Full transcript: Mike Dolce on London Real
0:11 Brian Rose: You mentioned success. I wanted to ask you, before we finish off, a few of your success secrets, like the Mike Dolce stuff you’ve learned over the years. Is there any one thing that you do in your daily routine, in your morning routine, in your week, or a mindset change that really had a big step function increase in your success?
0:33 Mike Dolce: Yeah, from a business perspective, it’s pay cash for everything. We have zero debt. Never had debt. Every piece of property that I have, every vehicle that I own, every personal possession, 100% cash paid. We have zero debt, period, the end, none of it. That allows me to operate very freely. I’m beholden to no one. I can make any decision I want. I save everything, although I’m very generous with my money. The blessing that we’ve been able to create through financial income, I share it with a lot of people. I think that’s massive from a business perspective.
1:09 That’s one to any entrepreneur and business owner that I can speak to is cash. If you don’t have the cash for it, you don’t have the capacity.
1:19 Brian Rose: It kills all your options, doesn’t it? It makes you make stupid decisions like sign book deals to big time publishers and give up your rights and perpetuity, as opposed to making a ton of money. Very few people make money off books, but Mike Dolce does, and I’m glad.
1:38 Mike Dolce: When I turned down that book deal, I was driving a 1992 Buick Regal. This was in 2011. Just to keep it in perspective, that car I bought for $1,200 two years before I was still driving it. My wife was driving a 2005 Kia Spectra that had rolled down windows. The only option it had was air conditioning. We bought that for cash in those days. That’s the way we slowly built our brand. That’s one piece of it.
2:06 The outside of that side is goal setting. I set goals every day. Every single day, I set goals for myself. I have different systems in which I set these goals, which are very important. As you know, your goal setter that’s anyone who’s successful sets goals. Long term goals, medium term goals, short term goals, and then daily goals are really for me, they’re just action steps, which I use. Action steps are like the wrong on the ladder. The goal is getting to the top of the ladder. That’s the action step, the daily action steps. I wake up every day. I clear my mind. I set very firm action steps for myself. What will I accomplish today? Not so big that I can’t do it.
2:43 Small enough that I know I can and I will definitely attain those. What that does, it makes me proficient at doing what I say and about achieving and about accomplishing. Every single day, I’ve achieved these goals that I’ve set for myself. Tomorrow, I do it again. I’m reinforcing the fact that I can do anything I set my mind to. People miss that small little thing. I’m not curing cancer today, for sure.
3:03 Brian Rose: But you’re getting things done.
3:05 Mike Dolce: Getting things done every single day and we’re moving forward.
3:08 Brian Rose: You mentioned embracing failure. You said you look for it and you really look out for it every day. I’m guessing you’re a guy that if you haven’t failed in something, you’re really wondering if you’re pushing yourself hard enough.
3:21 Mike Dolce: You’re spot on. If I’m not failing, then I’m not pushing my boundaries. I’m not testing myself. I’m not challenging myself. I’m not contributing.
3:29 I’m not growing.
3:30 Brian Rose: Absolutely. There’s so many more things that we are capable of as humans that we were too scared of failure to even attempt. You might fail at 90% of the things you attempt, but the 10% of the things that you actually achieve are life-changing. Absolutely life-changing for yourself, for your family, for those around you, for your industry, for your community.
4:00 Mike Dolce: So many different concepts and ideas. People, they’re just so scared. I do these motivational talks. I do a lot of work with the military and they’re no different than anybody else. They’re just shift workers, essentially, with a boss that they’re sick of, not making enough money for what they got to do. They got the old lady yelling at them when they go home and they got bills to pay and all that stuff. They’re dealing with all the same stuff. When I speak with them, I always ask them, what are you going to do three years from now? Where do you want to be three years from now? And they’re all like, I don’t know. Three years from now, you’ll be worse off than you are right now. Unless you start challenging yourself, pushing yourself, getting outside of that envelope, waking up an hour earlier and writing your goals down and going for a run, preparing your day and doing all these things that are 100% within your ability to do that people don’t do because they become lazy, they become apathetic, they become so culturally softened that everybody else around them, two thirds of the population that’s overweight or obese or that will die of lifestyle-related illness or disease, two thirds of those, two out of three people are making the wrong decisions every day, dragging you into grabbing the pizza and having the beer and you deserve it. You work so hard and sitting in front of their TV, the average American watches like four or six hours of TV per day,
5:32 Adult, four hours of TV per day. Are you kidding me? You know what you can accomplish in those four hours? And those same people are the ones, their number one reason for not exercising 30 minutes a day is they don’t have the time. Don’t have the time.
5:42 Brian Rose: I’m sure you hear that all the time. Oh my God.
5:44 Mike Dolce: So I don’t know even what the question was, but I kind of spun around that a little bit.
5:47 Brian Rose: Yeah. When you think of the word successful, who comes to mind?
5:50 Mike Dolce: You know, I look at Richard Branson a lot for motivation because I see how passionate he is about changing the world and how successful he’s a billionaire. And he’s been successful in many aspects of life, but he’s failed in many aspects of life. And publicly he’s always happy. He’s always positive and he’s a human just like the rest of us. But I think what he’s added, he’s used his position and there’s other billionaires out there, some of which I know that don’t have his, his smile.
6:32 And that’s really what it’s about. You know, drive coming here, I actually sat on the train and I sat for the half hour. So between stations, I spoke with a homeless man that I didn’t really go out of my way to speak with him. I asked if it was the train to, I forget the station now, and he’s like, yeah, you know, this one. And he got up and he looked at the board and I was like, oh, thanks. We just started chatting and he came and he just sat down. And for the next ride, you know, next half hour, so we just had the most enjoyable, open, very free conversation. We spoke about politics, Donald Trump. We spoke about the queen. We spoke about Inuits, you know, we spoke about Japanese culture. And then he looked at me and we kind of came through this tunnel and the sun was bright and he said, Joy finds you everywhere, doesn’t it? I was like, this is like so profound. And this older guy is probably in his mid 70s or so. And if I shut my eyes, I would swear this was a high level CEO, lawyer, sophisticated, educated. But with my eyes open, his duct tape holding all the holes in his jacket together and his socks that have holes and dirty shoes that don’t match and his pants that have probably haven’t been taken off in months or so. And it’s actually, yeah. Now, maybe he says that to every guy he sees on the train. I don’t know. Or maybe it was the way that in which we were interacting. But that right now is still, you know, I probably after this interview when I have some quiet time,
8:10 I’ll be reflecting on that. And I think that’s true. No matter all the situations I’ve been through, I’m always, there’s always joy. There’s always happiness. I always find and try and be positive. But this guy does too, because he had the biggest smile on the plane, the train.
8:25 And he made me feel good about myself. And here’s this homeless guy that didn’t want a penny, didn’t want anything that kind of sees that sunshine and joy always finds you. I was blown away by that.
8:37 Brian Rose: Right. So a person’s success is kind of the way that they can maintain their own state over a long period of time. And when you look at Branson, you’re not seeing the billions or the corporate accomplishments or all this other. You’ve seen a guy that is just generally always in a good state. And it’s hard to fake that smile every day. I generally do feel like Branson’s in a good state most of the time. And from everyone I spoke to that have met him have said that. He’s happy. And you see all the good that he does for the world. He runs this multi-billion dollar industry. And you could say, well, there’s certain things that probably harm the environment while he’s working to save the environment. He’s probably laid people off, but he’s made people million. There’s all these things. But what he’s doing, I believe his intent is just to simply do good. And that makes him happy and it makes him smile.
9:34 Mike Dolce: And there’s a lot that I’ve tried to model about him. I’ve modeled myself, my behavior, my core culture within my business, the way I engage with my staff. Very similar to how I think he would or what I’ve read that he actually does and systems that he had implemented and really trying to kind of motivate and support the people around you really create. That’s why we pay the health care
9:58 For our staff. We don’t want them to worry about that and they have the best health care. That’s why we set up 401k programs. So we follow our principles so they can start investing immediately and they can retire. Now also as a business owner, I understand the tax implications that has positive implications that has for me as a business owner. It’s great that I have a 401k set up company match, a little bit more write off, happy, support, stable, very ingrained, loyal, team members. So there’s kind of using that business model. I’m running a business but the bigger my business is, the more people I can help just like a Richard Branson. I see the Dolce diet one day as being the most influential and respected health and fitness brand in the world. With that type of company, the amount of people that we will be able to reach is exponential. That’s what we’re trying to do. I already have enough money to be happy and to live. I’ve had investments. My family will be fine. We won’t be hungry. The electricity will always be on but maybe I can only help 10,000 people a year and at a higher level, I can help 10 million people a year but at a higher level, we can help 100 million or a billion people a year and that’s through things like we just started a non-profit organization called the CHU Foundation which is Children Eating Well is the acronym and it’s dedicated to childhood obesity and diabetes and really eradicating those disease and conditions
11:29 Through education and that’s completely funded by myself and by my family to put that information out there and start spreading the message and teaching parents kind of teaching into the families, teaching parents how to feed their family and why and what the ramifications are if they don’t and the school systems really getting the education out there and making it cost efficient for lower earning families to do so that they’re not giving their kids high fructose juice boxes and some enriched wheat crackers and they’re sending them off to school or giving them a little snack or a bunch of cane sugar that they’re dumping down their throat and then expecting them to sit in class with their hands folded and pay attention.
12:13 Brian Rose: Yeah, I’m really glad you’re doing that because it’s something that so needs to be addressed and if two out of three people are dying from reasons based on their choices, what about the children that are doing the same thing?
12:27 Mike Dolce: Childhood diabetes is the highest it’s ever been. Childhood obesity is the highest right now that it’s ever been. The most advanced civilization in the history of the world, known world, right now has the sickest children that we’ve ever had. Two out of three adults will die of lifestyle related illness. That number has increased exponentially of just about 15 last 10 to 20 years. It went from one out of two to now two out of three and in the next five years, 10 years, that number will
12:57 Increase again, the percentage will increase again. This is mind-blowing with the advances that we have in technology and medical science and pharmaceuticals to see how sick people are, which really shows you what’s truly happening. Pharmaceutical industry, the health and fitness industry, the medical industry has all made more money than they’ve ever had in the history of time yet the citizens, the population are actually dying of lifestyle related diseases at faster rates than they ever have. These don’t make sense. You can really see where the profit centers are and you can see the misinformation being pushed down by everybody else that says, GMOs are the same thing as earth-grown foods and processed foods are absolutely fine to eat.
13:45 There’s no problem with that and sure kids can have candy and soda at two, three, four, five years old. That’s not really a big deal. That’s all misinformation, disinformation and it’s apathy. So what we will do is we will help put the message out there and we’ll educate that the 25 to 45 year old parent, essentially that’s our main target, that have most of the kids, we’ll kind of target them first to push down as we slowly start to build our resources and our team to really get those messages out there. It’s exciting.
14:00 Brian Rose: Two things I don’t know she said there is that one of your local buddies in Las Vegas, Tony Shea of Zappos, says that a company brand is a lagging indicator of the company culture and if you really think about that it probably makes sense and so the way you treat your employees, the way you talk about your ethos and the why of the diet ends up permeating out to your customers and they feel that and it might take a year or two years but it happens and when you see big corporations lose their culture it’s a few years later and the brand is going to.
