, if I want to perform at my best, the only way I can provide value is by being fully here. I have to be fully engaged in every moment. That’s how I know whether or not I’m doing a good job.
7:00 Am I fully present and engaged with what I’m doing? And I cannot be fully engaged and present if I’m tired, right? So if I, like, for example, we’re having this right now, and I judge how well this interview went based on how engaged I was and present I was, and I know that if I was up too late last night, especially with jet lag and whatnot, or if I decided to have a couple of drinks or whatnot, it wouldn’t work out right. It just wouldn’t happen the way it should happen.
7:26 So it’s just a matter of how do I have to pace myself on the level of exercise, nutrition, stress, and, you know, all the other activities, the energetic weight that is carried when you have a family, you know, like any other athlete would, am I treating my body the way it needs to be treated for game day? You know, every time I wake up, it’s game day, so I better be eating right. I better be exercising. My problem is over-exercising. I’m learning now how to actually back off, and it’s a little bit of a challenge, but what drains me and what really robs me of my life force and my ability to remain fully engaged and present with the people that I love and anything that I choose to do is are you burnt out from lifting way too much this week?
8:19 So, you know, I don’t not lift because my body’s breaking down. I not lift because I need to preserve. It’s just a different way of looking at it. I need to preserve my energy for full engagement in my life. Right, right.
8:32 Brian Rose: It’s almost like your body’s teaching you a new lesson in a way. I learn new things as I get older. I’m like, okay, you got to be a little more patient. You got to be a little more of this. You got to be a little more of that.
8:41 Value of your body a bit more than I used to. What’s a non-job? I had to ask you that before we finished up.
8:49 Elliott Hulse: Man, when I answer videos on YouTube, again, my objective is to provide as much value as possible, and I was getting a lot of questions from young men who got trapped in the idea, the dogma, the old story, that you got to graduate college. You got to go to college.
9:08 You got to graduate. You got to get a respectable job with a salary and health benefits if you’re going to be a respectable human being in society. And I transcended that because that wasn’t the story I wanted to play. I remember my uncle. Yeah.
9:25 Well, he walked around with a briefcase. He had a duffel bag, and he worked out of the back of his trunk and made hours whenever he wanted to and kind of freelanced. And so early on, I knew that I wasn’t going to have a salary and health insurance. I knew that I was going to be more like my uncle. So it was deeply embedded into my character that this is the way things were going to be.
9:45 And like I said before, I’m kind of psychic in that, well, that’s what happened. But looking back, it’s like that type of lifestyle choice transcends most of what we’re used to. That’s like maybe 5% of us can do that because it takes you out of the realm of perceived security. When you stay on the path, it’s because, well, you want to be secure. Well, I kind of ditched that idea that there is no security, and then I just transcended it.
10:19 And while I transcended it, building my business, I learned a lot of things along the way. So when I would get these questions, I could feel the pain in these kids’ hearts. And I was like, I made a video one day, and I said, you don’t have to do that. There’s actually another way. You don’t have to go get a job.
10:35 You can create a non-job. And when I said non-job, it’s not so much entrepreneurship in that you’re going to become a slave to your work. Are you going to do something that you love every single day? You could work for someone else and it’d be a non-job, but you can actually choose the kind of work you want to do. Just because your dad and your grandpa were lawyers, doesn’t mean you have to in order to have a successful life.
11:01 Brian Rose: What is your relationship with money? I think we all have a weird, dysfunctional relationship. That’s a great one, yeah. And I was just wondering what yours is. Even if you had one word that you would associate with money, because we’re all yin and yang in here.
11:17 We have businesses, but we have to be true to ourselves. I was wondering what yours is.
11:23 Elliott Hulse: Man, when you say yin and yang, that’s money. It’s put in, get out. It’s the natural rhythm.
11:29 It’s the systole diastole. It’s the way the world pulses. Economics is the pulse of the world because it’s trade. And how do human beings interact? We interact with trade.
11:39 We offer value in an exchange. You can offer value and have an exchange just through a hug. That’s an exchange. That’s trade, giving you some of my energy and love. You give me back some of your energy and love.
11:52 Trade on the economic level is merely that. How much value can I create and keep the channel open to receive the value back? I think that’s where a lot of people who want to create a lot of value, especially in this age where you can through the internet, also have hang ups for receiving love back. And I think it comes from our experience even with our parents. I give that love, but I don’t deserve, because love is conditional.
12:21 So we put up blocks against receiving the affluence that is due to us. And when I say put up the block, I don’t mean that there’s just one thing you’re going to move out of the way. I mean setting up your mindset such that you will engage in the activities and behavior that will allow you to receive. And I don’t think you deserve anything that you haven’t offered. And if you do get something back without putting something in, it’s going to catch up and bite you.
12:47 I mean, look at like Enron and whatnot.
12:49 Brian Rose: The evil rich people.
12:51 Elliott Hulse: Well, yeah, when you’re hurting other people and you’re hurting the planet, it’s going to catch up and hurt you and everyone else. I mean, that’s my only hang up with regard to money. If you’re doing it in a way that hurts another individual or anyone, or you’re destroying our planet, you’re in the wrong.
13:10 Brian Rose: Has your thoughts on your own business changed from say now to say exactly one year ago when you were slightly different? Is your approach to the acceleration necessary of your business, has that changed?
13:25 Elliott Hulse: No. Again, for me, money has always been more of a sanitation thing. Can I take care of myself and my family?
13:33 I’ve never been too extravagant with buying Lamborghinis and whatnot. It’s just, they don’t excite me. I’m not too excited about anything except getting other people excited about life. So, you know, I have a nice house for my family. I can send my kids to good schools.
13:50 We can buy really good food. We can go on nice vacations. So any other money that comes to me beyond that, I think Brian Tracy called it like a, what do you call it? I think a sanitation level.
14:02 Brian Rose: Okay, that’s one of your early audio tapes.
14:05 Elliott Hulse: I know that’s the wrong word, but it doesn’t matter. There’s a set level. Anything beyond that is just a matter of how much value I’m putting out. It’s just a scorecard at that point. Am I creating tremendous value?
14:18 Well, then the bank account will go up. If I keep providing the same value that I’m creating right now and not creating open up any other channels, I’ll still be okay because I can do the things that I want to do with my family.
14:29 Brian Rose: So it’s never been a scorecard thing for you? No. Yeah, it feels that way.
14:32 You have a new gym than you had a couple of years ago and like you said, you have the house, you have things you need settled and now you can really work on division or just communicating more and getting other people excited.
14:46 Elliott Hulse: Yeah, that’s really empowering, you know. The gift to me is seeing the transformation in the people that I serve. The gift to me are the stories about people who were really down and out and one thing I said in a video I made three years ago, dug them out of the ditch and now their life is great.
15:04 You know, that’s the blessing that I received.
