by K.O.F.I

We’ve been sold this fantasy that work and life should sit perfectly on opposite sides of a scale—neatly balanced, evenly weighted, always in harmony. But anyone living in the real world knows that life doesn’t play by those rules. Seasons shift. Demands change. Kids get sick. Deals heat up. Opportunities pop. And just when you think you’ve found “balance,” life throws you a new variable.

That’s why work-life balance is a myth.
The real target—the Full Mogul target—is work-life peace.
Work-life peace is being at peace with where each aspect of your life is in a given moment. It’s knowing that you can’t give 50/50 every day, but you can stay intentional, aligned, and proactive. It’s understanding your Full Mogul buckets—work, fitness, relationships, faith, finances, fun—and making sure none of them creep into the red zone. Because redlining is where burnout, resentment, and breakdowns happen.

Why “Balance” Sets You Up to Lose
Balance assumes work and life are competing forces (not to mention your other buckets). It assumes you’re failing if one side needs more attention. That’s a terrible metric for modern life.
When your business hits a big push or your family needs more of you, “balance” says you’re off track. Work-life peace says you’re right on schedule… for this season.

What Work-Life Peace Actually Means
Work-life peace accepts the ebb and flow. Some weeks your business needs the lion’s share of your focus. Other times, your health or your family needs you more.
Peace comes from alignment—your choices matching your values.
You’re not chasing equal time; you’re choosing intentional time. You’re making sure your yes’s and no’s reflect who you are and who you’re becoming.

The Real Danger: Redlining Your Life
When one area stays neglected for too long, that’s when things break.
Overworked? Your health pays.
Disconnected? Relationships suffer.
No recovery time? Creativity disappears.
Studies show the real threat isn’t imbalance—it’s unmanaged overload. It’s living in the red without noticing the warning lights.

Designing a Life That Protects Your Peace
Here’s the Full Mogul approach:

• Set flexible boundaries. Decide when you’re off, what you won’t compromise, and the non-negotiables that protect your energy.
• Scan your buckets regularly. Work, health, relationships, finances, growth. Check the levels. Adjust early.
• Treat tension as feedback. Not failure. Just data. An early signal to redirect.

A New Standard for High Performers
The future belongs to those who can perform at a high level without losing themselves in the process.
Not the most overloaded.
Not the most frantic.
The most aligned. The most intentional. The most present.
When you commit to work-life peace, you stop chasing the impossible and start living powerfully in the present—focused on what needs you today, aware of what needs you next, and determined to never let any bucket hit crisis levels.
This is how you build success without sacrificing yourself.
This is how you live Full Mogul.

Let’s go and let’s grow. ROAR!

Every year, people wait for January to “start fresh.” But the high-performers who consistently crush their goals don’t wait for the calendar—they create momentum before it flips. It’s not cheating to get a head start on yourself; it’s called winning early. If you start your January habits in November, by the time most people are warming up, you’re already in stride and separating from the pack.

Here are five things you must do now to make 2026 your best year yet:

1. Write It Down

Success loves clarity. Write out your 2026 goals, but don’t stop there—attach specific action steps and timelines to each one. Goals without structure are just wishes, but when you define the “how” and “when,” they become roadmaps. Order a 2026 planner and start planning!

Start with your major categories: business, finances, relationships, health, and personal growth. Then ask: What does “winning” look like in each area by December 2026? Once you can see it clearly, you can reverse-engineer it into daily habits and weekly wins.

2. Focus Your Energy

Distraction is the silent killer of momentum. You don’t need more time; you need more focus. Decide what matters most and double down on it, because split energy creates split results. Know the one-two things that must get done to make that day a success. 

Create a “Focus Block” each day—90 minutes where you eliminate all distractions and attack those most important tasks. Protect that time like your future depends on it… because it does. Consistency beats intensity, and clarity beats chaos every single time.

3. Elevate Your Fitness

Your body is the vehicle for your success, and how you maintain it determines how far you can go. The sharper you are physically, the more powerful you become mentally and emotionally. Movement builds momentum, not just in your body but in your business and mindset.

You don’t need to train for a marathon; just start moving daily. A 20-minute workout, a walk, or even morning stretching can recalibrate your mood, energy, and focus. As you plan for 2026, treat your health as a non-negotiable asset—because energy and endurance are the real luxury currencies according to the most successful CEO’s. 

4. Strengthen Your Circle

One of the most common resolutions is to “improve relationships,” but it’s not just about adding new ones—it’s about elevating the ones that fuel your growth. Audit your circle. Who challenges you, supports you, and keeps you accountable when motivation fades? The right relationships don’t just inspire you; they sharpen you.

This is the time to build your Starting 5—a small group of five trusted people who each bring something unique to your growth. Think of it like your personal board of directors: one who pushes your mindset, one who fuels your business goals, one who prioritizes health and balance, one who reminds you of your values, and one who simply has your back no matter what.

Energy is contagious, so surround yourself with people who lift yours. Invest in connections, schedule your first mastermind, accountability call, or strategy lunch with someone in your Starting 5. The people you spend time with today will either limit or launch your 2026. Choose wisely and build intentionally. (Stay tuned for our online community!)

5. Start Now!

Don’t wait until January to “get serious.” Start the habits, systems, and outreach today. Begin your prospecting, your workouts, your journaling, whatever moves the needle toward your next level.

Momentum is built in motion, not in planning. Getting a head start on your 2026 goals isn’t jumping the gun—it’s setting the pace. The earlier you start, the longer you’ll stay ahead. So don’t just dream about your next chapter—start living like it’s already yours…Full Mogul style! 

(Visit www.TapTheBeast.com to find out your Inner Beast Super Animal for 2026!)

Your Brand is Not a Logo—It’s a Promise. An Energy. A Soul.

With Lessons From Globl RED

Whether you’re scaling a startup, running a coaching practice, launching a personal brand, or building a boutique real estate firm—your brand is already doing the talking. The question is: what is it saying?

In a world where products can be copied and services commoditized, your brand is your edge. It’s not just what you do—it’s how you do it, what you stand for, and how people feel after interacting with you.

Let’s break down what makes a brand unforgettable—and how these principles show up inside Globl, a brand built with purpose, energy, and a clear promise.

1. Your Brand is What You Stand For

The most magnetic brands are anchored by a strong belief system.

• Nike doesn’t just sell shoes—it believes in the power of human potential.
• Apple doesn’t just build devices—it believes in challenging the status quo through design.
• Patagonia stands for environmental responsibility above all else—even profits.

A clear belief gives your brand gravity. It attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. When you know what you stand for, your decisions become easier, your messaging becomes sharper, and your team becomes more aligned.

🔴 Globl RED Example:

At Globl RED, we stand for Inspirational Excellence. That means we don’t just want to be the best—we want to inspire people along the way. We’re not here to do business as usual. We’re here to elevate real estate and the lives of the people involved in it. That belief shapes everything: our marketing, our service, our partnerships, our internal culture. It’s not a motto—it’s a mission.

2. Your Brand is How You Make People Feel

People don’t buy products — they buy feelings.

• A boutique hotel sells you the feeling of being seen and cared for.
• A fitness trainer sells you confidence and momentum.
• A luxury brand sells you identity and aspiration.

When your brand makes people feel something meaningful, you create emotional connection—and that’s where loyalty lives.

🔴 Globl RED Example:

Globl RED is infused with the DNA of our founder, Kofi Nartey—a former athlete, actor, speaker, and inspirational strategist. That energy is felt by everyone we work with. Clients often say working with us feels like having a life coach and power team behind them, not just a real estate advisor. Our branding, our communication style, and our client experience are intentionally designed to energize people. We don’t just help clients achieve their goals—we help them feel empowered, elevated, and inspired while doing it.

3. Your Brand is the Promise You Deliver On

Every brand makes a promise—great brands deliver on it consistently.

• FedEx promises overnight delivery—and builds its operations to ensure it.
• Starbucks promises consistency and comfort—you know what to expect, anywhere in the world.
• Tesla promises innovation and performance—and customers evangelize those results.

When your brand keeps its promise, you earn trust. Trust becomes loyalty. Loyalty becomes momentum.

🔴 Globl RED Example:

Our brand promise is Delivering Desired Results Through Inspirational Excellence, and we uphold it from the first phone call to the final closing (and beyond). Whether we’re marketing a luxury estate, negotiating a complex deal, mentoring one of our agents, or supporting a celebrity client behind the scenes—our goal is always the same: inspire with the process, and overdeliver with the results. That’s why clients return, refer, and rave. Not just because we deliver excellence—but because we do it in a way that uplifts, motivates, and aligns with their vision.

Final Thought: Build a Brand That Breathes

Your brand isn’t a PDF, a palette, or a logo file. It’s a living force—it breathes every time someone experiences you or your work.

So whether you’re just starting out or recalibrating after years in business, ask yourself:

💬 What do I stand for?
💬 How do I want people to feel after interacting with my brand?
💬 What promise do I make—and how consistently do I fulfill it?

Then commit to aligning every piece of your brand—your voice, visuals, values, and actions—around those answers.

Because when your brand is built with clarity, emotion, and integrity, it becomes something far more powerful than marketing—it becomes a movement.

Tag a fellow entrepreneur or creative.
Share this with someone building something meaningful.

And if you’re still figuring out your brand—start with the promise. Everything else should rise to meet it.

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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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.