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As Published on Inman:

Failure isn't final. 'Sellebrity' agent Kofi Nartey offers hard-won wisdom for excelling with the world's most sophisticated clients after 22 years

by Kofi Nartey
February 20, 2025

Two decades in luxury real estate have given me a front-row seat to the evolution of the industry, the nuances of high-net-worth clientele, and the strategic pivots necessary to stay ahead.

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From working with top brokerages to building luxury and sports and entertainment divisions, and even marketing the Michael Jordan estate — an endeavor that was both an incredible opportunity and a lesson in failing forward — these experiences have shaped my career.

Here are 10 game-changing lessons I’ve learned along the way that may help you build or grow your luxury business and become what I call a “sellebrity agent”: Someone who sells celebrity and luxury homes.

1. Exclusivity drives demand

   Luxury is about perception as much as it is about quality. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is that creating an air of exclusivity around a property — and even around your own brand — can dramatically increase demand. When I first transitioned from selling condos to focusing on luxury homes, I even created separate branding through a separate website. The highest-level clients want what others can’t easily access, and your brand must convey this.

2. Branding is everything

   Having worked with multiple top brokerages and launching luxury and sports and entertainment divisions, I’ve seen firsthand the power of branding and brand perception. Whether you’re aligning with a major firm or creating your own unique identity, how you present yourself will determine the caliber of clients you attract.

   High-net-worth individuals don’t just buy homes; they buy into experiences, lifestyles and reputations, and your brand is a promise of what the experience of working with you will be. Do a brand audit and make sure it speaks to your target audience and communicates what you want your luxury brand promise to be.

3. The right brokerage or team can shape your trajectory

   Different brokerages offer different value propositions, from marketing resources to technological tools, from culture to specialty divisions that focus on your ideal clientele. Early in my career, I moved through various firms, each offering unique strengths, but I realized that I couldn’t let the brokerage alone define my success. It was about leveraging the brokerage’s tools while still building my own team and our brand. The right collaboration can lead to exponential growth, which is what I am experiencing now.

4. Failing to sell can be a win

   Marketing the Michael Jordan estate was an incredible experience. Despite global exposure and strategic pivots, I didn’t sell the property during my eleven months with the listing. But what I gained was invaluable: insights into pricing perception, ultra-luxury marketing strategies and a deeper understanding of what drives international billionaire buyers.

   Failure is only failure if you don’t extract lessons from it.

   One of my top 10 Kofi-isms was born out of this experience. It is an acronym for F.A.I.L: Find All Important Lessons — and this one taught me quite a few. Even Michael Jordan said, “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

   
    

5. Sports and entertainment experience is a superpower
   My background in sports and entertainment gave me a unique edge. Celebrities, athletes and entertainers operate on tight schedules, value discretion, demand excellence and expect white-glove service.

   Understanding these needs — and anticipating them — helped me stand out in a competitive industry. If you can master the art of concierge-level service, you’ll become indispensable to high-profile clients. There are luxury agents, and then there are “sellebrity” agents.

6. Mastering the art of storytelling sells homes

   Facts tell, but stories sell. High-net-worth clients don’t just want to know the square footage and amenities; they want to understand the legacy of a home, its design inspirations, and its unique narrative. When I market a luxury estate, I craft a story that speaks to the emotional side of the purchase. Luxury buyers buy with lifestyle in mind and choose the home that will best co-author the story of their lives.

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7. Negotiation is a fine art

   Luxury real estate negotiations are as much about psychology as they are about numbers. In high-stakes deals, emotions, egos and pride play a significant role. Knowing when to push, when to pause, and when to pivot is critical. Learning to read the room, control the pace and anticipate counteroffers has been a game-changer in my career that has allowed me to guide my clients — demanding and easy — to their desired outcomes.

8. Marketing must be omnichannel, yet bespoke

   Selling luxury homes requires an entirely different marketing playbook. Digital ads, high-end print publications, social media storytelling, private client events and targeted outreach all play a role. The mistake many agents make is relying too heavily on traditional listing platforms. Luxury buyers aren’t just scrolling MLS; they’re engaging with brands, publications, events and influencers that align with their lifestyle. The goal is to meet the buyers where they are while maintaining a personal touch.

9. Relationships matter more than transactions

   I’ve learned that in luxury real estate, long-term relationships far outweigh short-term gains. Many of my best deals have come from referrals, repeat clients and strategic partnerships. Some opportunities have come quickly, while others have taken years to develop. Being a trusted advisor who delivers inspirational results — rather than just a transactional salesperson who may or may not deliver — is what keeps you in the game for the long run.

10. Mindset is the ultimate game-changer

    Luxury real estate is a mental game. All my talks, trainings, conferences and coaching, now have a mindset component to them. I’ve found that confidence, resilience and an unwavering belief in your value are non-negotiable. We must feed ourselves positive inputs daily to hold this vision of the best version of ourselves. We deserve that, and our clients do too.

    There will be setbacks, lost deals, and tough clients, but maintaining a mindset of abundance and adaptability will determine whether you rise or fall in this business.

    The luxury real estate space is constantly evolving, but these lessons have been the bedrock of my success. For aspiring luxury agents, the road ahead requires commitment, strategy, and an unrelenting focus on client experience. If you can master these principles, you won’t just sell homes, you’ll build a brand, a reputation and a lasting legacy.

Kofi Nartey is the CEO of Globl RED and Executive Director of Real Luxury. He is also the author of “Sellebrity” and teaches a “Sellebrity Luxury Real Estate Course” available at www.MogulU.com.

As told to Jordan Pandy at Business Insider (read this article online here: https://www.businessinsider.com/celebrity-real-estate-agent-tried-to-sell-michael-jordan-mansion-2025-2)

Kofi Nartey tried selling Michael Jordan's estate in 2015. Courtesy of Kofi Nartey

• Kofi Nartey was the listing agent for Michael Jordan's Chicago mansion for 11 months in 2015.
• Nartey figured out ways to generate buzz that led to more showings, but didn't land Jordan a buyer.
• The mansion finally sold for $9.5 million in 2024 after 12 years on the market.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with real-estate agent Kofi Nartey, who was one of the listing agents for Michael Jordan's mansion in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The over-the-top home went on the market for $29 million in 2012 and finally sold for $9.5 million in 2024 with another broker. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

The Jordan estate had been on the market for about seven years prior to me coming on board.

I've represented a handful of famous clients, like Nick Young, Jason Kidd, Neve Campbell, Matt Kemp, and Kevin Durant.

The goal was to speak to the avatar of the potential buyer: Who would want the story that comes with owning a trophy property like that? The buyer of this property is going to walk away from the closing table, text his buddies, and say, "Dude, I just bought MJ's house."

Someone gets to tell that story, gets to leverage that story. It becomes not only a talking point, but a source of connections, a source of storytelling, a source of business opportunities, and more. Even if that's not your main purpose, it's an ancillary benefit that can't be ignored and that I wanted to promote.

Jordan put his own stamp on the mansion

A lot of the homes we deal with are one-of-one custom builds built specifically for the client. We use the typical "comp" analysis when we're running numbers to get a baseline, and then we adjust up or down based on different attributes of the property.

There was no way to capture the true value of Michael Jordan's estate based on comparable properties. The best houses in the neighborhood are maybe 10,000 square feet. This one is 56,000 square feet — there's no real comp for it.

Because he was such a huge public figure, he wanted to be able to enjoy himself in his own home without having to face paparazzi and hang out with his family.

You've earned the right to customize the hell out of the house, so make it your own and enjoy it.

Jordan had a 23 on the gate. The house has its own full-court gym, full training facilities, cigar lounges, and a swimming pool shaped like a basketball hoop. It has its own pond stocked with fish. It has a par-three golf hole. It has a whole hair salon for his wife.

The front gate outside Michael Jordan's former Chicago mansion. Scott Olson/Getty Images

You're doing yourself a disservice by trying to normalize those things. If anything, you have to lean into those differentiators — capture that story and tell it the right way.

I wanted to raise the house's profile in the hopes of landing a buyer

The call to get the listing wasn't surreal.

The call that was surreal was when Michael Jordan himself called me.

He called me to tell me a little bit more about the vision and answer a few questions I had to extract the story behind building such an amazing property.

It was not just selling another house, not just selling a bigger, better property in the neighborhood. The idea of selling a legendary estate, a trophy property, hadn't fully been embraced.

I wanted to begin repositioning the marketing strategy by changing the price. I picked numbers that added up to the number 23: $14,855,000. That became international news alone.

I offered prospective buyers a pair of each Jordan shoe that had come out in the buyer's size if they bought the home. That made international news.

Jordan launching a line of Air Jordans. Kelly Kline/Getty Images

The pricing strategy was more than fair. It was just a matter of capturing the right story to bring in the right buyer.

I would get calls directly from qualified buyers asking about it. I would also get a lot of silly and fun calls like, "Hey, can I play Michael one-on-one for the house?"

We have some markets and some properties that take two or three years to sell. It's not very common, but some do take more time.

I didn't get a chance to close the deal, but I think I could have

I only had the listing for 11 months in 2015.

I changed companies and the listing stayed with the old company — and then that company lost the listing.

I think given a little bit longer, we would've been able to get the deal done. Given the initial momentum and increase in visibility — the increase in excitement and showings — I think we would have been able to get more than $9.5 million.

At the end of the day, the number that it sells for is the number that everyone agrees to. That's what a buyer decided they were willing to pay, and what Michael Jordan was willing to sell it for.

But I also think that there are some things that can always be done differently to squeeze a bit more value out of a property like that.

Elevating your brand and providing stellar service to high-end clients, luxury expert Kofi Nartey writes, means becoming the hub of a trusted, supportive service ecosystem

Having played sports at the highest levels, I have come to appreciate the importance of having the right team.

Even in my 10-year professional acting career, I saw the efforts of everyone around me and how they contributed to a successful show or movie. This included the writers, producers, set designs, wardrobe, hair and make-up, grips, gaffers and more, who created the perfect environment for us actors to be in character and deliver the ultimate performance. 

With trusted professionals around you, you can do so much more and deliver a better experience to the end-user or audience in this case.

In luxury real estate, success isn’t just about securing the perfect property or closing high-value deals — it’s about offering an experience that extends far beyond the transaction. We are not simply real estate agents; we are the architects of our clients’ lifestyle.

This is where the concept of luxury real estate as a “team sport” comes into play. Success in this realm depends on our ability to surround ourselves with trusted vendors and ancillary service providers who help us deliver an elevated, bespoke experience to our discerning clientele.

In luxury, every interaction counts, and it’s often the smallest details that make the biggest impression. Having a trusted team of service providers is non-negotiable. These include not just contractors, stagers or interior designers but a network of premium vendors, such as exclusive car services, personal chefs, private yacht charters and even restaurant concierges who can secure a last-minute reservation at the most sought-after dining spots.

When a client needs a luxury vehicle to test the drive from their new home to the country club or wants the private chef for a dinner party that night, it’s your team that makes it happen seamlessly. The level of service we provide doesn’t stop at the property line — it can extend into their daily life.

Excellent service as a standard for all vendors

When we talk about luxury, we’re talking about excellence at every touchpoint. Our partners must embody the same high standards of service that we provide. Every interaction, whether it’s the car service picking them up from the airport or the high-end florist setting up their new home for a party, needs to reflect the same commitment to quality.

The vendors we trust are an extension of our brand, so they must consistently deliver excellence, discretion and professionalism. Remember, they are an extension of your brand.

Discretion and privacy are paramount

Our clients expect the utmost privacy. Whether it’s moving into a multi-million dollar estate or selling off a highly exclusive property, confidentiality is a given. The service providers we work with must understand this — no detail about their home or personal preferences should ever leak out.

Discretion is not just about security; it’s about maintaining the trust and peace of mind that comes with handling the needs of high-net-worth individuals.

Providing a concierge experience

What we provide goes beyond simple real estate services; it’s concierge-level service at every step. We are the “hub” of a finely-tuned network, not just a “spoke” in the wheel. Our clients come to us not only for property advice but for lifestyle recommendations, insider access, and the ability to make the impossible happen at a moment’s notice.

Need a private jet to tour properties across multiple cities? Done. Looking to remodel a penthouse suite before moving in? We’ve got the best designers on speed dial. This seamless ability to deliver everything clients need is what sets us apart in the luxury real estate market.

Staying connected: The hub of their world

The beauty of having this expansive network of trusted vendors is that it keeps us constantly connected to our clients. By being a reliable resource for every part of their luxury lifestyle, we ensure we are always their first call — not just when they need to buy or sell real estate, but when they need help with anything that requires high-level service.

Whether it’s organizing a bespoke vacation, arranging for a chauffeur, or simply offering advice on a new restaurant in town, our role is indispensable in their world.

This ongoing relationship makes it easier for us to stay in tune with their evolving needs, preferences and timing for their next real estate transaction. As a result, we don’t just sell homes — we become a part of their lives, building trust and loyalty that ensures we’ll be their go-to resource time and time again.

Need a private jet to tour properties across multiple cities? Done. Looking to remodel a penthouse suite before moving in? We’ve got the best designers on speed dial. This seamless ability to deliver everything clients need is what sets us apart in the luxury real estate market.

By Kofi Nartey, as published on Inman News

https://www.inman.com/2024/10/25/luxury-real-estate-is-a-team-sport/

By Kofi Nartey

High-end real estate authority Kofi Nartey offers tips from upscale brands like Louis Vuitton and the Ritz-Carlton on how luxury real estate agents can deliver exceptional client experiences

Luxury agents don’t just sell properties; we sell memorable experiences. In this segment of the market, the transaction extends far beyond the mere exchange of property. It is an experience, a carefully curated journey that reflects the sophistication, exclusivity and prestige associated with the homes themselves.

As luxury real estate agents, our role is not just to facilitate a purchase but to craft an experience that aligns with the expectations of our discerning clientele. The brand we represent is more than just a name; it is a promise — a guarantee of unparalleled service, discretion and exclusivity.

The luxury of exclusivity

Exclusivity is the cornerstone of any luxury brand, and in real estate, it holds particular significance. Consider the allure of brands like Hermès, where the rarity of the product enhances its desirability.

In a similar vein, the exclusivity of a luxury property is not merely about its price tag or location; it is about offering something that is not easily accessible. This could be a private listing, a unique architectural masterpiece or a home with a storied past.

When a client approaches us, they are not just seeking a property; they are seeking something that few others have access to. Our job is to maintain this air of exclusivity, ensuring that each client feels they are part of an elite circle.

This is why private viewings, invitation-only events and off-market listings are essential tools in our arsenal. They reinforce the idea that what we offer is not available to the masses—it is a privilege reserved for a select few. A privilege that also protects the privacy and security of our clientele.

Crafting the experience

Beyond exclusivity, the experience we provide is what truly sets us apart. Much like a luxury brand such as Ritz-Carlton promises not just a stay, but an unforgettable experience, we too must deliver beyond the ordinary. Every interaction, from the initial consultation to the final closing, should be imbued with a sense of luxury. This means personalized service, attention to detail and an understanding of the client’s unspoken needs.

For example, just as Louis Vuitton provides bespoke services to its most valued clients, we must tailor our approach to suit the individual preferences and lifestyles of our clients. Whether it’s organizing a private car and driver to view a property or arranging a private dinner with a renowned architect, these moments create a lasting impression. They are what transform a transaction into a relationship, and a client into a loyal advocate of our brand.

The promise of our brand

When clients choose to work with us, they are choosing a brand that stands for more than just luxury real estate. They are choosing a promise of excellence, discretion, and a level of service that is unrivaled. Our brand is a reflection of the experiences we create, and each client interaction is an opportunity to reinforce this promise.

As Karl Lagerfeld once said, “Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress.” It’s about the seamless blending of comfort and sophistication, familiarity and exclusivity. Our brand encapsulates this philosophy, ensuring that while our clients may be stepping into the world of luxury real estate, they feel at ease, understood, and valued.

Loyalty through experience

In the luxury market, customer loyalty is not just about repeat business — it is about advocacy. Clients who have experienced the highest level of service are not just likely to return; they are likely to recommend our services to their peers. This is where the true value of a luxury brand lies: in its ability to create not just satisfied customers, but loyal ambassadors.

Our commitment to exclusivity and experience is what builds this loyalty. By consistently delivering on our brand promise, we foster trust and create relationships that endure. This is the essence of luxury real estate — where every transaction is a testament to our dedication to excellence, and every client is a partner in the ongoing story of our brand.

As we continue to uphold these values, we not only enhance our brand’s reputation but also ensure that every client experience is nothing short of exceptional.

Kofi Nartey is the leading authority on celebrity and luxury real estate and the executive director of the Real Luxury Division and CEO of Globl RED, a private real estate and development firm. Follow him on LinkedIn.

Read the full article here if you have an Inman account: https://www.inman.com/2024/09/27/kofi-nartey-on-the-power-of-exclusivity-and-a-luxury-experience/

By Kofi Nartey

You are in for a treat today because Kofi Nartey is cooking a dish for you to make your brand last! Kofi provides tips for building, executing, and creating a lasting brand. Prepare a pen and paper because Kofi will share the key takeaways when you start to think about your brand. He also touches on the Marketing Five Cs and Mind Share. As Kofi mentioned, building your brand through storytelling will help reinforce your brand. So, don't miss this episode and get a taste of Kofi Nartey's insights on successfully building a lasting brand.

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Listen to the podcast here

Building, Executing, And Creating A Lasting Brand With Kofi Nartey

I hope you folks are enjoying the journey we are pouring into this and, hopefully, pouring into you. The feedback has been great. The Mogul Nation community's been great, and we're going to rock and roll. I'm coming to you guys to talk about brand. The brand has become almost more important than ever. Creating a lasting brand takes structure, plan, and execution. I want to touch on those things. There are a lot of conversations that have been had about brands in the past. I've given a lot of talks on brand. I've had a lot of questions about brand, so I wanted to do a fast and furious episode with you folks about how to create a lasting brand.

I'm going to break it down into the three categories, building it, executing it, and making it last. First, let's define brand. Brand, in a dictionary definition, is a name, term, design, symbol, logo, or any feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from other sellers. When you think about brand, you think about the brands that you even engage with. When we think about executing a brand or creating a brand, if done properly, it will do a lot of the work for you because more so than often, more so than not, people are engaging with your brand before they engage with you.

People engage with your brand before they engage with you. Share on X

Brand Is A Promise

I'm going to give you guys a lot of single-note takeaways. One of them is brand is a promise. It's a promise of what the experience of working with you is going to be. This is how I have defined brand over the years, a promise of what the experience of working with you is going to be. That brand that shows up ahead of you is that glimpse into that.

We touched on a little bit about both personal brands and company brands. A lot of us who are sales people, especially in the real estate industry that I'm in. It's a combination of the two. How are we marrying our own personal brand with the brand of the brokers that were a part of? Our value proposition is combined with the value proposition of the brand that we are a part of. First, let's talk about building a brand.

When you are starting to think about brand, there are a few key things that you need to have as filters, as reference points, and as an outline for how you're going to do it. The best way to do that is to ask yourself some key questions. Who are you servicing? What is the product or service that you're bringing to whom you are servicing? How do you do it better than others?

You think about how you differentiate your product. What makes your product more unique? What makes it improved, better, or beyond other existing products that are out there? You can also think about is it a new product. Is this a new service that's more innovative, better, unique, and something that's going to change the game for a specific industry that you are bringing to the market?

I did a whole episode on SWOT analysis versus what I call OTSW because you have to change the letters around. Go back and check out that episode. I won't spend a whole lot of time on SWOT analysis, but I'll give you a high-level overview of what we talked about there. When you're creating a brand, a SWOT analysis is a great approach to take.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Whenever you're exploring a new business venture or, a new idea, or a new service, you can do a SWOT analysis. I've always thought that it should be reversed to what I call OTSW because when we look at going into a new market, a new field, or industry, if we start with our strengths but there's no market for it, you're destined for failure.

That's why you have to reverse it. You have to look at the opportunities in the marketplace. Where is there a void? Where is there a problem that needs to be solved? You then hold up your strengths and say, “Here's why and how I have the best strengths, the best products, or the best service to satisfy that opportunity, to fill that void and ease that pain in the market.”

Look at the opportunity first, and then we look at our strengths that we have to fill that void, to create a product or service, or to highlight the high-level aspects of your product or service that best service that need that fill that void. We think about a few things as it relates to that creation of the brand. I call them the five Cs. You folks may have heard about this in marketing.

The five Cs are Clean, Concise, Clear, Consistent, and Constant. You want your brand to be clean. It can't be cluttered or messy. You want your messaging to be concise. You want it to be clear in terms of what the product is, what the service is, and who you are servicing. The constant piece is that you are putting your brand in front of people constantly. You are putting your brand in front of them on a regular basis. The consistency piece is that it's consistent across the different platforms.

Lasting Brand: Put your brand in front of people constantly.

If somebody engages on your brand on social media, on your website, or in your printed materials, it's consistent in the brand messaging, the logos, or the colors. I talked about SWOT analysis at the top. What we've transitioned to is what we call product market fit. Andresen came up with this concept of product market fit. How well is your product suited to fit a specific portion or part of the market? What we're talking about here with that consistency and constancy is what we call time on brand. This is another term that we're hearing more these days in marketing and in business. How much time are people spending on your brand?

Time On Brand Creates Mind Share

This is part of even as we get into the execution and making your brand last. You want to make sure people are spending time on brand because what time on brand does is it creates mindshare. I'm giving you guys a lot of these one-liners. Take notes. What is mindshare? Mindshare is when people think of a product or service, they think of you, or they think of your product or service. If I say hamburgers, what comes to mind? Maybe McDonald's, even if you don't eat them. Maybe In-and-Out, whatever it is, because those are very popular household brands.

When I say soda, you might think Coke or Pepsi because those are popular household brands. They have mindshare. When I say real estate, for my real estate professionals, are people thinking of you? When I say luxury and celebrity real estate, I'm hoping people think about it because that's where I've built my brand around in terms of mindshare.

Here is a few more things to dig into as you're building out your brand, a few more questions that you will be able to ask yourself to help build out those tenets of your brand. We won't have time to go through the whole exercise, but I'm taking people through this in workshops and sessions to help them build out their brand in real time. Here's one. How do you make people feel? If you can extract that, put it into your brand, and articulate that into your brand, your brand will start doing some of the work for you.

How do you benefit people by working with you? What's the benefit to your product or service? Why should they work with you over other people who can provide a similar, if not the same, product or service? What words do others use to describe you? This is one of my favorite ones because if you don't know, you should ask. Especially if you have a product or service that's been in operations or has existed for a while, it's a great exercise to reach out to some of your clients who will shoot straight with you or people who know you in your business and say, “What words come to mind when you think of me?” This is a great one.

The next one, what field or industry are you in or do you believe yourself to be in? This might seem pretty straightforward like, “I'm in real estate, sales, or marketing,” but we have to unpack that. I think about a lot of the platforms now, even the ecosystem and platform that my firm is a part of, the real broker. It's a tech-based platform. In one aspect, they're in real estate, but in another aspect, they're a technology company. It is truly a technology company because of the innovation on the back end and the AI tools that we're able to use. All the things that put our whole business in the palm of our hands on an app, that's technology.

You're in the technology business as well as the real estate business. You have to think, what industry are you in? What that does for you guys is it gives you a little bit of protection against blind spots. If you're not innovating within technology if that's part of your business, you can miss somebody who's coming in to take you out of that business. When we think about Kodak in the film industry, then things went digital, and now you have your phones. We don't even print photos anymore.

Technology took over something that was an actual hardbound product. Photos used to be printed out. You hold them in your hand, but now we keep everything in our phones. You have to think, what industry are you in? Sometimes it's not even just the product, but you're in a service industry. What is that service aspect of your product look like? Who's your target audience? You have to know who your target audience is, specifically who your target audience is.

The more defined your target audience, the more specific and detailed that avatar of a client is, the better off you're going to be in terms of reaching them and resonating with them. What do you do that makes you stand out from everybody else? We call this your USP or your Unique Selling Proposition. When you can articulate your unique value adds to your clients and what differentiates you from the competition, that's where you win.

Usually, if you're in an industry that's somewhat saturated or oversaturated, you have to do these exercises to extract the unique adjectives and unique details that describe you over everyone else. If you do the exercise, there are things that you can say about yourself that nobody else can say. That's when you start to win. When you identify those things, you can articulate those things and those things resonate with the clients that you're pursuing. They resonate with the customers that you're going after.

Not just things that you do, “I play the ukulele.” Whatever it is that you’re doing in your spare time, that's fine, but what are those things that describe you in your service that will resonate with clients? Your attention to detail, your follow-up, or your specific expertise in that industry, those are the things that, in combination, you should be able to put together a narrative that other people cannot put together.

Let's jump into some of the next things. You've built in your brand. You're extracting all of these details and adjectives to describe your brand. How do you push it out there? How do you execute it and make it last? In the execution of your brand, this is where your materials come into play. This is where your website, designs, and logos come into play.

You have to create a memorable visual identity. The goal when you execute your brand that people will engage with often before they engage with you is when they're walking down the street and they see your brand logo and your colors. In their peripheral vision, they start to recognize that as your brand. That's when you know you're doing a good job because it's been clear, concise, and consistent and there's constancy across all platforms. They're constantly seeing it.

You have to create a memorable visual identity. Share on X

All of these things will help you develop something that's not only memorable but maybe even visually appealing, especially if your brand has a story to it, being able to build that story into the narrative of your logos and brands. Our logo for Globl Red is for unlocking potential in people and in property. It's open on one side to receive information, tools, and gifts. There's a person or property in the middle, and then we open it up to share those gifts and that story with the world.

I love telling that story about our brand. The logo represents unlocking potential. You want to craft a very consistent message around your brand. Do you have 2 to 3 words that capture what you're doing, dedicated, discreet, and driven? I had those as my mantra around what I was building for years. Do you have a very consistent message? This can tie into or be extracted from your mission statement or your value statement.

We're not going to dive into that because we don't have a lot of time. Spend a little time developing your mission, vision, and values. That will help you create your consistent messaging that you're going to share with the world. You want to make sure that you're building both a strong online presence and, if you are interfacing in a specific geographic area, a community presence. An online presence, so your website and social media. Are you leveraging social media? Are you leveraging the different social media platforms in the right way? Have you created a website that's user-friendly and visually appealing, the user interface, something that is easy to navigate, people understand, and want to come back to that sticky? Meaning when they go to your website, is there information that keeps them there?

These are things you want to build into your online presence. Make sure you have a very good customer experience. This is another thing. When you have your brand and you get the opportunity to service somebody through your brand, make sure that the brand experience is built into the customer experience. When we talked about the messaging, is the messaging that you're putting out there built into the customer experience? Part of what we talk about with Globl Real Estate and Development is we want to deliver inspirational excellence. We do what we do for real estate transactions in a way that is excellent, and that excellence is ideally inspiring to people. It makes them want to work with us. It makes them feel better after working with us, but are you delivering that throughout your customer experience?

You want to build in storytelling. Here's another one, storytelling. What stories can you tell about your brand? What examples can you give through the form of stories that will help build and reinforce that brand identity? This is one of the keys to making your brand last because people will remember how they feel and remember the stories you tell them much more than they remember the self-promotion or brand promotion that you put out.

I always encourage our agents within our firm, and the agents within the real brokerage is then training with all of the agents. Build your value proposition into stories. It's one thing to say, “I'm great because I do this.” It's another thing to say, “I was able to help this client in this specific situation in this specific way to ultimately deliver on their desired outcome,” and give the example. Give the exact story. Tell those stories.

Adapt And Innovate

Next up, when it comes to making it last, you want to be able to adapt and innovate. I know we're talking about building a brand, which means you shouldn't be making changes to it right away, but if you're getting consistent feedback, if you want to stay ahead of the curve and ahead of innovation, you have to be willing to adapt and innovate. The adoption and the innovation come from another strategic piece, which is measuring and analyzing the effectiveness of your brand, the outreach and the receptivity of the brand, how people are receiving your brand, the feedback you're getting, and the social media engagement that you're getting based on different posts and messaging.

Even that brand experience, getting feedback from the clients. This will help you in that innovation and know what to tweak, change, stay ahead of, be better at, and improve on instead of recreating the wheel. This is the mistake a lot of people make, even Alex Hormozi. Check out his show. I had a chance to meet him at the RISE real estate conference, and he talked about this.

He talks about this loop that entrepreneurs get stuck on, where things get difficult then they jump ship and do something else. Instead of constantly jumping ship, we need to look at our brands, products, and services and improve them because, by that point, you've done 80% or 90% of the work. That 10% that seems like it's a failure, a challenge, or like, “This isn't working,” is 10% that you need to focus on, fix, and fight through because you've done 90% of the work.

I hope this last thing I said hits home because a lot of us entrepreneurs are guilty of this. It’s that Shiny Object syndrome. We pick up a shiny object. We love it, hold it, and squeeze it until it's slightly dull, then we look for another shiny object, but just know that if you haven't heard it before or haven't heard in this way, that shiny object, when you pick it up, engage with, and go on this journey with it, it's going to get dull before it gets shiny again.

There's a diamond in the middle of it, but that shiny part that attracted your attention is going to turn into coal. That coal is going to be squeezed down into that diamond that's in the middle. You have to stay true to the journey. You have to stay in the course. In terms of your clients, we want to make sure that we're investing in a long-term brand relationship with our clients. You want to prioritize building relationships with your clients.

When you have that brand, service, or product, that experience is going to start the relationship, and how the relationship starts is usually how it will continue. What are the aspects of your brand that are infused into that relationship and that experience? What are the keys or strategies to maintaining an ongoing relationship with your clients? It's much easier to retain clients and get referrals from those clients than it is usually to acquire new clients.

You want to build those relationships, and you want to have community engagement with this database of people, consumer, and client base that you've built. You want to stay engaged with them for the long run. What does that look like? How do you do it? How does your brand test them? Do you have a newsletter? Do you have a get-together? Do you send out holiday cards? Do you text them or reach out to them quarterly or monthly? What is that look like? What's that cadence?

Make sure that you keep those relationships and not just a sales relationship but a human relationship, which brings me to my last major point on how to build a brand that lasts. That's to evolve with purpose. If you don't have an underlying driver or purpose for what you're doing, you may get burnt out faster. You might lose that vision faster, and you may fizzle out because this is not something that you're truly passionate about.

If you can continue to evolve with purpose, why does it matter that you're doing what you're doing? Why is it important to you that people are working with you over other people? I always tell people I don't mind pushing for people to work with us because I know that they're going to be in better hands with us than they are with somebody else. If you care about people, you want what's best for them.

If you feel like your product or service is best for them, then you will push them to work with you because you know you're going to protect them better, service them better, and their ultimate outcome is going to be better. Take these notes as you're building out your brand. I know there's a lot more we can dive into, but I've given you a lot here in this quick jam session. Make sure that you spend the time upfront to build the infrastructure for it, capture the essence of the brand, to then execute it, and build it into the client experience.

If you don't put the infrastructure together, your brand will still develop, but it won't develop with your input or feedback. It won't. You have to make sure that you spend the time upfront to work on it to make sure that it has the infrastructure not only for scale but also for longevity. I talked about being passionate and even evolving with purpose. It doesn't have to be your lifelong passion to build a brand that's amazing that you can execute on, but it does have to be something that you can get up in the morning and feel driven to do for the next 5 years, 10 years, or maybe even 15 years before you do something new.

I'm an entrepreneur. I get it. When you've gotten to that point where you feel like you've maximized something that you've built or worked on, it's either time to iterate, grow, or do something else. Sometimes, we feel that way too soon or too early, which is not staying on your full mogul journey. It's jumping from a new journey to a new journey, and that's not what we want to do. We want to see things through. We want to focus and finish.

If this was helpful, you folks can find me on social media @Kofi_Sellebrity. You can visit FullMogul.com, listen to other podcasts, or on Spotify and Apple. Share this with somebody. Let's take some time to work on those brands. If you already have a great brand, use some of those questions to improve your brand. Join us if you're not already with us. If you already are, stay with us on this full mogul journey.

Important Links

• SWOT vs. OTSW – Previous Episode
• @Kofi_Sellebrity – Instagram
• @Kofi_Sellebrity – TikTok
• Apple Podcasts – Full Mogul Podcast

Your vision isn't just a dream; it's the blueprint of the life you're crafting. Nurture it, protect it, and align every action with its design. In this episode, Mimi Nartey joins us to talk about crafting and sustaining a powerful vision for your life. She helps us understand how to bring our dreams to life, from the beginning to our daily actions. Mimi dissects the essence of creating a vision that's not just a fleeting idea but a compelling force that propels you forward. She shares how our life experiences, both tangible and emotional, intertwine to shape the canvas of our envisioned future. But it doesn't stop at visualization – holding onto that vision requires intentionality and dedication. Mimi talks about the significance of nurturing your dream, feeding it with knowledge and mentorship, and aligning your environment to reflect the future you're striving to achieve. Tune in now and start holding a vision for your life!

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Listen to the podcast here

Creating And Holding A Vision For Your Life With Mimi Nartey

I have a big topic, but we’re going to try to keep it concise, fun, and light. I said we because guess who is back? It’s my wife, Dr. Mimi Nartey.

Thanks for having me again.

We are talking about creating a vision for your life. There’s no better person for me to do this with than the person I’m creating a life with, and that’s my wife. We wanted to break this down into a few categories for you. Do you want to give them the category we’re thinking about?

As we were sketching this out, we were talking about why we wanted to talk about this and what we wanted to talk about. Creating a vision for your life is important because you need to have a vision for your life to feel a sense of purpose, have some passion, make an impact, and have some enjoyment in your life. There are two parts to this. There’s creating the vision and holding the vision. Once it’s created, you need to hold it. What does it look like? What does it entail to develop this picture of what you want? Once you have some ideas of the pictures that you want to create or manifest, how do you hold fast to that vision for your life while you’re in the process of achieving it?

As we always do, we have our general ideas and concepts. We never compare notes until we get here in the booth.

We’ll see how it all reconciles.

This is a critical topic because, in challenging economic times and challenging times in life and business, it’s more important than ever to be able to create an actual vision or hold the vision that you’ve already had for yourself. Why don’t we start with that first concept of creating the vision? Jump right in.

As I was reflecting on this idea of creating a vision for your life, I realized that creating that vision either starts with a push or a pull. There’s something that you want to leave behind or a new reality that you’re inspired towards. I was thinking about this. When there’s something that you want to leave behind, you don’t necessarily have a clear idea of what could be next. You know you don’t want this anymore.

That is true because that push is usually away from pain, discomfort, and people who are causing pain and discomfort or a job. You’re right. It’s more about you feeling the fire, burn, pain, and disappointment. You know that something else is better than this.

Something has to be better than this. This is often the case if you’re part of the first generation of instituting something new in your family lineage. You could be creating a family business. You want to be the first generation to have a healthy marriage or constructive parenting. You want to break negative cycles that existed before in your family. You might want to be the first millionaire in your family. These are away from experiences that you have found as pain points before towards something else, but it’s a little bit obscure of what that something else is completely.

You may have grown up where there was a lot of negative energy or fighting in your household in the marriage. You’re like, “I want my marriage to be different than that, but I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know how to get there, but I want to start thinking about a different vision from what I’ve experienced.”

That’s heavy and deep. We hear people talk about breaking generational curses. Sometimes, it boils down to, “I am going to be the one to change the legacy of my family from this point moving forward.”

Both of our fathers are immigrants from West Africa. They came here in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I sometimes marvel at what dreams they were able to hold coming from one part of the world in such a difficult set of circumstances, relatively speaking, and how they were able to decide that they were going to leave that behind and create a new future for an entire lineage in a place that they had never even seen before. It’s a different context.

Creating a vision for your life can start with that push away from something that has been a part of your family before part of your family lineage. You’re saying, “I want to break that intergenerational curse.” The other piece is the pull. You could be inspired towards a reality that you have been exposed to in real life or through divine communication with God.

It ties into a couple of notes that I had. One of my notes was one of my Kofi-isms. One of my Kofi-ism is we have a responsibility during our lifetime to realize all of our God-given gifts and share them with the world. That is a pull. For me, it’s one of my strongest pulls. It’s knowing that I have the potential to do certain things and share those gifts with the world. It motivates me on a daily basis. It motivates me to motivate others to help realize their potential.

When you talk about divine gifts, it reminds me of the religious concept of SHAPE. We hear it in church. I’ve heard it from other religious leaders of other faiths around your SHAPE. The SHAPE is an acronym for your Spiritual Gifts, Heart’s Passion, Abilities, Personality, and Experience. You’re guided by this SHAPE towards what your potential is and what you want to leave and share with the world.

Even as we’re starting off and we’re talking about creating this vision and it’s going to be initiated by this push for this pull, it’s important because as you’re going to move towards holding your vision later, and that’s something that we’re going to talk about in the second half of this. If you are motivated by the push, it’s important that you focus on feeding your vision. If you’re motivated by the pull, it’s important that you focus on protecting your vision.

I’m going to go ahead and explain this for one second because if you are being pushed, you know that your current circumstances are not what you want for your future, but you may not know what that future vision is. That requires research and exposure. If you are being pulled because you are inspired by some other reality or divine communication with God or the universe and if you’re internally inspired, you have to protect that because other people may not understand the call that’s on your life. Those are the two different juxtapositions, but that’s getting into the holding. I wanted to explain how it’s going to relate to what we’re talking about later. First, it’s creating this vision and thinking about how you start to visualize and how you start to apply structure to your vision.

As you’re visualizing, there are two components to what you’re visualizing. You’re visualizing your life and how you experience your life. I was thinking about it. To break that down a little bit further, your life and the tangible aspects of your life are things like where you live, the car you drive, the food you eat, the places you frequently visit, how you travel, and how you experience life.

What is your experience in the place where you live? What is your experience with your friends? What is your experience when you travel? What is your experience when you go out for fine dining? There are a couple of different aspects that are important to get detailed with in terms of what you’re visualizing for your outcomes. It’s because when we start to transition into holding the vision, the vision has to be specific for us to be able to hold it, be pulled towards it, and be inspired by it.

This is powerful because I do think that many people start to think, “I would like this and that.” They don’t necessarily spend enough time on the emotional piece, which is what I’m hearing you say. How will I feel when I have that thing? That is the important hack to manifesting the thing that you want.  When it comes to visualization, after you have that initial inspiration, you want to be intentional with how you’re visualizing what it is that you want. Imagination takes intention and practice. People don’t respect that creativity, imagination, and visualization. It takes time. You have to honor that it is a process that needs intention and practice. Journaling, meditation, prayer, talking out loud, and running simulations for yourself are ways that you can start to get more clarity and specificity in your vision.

When it comes to visualization, after you have that initial inspiration, you want to be intentional. Share on X

You’re hitting on some critical things because you think about this idea of your big why. People talk about it all the time. Simon Sinek made it popular. You have to be able to sit still and think about what it is that you want. Sit still and analyze that process of curating this life and this vision of this life and how you want to live it. It does take daily visualization, a vision board, and prompting with certain cues, experiences, and tools to help you think beyond what you can see at the moment.

There’s so much to be said about creating that space and that time for that visualization. Do you realize that it’s possible to build certain skills simply through the process of visualization? I was sharing this with some of the girls that I coach on my soccer team. You could spend time every night working through some technical things in your imagination that would create the connections in your brain synapses that would help you build the skills. That is huge. If you think about that, there’s so much to be said for this process of visualizing, imagining how much time you could invest into those things, and how that could be translated into major differences and improvements in skillsets in your life.

You’re saying, and I believe it because I’ve seen it, that you can program your brain to do things or better prepare you to do things without even doing them. It’s through mindset work visualization of what it is and the different aspects of doing those things.

That’s what I’m saying. This is such powerful insight, in my own opinion. I don’t play basketball. I want to go and learn some skills in basketball and how to make a shot. I could go and practice, but in my imagination, my practice could even be better than my actual practice. Physically, it could be.

The brain doesn’t know any different. This is where we have to lean into programming our brain and what we feed our brain. The brain doesn’t know if you’re joking, telling the truth, or lying. The brain will put together those synopses to put that action in place and make it an actionable thing.

This is why you have to be protective of what you feed yourself, what you say, and what you do because your brain is like a sponge. They always say that amongst children. You are absorbing all of these things. Your subconscious mind does not know the difference. You have to be careful. I’m passionate about what we tell children and what we instill in them because you have to be thoughtful and intentional about what you share with them.

Because of this reality, your subconscious mind does not know the difference between truth, what’s fact, or what’s fiction. Whatever information you overlay on your mind is what gets absorbed. We can use this to our tremendous advantage in a metaphysical sense, or we can see this as a point source for our challenges.

I love the time that we spent on creating the visualization, the structuring of it, your push, your pull, and the shape. Is there anything else on the creation piece before we transition to holding the vision?

As far as structuring your vision, because that’s an important thing too, there are two pieces to structuring it. There are some highly disciplined components to structuring your vision. It’s something that needs to be organized and intentional. There’s also some highly creative component to your vision. Once you have this idea for your life, it’s like, “I want to have this business.” In terms of the highly disciplined component, you are going to have to work diligently on the steps to achieve that goal. There’s another component that’s more creative, where you’re going to have to think through the unique application of your skills and shape that are going to create your signature style that is going to unlock the best parts of your vision.

What I’m hearing in there is you have to be able to tap into your gifts, talents, shape, and divine inspiration that will help you execute this vision or lay out even the vision.

That will help your vision grow, expand, and get more specific and attainable. The thing that is interesting is the more specific your vision is to you, interestingly, that’s how it becomes more achievable and attainable.

I have a question on that. I want to get philosophical here for a second. I don’t think we have it in our notes so we’ll see where this goes. How much of the vision do you think needs to be dialed in before you can commit to it? Sometimes, we limit our visions based on what we can see in front of us and what we know is possible versus I have these exponential goals that I don’t even know are possible, but that’s the actual vision that I want to hold. How much of it has to be set and laid out before we can say, “I know this is a ten-step vision. I see steps 1 through 7. With the last three, I’m going to go for it?”

I think that last bit about going for it is exactly it because I didn’t have notes on that specifically. What I did have a little note here was on what makes it hard to create a vision. What makes it hard? What are the barriers we’re facing? One of them is complacency or lack of ambition. That makes it hard to create a vision. Usually, your network is the problem. If you are feeling complacent and you can’t seem to find a motivation for something bigger, that means that the environment around you is not stimulating you enough. The people you’re talking to aren’t full of different kinds of ideas to break you out of the stagnant pattern that you’re in.

If you are feeling complacent, and you can't seem to find a motivation for something bigger, that means that the surrounding environment is not stimulating you enough. Share on X

You’re right because the people who are in your circle, like your five closest friends, as they always say, the things that they talk about and they’re fighting for, working towards, trying to aspire to, or income goals become yours. It rubs off on you. It influences you and impacts you on a daily basis, even as it relates to this visualization process.

The other two things that make it hard to create a vision are low self-esteem and low self-efficacy. It’s not feeling like you can do it. That’s some self-internal work that you have to do. Finally, to your previous point, your dream or your vision isn’t quite big enough. That makes it hard to create a vision and much harder to even sustain that vision. If your vision isn’t big enough or the scope of what you’re thinking about isn’t big enough, it’s going to be hard.

Sometimes, it’s better and even easier to think bigger. I was listening to both Sharran Srivatsaa, our good friend and the President of Real, and also  Alex Hormozi. He had a podcast where he touched on this and this whole idea of, “I want to double my income. I want to do twice as much as I’m doing.” Usually, that thought process evokes the idea of working twice as hard versus saying, “I want to 100X what I’m doing.” It means that you’re going to have to rethink your whole infrastructure, game plan, and model in a way that’s going to make you more creative and resourceful than ever.

That’s where your motivation and creativity are going to be kicked up into high gear and where you’re probably going to focus on what aspects of this vision are amplified by your specific shape.

We’ve touched on creating the vision, why you created it, how you created it, and your SHAPE. Let’s talk about once you have the vision, how do you hold the vision? How do you protect the vision? How do you feed the vision? What’s next in the process?

Feeding your vision is important, especially if there’s something that you know you’re trying to leave behind or eliminate. It could be a weight loss goal. It’s like, “I have never been in shape. I want to be fit. I don’t know completely what I’m going to look like, what that’s going to feel like, and how I’m going to get there, but it requires research and exposure.” The outcome may not be clear or the pathway may be a black box. In order to feed your vision, you need to soak yourself in information about that and find good mentorship.

If you can find someone who has been along the same or similar path to help guide you. I know that whenever I’ve been in a process that seemed to me to be a black box, I turn to a trusted mentor to ask, “I’m at this point. I want to be at that point. You are at that point. Tell me, what was your process like? Even though I know it may not be the same, at least it’s starting to give me some clues about the direction that I need to go.”

We have to be even more abstract when we think about mentorship. I have been in real estate for many years. When I started, I didn’t have mentors and access directly to mentors. My mentors became books and Google. I had to research these things. Now you have everything from autobiographies to biographies to books on tape, to podcasts, all this access to information from people who’ve done what you want to do, who are living the way you want to live, who are now open to, willing, and sharing their process on how they got there.

Even if you don’t have direct access to somebody, you have access to people’s journeys and their information. This is why that feeding part of it can come through direct access and actual conversations with people. It can come through podcasts. I love reading books, but I also think it’s more important to reread books. You own the information and hold that vision board that you’ve created. All of these things will help you feed that vision.

The next thing in relationship to that is integrating more in your life that aligns with that ultimate vision. That includes people, things, and experiences. You need to integrate more into your life that is lining up with that final outcome.

I didn’t know you had that in your notes, but I will attest to you guys. She is living this truth, even in our household. She’s constantly upgrading and changing. She’s changing this mirror, bureau, dining table, and chairs. If I disappear, you know what happened. She changed me one day. It’s always realigning with the next version and a big vision of ourselves. It does fuel your mind. It feeds and fuels that vision. It helps you hold the vision.

One of the barriers is often low self-esteem or low self-efficacy. The idea that you don’t believe in your own heart and mind that you belong at that next yourself. The more that you can do to line yourself up with that in your lived experiences, the more you will convince your own subconscious mind that is who you truly are. You will start to make more decisions and exercise more actions in alignment with that final outcome.

Exercise more actions in alignment with that final outcome. I had to say it twice for the people in the back and the people in the front. When we look at the examples that are out there and we look at where people have arrived, people want to mimic where they’ve arrived, but they don’t want to mimic the actions that that person took to get there.

We talk about adjectives and nouns. You can feed your environment with nouns that’ll help you visualize. You can also feed your adjectives. You look at the adjectives that it’s taken somebody else to get their perseverance, hard work, attention to detail, and professionalism. You can emulate the adjectives that it takes. That becomes your hard wiring. This takes us back to what you said about the brain. The brain doesn’t know any better. If you start programming the brain with those adjectives, that’s who you now are.

The word programming is important. All of this whole idea of creating a vision and leveling is about reprogramming. It’s reprogramming your mind to reprogram your life. The final thing I have for feeding your vision is to document your advancement. That’s an important part of the process because, as you start to see yourself make progress, you will become more of a believer in yourself.

On top of that, and these are your techniques, revisit the documentation. We talk about how we document things and sometimes forget that we’ve done them. It’s important to go back and say, “I did that. I accomplished that. I persevere through this to get to that.” It’s good to remind yourself of your adjectives.

Commend yourself. It’s an issue of faith. It feeds your faith and what’s possible beyond where you are because you can look at how far you’ve come. There’s that beautiful old church thing that’s like, “I’m not where I want to be, but I’m sure glad I’m not where I used to be.” That’s the idea of continuing to document your progress and look back with a grateful heart on how far you’ve come.

Documenting your progress feeds your faith and what's possible beyond where you are because you can look at how far you've come. Share on X

Another great way to help hold your vision is to define the right accountability partners for the different aspects of your vision. We talk about the full mogul journey. The full mogul journey is the highest and best version of yourself across all aspects of yourself. When we look at those different aspects, those are different buckets of your life. The different buckets of your life might require slightly different visions.

Your overall vision is your whole life, but you might have a vision for fitness, work, as a spouse, or a parent. I look at my own life. I have my little brother, Lamine. We text each other when we work out. I’ve got a good buddy, Joe. He’s a wrestling coach. We text each other when we work out. I’m like, “I got a good one this week.” He’ll text me, “I got two in this week.” I’ve got Bill Pipes and Sharran Srivatsaa, my business coaches. They help me with my business accountability. I have you, who’s my overall accountability partner. It’s important to find those people who can help you hold the vision for the specific things that you’re working on.

That relates a little bit to the protecting your vision piece. As we’re talking about, there’s feeding your vision, especially when you’re trying to leave something behind. That’s important. As you’re being pulled towards something, it’s great to have coaches and mentors, but on the protecting your vision part, sometimes you may have that inspiration. There’s something that has been put on your heart that you know it’s for you to do. It’s a conversation between you and God.

If I could take a moment to digress, there’s a statue that was being carved by Michelangelo. It was never completed. What I think is interesting and powerful is it wasn’t completed before he died. It was never completed after because, as I was telling our children in our European art history homeschool class, the vision was between the creator and the subject. There’s no one else who can execute the vision that the creator held for them.

This is why protecting your own vision, especially when it comes from that divine inspiration, that still quiet voice inside you, you are the main keeper of that specific message on what your purpose is and who you can be. Nobody else knows fully. You know what that call is on your life except you. You have to find, if possible, a trusted friend or partner that you can share that dream with.

On the flip side, keep it private from those who can’t understand because there’s also that quote, “A prophet is never respected in their own hometown.” When you have that call in your life that may be bigger than what has ever been seen in generations of your family before and what people generally do in the hometown that you come from, you may have to protect that vision until you get to a certain place of stability with it.

You hit on many important things. We can’t announce and share everything. We can’t create vulnerability for things that are forming. I refer to it as even a castle building. That’s why castles have a moat around them. It’s to protect them. While they continue to build the castle, the cement has to dry before it gets introduced to the world.

You are building on something that was inspired within you, but it’s a seedling when it starts. It’s the mustard seed. We know what can happen with the faith in the mustard seed. If you are able to protect that and protect it from the haters, I’m going to use the word haters because if you haven’t read it, read our episode on haters. We’ve got a whole episode on haters and when you have to protect yourself from the haters, but this is one of those things to think about as it relates to protecting your vision.

With that special call in your life, honor it and understand that it’s not for everybody. When you find the right people, person, or mastermind group, you can share that with them. They will be encouraging. They will be supportive of you right away. They’ll have good insights to help refine and hone the direction you can go to manifest that vision.

We talked about the people that you surround yourself with. If you are surrounded and have outgrown the people that you’ve surrounded yourself with, they become those crabs in a barrel who want to pull you back to where they’re comfortable seeing you, not to release you to be this new person that you’ve evolved into. Sometimes, it’s time to jump barrels, jump ship, find a new tribe, and find a new group that aligns with this new version of yourself, this new vision for yourself, and the outcomes that you desire that they are already living and experiencing or can give you access to.

In this protecting your vision conversation, you also have to swiftly and gradually eliminate things that don’t align with the ultimate vision. That is also a challenge because sometimes, there are things that are obvious. There are things that are less obvious as you make a lot of progress. You don’t realize, “This is something that seemed benign, but it’s holding me back in some way.”

This is a funny story. I had a professional coaching call with a client before. The most random thing is she was asking whether or not she should continue shopping at the Dollar Tree. This is a woman who’s successful. As we talked, what I told her was that she may need to take a break, not because there’s anything wrong with the Dollar Tree. If you need to get some tape or staples, there is no problem, but it was what it meant psychologically to her because she was connecting it to her past and growing up in challenging circumstances. That was the only place her family could afford to shop.

There was this baggage and this negative psychological hold on her that was connected to this place. Until your mindset is over the hump and you feel confident and fully aligned with the next version of yourself, you may have to eliminate this for a while. It’s a funny little random example. Hopefully, it’s a metaphor that people can leverage into other aspects of their lives.

I’m loving this content. It’s setting a new bar for yourself. When you set a new bar, you have to leave certain things behind. In leaving certain things behind and in making certain declarations, you’re holding the bar to keep that vision of yourself that is above and beyond the bar. You can’t digress. The other thing that it does for you is it creates discipline in the new shoes, steps, and walk of this new journey that you’re on. It requires discipline to get to your vision. Part of the discipline requires letting go of certain things and saying no to certain things. That is the hardest thing to do.

It’s in those small actions that your identity lies. That’s where your identity is. If you are trying to transform your identity, it’s not necessarily going to be in big, sweeping things. It’s going to be in the nuances of the decisions that you make. If you decide that you’re going to go here or there for lunch, those kinds of small choices are the ones that line up with your identity. It’s funny because I know you talk about this a lot with acting and the choices that the character would make. It’s like thinking through what choices this character would make if that character is the next or the highest and best version of myself.

Transforming your identity is not necessarily going to be in big sweeping things. It's going to be in the nuances of the decisions that you make. Share on X

This has been great. I love the energy. I’m ready to log off and get back to work on the vision. Why don’t we bring this home with a quick recap? Is there anything you want to leave everyone with or any points we didn’t get a chance to make?

It’s thinking about what makes it hard to hold the vision. I talked a little bit about what makes it hard to create the vision. Something that makes it hard to hold the vision is not having daily irregular habits that are connected with the ultimate vision and not seeing sustained progress in your life, which is why it’s important to document because we are making progress. It’s like that MLK quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Even though the arc of our self-actualization is long, it is getting there. Finally, what makes it hard to hold division are our present circumstances or challenges. You have to learn to believe in the truth and not be confused by the way things appear in a moment of challenge.

This is true. You are not your current or your challenging circumstances. You are the vision of yourself that you’re holding. You touched on it right there at the end. It is finding yourself in the spaces that align with who you are. The last quote that comes to mind that I’m making up right now is you need to get accustomed to being you.

You are the vision that you’re holding for yourself. Make sure that your environment, peers, clothes, diet, workouts, conversations, and mental conversations align with you. This was a great conversation and energy. Holding and creating that vision is something that we often have to revisit. Sometimes, we have to redefine. Hopefully, these tools are helpful for you guys along the way.

Thanks again for having me.

Please reach out to us if this is helpful. DM us on social media. As we always say, share this with somebody else who needs to hear it and can benefit from revamping or holding their vision or protecting their vision. Use this as part of your full mogul journeys. On with your day, moguls.

Important Links

• Dr. Mimi Nartey
• Haters – Past Episode

It’s easy for busy individuals to overlook their health and lose track of keeping their shape. But how can you maintain your health while clawing your way to success? Being busy is not an excuse to skip an exercise because Kofi Nartey shares some health tips for busy entrepreneurs. Kofi does a full-body workout, yet he listens to his body more to know when to rest and slow down. He also shows the value of power naps in recharging your body to keep you going. Avoid starving yourself from success, and learn to keep your body going to reach your goal! Join Kofi Nartey in this insightful episode because he unpacks so much wisdom today.

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Listen to the podcast here

Kofi's Fitness And Health Tips For Busy Entrepreneurs

In this episode, I’m going to do something a little bit different based on a lot of questions that I get online, on Instagram, and Facebook, about what I do for fitness and health. I pride myself on trying to keep my body together. I tell my kids I’m fighting the dad bod. Nobody wants to have the dad bod. That’s my goal. One of my fitness goals is to not be labeled as a dad bod. I try to hold it together. I tap into my past athlete and workout experience to maintain and keep myself together.

I am not a fitness or workout head, but I realized the importance of it for my life. I wanted to share some things that are working for me and the way that I help maintain my body, fitness, and consistency by staying on top of workouts and taking care of my health. I want to share some of the general benefits that I’m aware of that are helpful for entrepreneurs who pay attention to their health, fitness, and diets.

We’re going to go quickly on this one. We’re going to run through it. Bear with me. Before we even get started, let me give a little disclaimer. Make sure you consult your doctor or health professional before engaging in any specific fitness or dietary programs. I’m going to say it again for the people who are lawyers, the people sitting next to lawyers, and the people with lawyers on speed dial. Consult your doctor or your health professional before engaging in any fitness or dietary programs. Let’s jump right in, you guys.

Consult your doctor or health professional before engaging in any fitness or dietary programs. Share on X

I’m often asked, what do I do for my fitness? How do I stay in shape? How do I maintain my health? Even with the onset of lots of business building, lots of new clients, and expanding into different markets, kids who are in sports, and my wife who coaches sports, we have a lot of things on our plate, which makes it a lot harder to find the time to maintain health and fitness.

One of my sayings and Kofi-ism is don’t complain when your plate is full when you said you were starving for success. Part of the full mogul journey, even the concept of being full mogul, the highest and best version of yourself across all aspects of yourself, has to include your health bucket. I envision them as buckets. Your health, your family, your career, whatever is important to you, those are the different buckets of your life. Health has to be one of the primary buckets of your life, which means that you have to make time for it.

The goal across all aspects and buckets of your life is to make sure that there are no bucket red lines. Make sure it’s never empty because once it gets empty, your relationship, career, faith, and health, that’s when you’re in trouble. For me, not only is it something that I want to maintain to keep that bucket alive, but it’s also to keep myself alive. Fortunately, I enjoy working out.

Fitness, exercising, and working out are centering for me. I ran off all kinds of things that keep me busy and engaged on a daily basis. When I have that time to work out, it’s a time for me that’s stress relief. It’s a time for me that’s for me and about me. It’s a time when I can put on my headset, put on some music, and grind. That physical pushing of the weights or doing cardio is a win, recentering, and a stress relief for me. I try to get it as often as I can. I can’t go to the gym every day, but it’s about 2 to 3 days a week.

When we look at even studies that show studies of executives, business owners, and highly successful people, when we talk about the priorities that they have in life and identifying the priorities that they have in life, most of the executives and I don’t know the exact percentages, but I know it was most, I think it was something like between 60% and 70% of them identified health as their number one priority.

You would think, “What’s your big why? Why are you doing this? What are your priorities?” People would say, “My kids or my family.” It’s like they say on the airplane. Make sure you put your oxygen mask on first before helping the next person or your children. If you can’t breathe, you’re not alive to help them put their mask on. If your health isn’t where it needs to be, the people that you are maintaining that health for have the risk of losing you.

You have to put a priority on your health and maintaining a certain level of well-being because that will make you a better person for those around you, for those that you say that you’re sacrificing for, giving up your time for, giving up your career, and giving up your health. No, you can’t give up your health because if you give up your health, all the other things will disappear. If you’re saying those other things and other people are a priority, you have to take care of your health to be there as a priority for them.

Full Workout

Some of the things that I do in terms of working out is I have four different types of workouts. The first would be a full workout. This is when I bring my gym bag. I check out from work. I go to the gym either next door in my building because my office building has a gym, or I go to Griffin Club here in LA. It’s a tennis club or private club membership where we have a gym there. There’s a restaurant, tennis court, pickleball, pools, and all this fun stuff. The gym is adequate and I can get an amazing lift in.

When I go and do my full workout, I usually do a combination of upper and lower body each day. I am channeling some of my Cal football days, Raiders days, and ongoing access to exo sports training that my kids are getting through my wife coaches at the high school. They have exo sports training for the kids. I get to sit in on some of the strategy sessions on how to get the best workouts, diet, and nutrition.

It’s good to alternate the days that you’re working out different body parts, especially depending on your age. You need to give those body parts rest after you’ve worked them. I’m at an age where I’m not slowing down but I am listening to my body more. Even in those full workouts, I still do bench presses, squats, leg extensions, curls, low rows, and deadlifts. I do these things to continue to build muscle. My goal is to continue to build muscle, but again, I listen to my body more.

The goal is to continue to build muscle but listen to your body more. Share on X

Several years ago, when I would lift, I’d feel a little bit of pain and keep fighting and risk injury. Now, if I feel a little bit of pain and strain, I slow down or stop. I am still able to lower the weights at that point and push myself to exhaustion because exhaustion is where I’m going to break down some of the muscle fibers and still build because I still want to continue to be strong, feel strong, and be able to move some weight.

I have to be more thoughtful and mindful of how I lift. I have to be more thoughtful of my knees and back but I have this personal goal. My goal is to be able to still rep 225 pounds on the bench press until my son can rep 225 pounds on the bench press. He’s eleven. He hasn’t touched a weight yet. He does some pushups at home. I’ve got years of lifting ahead of me, but that keeps me motivated and going.

I usually would do a combination of bench press, some chest, some curls, and some leg extensions. I do calf razors and hamstring curls. On another day, I might do leg squats, pull-downs on the back shoulders, and a little bit of abs. I always do a little bit of a warmup. My warmup is usually the bike or the elliptical machine. I like those two because they’re easy on my knees. I do those for ten minutes. If I want to get a little bit better warmup, I’ll do it for about fifteen minutes to the point where I start to break a sweat and fire off some of those muscle fibers to get me ready to go.

Those are my full workout days. The second is what I call BTN or Better-Than-Nothing workout. Better than nothing is when I don’t have as much time. How long do I work out typically? I usually don’t go longer than an hour. I’m able to get everything that I need to get done within the hour, but a better-than-nothing workout might be a 30 to 45-minute window and I want to get something done.

Better-Than-Nothing Workout

What I will tell you is getting there, changing into my workout clothes, knowing that I don’t have the energy now, I don’t have as much time. I’m going to do a BTN or a Better-Than-Nothing workout. It almost always turns into a satisfying workout because once you get going, you usually end up doing a little bit more than you thought you could do. It turns out to be a win. That’s always a win of a workout, but some days it truly is a time-constrained workout where I’ll pick a couple of different exercises, a few different things that I’m going to do, and I grind those out in 30 to 40 minutes.

The third type of workout that I do is my no-sweat quick set. This one is interesting. You may or may not have heard of this because I made it up. You may not have seen it because I work out in my work clothes. A lot of days, I’m dressed in either jeans, a button-down shirt, and a blazer. Something like that is my normal work wardrobe. I don’t wear full suits as often, but sometimes I do.

No Sweat Quick Set

The no-sweat quick set is usually like a quick break from work, where I walk next door to the office in my work clothes. I pick one thing to do, whether it’s three sets of leg extensions, tricep pools, or on the sitting bench. Something that I can do 3 to 4 sets of without breaking a sweat. Those are workouts that I sneak in and get done to make sure that I’m doing something that day.

With both the better than nothing and the no set quickset, the goal is to keep the workout momentum in my life. We talked about your full mogul buckets, keeping those buckets going, keeping them from redlining, and knowing that this is part of who I am. This is part of my identity. This is a box that I need to check to maintain that identity. Sometimes, I need to get a better-than-nothing workout and then 2 to 3 days a week, I’m doing something that’s a full workout ideally.

The fourth aspect of working out is cardio. It is my weak spot. I don’t spend enough time on cardio. I keep leaning into that old saying and it’s a current saying that abs are made in the kitchen. I try to watch what I eat but I could be doing more cardio. I had knee surgery a couple of years ago. I still have a little knee pain here and there, but there’s no excuse. I can do cardio by walking, on the bike, or treadmill.

I don’t do enough cardio. When I do, it’s usually in the form of walking. I’ll go for long power walks with my wife. We call it our walk and talk, where we strategize about life. We also do it a couple of times a week. We’ve got a couple of good hills near our house. We walk around our neighborhood. We walk up the hill, through the neighborhood, and back down the hill. All along, we’re talking about life and strategy. We have great conversations. As a matter of fact, we could record those talks for the show.

If I’m not with my wife, I walk and listen to something in my headphones. I’ll listen to music or a podcast. The other thing you can do, and this was good for entrepreneurs, especially people with kids who are in sports. You’re taking them into practice or the game. We have soccer games every weekend. You have to show up an hour early. Your kids can warm up. While they’re practicing for an hour and a half, you can walk around the park where they practice. Walk around the track or the field where they practice.

Get in those steps. All the steps count. It’s not a zero-sum game. It’s not 0 or 100. Getting those steps in somewhere in between is better than nothing. I’m going to get 5,000 steps a day if I can’t get 10,000 steps a day. Those things make a difference. You have to commit yourself to getting it in where you can. If it’s not going to be walking or jogging, pick something that you like. Cycling, spin class at your gym, yoga, Zumba, swimming, whatever it is that you like to do for cardio, pick it and do it.

Tennis and pickleball are amazingly popular and it’s a lot of fun. If you’ve played pickleball, you break a good sweat with that. My wife still plays soccer. She coaches and trains our kids, but she also plays in this cool league called 18 to 80. It’s a women’s league of people from eighteen years old and even a little bit younger all the way up to 80 years old. It’s to keep people engaged. It creates community, engagement, and cardio opportunities.

Power Naps

Another thing that I do for my own health is power naps. I’m going to talk about the importance of sleep and rest, but being able to get in power naps during the day and workday and taking a little bit of a break recharges your body to keep you going. This isn’t a workout technique but it is something tied to health and well-being.

I learned this when I went to business school at Pepperdine. It’s called the PKE program at Pepperdine, Presidential and Key Executive Program. It’s for people who run their own companies or are part of the C-Suite of the companies. It’s a two-year traditional program. We have marketing, finance, and economics. We had our international trip. We had to do our thesis.

For the first four days of the program up at the Malibu campus, they brought in people to teach us things like yoga, mindful awareness, and meditation. The explanation around that was you’re going to go through this two-year program. You’re going to be making big decisions for your company. No matter what, in business, you never have perfect information. You never have all of the information. At best, you have 70% to 80% of great information. That last 20% of decision-making for your company and yourself is trusting your gut. You’re going to have to be able to tap into your gut. That’s why we did yoga, mindful awareness, and meditation for those purposes.

They also taught us the power of the power nap, where you lie down on your back or lie down as flat as possible. Sometimes, I do it in my car, and I put the seat back as far as possible. Turn off all devices, lie perfectly still, and close your eyes for 10 to 15 minutes. You’d be surprised. Sometimes you can fall asleep. If you fall asleep, make sure you have an alarm set on your phone for fifteen minutes. Your body will start to recharge.

It’s like plugging your phone in. The cells start to recharge. Your body starts to recharge. It starts to replenish your energy in that quick turnaround. If you have a little bit longer, you can take a twenty-minute nap. It’s not necessarily a long sleep, but you will find that energy shows back up in the afternoon, into the evening, or into the late evening when you need to get the extra work done.

Cold Shower

One of the last things that I also incorporate is cold showers. I don’t do it every day because it’s not easy. Let me give you the full disclaimer on that. When I do a cold shower, I still wash in warm water because it’s hard to do a 7 to 8-minute cold shower. I’ll wash and get myself clean. For the last 2 to 3 minutes, I turn it to as cold as possible.

I’ve been doing this for about a year, and Wednesdays are my cold shower days. I’m going to up it to at least twice a week, if not three times a week because the benefits of cold showers have been amazing. I could feel the difference in my body. Research and studies show that it can benefit your body. I’ll give you guys some of the benefits that I’ve seen and have learned about along the way, but that 2 to 3 minutes of a cold shower is invigorating. It does a lot for your body and it’s not too hard to do it. It requires a little bit of mental toughness.

When I played football at Cal and even with the Raiders, we had ice baths. At Cal, we call them bear tanks. You have an ice bath that will rejuvenate your body and get rid of a lot of the inflammation in your body. UCLA Health did a study on cold showers. It does everything from bolstering your immunity to colds. Even a few minutes a day might keep the germs and the viruses from circulating in your body. That shock of cold water can stimulate the blood cells in your body to fight off the infections.

Secondly, it can combat the symptoms of depression. Some of the research shows that cold water is therapy against depression. It improves circulation. Cold water strains your body. It goes into survival mode. When you are in the shower, even in the bear tank, ice plunge or cold plunge at your gym, when you step into it or get into it or turn that water cold, your body goes into survival mode, and you feel it. Your breathing changes. You almost start to not hyperventilate, but your breathing gets quicker and more rapid. It increases the blood flow and circulation throughout your body because it’s trying to protect you.

This helps decrease the amount of time it takes your muscles to recover from exercise because your body is redistributing the blood and it delivers freshly oxygenated blood to the areas of your body that need to recover. It can also, as a fourth thing, increase your metabolism because your body is trying and fighting to stay warm while you’re in that cold shower.

There’s all these different reasons that I love cold showers. One of the biggest benefits is it reduces inflammation and even can prevent muscle soreness in your body. It’s some tangible, real pain relieving, inflammation relieving results from that cold shower remedy. Try it. Start small and short. For the first few times I did it, my trick was I was going to say the alphabet three times and not fast. By the time I got to Z, my body was adjusting.

Cold shower reduces inflammation and prevents muscle soreness in your body. Share on X

I was putting my head under the water and letting that cold water hit the back of my neck and body. I could feel my breathing changing. I was trying to still breathe through my nose and out through my lungs to get that good oxygen in through my body. Start small, build up to longer amounts of time, and more frequency of the days. That cold shower can make a huge difference.

Diet

As far as dieting, I don’t do a lot of special things for my diet, but I do have a few things that I pay attention to. That’s my sugar and salt intake. Cholesterol levels, fat levels, saturated fat, you want to avoid it. You have to consult your own physician to see what your body needs. Ideally, you have a diet that is servicing you in the ways that you specifically need it, whether it’s certain times of day. If you’re diabetic, you have to have a different diet. I’m lactose intolerant. I have to watch out for dairy products. Gluten-free if you are allergic to gluten. You have to pay attention to what you are eating based on your dietary needs.

For me, reducing the amount of sugar also reduces the inflammation in my body. Reducing the inflammation in my body reduces the risk of cancer. There are different things that you can do. I eat a lot of berries, anti-inflammatories, and different things that help your body fight the natural carcinogens and things that enter your body from an organic and food level. You see how unscientific I am. I told you this is what I’m doing for me. I’m not a scientist, but these are the things that have been working for me.

Some people drink. If you’re going to drink, the easy thing to do is drink in moderation and stay away from drugs. I don’t do drugs. That’s not my thing. I know I have some friends who don’t drink but they call themselves California sober. That means that they go to the dispensaries. I’ll leave it at that. If you’re California sober, do your thing. It is legal. I can’t tell you you can’t do it but it does have some ramifications. Make sure you know what you’re putting into your body and how it can impact you.

Supplements

There are supplements. I take multivitamins every day. I bought it at Costco. It’s to make sure that I am getting the vitamins that I need. Lastly, I take fish oil in the form of what’s called Omega XL. That’s the brand that I like. I’ve been taking it for years. I met the owner of the company, a guy named Ken Meares. He’s a great guy. A lot of former athletes were promoting it. They made me a VIP client. I started using it. I shared it with my wife. She liked it. It helped with the information in our bodies.

It’s one of those things that you don’t necessarily know it’s working until you stop taking it. You take a couple of days. It’s a green-lipped mussel oil. It’s extracted from the waters of New Zealand. It’s omega oils that your body can benefit from but the weeks that I go where I don’t take it for a while, I start to feel a little bit of those joints and muscle aches and pains. It helps with inflammation in the body. Many things are attributable to inflammation in the body.

Drink Water

Lastly, from a diet standpoint, for me, drink lots of water. I don’t drink as much water. I’m supposed to drink 80 ounces a day, but I’m always drinking as much water as I can, even playing ketchup in the evenings, where I’m pounding a bottle or two of water to make sure my body is getting replenished with water. I start my days with water. As a matter of fact, one of the first things that I do, and I read it somewhere and started doing it, and it feels good to do it, is to drink half a bottle of water first thing when you wake up. It reinvigorates your system. Having that bottle of water go through your system wakes up your system. I found that to be helpful for me. I can feel the difference.

I want to run through a few things that I know are the benefits of paying attention to your fitness and health as it relates to our entrepreneurial journeys. I’m going to run through ten quick things to wrap this up and send you on with your day. Number one, it increases your energy levels. If you exercise, it helps your cardiovascular health. It leads to improved blood flow, oxygen delivery to your tissues, and different things that help you with stamina. If you’re in business and have the grind of business, being an entrepreneur, wearing all these hats in your world, being a parent, being a coach, and all these different things that we have to do, energy levels are critical.

Number two, it reduces stress. Physical activity itself releases endorphins. Endorphins are the body’s natural stress relievers. Being able to go out, walk, do jogs, swim, and do a bit of the lifting helps reduce stress, feelings of anxiety, and even depression and helps with your overall mental well-being. Number three, it enhances mental clarity and cognitive function. It helps your brain function better.

We’re pursuing big goals. We’re on full mogul journeys. We have to have every aspect and ounce of our brain firing for mental clarity. It’s with that mental clarity that we make better business decisions. It helps us even in solving those complex problems that our work and life provide that we have to deal with to take our business from where it is now to those exponential levels of where we want it to be.

Number four, it improves our mood and emotional well-being. Your emotional well-being is tied to neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. Physical activity stimulates the production of those things. Those things are associated with your mood and sense of well-being. Moving some weight, walking, and getting those bones and muscles going can help you have a more positive outlook on what you’re doing even a more positive outlook on workplace challenges.

Number five is boosted productivity. It’s been shown to also enhance your productivity and creativity. I talked about taking breaks with the power nap but also taking breaks for these physical activities and building in some of these physical activities. It will make you more efficient and focused when it comes to work.

Number six is enhancing sleep quality. We could do a whole separate episode on sleep. I couldn’t because I’m not a scientist on sleep but I know that it’s important to get that good rest. When you exercise more regularly, you sleep better. Number seven, it strengthens your immune system. We touched on this a little bit with the cold showers and how it release different things into your system to help boost your immune immunity, but exercising does this on a daily basis. A stronger immune system will help prevent illness and sickness, which will help prevent pauses and being able to work, hustle, grind, build, and go full mogul.

Number eight, it improves your time management. If you incorporate exercise into your daily routine and time block, you have a priority set for each aspect of your day, which improves your time management skills, even as it relates to BTN, a Better-Than-Nothing workout, no sweat quick set, getting it done, maintaining that momentum, and keeping that bucket going.

Number nine, it enhances your confidence. Achieving physical goals through regular exercise can help your self-confidence. Something that I like about working out is I can see my body changing as a result of the effort that I am putting in, and that increases my confidence. If I put in the work in the gym, I get the results. If I put in the work in the show, I get the results. If I put in the work in training myself on my scripts, objection handling, and sales skills, I will get the results. The physical evidence of working out is a reminder that that will show up in other ways in my business world.

Number ten, it’s a great way to build relationships. Working out with a friend, a spouse, or a partner provides opportunities for building relationships. Relationships are also tethered to longevity in life. Even as an ancillary benefit, it creates business referral opportunities, especially for our salespeople out there. Take advantage of all of those things.

I want to leave you with a couple of last things before we wrap up. One, it’s a message for what I call my almost there, almost fit, almost ready to get started, and almost working out. Do it now. My message to you is to do it now and do it to the next level. I have a lot of my buddies, good friends, and people that I know come across who are 70% to 80% of where they want to be fitness-wise. Find a season, not even a lifetime, to commit to being the best version of your physical self, especially if you’re right there.

We talk about it in sports and life. My wife and I talk about it. That 70% is like zero. If you do something to the point of 70%, it’s like not doing it at all. If you’re not doing it all the way, what is the point? We talk about it in homes that we sell. We walk into a house and this house is a B+. Why not make it an A and A+? Get there.

The almost there is the other reason that I even wear two watches every day. You can’t see me because you’re reading this. If you see me in photos, I will have on two watches because it’s a reminder that the time is now. We’re not promised tomorrow. You have to get after it now. Whatever those big goals are, your fitness, health, or business goals, get after them.

My second piece of advice for you guys is don’t fall into what I call the hero complex and let it compromise your health. I talk to a lot of my dad and mom friends all the time. They’re sacrificing their health to be a hero to their kids and work. That is not a full mogul. A sick hero is not a hero. Trust that you will be a better hero to those people that you love and care about. You’ll be a better hero to those people who are following you at your company, have bought into your company culture, and are helping you realize your vision. You’ll be a healthier, happier, better version of yourself if you take care of yourself.

Hopefully, that was helpful. It is not too scientific but it’s some of the things that have worked for me. Hopefully, some of them can work for you. Let’s continue the conversation. If I’ve said something that you guys think I can improve on, text or DM me. I’m always looking for great health and workout tips and more ammunition for this bucket in my world onwards and upwards, Mogul Nation. I’ll talk to you on the next one.

In the world of entrepreneurship, your business pitch takes on the role of a stage, with your clients as the captivated audience. Our host Kofi Nartey discusses the awe-inspiring connection between acting and entrepreneurship in this episode, unveiling the top 10 success strategies he acquired throughout his acting career. Explore the importance of knowing your lines, dressing the part, and more parallels between business and acting. Every strategy is valuable, from knowing the intricacies of characters to recognizing the important role your clients play as the focal point of your business story. And the grand revelation? The realization that every audition, every client meeting, every interaction in the business world, is an invitation for you to be the right fit. Tune in now and unlock the doors to your aspirations!

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10 Success Strategies From 10 Years Of Acting

We are going to have some fun in this episode. This is going to take me on a little bit of a journey through my past acting days. It's going to bring you with me and bring us right back to how we can use some of the strategies that I've learned from acting for success in life and business. It was a fun ride. Sometimes, people ask me if I miss football. I don't really miss football because I know if I ran to the mailbox, I'd pull a hamstring. With acting? There are days that I think, “I wish I could do the acting thing again.” Who knows? I might revisit it in the future, at least do some voiceover work or something fun.

We're going to go quickly because I want to get through all of these tips that I've been able to apply from my acting days to my business life and my entrepreneurial life. I thought it'd be important to give you a little bit of background on my acting journey, how I got into it, what I did while I was acting, and then my transition out of acting.

It started back after football. I played football at Berkeley and then went to the Raiders. I got hurt with the Raiders and then decided, “What am I going to do next?” I had always had a little bit of an interest in acting. I did school plays. I did the talent show at Carnegie Middle School. I was Arsenio Hall, running the talent show. It’s taking me back. I always had a little bit of an interest there, so I thought, “This might be something I can revisit.”

It started with a little bit of the modeling side and commercial work. I'm going to give you guys the full story here. There was a guy taking photos of a model in our stadium up at Cal where I played football. I was back there visiting. I said, “Do you need another model?” I was joking. He turns to me and says, “I do.” He had this strong Italian accent. We made this deal. This is one of the lessons that I learned from my acting and modeling days. He said, “Why don't we trade? I'll give you some photos that you can use for acting and your sports stuff. We'll then take the photos that we use on our side and be able to use those for our commercial purposes.” I said, “Done. I'll get some free photos. This will be great.”

I did a lot of sports photography with them that day. I did some things running through the stadium and running on the field. I got some amazing pictures that would help me jumpstart my acting and modeling. Fast forward a year later before I even got fully into it, I walk into a foot action and there's a 5-foot tall poster of me running through my stadium. Lo and behold, they had these posters in every foot action around the country and I didn't get a dime from it. You live, you learn, and you keep moving.

I came back to LA. My football career was done at that point. I hadn't given up on it yet, but it was done at that point. I wouldn't revisit it after the injuries. I was working a couple of different jobs and started doing some extra work. I had a good friend of mine, Mazio Royster. 3rd and 1 was his company. He did a lot of sports commercial casting and sports movie casting. A lot of us former athletes locked in with Mazio to do some extra work. It paid pretty well. It was pretty easy. You show up and do your sport or dress up to do your sport or different sports. I then realized, “I want a bigger role in these commercials. I want to speak. I want to do the main character thing.” I started doing some improv classes.

If you're reading, you'll know that I made the decision to pour more into it but knew that I needed to get better at it. I signed up for some scene study classes. One of my first early on-scene study classes was with a woman named Cyb Barnstable. I remember her because one of my classmates there was Kellan Lutz from Twilight fame. Me and Kellan hit it off. He was new to acting then. I was new to acting then. These were two young guys or two alpha males that hit it off. We are still friends to this day.

I had a lot of fun learning the craft. I got into casting director workshops here in LA. There's a guy named Gary Dubin. He used to put on these casting director workshops. They were great because we would do scene studies but we would do them in front of casting directors. It was a chance to learn from each other. They were also built-in auditions because you're getting in front of people who are casting shows to give you real feedback.

I was able to get a commercial agent. I was with a firm called KSA at the time. Now, they're KMR. They changed ownership. I was with Coast to Coast for my commercial acting. I was able to book my first few jobs early on. It was way back in the early 2000s. My very first acting job was on Young and The Restless. I played a police officer on three episodes of Young and The Restless. Fast forward, I was able to do TV shows like Numbers and Psych with my good buddy Dulé Hill. I can't even remember all the shows that I was in, but we had a lot of fun. I was in True Blood and Modern Family.

I was a working actor here in LA. Not everybody gets a chance to say that. I made a living during those acting days. I went on and did a couple of major motion pictures. I was in a film called Kick-Ass with Chloe Moretz and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Matthew Vaughn was the director who was married to Claudia Schiffer. We filmed that in London at Pinewood Studios where they filmed Star Wars. I had a lot of fun.

I finished up with a movie, the Fast & Furious. I was in one of the Fast & Furious movies with my good friends to this day, Laz Alonso, John Ortiz, Vin Diesel, and the late Paul Walker where I got a chance to not only film here in LA but spend some time with him in Mexico. This was Fast & Furious 4 where we filmed in Mexico. We’re driving through the tunnels in Mexico with Braga. I was one of Braga’s henchmen. We had some great times getting to hang out. We had drinks, tacos, and tequila. I had lots of fun hanging out with those guys in Mexico.

With every part of the experience, I did learn something new. There were takeaways at every aspect of the way and even at the beginning of my transition. At a certain point, I had gotten married. I met my wife. We had a baby on the way. While acting was great, it was also taking me to all these different places around the world. It was cool to film Fast & Furious. The parts of it where we filmed in Mexico were cool to do. Kick-Ass, we filmed that movie in London. Even Psych was filmed in Vancouver, Canada. My wife came to see me up there and hung out with me out there at Sutton Place, the hotel where all the actors stayed up there.

I knew I needed something that was going to keep me home because I wanted to be home. I wanted to be there for my family. I needed to find a career where I could apply some of my gifts, talents, and desires. Real estate was one of those vehicles. I liked people. I liked the properties. I liked negotiating. I liked the business strategy. I liked creating marketing campaigns. I knew that this was something that would allow me to do that and also stay home in the process. I phased out the acting career. I still did a few little jobs here and there as I was transitioning into real estate, but at a certain point, real estate took over full-time.

#1: Know Your Lines And Be Prepared For The Audition

Without further ado, I want to jump right into ten specific things that I learned from acting that apply to business and sales that you can take and apply to your entrepreneurial pursuits. Number ten might be my favorite, so hang in there with me. I'm going to go Fast & Furious, no pun intended. Number one, know your lines and be prepared for the audition. You have to be ready for the opportunity. When we get to number ten, it will help with this. We'll get there pretty quickly.

You have to know your scripts. Whatever your industry is, you have to know your objection handlers. You have to know your pitches. You have to know your contracts. You have to be able to anticipate objections. When you go in for auditions and acting, they expect you to know the words. When you're auditioning for pitching your services, pitching your business, or pitching your company, you have to know your value proposition. You have to know the words that you're going to deliver at that moment. You have to anticipate the kind of questions that people are going to come up with and throw back at you. You have to be ready for that, too.

#2: Dress The Part

Number two, dress the part. Wardrobe is huge in acting. Awards are given for wardrobe. I remember even in Kick-Ass, I had a $7,000 lace front dreadlock wig. Do you want to see what a $7,000 lace front wig looks like? Go to YouTube or google Rasul Kick-Ass. That was my character. Not only will you see the wig, but you'll get to see me die on camera. Wardrobe communicates something. It communicates something about you, what you wear, how you show up, and your professionalism. Are you buttoned up? Are you casual? Are you relaxed? You have to pay attention to how you show up, how you present, and what you wear.

In business, there are a lot of times people say, “Do I need to wear a suit and tie every time for luxury real estate or if I'm presenting?” Not necessarily, but my rule in business is to stay one step ahead. One step ahead is one step ahead of the client's style. Sometimes, we work with athletes. They're going to show up in jeans and a t-shirt. I'll show up in jeans and a button-down shirt, maybe untucked. I'm not going to show up in a suit and tie for someone who's in jeans and a t-shirt because there is a disconnect there. It's not relatable. You don't want to be too far out from where your client is.

If my client is in dress slacks and a dress shirt, I might be in dress slacks, a dress shirt, and a suit jacket. A lot of times, even for first impressions, I always like to show up in a jacket. Even if I have on my jeans and my casual tennis shoes or my nice tennis shoes, I’ll be in my button-down shirt and jacket. I'll show up in that and then I can take it off in a more relaxed moment when we're sitting down to talk about the balance of the business. You have to show up to be ready. Show up one step ahead.

#3: Act The Part

Number three, act the part. How I behave as Kofi the business professional is different than how I behave as Kofi the soccer dad, Kofi the real estate guy, or Kofi the husband. Each aspect of my life requires a different version of myself that either already exists or that I've created. When you're showing up for business, you have to act the part of the person that they're looking to hire or the person they're looking to work with.

Confidence is key. That comes from being prepared. They want to hire success. They want to hire confidence. They are subscribing to what you're presenting. You have to know your lines. You have to be prepared. You have to look the part. You take a look at the top professionals in your industry and you can often model their success actions. Take note that I said actions and not outcomes. When you're modeling others who've done it before you, model their actions and don't jump to the outcomes.

Too many people want to jump to the outcome, but it's the actions that lead to the outcome. Sticking your tongue out doesn't make you Michael Jordan. Let’s be real. Taking his work ethic will make you a better basketball player. Act the part. If you need models, find people who are doing it. Look at what they're doing to be successful and model that as well.

#4: Show Up To Be Immortalized

Number four starts with a quick story. I mentioned that one of the movies that I worked on was Fast & Furious. When we filmed in LA, everybody went home at the end of the day. When we filmed in Mexico, there were a few of the actors who were there. It was me, Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Laz Alonso, and John Ortiz. We had a lot of local extras. When we stopped at the end of the day, we all hung out together because we knew each other. We were the only ones there in town. We spent a month in Magdalena, Mexico, this small town of Mexico. We had a chance to get to know each other. I got really comfortable.

Van Diesel was already a superstar and still is. He had two trailers in Magdalena, Mexico. One was for wardrobe. Another one had a full gym in it that he let me work out in. We’d show up to set. Everybody shows up. You have to be there on time for wardrobe and makeup. You have to be ready and get there on time. Vin Diesel was 30 to 40 minutes late every single time. He's a superstar star so everybody's going to wait for him.

I asked him one day when we were hanging out afterward. I said, “How come you're late every day?” Those of you guys out there who know me know that I would ask that kind of question. I'm a little bit more direct. I like interesting questions and uncomfortable so we can learn something about each other. I asked him and he said, “I know that I'm showing up to be immortalized. I'm showing up to be immortalized when they roll that camera. It's forever. The re-runs, TV shows, and all that is forever. I want to make sure that I have everything together. I want to be prepared. I want to dress how I want to be dressed. I want my lines to be perfect so I can show up and be immortalized.” That stuck with me for life.

Number four is to show up to be immortalized. Remember, you're going to be remembered based on how you show up. You're going to be remembered based on how you present. Even if you're not showing up to be recorded or filmed, they're taking mental notes. Make sure you show up prepared. Take that extra time to get ready. Take the extra time to run your numbers, know your numbers, know the contracts, and know your scripts. Sit in your car for a few extra minutes before you get out and go into that meeting to make sure that you're going to be present and that you're going to be ready because you are showing up to be immortalized. We have Vin Diesel to thank for that one.

#5: You Can't Do It Alone

Number five, you can't do it alone. I remember my acting days. I never made it big. I wasn't a huge household name or anything but I got to work a lot and meet a lot of amazing people. You pull up and park your car and you're walking through a whole production village. It takes a village, a video village wardrobe, makeup, lighting, sound, grips, and gaffers. Not to mention the writers, producers, directors, script supervisors, and so many more people who go into making a production a success. You can't produce award-winning TV, films, shows, or even a basic commercial without a team. You can't do it alone.

I remember I did a commercial with this guy named Joe Pytka. Joe Pytka is a famous director. He was notorious for riding a bike on set and stopping and yelling at everybody whenever he was upset about things. There were 1000 different people for these commercials we were shooting. There are the scriptwriters, supervisors, and all of these different people. I know for myself personally, I felt a sense of responsibility to do my best for all of the people that made that scene possible. They're doing all of that, so when they say action and the camera rolls, I can deliver my lines the right way. I'm well-lit. I sound good. The lines are right.

I transfer over to business. Whatever your business is, you're typically working as a team. You're not working in isolation even if you have vendors that you work with or part of your supply chain. In real estate, I have agents that work with me and support me. I support them. We work collectively together. We have escrow officers, title officers, and transaction coordinators. I've got my chief of staff.

Whatever your business is, you're typically working as a team, you're not working in isolation. Share on X

There are all of these different people who make what we do possible and make it easier to do it better. Even finding the right support from the right team can make a difference. It's even part of the reason that I partnered with Real, the brokers that BLOBL RED has partnered with. It’s because the resources, team, collaboration, and authentic giving and collaboration were something that resonated with me.

I do a co-list coaching program for agents who want to coalesce their first or next luxury opportunity because it's hard to do it alone. I remember trying to figure out luxury on my own. It was hard. Finding someone I could trust to do it with is even harder. I wanted to be that for other agents. It has been fun to be able to collaborate and work as a team. Who you have in your corner matters.

#6: Know Your Character

Number six, know your character. Know your character or who you are. In acting, you have to know the backstory of the character that you're playing. What makes them tick? How do they operate? What was their upbringing? Sometimes, you get certain parts of the story that they tell you and you make up the rest. Those little things will give you character nuances that will make the character special, unique, and even believable.

Everybody has nuances. Everybody has little things that make them tick, little isms that they do, and gestures. They speak with their hands or they don't have much expression. Whatever that is, you have to know what kind of character you are. As it relates to business, what are the strongest character traits that you can amplify, demonstrate, be, and bring to the forefront for your business character? Remember, acting the part of your business character is going to resonate with your clients.

What are the marketable adjectives that best describe you that you can lean into? What's your best form of communication? You have to know. Are you great with sitting and talking with people and building rapport? Are you great with emails? You're better written than you are in person. You don't love having long conversations, but you love the analytics. You love writing very detailed reports. Whatever it is, you have to identify it and then lead with those best traits.

Whatever your best trait is, you have to identify it and then lead with that. Share on X

#7: Know The Characters Around You

Number seven, know the characters around you. Starting with knowing yourself, you also have to know the characters around you. I remember reading scripts in acting. I would read the scripts to understand the other characters that I was in a scene with. It is about understanding those other characters. You have to know who you're dealing with even in business.

In business, in real-time, you can listen. You don't have a script to read, but you have to listen. The best way to listen is by asking a lot of questions to get them to do a lot of talking so you can hear what's important to them. This will help you understand who you're dealing with, what makes them tick, and most importantly, what problem you can solve for them.

We often use a DISC profile. If you're not familiar with it, you can Google it. We'll talk about that another time. We don't have our clients take DISC profiles but we know that most people fall into one of those categories of personalities, the D, I, S, or C. It gives us some idea of how they tick and what's important to them. I know myself. I'm a high D followed by a high I. In my personal life, I lead with my high D. I’m like, “Get it done now. What's the answer? Let's move. Let's go. Let's do it.” In business, I have to lead with what I call my lowercase D and more of my I so it's not overbearing for people.

I'll give you guys a pro tip. Here's a pro tip even from my acting days. I remember in acting when you read the script. Seeing how other characters react to your character helps you understand more about yourself and more about your character. I'm going to say that again. Reading about how other characters react to your character helps you understand more about your character and that character's traits. When your character walks into the room, do the people in the room smile? Are they afraid? Are they hiding in fear? That tells you what kind of character you are coming into that room. How do your clients react to you?

A great exercise for this for your brand, in general, is to ask your clients words that come to mind when they think of you and when they think of your company. I did a whole talk on branding. This is one of the key questions to unlocking your brand. Ask your clients what words come to mind. They'll tell you. It's good to know how they think of you, how they react to you, and how they respond to you. They may even surprise you with certain words.

I did this a couple of years ago. One of the words that came up that I never thought about was protected. Several of my clients said, “We feel protected in working with you.” I was like, “That's a hell of a word.” We use it a lot. Our clients feel protected. They're right. My goal is to protect them through the process, the contracts, and the negotiations. My goal is to protect their best interests and desires and deliver them on the outcome that they want. Do that exercise. That’s a pro tip. This is a bonus for you guys right there.

#8: Be Creative And Adlib

Number eight, be creative and adlib. This I learned after booking several jobs during my acting career. What I came to learn is you audition and you deliver the lines that they give you. You got to get the lines right. Know your scripts. Once you book a job and you're on set, there are tons of adlibbing. They try it several different ways. They even expect you to try it in different ways. It's even appreciated. I'm sure even if you've never acted a day in your life, you've seen outtakes, especially from comedic movies where some of it is ad-libbed. A lot of it is ad-libbed. You get to see these long outtakes of people carrying on in character that make for some of the best movie moments.

As it relates to business, you have to know your scripts and the core aspects of your business before you can adlib. Once you know that, be creative. Take moments to be creative in how you are conversing with your client and how you are relaying information. We know in real estate, because we’re dealing with so many negotiations, even negotiations with our own clients, that we have to have 5 ways to say every 1 thing. One way may not be convincing enough. We might have to follow it up with a different example, a story, and statistics. All of these things are ways of being creative.

Remember, you have to know the boundaries of the lines before you can color outside of them. It’s the boundaries of the box. You talk about thinking outside of the box. You have to know the box before you can think outside of the box. Know your basic scripts, basic contracts, and sales proposition, and then you can get creative.

As an actor, you have to know the boundaries of the lines before you can color outside of them. Share on X

I'll give you guys one more pro tip on this one. Your voice is an extremely powerful tool. This is another thing that I learned in acting in some of those scene study classes where you do monologues or scenes with other people. You can take people on a journey with your voice. You get animated if you're excited about something. You slow down and pause if you want to make a point.

When you're conveying information to your clients, use your voice to take them on the journey that you want to take them on. It also implies that you're listening. When you pause and slow down, it's a little bit more thoughtful. It pulls them in. It doesn't even really matter what you're saying, but it can be more thoughtful and feel more thoughtful if you're reiterating what their goals are or reiterating what you heard them say. Their needs are the problem that you're going to solve for them. Slow down. Take a beat. Use your voice as a tool. That’s a pro tip. That was a bonus one.

#9: Remember Who The Star Is

Number nine, remember who the star is. In acting, there's almost always a star or a hero. The story revolves around them. Even if another character has more lines, he or she is still there to tell the star's story. Listening even requires acting ability. Some of the best scenes are communicated in silence through facial expressions. That supports the overall story of the hero or the star.

How does this relate to business? Your client is the star even if you have a product or service. Hear this. You have a product or service. The product as well as your service is playing the role of supporting actor to your client as the star. The star is on that hero's journey. The star is the person whose problem is being solved. Your product, service, abilities, skills, and resources are all supporting actors to your client as the star.

We have to talk about this a lot as it relates to sales professionals because we have to remind agents, “You are not the star.” I want you to remember this. You might be the hero because we're often heroes, but you're not the star. I'm going to say that again. I like how that sounded. You may be the hero, but you're not the star. Quote that. Text that. Share that on social media. We do show up as heroes for our clients, but we have to remember being the hero doesn't make us a star. We're the hero to our client star.

#10: The People You're Auditioning For Want You To Be The Right Fit

Number ten might be one of the most important takeaways for you guys. Remember number one and what I talked about, being ready for the audition. There were so many auditions that I didn't get. You go into it. You're nervous. You're worried about it. I remember after booking a certain number of jobs that it was a numbers game.

I also realized something that was a game-changer for me going into auditioning that allowed me to reframe the way that I auditioned and also took the pressure off of me. That was realizing that the people you’re auditioning for want you to be the right fit. That's number ten. You're not walking into a room that you've been invited into to be rejected.

Many times, so often, as sales professionals and real estate professionals, we go into listing presentations or buyer consultations, or we go to meet a new client. We are nervous and scared because we're presenting our services. We think we're presenting in a hostile environment. If they've invited you into your home, their goal is to find someone who can solve the problem that they have. That's selling their property, moving on in life, or moving to the next chapter. They want you to be the right fit.

When I auditioned for casting directors, producers, and writers, the next person who walked into the room, they wanted them to be the best person for the role so their job is done. They found the best person for the role. They're not auditioning people for fun and to hang out in the evenings, the weekends, or whatever it is. They are trying to find the right person for the script that they've written.

When your client invites you in, know that they want you to be the right person. They have a problem that needs to be solved and a role that needs to be filled. They want to efficiently identify the right person to fill it. This removes so much doubt and pressure on us as sales professionals who are constantly presenting, constantly pitching, and constantly auditioning for our next opportunity in business.

Even when they seem resistant. When you walk into a room and their arms are crossed and they seem resistant, the truth is this is often their performance of discernment. They can't make it too easy for you. They have to do a little bit of putting up their own resistance, like, “You got to work for this,” but know that you have been invited in again because they want to find that right person.

Let’s do a quick recap. 1) Know your lines and be ready. 2) Dress the part. 3) Act the part. 4) Show up to be immortalized. Vin Diesel. 5) Know that you can't do it alone. 6) Know your character. 7) Know the characters around you. 8) Be creative and adlib. 9) Remember who the star is. 10) They want you to be the right fit.

These tools have been a game-changer for my business. I hope that these tools are helpful for you and your business. I hope they help you take your business to the next level. Thank you guys for joining. Share this one. Tag me on social media. Hit me up, text me, or DM me if you found this helpful. Share it with somebody else. Please, stay focused on your Full Mogul journeys. On with your days.

By Kofi Nartey

Anxiety is the compass pointing us toward personal growth; harness it, and you'll find clarity and purpose in life's journey. In this episode, join hosts Kofi Nartey and Mimi Nartey as they dive deep into the often-misunderstood world of anxiety and how to effectively manage it. Together, they explore the diverse sources of anxiety, from overly rigid definitions of success to the challenges of negative self-talk and the perils of procrastination. The discussion then takes an uplifting turn as they stress the importance of serving others and the rewarding feeling it brings. Throughout the episode, Kofi and Mimi provide helpful strategies for reducing anxiety and offer encouragement to those who may be struggling. If you're looking to gain a fresh perspective on managing anxiety and want to take away practical tools for leading a more balanced and purposeful life, then don’t miss this episode. Tune in and learn how to find clarity and purpose in the midst of life's challenges.

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The Anxiety Challenge: How To Find Clarity And Purpose Despite Life’s Challenges

Tools for Dealing With Anxiety

Mogul Nation, hopefully, you guys have been enjoying the journey. You're staying close to the journey and focused on the journey. In this episode, we're going to talk about something that deals with so many parts of the journey and life, and that's the word anxiety and how we deal with anxiety. Now, this is something that we could do ten episodes on, so please keep in mind that we've got a limited amount of time here, but we definitely want to touch on this for Mogul Nation because we know that this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I am joined by my favorite co-host, my wife, Dr. Mimi Nartey.

Did I get a promotion to co-host? Look at that.

I did say that out loud and it's recorded. I didn't even interview you first, but I thought it'd be important to start with a dictionary definition of anxiety. I guess I’m a little anxious. Let me give the dictionary definition of anxiety. It's a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or an uncertain outcome. What I thought was interesting about this was it's a challenge because it's about something you know is going to happen or something you don't know is going to happen and either one can create high levels of anxiety.

What's interesting about this is that anxiety is a natural phenomenon because on a daily basis, all of us are experiencing things where we don't know the outcome or that's a part of life. I do think that there is a point at which this anxious feeling becomes clinical, so it's something that I have a deep level of compassion for. My doctor was in public health, so over the past decade or two decades, we've seen a dramatic increase in the social medicalization of anxiety. Anxiety is transforming from maybe a part of a natural life experience and people finding healthy coping mechanisms there to something that is beyond what people feel they have the capability to cope with.

Mentoring a lot of young people, I know that it is important to have a moment to talk through. How are we going to deal with anxiety? In whatever you pursue, there's going to be a level of uncertainty. Even in the things that you are enthusiastic about, there's still a level of uncertainty. If you fall in love and you get married, you don't know how it's going to turn out. If you want to start a business, you don't know what the outcome is going to be. Thinking through what are the causes of anxiety and how we can manage it is going to be important.

Even before we jump into some of the causes, it's important for our audience to know that it's okay. Experiencing anxiety is okay. It's sometimes even expected. The goal here and the goal in general is not necessarily to eliminate it altogether. You can't always eliminate the worry, nervousness, or unease. The goal is to manage it and not let it overwhelm you.

I definitely think especially because so many of us have had particular life traumas or life experiences early Adverse Childhood Experiences. ACEs as they call them. It’s things that were beyond your control that become triggers in your life that create these moments of anxiety for all of us. It's about what are some strategies that we can employ to minimize the impact of this anxiety on our ability to function.

Let's jump into some of our notes. Tell me a little bit about how you approach this topic.

I was thinking through what are some of the sources of anxiety, some of the ones that I’ve personally experienced or talked to other people, friends, people that I mentor, and what is causing them anxiety. As I bring it up, maybe you have ideas on how they can be addressed because I know one thing that I’ve observed, even in myself, is that lack of routine produces anxiety.

A lack of routine definitely produces anxiety. I 100% agree. We've said before on other episodes that activity is the antidote for anxiety, but routine and planning are part of the activity because you have to know what the activity is going to be. If you have a routine or something that isn't an anchoring process, it allows you to come back to that anchoring process, creating some stability that eliminates the lack of or the uncertainty regarding the outcome so you have an idea of what your process is going to be. The next step you have to take is to plan because you put this plan together. What it also allows you to do is not just plan and not align with your goals but be able to realign with your goals.

One of my Kofism is alignment theory because I feel like in life, we seek alignment and our emotions seek alignment with whatever we’re experiencing, going through, or feeling, both good and bad. On your days that you're excited or you've got a big thing, a big event, a big talk, or whatever it is, you're going to put on your best outfit and your hair is going to be done. On the days when you're feeling depressed, anxious, or nervous, you're not going to get out of bed. You're not going to want to, at least. You're not going to get dressed in the same way. You might throw on some sweats, but having a routine allows you to quickly and better realign with the desired outcome you're working towards.

In life, we seek alignment and our emotions seek alignment with whatever we’re experiencing, going through, or feeling, both good and bad. Share on X

That's fantastic because, basically, you're never untethered. Even as a mom, when our kids were very small and even now to a large extent, there's a lot of keeping them on a schedule. That is for their emotional stability so that there's some expectation or a cadence to the day that gives them that grounding. Another source of anxiety is related, but it's lack of preparation.

An unknown outcome or uncertain outcome is it's exaggerated and exacerbated by knowing that you're not ready. If you know you are not ready for something, you are going to feel a certain level of anxiety and sometimes overwhelming level of anxiety. It's part of the preparation and a part of practicing. You have to practice and prepare for whatever it is you're stepping into. We talked about it in sports and in life that practice not only makes perfect but practice makes it permanent.

We practice until we can't get it wrong and that will increase your feeling of competence. When you've increased your feeling of competence, it increases your level of confidence because there's no lack of confidence in the things you know how to do. The more you prepare and practice and get yourself ready, that increases that feeling of, “I can do this,” which is the definition of competence and leads to that confidence to go ahead and do it.

Another thing that I have in this has been coaching people. Something that leads to a lot of anxiety is procrastination. I’m hearing them talk and talk through what their goals are, but they're not taking those steps that they need to take. What can people do about procrastination?

The evil P word is procrastination. It reminds me of a couple of things because I talk about why I even wear two watches. One of the reasons I wear two watches is the time is now. It's like life is not promising. We want to get out for our goals now, but as it relates to even the daily things that we do and our focus, finish our daily to-do list and things you're working on. You've heard the term eat the frog. If you procrastinate and you put things off like do the hard thing first, not only are you waiting, challenged, and fighting mentally like, “I have to do this later,” but then you still have to do it when that time comes so you're fighting two battles. It reminds me of a saying.

If you procrastinate and you put things off like do the hard thing first, not only are you waiting, challenged, and fighting mentally like, “I have to do this later,” but then you still have to do it when that time comes so you're fighting two battles. Share on X

Our dads are from Ghana and there's a saying in Ghana, “Esiwo fa wu na esiwo sesẽ,” which is the soft for the hard or the hard for the soft. You want to do the hard thing before you get to the easy thing and it's better to do that hard thing first and get it out of the way. I talk about it as it relates to real estate and delivering challenging news to our clients, like maybe a deal is falling apart or their offer didn't get accepted. I always say, “Deliver bad news quickly but with the solution.” If you're sitting on that news all day, it weighs on you mentally or it's stressful to you. If you can deliver it quickly, it gets out of your mind and your plate.

The only amount of time I give myself to sit on it is enough time to come up with the solution so I can deliver that news and say, “Here's the bad news, but guess what? Here's the solution to that bad news.” Don't procrastinate. You have to go ahead and take that first step, and a lot of times, that first step leads to the second step, which leads to the third step, which is what we define as momentum. When you have momentum, it allows you to push past the other moments that would create anxiety because you're already in motion and moving. You're already doing the thing that you thought you couldn't do.

That was powerful. Great job on that. That's an amazing way to deal with procrastination. Another thing that leads to anxiety is too rigidly defining success. This is what I’ve seen a lot. I’ll take a super oversimplified example. It's like you think about something like a wedding day or you're planning your wedding. If you are too rigid in what you think your wedding day should be like, you're going to have a lot of anxiety. Now, there are some elements, beats, or notes that have to be hit. If you can have a little bit more flexibility or a broad perspective on what a successful wedding day would be like, it's going to lower anxiety levels. That's one example, but I don't know if you have some ways of thinking about that.

That's an interesting one and a very good one. We're married. We have kids. I see it with our son. Sometimes, most on the good days, we are, but you can think about our son, Lincoln. He is a soccer prodigy. He's a very smart kid academically. Sometimes, he holds a very rigid definition of what success is. If he goes into a game, he sets Mamba mentality type of goals like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. I’m going to score two goals.” If he doesn't, if he sets that rigid goal of two goals in this way, sometimes it's hard for him to experience and appreciate all that he's done well in that game.

Sometimes, even for him, he'll score a goal, but it may not have been the way he wanted to score it. He's still a little bit disappointed. We've had to help him redefine what success is. Coming back to things that we've talked about before. Success is in the journey. If you know what your overall journey is or what your big picture goal is, then you can recognize that the things that you're doing, the way you're experiencing them, even if they're not specifically within the definition that you set out, it's still contributing to the journey.

Success is in the journey. If you know what your overall journey is or what your big picture goal is, then you can recognize the things that you're doing, the way you're experiencing them. Share on X

If you appreciate how it contributes to the journey, it becomes either 1) Something to celebrate or 2) Something to even learn from that is still going to get you to where you want to be faster. It’s because now you're improving on something that you could be doing better or it's a moment to sit back and say, “I’m doing a good job. I did this well. I had the success. It's not the exact thing, but I’m moving in the right direction.”

Another thing that’s related to that source of anxiety is having a gratification time frame that's too short for your process. That's something that I also notice when it comes down to coaching people and talking with them about their business, their goals, and how they're trying to develop themselves either professionally or personally. I’m talking and realizing from my perspective that this isn't quite adding up. The things that you're trying to achieve in this time frame, you're biting off a little bit too much and that is why you're feeling anxious.

I’m guilty, so I’ve had to institute my own strategies around this and I’m happy to share. One, you have to reframe your timelines instead of looking at what you can do in a day or in a week. Think about what I can do in 3 months, 6 months, or a year, and then what are the steps that I need to take daily, weekly, or monthly to get to that year 2, 3, or 4. I heard a huge investor master. His name is Masayoshi Son. He is part of SoftBank and his investment strategy is not what a company can do this year or next year or as part of an exit. It's what's your 100-year plan?

Literally, he looks at companies and says, “What's your 100-year plan?” Hopefully, I got his name right. Forgive me if I didn't, but that concept, I did get right. It's beyond your lifetime. If we apply that level of thinking instead of what we can do right now. What can we do that's going to impact their lives over the next year, our business over the next year, 2 or 3 years because that time is going to pass anyway. The other challenge that we have as it relates to this is there's an expectation of a direct correlation between the things we're doing right now and the outcome we think it's going to deliver.

That's exactly it. That is a huge source of anxiety and a little bit of a problem in our thought patterns. It’s expecting there to be a direct correlation when, to be honest, the magic of the process is not usually that direct. Sometimes, it seems like the disappointment of the process, but it's also the magic of the process that is not a direct correlation.

It is not a direct correlation. We talk about it all the time in sales. You're doing your lead generation and calls and then all of a sudden, you get a new client out of the blue, but it's the energy that you're putting out there. It's the momentum that you're creating and the universe or God. All of it will come back to you in different ways. The important part is recognizing that it's okay if it comes from a different direction or a different place. Also, you're staying committed to your process and you're staying committed to your journey, so you don't have to feel anxious. You don't have to feel the anxiety or the nervousness because that one step or one foot in front of the other is going to lead you in the right direction. Whether it's slow, fast, or whatever it is, you have that plan or process in place.

Everything is snowballing here. Another source of anxiety related to that is not having a growth mindset. Understanding that it is going to be a process, there aren't direct correlations, and not being able to appreciate that and sit in that comfortably.

The growth mindset part of it is coming back to not the feeling of anxiety but even that feeling of disappointment when things don't work out or that unrealistic expectation that the direct correlation between what you're doing and what you're expecting. It doesn't always come that way and that creates disappointment. Instead of looking at the things that slow you down or the things that seem like failures as disappointments, we look at them as opportunities for growth.

I tell our agents all the time and I even ask my clients who think we did a good job, you still ask them, “How could I have done it even better?” You have a growth mindset, not even from failure but also from success. We succeeded, but we could have done it even better. Let's figure out how we do it even better. If it is a “failure,” we employ the acronym for FAIL. I’ve got two of them that I love. One is Find All Important Lessons because if you use this, then you'll figure out what you need to take away. What do you need to change? What do you need to tweak to do it better next time?

The other important part of it as it relates to the broader pursuit of life and your goals is FAIL, Fastest Access to an Impactful Life. The people who are willing to go for it and willing to fail are the ones who will get to their desired outcomes or that exponentially better level of life faster. We think about the highest, the biggest, and most successful people out there. If you read their biographies or autobiographies, they have failed hugely, but they found all the important lessons and it was the fastest access to an impactful life.

I love that. As you know, I’m a soccer player and a soccer coach. I’m talking to our daughter and a couple of her teammates that play forward. I was sharing something like that with them because it's very interesting you take shots and you miss a lot of shots. I was explaining to these girls into their parents that they should not feel anxiety or frustration as they are learning to become excellent goal scorers because there are 100,000 ways to score goals. At 14 or 15 years old, you might have only experienced maybe 4,000 of those 100,000 goals but the more shots you take, the quicker you're in your process of experimentation and data collection.

All of those opportunities that you take, you shoot, or you miss, they're all the learnings that you need. You're trying to expose yourself to all of those different 100,000 ways to score so that you can become a master at that task. I love that Find All Important Lessons and Fastest Access to an Impactful Life. Another important source of anxiety is negative self-talk. I am floored by the ways that we speak to ourselves sometimes.

Again, this does come back to a lot of early childhood traumas or different kinds of life experiences where people have had people in their lives who have spoken negatively about them. It's amazing that we have the habit of adopting that narrative and that voice even within ourselves. We criticize ourselves and we're down on ourselves when we fail or we doubt ourselves or our capacity to do things. That's an important source of anxiety and I’m hoping that you have some ideas on how people can deal with that.

The first thing to remember is that you are not your challenges. You are not your failures. You are not the hiccups that happen in life. You are the vision that you hold yourself to be. You are what you've accomplished to this point that you're building on and the future self that you're working towards. In those moments that something doesn't go right, you have to be able to hold the vision on the other side of that thing or that moment. The negative self-talk happens to the best of us. It happens to all of us. It happens to me and the goal is to ideally get to almost no negative self-talk, but you have to fill your mind, heart, and spirit with enough ammunition to combat the negative self-talk.

Negative thought comes in on one side. You have all these ammunitions, different ways of framing it, different ways of looking at it, or some better ways to think about it and combating it inside your head. The only way to do that is by filling your mind with all of that ammunition. What do we do? We read books. We listen to podcasts. There's a lot of different things that you can do. You lean into your faith because you've got to have 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 different ways to combat every negative thought that creeps into your head. The more ammunition you have, the better chance you have to squash that negative thought because two things can't occupy the same space at the same time.

That's fantastic. What comes to mind for me is James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh. It's in that book where he talks about the garden of your subconscious mind. There are two sides to that. What you're saying is you control what you plant. If you're planting healthy plants and good things in your subconscious mind, that's what's going to be occupying the space predominantly and then trying to eliminate or minimize, that's going through and weeding. You're making sure that you're weeding that garden and tending to the garden of your subconscious mind because that is the picture of how you are perceiving yourself.

The other side takeaway or ancillary benefit of reading books around other people who've gone through different things or succeeded at different levels or listening to podcasts is that you're reminded that other people are dealing with the same thing or similar things because we're all human. That's part of the challenge, too. Sometimes, we think we're dealing with something in isolation. We’re the only one experiencing it or we’re the only one experiencing it this way. No. A lot of other people have gone through a similar human experience.

There's more or less one kind of human experience. It's the one with ups and downs. It's the roller coaster ride. Another source of anxiety is a lack of focus. I also see that when people are not committed to a certain goal or outcome with a high enough level of intensity, they are experiencing anxiety in the form of doubt and distraction. It's interesting. Focus could be something to consider if you're dealing with anxiety.

I hope I have some notes on focus because I literally have a focus and finish bracelet on my wrist. Focus and finish is one of my mantras. Focusing on the small steps will lead to your big goals. Realizing the importance of completing each task that you initiate and staying focused until you reach that level of completion. The key part of focus is holding that vision and then setting the plan to get to that vision so that you can lean into that instead of having to reinvent yourself all the time. If you're constantly thinking, “How am I going to do this? What am I doing? What am I focused on?” That creates anxiety and uncertainty because you don't know the desired outcome that you're working towards.

When you know the desired outcome, the new kind of anxiety is, “I know the outcome, but I don't know how to get there.” That's what the planning comes in to alleviate that feeling of not knowing how to get there and then having some flexibility along the way that the steps that you're taking may not lead directly there, but it's going to get you in the right direction. Sometimes, it leads directly there and then sometimes, recognizing that the results you're looking for are going to come from a different place. However, the other gift of focus is the ability to refocus. It comes back to my alignment theory because if you have the focus and you start to lose focus, knowing what you're working towards will allow you to realign, refocus, and revisit the plan to get there.

That's powerful because, again, going through moments of ebbs and flows, doubts, disruptions in life, and being able to refocus is what's going to minimize anxiety. The final thought that I had now was there is so much content around self-care. I am definitely a proponent of taking care of yourself, establishing a healthy lifestyle and routine, making time for rest, and all of these different kinds of things in personal development. I do think that a source of anxiety for people is maybe being a little too inwardly focused and not realizing that the key to real joy, happiness, and meaning in life is in serving others. That hasn't changed.

The first thing I want to share in response to that is one of my Kofisms. One of my life philosophies is we have a responsibility during our lifetime to realize all of our God-giving gifts and share them with the world. When you are sharing your gift to the benefit or towards the benefit of other people and helping other people, it's one of the most rewarding feelings you'll ever experience. One of the quick hacks, I’ve told people and utilized it myself, is if I’m worried or concerned about something, I quickly shift and think, “What can I do for somebody else?”

It's a distraction away from my own challenge, anxiety, or problem. 2) There's that reward of giving or helping somebody else in their journey. It's important. You brought up such a good point because we think about ourselves, our position on the planet, and our own happiness and joy, but we don't exist in a vacuum. Part of the human contract is to realize that we are in this together. There are things that you should be doing to keep yourself going, healthy, and alive, but your focus should be on, “How am I contributing to the big picture? How am I sharing my gifts with the world?” If you're sharing your gifts, you don't run out and the world will ultimately reward you for that.

Part of the human contract is to realize that we are in this together. Share on X

It's important to even touch on a couple of quick real-time things because anxiety can hit you in a moment and can hit you for a season. I was thinking about what you're saying about doing things for others. I remember the last big talk I gave. There were probably about 4,000 or 5,000 people in the audience and people always ask, “Do you get nervous when you speak?” I love speaking and sharing, but I still get nervous right before I go on stage. I remember the last time the guy who was putting my microphone on my lapel. I took his hand and put it on my heart so he could feel it.

I was like, “Nobody believes how hard my heart beats right before I go on stage.” He was like, “Are you that nervous?” I’m like, “It happens every time, but I’ll be fine within 30 seconds.” I also quickly shifted to, “I’m about to change somebody's life out there.” That's my goal. If I step on stage, I want to do and say something or give one little gem or nugget that's going to change somebody's life. That brings a lot more ease to me. It brings a lot more calm to me and allows me to start speaking, going, and sharing. If you are feeling that anxiety in a season or it's bigger than that, it's not about sleeping well, physical activity, reducing your caffeine intake, or taking some deep breaths before you go into whatever it is you're going to go, seek help.

That's the last thing I want to make sure we leave everybody with. Ask for help. Raise your hands and say, “I need help.” Reach out to somebody, medical, guidance, psychology, or psychiatrist. Find that help. I did an episode for my fellas because, a lot of times, men try to internalize and deal with things. Women, too. We think that we're in it alone, but you’d be surprised how many people are out there willing to help and even listen.

I agree with you and I hope that this is useful to people out there that understanding anxiety is something that we're all dealing with. If it does rise to a level beyond what's manageable, please, there's no embarrassment. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be able to say, “I need support.” I’m definitely encouraging everybody to do that.

One last piece is sometimes we seek support, but we seek it in the wrong places. Recognizing that you might have to go to different sources to get the support that you need because sometimes you engage with somebody who's actually not equipped to help you like a friend who's never been through it who doesn't quite understand. They even call it a second opinion in the medical profession for a reason. Sometimes, you go to a doctor and a psychiatrist and they tell you one thing. Sometimes, you still need to get a second opinion and sometimes, there's somebody who's dealt with what you are going through specifically who can help you even better. Don't be afraid to raise your hand.

Don't be afraid to raise it twice to get the help that you need and to be able to realign and get back on track with who's inside of you or who you know yourself to be. That's the real self-care. Mogul Nation, I hope this was helpful. There's so much to unpack with anxiety, but we tackled a lot of great things. You had a lot of great topics that you brought up, Mimi, and some great questions. Hopefully, I was able to give some of the tools and resources that have been helpful for me in the journey. Get that help if you need it, take those deep breaths, and get that rest. Know that staying focused and committed to who you are and not what you're experiencing at the moment is the key. Mogul Nation, on with your days.

Important Link

• As a Man Thinketh

By Kofi Nartey

Life is like a game that you need to win. You have to have a strategy to become successful in it. Today, Mimi reveals her journey as a soccer player and how it affected her life. Kofi Nartey and Mimi Nartey discuss how we can become successful with transferable life skills from professional sports. Mimi and Kofi also share what they learned from sports. So, kick your ball of life into the goal of success with Kofi and Mimi Nartey today.

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Listen to the podcast here

Success Strategies From Sports: Transferable Life Skills To Be Successful

Transferable Skills We've Learned From Professional Sports

Welcome back to the show. I'm excited as always. Anytime we can share knowledge, I'm excited to do so. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing success strategies from sports. Some of you know I played sports, but what you didn't know or may not have known is that my wife, or a lot of you knew this, too, also played sports at a high level. She is joining me for this episode.

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Welcome back.

Thanks for having me again. I am super excited about this topic.

We're going to dive right in. There are so many tools from sports. A lot of them are some of the things that you hear all the time. We're going to do a deeper dive into some things that you may have heard before but haven't heard in this way and things that you never heard in terms of takeaways from sports. It's important to have a little bit of an understanding of our sports backgrounds. You're here. Tell us a little bit about your sports background.

I have been involved in soccer for a very long time. I started playing my first soccer team when I was about eight years old. My dad is like your dad, originally from Ghana, West Africa. He was my first soccer coach and my trainer for much of my life. He trained me and my sister. I always joke that my dad is like the African Richard Williams, and I intend that to be as loaded as it sounds.

I played competitive club soccer. I played at the Olympic development level. The United States has a track for preparing talented soccer players for the Olympic development program for representing the nation. I played a lot at the international level as a youth and received a lot of recognition. They were things like Best Player awards, other kinds of accolades, major tournaments in England, Scotland, and Sweden.

When I was fifteen, I had the opportunity to try out for the Ghana Women's National team. I took advantage of that opportunity. I started playing with them when I was fifteen years old. My high school years involved a lot of traveling back and forth in long stints in Ghana. It was a very non-traditional experience for me. I got a scholarship from Gatorade, played Division I at Columbia University, and made the All-Ivy team in my first year.

What a lot of people don't know is that in 1999, I was in the Women's World Cup pool for Ghana. I had an ankle injury, so I was not able to participate in the 1999 Women's World Cup. In 2002, I had a chance to play in the FIFA African Women's Cup of Nations, which is effectively like the World Cup of Africa. I helped my team earn a silver medal in that tournament, which was also the World Cup qualifier.

In 2003, I did represent Ghana in the Women's World Cup. I did not play much longer beyond 2003, but I did play briefly in the W League for the Portland Rain. The W League is the league that proceeded the NWSL that's actively going on. We've got, locally, Angel City FC and all that. I had a pretty storied career from the playing side. On top of all that, I've been coaching youth soccer for almost 25 years. I started coaching when I was 16 because I have a sister who's 11 years younger than me. I had a lot of learnings from a process that long as a player and then also from the long process of engagement with youth athletes as a coach.

There's a lot there. I feel like we could do a whole episode on your sports experience. Not even just takeaways from sports but from the sports experience. I know it's not about that for this episode, but I want to ask one question that maybe the audience would like to know. At what point in your journey did you realize that you had the ability or opportunity to go to the highest level of women's soccer?

I have to credit my dad for holding that vision for me. A lot of times, I talk about my responsibility as a coach or the service that I'm providing as a coach to youth players. It's not just about teaching them technical and tactical things. The responsibility of the coach is to hold the vision of the highest outcome for those players and help support them through the gap between where they are and where they could be.

Pretty early on, my dad started to develop these ambitions and communicate these ambitions for me about what was possible for me in this sport. I had talent. I had a lot of natural athleticism. I put in a lot of work. It was probably as early as 12, 13, or 14 when I really started to stand out. I had this constant voice telling me that I had a big destiny in this process.

I love it. A little bit about my own sports background. My very first sport was soccer. My dad's also from Ghana, and he played soccer. He played soccer when he was in primary school. He played field hockey. He was part of the national championship field hockey team from Achimota in Ghana. When he came to the US, he continued with his soccer career at the University of Washington. He was the captain of the soccer team.

I was introduced to soccer very early on and managed to reach a level of club soccer. I played for FRAM here in Southern California club soccer and then transitioned out of club soccer pretty early as well to American football. That was more of my exposure to American football. A lot of my friends were playing football and basketball. There were not as many playing soccer. I wanted to do what my friends were doing. I played one year of Pop Warner, skipped a couple of years, and went to high school.

When I went to high school, I thought I was going to play basketball. I went to a highly gifted magnet program that was at Crenshaw High School. Crenshaw was a basketball powerhouse, so I was like, “I got to try out for the basketball team.” They were a basketball powerhouse and I was not a powerhouse in basketball, but I was 6’1”, almost 6’2” in high school as a 10th grader. The coach there, Robert Garrett, recruited me out of my registration line. I was registering for classes. He came and said, “Do you play football?” I said, “A little bit.” He said, “You're going to play football.”

I did not know that.

Fast forward, I ended up playing football there. I did pretty well and made All-City as both a receiver, kicker, and punter. I had my soccer still embedded in me, so I was able to do that. I still hold the record for longest punt and longest field goal at my high school. I was a 55-yarder in the playoffs in the Fog. There was major drama. I'll tell you that story over drinks one day.

I got a scholarship to go to Berkeley. I had a lot of different options in terms of schools that I could have attended, but I wanted to go to also a great school. That was in part because of my dad. He instilled academics first. He had no intentions of pushing me into sports or even into professional sports. He was really focused on the academic side.

Sports played a big part in my life, but I did well in school. I had a great SAT score. I was smart but also had this athletic ability. I had a football scholarship at Cal. I had a very interesting ride there. We had three different head coaches while I was there. We had 4 or 5 different position coaches at wide receivers. I had a lot of transition, a lot of changeover, and a lot of lessons learned from that.

My collegiate career was okay. I realized that I had a shot to make it to the pros. I doubled down on my efforts. I doubled down on my work in between practice and after practice. I gave myself a shot at the league. I had a couple of teams that offered me an opportunity to come in. I opted for the Raiders. They were in Oakland, which was local at the time. I knew there was a receiver space there that I could try to fight for, so I went to the Oakland Raiders. Unfortunately, like many people who go to that level, my career was cut short by injuries against the game or against the Cowboys. I still don't like the Cowboys, if you're a Cowboys fan. That was the chance to get to the highest level of football, which was great.

It’s neat that you've organized us to do this episode because we have met so many people who don't know the first chapters of our stories since we've been married. It's exciting to share that and give some more context. A lot of people see you as a leader in the real estate industry and maybe don't know so much about what your experience was in sports and how that has really framed out who you are as a person.

We started with this idea of doing ten things that we learned from sports, but as soon as we started the list, we were like, “This is going to be more than 10.” Let’s jump right in. Let's start sharing. It may be 10, 20, or 25. We want to share as much as we can in this jam-packed episode. I'm going to let you go first. We have a policy that we don't plan these things together. I do my list, she does her list, and then we come into the booth and see where it goes. This is going to be interesting. I know there are going to be some good takeaways.

I’m jumping right in. What's something I've learned from sports that is a success strategy I use in other parts of my life? It comes down to learning how to play, be defensive and protect what's yours, and learn how to attack and go after what you want. On the defensive side, learning how to play defense, a lot of risk assessment is involved when you are in a defensive mode. That is a really important skill to leverage in life and in business. On the offensive side, when you're on the attack, there's something about learning the timing of when to exploit and learning what you have to leverage to exploit your opponent.

That's so important. We think about some of the biggest deals that are done in business. There's usually that moment of, “This is the moment to attack. This is the moment to put the offer in. This is the moment to seize this company. This is the moment to defeat the competition,” or whatever it is. It's such a great takeaway.

Mine is something you hear all the time, but I want to unpack it a little bit further. The first one is teamwork. We hear it all the time, but what does that mean? In most sports, you're part of a team. You're competing with other people. You have accountability to other people. That was one of my big takeaways, knowing who your advocates are in that teamwork framework and knowing who your soft, subtle, silent competition is. 

When we're competing for positions, we have what's called a depth chart. The depth chart shows who's the first, second, and third receiver and who's on the bench. You're competing to climb up the depth chart. I remember identifying, “Who's going to be my accountability partner here? Who wants it like I want it, but also, is that competition?” It's not that we were competing in a negative way against each other.

It was two people in particular. It was Na’il Benjamin, who's one of my best friends, and Bobby Shaw, another one of my best friends. We were both all three wide receivers at Cal. We would all compete. We come early and stay after. They became great accountability partners for us to push each other even further. On game day, the teamwork thing transitions into, “We're all in this together at this point. We're all fighting together. Let's go get it.”

On the teamwork point, I have two thoughts there. In participating in a team sport, you learn how to value at a deeply internal level the idea of equitable partnerships. In a team, everybody is not exactly the same. The roles aren't the same. The skill levels aren't the same. The experience levels aren't the same.

In the process of working with other people, you do learn how to value equity in the community that you have that's working towards a common goal. The second point is that you learn with this team model how to build a team and then how to manage people from a capabilities perspective. It really gives you a more inclusive leadership style.

In the process of working with other people, you do learn how to value equity in the community that you have that's working towards a common goal. Share on X

I was playing in a women's pickup game. There's an amazing pickup game that happens in the Mar Vista area. It's been going on for 40 years. It's a women's pickup game that's called 18 to 80. It is supposed to include women from 18 years old all the way to 80 years old. I received one of the highest compliments as an athlete or soccer player I've ever received playing in that game. One of the women said to me, “Playing with you is amazing because you make everybody look good.”

That was such an important, humbling compliment for me. From all of the different kinds of accolades that I've gotten, that one hit me deeply because it's the idea of having learned over all of these years of playing sports how to take that capabilities approach, how to see what everybody is offering within my team, and how to amplify their potential in the way that I can serve them the ball or move to support them.

I love that. My logo for the company is a logo that represents unlocking and unleashing potential. It's one of the things that I pride myself on. How can I talk to somebody about their business and their property, unlock the potential within that person or within that thing, and unleash that potential? You touched on leadership, which was second on my list. You learn different styles of leadership from the other people around you. You learn and find your voice for leadership.

To your point, that partnership or accountability as being a teammate or a team member isn't always equitable. Sometimes, you play a role as a receiver. Sometimes, I have to block so the running back can score. I have to do something else so the other receiver gets open. I have to clear the field or whatever it is, but that's my role at that moment. That's how I can perform leadership in that moment.

You also learn from your coaches. There are so many different coaching styles. My high school coach, Robert Garrett, was a grab-you-by-the-face-mask. He’ll tell you what to do and you have to get it done. He also recognized that I was a little bit more of a cerebral player, so he didn't have to necessarily grab me every time. He could tell me and I would get it done. You learn to adapt to different coaches. You also learn your own leadership style to help lead other people.

That’s so important. With what you're saying about learning from different coaches, I had something similar, which was learning that there are different styles of play. It is learning that as a life philosophy. There are different styles of play. You also learn how to learn from different people. Learning how to learn and knowing how to know is such an important skill.

I gave a commencement address a few years ago at St. Bernard High School. I spoke on that very topic of learning how to learn. As an athlete, and you are a person who is a person pursuing a goal and hungry for an outcome for yourself and for your team, you become voracious in trying to extract knowledge from the person or the mentor who has that knowledge for you.

On this idea of learning different styles to play, you start to do the analysis. You’re like, “What are the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches?” You then start to realize what constitutes a particular style or theory of play. These are all transferable life skills. When it comes to business and kinds of business approaches or different kinds of strategies for running your business, you realize there's more than one way to skin a cat. Whatever the way is, there has to be a certain level of fidelity to that style in order to have success.

I love it. Hard work and discipline are next on my list. Whether you like it or not, if you're part of a team, you're forced to work hard and be forced into discipline. Practice is at a certain time. On game day, you have to show up at a certain time. These things are built into your regimen, even things off the field. We see it with the soccer teams that you coach. When they line up their backpacks on the sideline, they need to look neat. This is part of discipline because how you do one thing is going to be how you do almost everything or how you do most things. The level of work it takes to succeed in sports or at a high level is transferrable to almost everything you do.

That’s important, the level of discipline that you get and understanding that excellence is a lifestyle. It's not something that's happening on the field. It is being particular about your technique. You have to take the point of view that, “I'm going to be particular about everything that I do.” I couldn't agree more. Another one that I have that's really interesting is from sports is I've learned how to be comfortable standing in the gaze. That means learning how to accept criticism, learning how to accept praise, and also learning how to be an ambassador.

Transferable Life Skills: The level of discipline that you get and understanding that excellence is a lifestyle.

For me, in particular, I have played at a level where I'm representing a state or representing a country, and I've had that opportunity from a very young age. It is learning what that means, the responsibility of being an ambassador, and being a brand ambassador. At times, I've cooperated with a couple of different sports brands. Importantly, it is learning how to stand in the gaze and accept the attention that comes with performance.

I love that. It jumps to one that I had later on my list, but I'm going to share it because you shared that. That's performance and performance under pressure. Performance and performance under pressure. Sports is not just playing a game. It’s performing. You have to understand what it means to perform in front of people. To do that under pressure, the game is on the line, you have to step up and fulfill your obligation to get it done.

There's a little bit of that spectacle. That's part of it. Even in sales, it's a little bit of a performance. We think about Michael Jordan and him sticking his tongue out. He always said he played the game as if somebody who was in the stands was there to see him for the first time. He wants to perform and give a certain performance.

Kobe Bryant with that mean mamba mentality underbite is a performance. He wants to show you that he's angry, focused, fired up, or whatever it is he's trying to show you. Look at Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Everything about him is performance. It's all performance, and he lives up to it. It drives him to do exactly what he wants to do. He is a crazy, amazing soccer player. He is retired, but look him up. He came to the MLS and took out a full-page ad in the LA Times that said, “You're welcome.” He feels like he is a gift to the world. He is a gift to everyone here. Performance is a huge part of it. 

To piggyback a little bit on what you're saying, also, from sports, you learn to develop coping strategies for anxiety because there is that performance piece and there's naturally a little bit of performance anxiety that goes into it. You learn how to prepare yourself to minimize anxiety. You learn how to establish a routine, things like the hype song that you're going to use to get you in the zone and get you fired up. You learn how to identify your support system and how to communicate with your support system to manage that anxiety. These are all really important skills that you also leverage in life and business. These are things that, from sports, set me ahead.

From sports, you learn to develop coping strategies for anxiety because there is that performance piece, and there's naturally a little bit of performance anxiety that goes into it. You learn how to prepare yourself to minimize anxiety. Share on X

I love that. It ties into one of my points, which is the importance of practice. There's that quote, “Activity is the cure for anxiety.” You could almost replace that with practice. Practice is the cure for anxiety. You have to practice. You have to do it. You're forced to practice in sports. Those who thrive and excel practice more than they're even required to because they're driven to be the best version of themselves.

We talk about practice, but it's not even about just being good at your position. It's being good and disciplined across all aspects of being the athlete. That could be in the weight room or classroom because you have to keep your grades up or on the field. We say, “Don't practice until you get it. You practice until you can't get it wrong.”

The last part of that is even the plays. You have to understand where you need to be on the field. In football, we have huge 2 to 3-inch stick playbooks with all these different variations of plays. That's the same thing in business. You have to know your contracts, your scripts, your objection handlers, and your sales pitches. All of that requires practice.

It's great to break this down because, for people who haven't had a lot of experience in sports, I don't think they often appreciate the high level of intellectual functioning that is part of a very high-performing athlete's experience and repertoire. You look at someone like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jordan. These people are geniuses at the level of any major physicist and Oppenheimer in terms of the information they are synthesizing and what they can translate. They also have that kinesthetic intelligence that's coupled with their creativity and ability.

That practice piece is so hugely important. It is learning how to practice and how to understand that that is a huge cure for anxiety. It is understanding that practice also makes permanent at the level. It's not just getting through the task or going through the motions but understanding that you have to do things in a certain way to develop mastery of the thing that you're doing.

One other word to add to the practice piece is nuance. When you get to a certain level, especially a high level of sports, it's no longer learning the foundational elements of the game or being a player. It's about nuance. It's about small tweaks. As it relates to business and success even in life, at a certain point in your life, you know the direction you're heading in. You know the business you want to launch, your business, and your industry very well. You need to figure out the little nuances to continue to get better and to keep breaking through to the next level. 

I'm going to jump in with another one, another important learning. Through sports, I have learned the life wisdom or the life principle. There is a place where you will thrive and it will likely have to change to continue to grow over time. Having had the experience of playing sports at different levels in different teams, different places, different states, and different countries, I have come to learn that there are certain environments that really are right for you as a player.

Based on what your style is, what your experience is, and what your goals are, there are certain environments that are right for you. There are certain environments that are right for you for a season, and then beyond that, you need to look to grow into the next environment that's going to continue to develop you.

Transferable Life Skills: Some environments are right for you for a season, and then beyond that, you need to look to grow into the next environment that will continue to develop you.

I love that. It relates to even part of my own journey in real estate and a lot of agents that I know. You change teams or change brokerages because you've outgrown where you are or the opportunities no longer exist where you are, or there's greater opportunity ahead. This episode is going to be a little bit longer than normal because I want to dig into that a little bit more. You brought up such a good point.

I want to ask you a question and we can brainstorm quickly. How do you differentiate if it's the environment that needs to change or if it's you that needs to change? Sometimes, from an accountability standpoint and responsibility standpoint, we have a habit of pointing outward and saying, “It’s this coach's fault,” or, “It's this environmental fault,” but it's you who needs to work harder to be a better player to get the starting position. How do you start to recognize which one it is?

It has to do with really being self-aware. We are off the seat of our pants here, but it's that self-awareness and understanding of what your goals are. Also, these are changes that are made after attempts to adapt. Those are the three things. One is self-awareness. What am I trying to learn? What aspects of my game am I trying to develop?

For example, our son, Lincoln, is eleven years old. He is a very talented little soccer player. We have him in a really small, what I would describe as a boutique soccer club. There are huge, major soccer programs all across southern California, but the environment that he's in is so special. He has a West African soccer coach who is really cultivating a certain kind of style of play for him. This is the right environment for this time. He could be in another place and people would be trying to plug him more into a system. We're focused on a certain aspect of his game.

There's a real analogy to draw there, depending on where you are in your business. What aspect of yourself in your business are you trying to develop, and is there an environment that's right for you? It might not be the biggest name, the real estate company, but you know that certain needs that you have can be met in that environment right then. It is understanding yourself, your weaknesses, and your goals for your own development. There is always that trying to adapt and running the experiment to see if you can make it work. That's also what's going to reveal whether or not that place is the place where you can flow.

Transferable Life Skills: Understand yourself, your weaknesses, and your goals for your development.

I love it. My next one is a little bit of a longer one, but I'll try to keep it somewhat succinct. It's the physical demands of sports where you build your mental stamina and resilience. It is the physical demands that are placed on your body. I think about football and what I had to do in high school and college. We do 2 a day in college where you have 2 practices a day.

The first one's 5:00 in the morning. We’re doing all these crazy drills. We’re running miles and running hills. All these things are so physically demanding that they push you to the edge of mentally breaking down. It’s not just physically breaking down but mentally breaking down. It builds up your mental fortitude and mental stamina to deal with things in life.

Even as it relates to business, it makes it easy for me to deal with anything that is a challenge in business. There’s nothing in business that I've faced that's been as physically demanding as what I faced in sports. It also builds up that resilience. Even with losing games, dropping the ball as a receiver, getting beat as a DB, or giving up a goal as a goalie, you have to bounce back immediately because your team still needs you in real-time. You don't have time for a pity party. You can watch the film later and learn something from it, but you have to build up that quick bounce back or that resilience. That is 100% transferrable in life.

I always say that one of my personal superpowers is ruthless optimism. It’s really a commentary on that resilient mindset and that attitude and being able to see the difference between the way things appear in a moment and what is the bigger truth. That's all part of it. You do push yourself to those physical limits. It feels like, “I'm going to die right now. I am over here. I'm exhausted. I'm vomiting. I'm feeling dehydrated.”

In reality, you're getting stronger. You do have those particular experiences. In the losing, maybe it's real-time in the game. You are able to see the difference between the losing score and what the outcome still can be before the game is over. It could be an injury. I had some pretty serious injuries. You mentioned what happened with you playing in football. When I was in college, I had a really serious concussion and was told that I would not play sports again. After that, I went on to play in the Women's World Cup. That whole experience is what has taught me ruthless optimism and how to fight for what I believe can be the outcome despite what it seems like at the moment.

That's it. Those challenges in facing that adversity and building up that mental stamina and physical stamina create muscle memory. It creates muscle memory for your mind as well when you're dealing with negotiations and tough things in business and in life. I have this thing, the two taps and a beast. It’s where you are tapping into your inner beast, but your inner beast is created in those moments. That inner beast is created from the life experiences you have and the sports experiences you have that push you to those outer limits. You know, in any given moment, you can tap into that fortitude that you've built from life, experiences, challenges, and defeat that you're still here to fight on. You have to tap into it and go.

That's fantastic. As you're talking and I'm thinking about it, across human development, so much of our agenda has been to try to civilize ourselves, so to speak. There is a true power in not trying to suppress your inner beast or your more carnal instincts but harnessing them and being able to manage them and direct them at the appropriate times in the appropriate ways. That’s like unlocking the next level avatar, the one that can have the intellectual side. You also can tap into that fundamentally emotional carnal side to achieve certain outcomes as appropriate.

I'm loving it. It reminds me of the episode we did on it’s not about winning or losing. It's about always winning. It is this idea of participation awards and getting past that. There is something that builds character, fortitude, and that inner beast that’s transferrable in life, even though when to attack and when to get after it.

We're running out of time here. I know we have a couple more we want to get through. One of my other ones is playing your game. It starts with knowing your competition. If you know the competition, you can't be distracted by the competition that's out there. You have to know what you know and know that you know how to do what you know. You have to stick to your plan and play your game.

That's fantastic learning from sports. There are different styles of play. You're going to come up against people that are playing the game in a different way. Being able to have fidelity to what your approach is, understanding your approach, being prepared in your approach, and sticking to that is a huge learning from the experience.

I've got to add to that because even in my experience in LA real estate, there are a lot of people playing a different game, and it's an unethical game. You are tempted to see some of the success that they're experiencing from lying, cheating, exaggerating, and whatever, but you have to stick to your moral compass. You have to stick to your plan not just in terms of how you're executing your business plan, but how you hold your vision of your values and your moral compass as well.

Stick to your moral compass. Share on X

You think about the pressure that comes with business and the pressure that we even experience in sports. The best athletes and the highest achievers, when the pressure is at its highest, that's when they get the most focused. The most focused is knowing your game, your desired outcome, your game plan, and your strengths and staying committed to that.

My dad always used to tell me that under those situations and circumstances of high pressure, we're going to see what's really in there. You got to be squeezed to see what's in there. My takeaway here from sports is that I've learned that the destination is the journey. That's what I've learned from all of this.

Someone asked me on a podcast, “What is that experience like to play in a Women's World Cup?” You have that moment where you're on the field. You're listening to the national anthems and tens of thousands of people are in the stands cheering. You know your family and your friends are out there among them. I said, “It's such a humbling moment because that is a moment that is a representation of all of the years of what's been invested.” The destination is the journey, and because of that, I am, even though I'm retired from playing soccer, still becoming a better athlete every day. I am still becoming a better athlete every day because I have learned that integrative approach to my personal development, and it's ongoing.

It's moments like this that I know or remember why I married you. I love that. Your last point is the destination is the journey, right?

Yeah.

Mine was remembering that it's a game, so enjoy the journey. Sports is a game. Life is also a game, so you have to enjoy the journey. Every game has its rules. Know what the rules are, but also, every game has predictable moments and unpredictable moments. The better you prepare yourself, the better you'll be able to play within your game.

Be ready for those unpredictable moments. Life is going to give you unpredictable moments. Business opportunities, death, disease, and all these things that we deal with in life are unpredictable moments. If we can hold onto our core values, strengths, and the things we've built, that inner beast, we will be able to fight through.

You have to remain flexible. Sometimes, you've got to call the audible. You got to do something a little different. The word is little different. Sometimes, things happen in life and we feel like there's a need for a huge change. When you call an audible in sports or even in soccer, sometimes, you've got to turn to your left a little bit to get the pass off or get to pass somebody a little bit. In football, we change the route from a post to a post corner. It’s a slight tweak, but we're ready to call that audible. You have to enjoy the journey. 

This has been such an interesting conversation and one that I hope everyone can leverage. Our daughter got involved with the EXOS training program. That is one that develops athletes. They develop athletes in preparation for the NFL combine and everything. What's interesting is they also do a lot of performance training and conditioning for executives, like Google execs and big company execs. There is so much overlap between this sport’s or athlete’s and business mindsets. Success is a success.

That's what's led to even some of the speaking opportunities that both you and I have had. It’s not just speaking to athletes. I spoke to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2023 about excellence and transferable skills. I do a lot of talks to NFL players in particular, but some of the corporations, big companies, insurance companies, and different companies in different industries have brought me in to teach some of these lessons from sports. I am excited. This was a good one.

Nice job.

Hopefully, you guys enjoyed this and took something from it. Hopefully, something's applicable to what you're doing or what you're planning on doing. I'm going to do another one coming up, a little teaser alert here, on things that I've learned from acting because there are a lot of tools that I learned from my acting career. Share this. Reach out to us on social media. Let us know that you’ve read this particular episode. Reach out to us. DM us. What's your social media handle?

@MimiNartey.

That is my wife's. I'm @Kofi_Sellebrity. You can always find us at the Full Mogul show. Go to FullMogul.com to read this episode and other episodes again. Please stay committed to your full mogul journey.

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