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How do you deal with haters? These people hide behind social media profiles and workplaces, and they are everywhere! In this episode, Dr. Mimi Nartey, co-founder of The Nartey Sports Foundation, delves into how to deal with your haters and explains what toxic support is. What motivates them to make unkind statements? How do we protect ourselves from haters? You better not miss this interesting topic with Dr. Mimi and Kofi Nartey today!

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HATERS: Face Them, Embrace Them Or Chase Them With Dr. Mimi Nartey

This episode is going to be a zinger. It's going to be a good one. I’m super excited about this. Some people aren't going to be excited about it because some people are guilty of being haters. We're diving into haters. The title of the talk is Haters: Face Them, Embrace Them, or Chase Them. We're going to jump right in, and I say we because I am joined by my number one supporter, not a hater at all, Dr. Mimi Nartey.

Thanks so much for having me. This is going to be a hot topic.

Let's jump right into the heat. What is a hater? How do we recognize haters? Who are these people? What does it mean to be hated?

I think this is great. There's an awareness now in popular culture about people who hate on other people. People love to throw that around. I hear our elementary school son talking about people hating or not hating. It's popular. We need to figure out what we mean. Who are these people in our lives that are hating on us? Why is it important? What does a hater look like? A hater is someone who could be online who's making unsolicited negative or limiting comments intended to attack you on a personal level.

There are more haters hiding behind social media profiles. We're definitely going to touch on that more than probably anywhere else.

There are also haters in your professional environment. Those are people who are also making limiting comments about your potential or taking actions to hinder you or harm your professional reputation. There could be haters in our own families sometimes who are making subtle undercutting comments about you with statements like, “I don't know who he thinks he is,” or, “She thinks she's too good.” Haters could be someone that you're interacting with on a social level. It could be a friend, a person who's supposed to be a friend, who might be creating campaigns of doubt about you.

I’m not going to let us brush past the family piece. We're going to dig into more of this and the whole definition of what we see as haters, but sometimes it's those who are closest to you. You have to have an awareness and have your radar on to be able to even recognize those comments and those people who are touching you on a subconscious level that's negative.

I call that toxic support. You have people in your support system or people who are supposed to be part of your support group, your mastermind group, but somehow the level of support that they're giving is insufficient because there's a little bit of toxicity there.

That's an amazing oxymoron. I love that, toxic support. Sometimes we think it's support. It feels like support. We expect it to be support because it's somebody that is close to us. There's an expectation of care and love, but it's toxic. It's laced with toxicity.

Another important one is sometimes that hater is that voice of doubt inside your own head. That's the foundation for Imposter syndrome. What are we telling ourselves? What is our own self-talk? Get rid of the negative self-talk because that's a form of hate that we can control.

We talked about family and people close to you being big. Your own head and your own thoughts are the biggest. They are number one in terms of hitting on your process and creating that doubt, creating that negative energy. That's extremely important. It's extremely important to fill your mind with other things that can counteract that and combat those even doubts that show up as hate within yourself.

When you look at all of these examples, these are some of the ones that I came up with off the top of my head. Most of us in life or in business are experiencing this dynamic. That's why this matters, this important conversation to talk about. What do we do?

What do we do when there's obvious hate, when there's subtle hate, when there are backhanded comments? Even defining it and recognizing it is the first part of the battle. I pulled up the dictionary definition. There's the street version. There's the hip-hop version and the colloquial version. The Cambridge dictionary definition was pretty spot on, even for the purposes of our episode. “It's a person who says or writes unpleasant things about someone or criticizes their achievements, usually on the internet.” You talked about that and touched on it already that it's usually people hiding behind something who are throwing out these comments and these negative mentions.

What's funny is haters are people who are trying to usurp some power from another person. There are spiritually healthy sources of energy and power and spiritually unhealthy sources of energy and power. Hating is a spiritually unhealthy way to try to get energy or power by taking it from someone else with some disempowering comments or actions. It's not sustainable and it doesn't last. I do think that it's easiest for people to try to pluck power or chip away at people online.

Hating is a spiritually unhealthy way to get energy or power by taking it from someone else with disempowering comments or actions. It's not sustainable, and it doesn't last. Click To Tweet

You gave it the term toxic support. I even put in my notes. We never compare notes ahead of time because it makes it a little bit more dynamic when we show up and either are overlapping or contradicting each other. I had supportive haters because there are those people who are positioning themselves as part of your support group or a supporter of you, but they're only going to encourage you towards the limits or outcomes that they are comfortable with you reaching. They're going to push you to a point, not of your full potential, but of the potential that they're comfortable seeing you achieve.

At the end of the day, people are hating because of their own insecurity, their own ignorance, or their lack of exposure. They're basically feeling threatened and confused by your grateful confidence. A lot of times, your positivity is convicting. That conviction is disempowering to them.

They have to have some self-defense mechanism. It's the insecurity that you mentioned. Sometimes it's even jealousy. It helps them still feel good about their limitations, their limiting beliefs, or their lack of achievement in their own lives.

When people are exposed to someone with particular combinations of gifts and talents, discipline, gratitude, and confidence, it challenges their own subconscious programming. If they don't have the tools to deal with it, they hate on you.

Sometimes it's for attention. There are people who use hateful commentary, especially on social media. It is what we call clickbait. They're trying to get attention in their otherwise boring lives. I’m going to hate on the haters. I’m going to make comments like that. Your life is boring if all you have to do is hide behind a desk, hide behind a phone, hide behind a computer, and throw clickbait out at other people as hate.

Something else I want to throw out there is this. Unfortunately, as a woman, I can only speak about the experience of being a woman. We are socialized, and it almost seems like from a young age, to hate other women. We are fed lies that support a scarcity mentality. We're led to believe that there's only a limited amount of beauty, a limited amount of success, or a limited amount of happiness. If someone else has it, it poses a threat to me, when in reality, the truth is abundance, not limitation.

I want you to spend another minute or so on that one. For our women readers out there, this is something that we see. We see it on the internet, we see it on social media, and we've even seen the other side of it. Those are women supporting women and women adjusting your crown.

Real queens fix each other's crowns.

I didn't know what they were saying, but I knew there was something about a crown. Why is that so important?

Unfortunately, when we think about social oppression, what is it, really? Effective social oppression creates a situation where you disempower yourself. You are pushing down. You feel like crabs in a barrel, fighting for significance, importance, or validation on some level. Unfortunately, it's been tough with women. We're made to feel like, “If someone else is beautiful, that might mean that I’m not beautiful.” In reality, multiple people can be beautiful, have been, and will be for eternity.

I do think that what I have been encouraged by, as you're saying, is women's empowerment movements. That's the crux of it. It is about intersectional feminism, women respecting who we are in our myriad of beautiful expressions, and being encouraging and feeling like, “I can be who I am. I’m not threatened by someone else being who she is.” I’m empowered by other people's traits, talents, and gifts.

On the male side, we look at success the same way. We look at physical attributes the same way. We look at these things like, “From that scarcity standpoint, this person's successful,” or, “If they've achieved success in my industry, is there room for me to succeed? Is there a pathway?” Yes, there is. When you look at our Mogul Nation and our Full Mogul pursuits, the highest and best version of every individual creates the highest and best society. Imagine if everybody is living up to their full potential because their potential, your full potential, our Mogul Nation's individual full potential is unique to them. No one else will achieve your full potential.

There's a quote maybe from Gandhi. I’m definitely not going to get it exactly right. It's something to the effect that all of the problems in the world or the majority of the problems in the world could be solved by closing the gap between what it is that we're doing and what we have the potential to be doing collectively.

Coming back to the idea of clickbait, it is this whole thing that controversial sells. When somebody makes controversial statements, it gets them headlines. I feel like some people don't even believe at their core what they're saying or the hate they're putting out there. Some people have made a brand out of making controversial statements and creating these fires on Instagram and Twitter, and getting the news to talk about them. That's their only pathway to fame. They aren't even living their truth. They're throwing these things out to hate on other people or to make controversial statements to get attention.

That makes me think through all of the different kinds of haters there are out there. There are all of these different things motivating them to make these unkind statements on a daily basis for attention because they haven't quite tapped into or tuned into what their real gifts are and where should they be putting their energy for sustainable significance.

One other classification of haters would be institutional haters because not all haters are human. There is some systemic and institutional level hate going on, some things that can limit your progression and opportunities. Sometimes we create those in our heads, but sometimes they're real.

The haters can be explicit and deliberate like we're talking about. There are people who are out there saying whatever and doing whatever. That's usually likely in these cyberspaces where they don't have to be confronted or addressed back for the things or held accountable for the things they're saying. The subconscious haters, a lot of times, are the friends and family sometimes in that toxic support cycle where they may not even fully be aware that they are hating on you or why they're even doing what they're doing. These institutional haters, our cultural systems, and our political systems are unfortunately working on it but not optimally designed for everybody to be successful. A big institutional hater is the media.

The media is huge, which is why I know you like to avoid a lot of the rhetoric and the nonsense that's thrown out in the media, even to protect your vibration and your energy towards your own pursuits.

Getting back to the idea that a hater is a person who's chipping away at your energy and who's chipping away at your drive and your power, I limit my exposure to the media, especially visual media. If I want to update myself on the news or world events, I prefer to read my news because televised media or video media, is usually designed to provoke and destabilize you emotionally. I see that as a form of hate.

We've got to address our subtitle, Face Them, Embrace Them, or Chase Them. As I quickly lead into that, I wanted to touch on why we experience it as hate. Why do we feel like somebody is hating on ourselves? A lot of times, hate or those comments of hate or toxic support can serve as a reminder of a version of our former self that we’ve moved on from, or better yet, we’ve evolved from.

Those comments scare us because they remind us of that past. Even as you talked about the media and protecting yourself from the media, this is another reason we have to protect ourselves from certain people and certain types of hate because it can impact your own self-worth and your vision of your own self and even the pursuit of your goals.

What I’m hearing is that we have this vision of ourselves at our highest potential. That's somewhere in us. No matter what you've been through, no matter what childhood trauma you may or may not have experienced, somewhere in your heart is your understanding of your true potential and your true capacity.

We are all in an imperfect struggle or process to get to that. When we are experiencing hate, it perturbs our subconscious because we are trying to be pulled towards that highest version of ourselves, towards meaning, towards purpose, towards love, towards beauty, abundance, and expansion. What we have with this hating energy is someone trying to pull us back down, kill the vibration, keep us, at best, stagnant, if not pull us into a regression.

Let's jump right into when to face them and even to embrace them because sometimes we do have to take on our haters. Sometimes it even makes sense to embrace our haters. One example of that is when it provides you with the right spark and right motivation. This is a little bit of a tricky one. This can bring out the petty. You think about Michael Jordan, his pettiness, and his speech at the Hall of Fame, where he talked about all the people who said something negative or challenged him in a negative way. If you've seen The Last Dance, which I’ve seen nine times, I love it. It's a great documentary, all of that fueled him on a daily, weekly, monthly, and apparently his whole life. It fueled his drive for success.

This is important. If you're aiming for greatness in your career, greatness in sports, in your relationship, your family life, whatever it is, you're going to have haters. If you're aiming for greatness, especially in multiple areas of your life, you're certainly going to have haters. Everyone who's achieved something great, like your example of Michael Jordan, has experienced this particular form of adversity.

I do think that there are times when you can embrace your haters when the hater doesn't have close emotional proximity to you. Michael Jordan going back and looking at all of these people who may not have recognized his truest potential or his highest potential were people who still were at a certain particular emotional distance. That's why he could leverage that into fuel for himself.

Another time we should think through what we might be describing as hate, and maybe we want to embrace it, is when our haters are critics. What I mean by critic is there's an important difference there. A critic is a person that can make you better. It is a person who's a peer who may be offering actual insights and feedback that we may not want to hear, but it is important for us to embrace that.

I think about Dr. John Henrik Clarke, who's a famous African-American historian and professor. He basically created Pan-African studies. I remember him at a conference one day. He says something to the effect of, “I’m not here to debate with anyone. I’ve devoted twenty years of my life to this subject. I only debate with my equals. All others, I teach.” While that is a mic-dropping level-setting zinger in and of itself, what's important is he does acknowledge the opportunity when he would debate. That is when he encountered an equal.

For me, in my life, even through high school, college, and now as a full-on adult, I’ve embraced certain people that are intellectually my peers or know something more than I do, or I want to bounce something off of them. There are certain people in your life. I call them half-empty haters. They're not bad people at all. They're always cynical, or they're risk averse. They're cynical about everything.

Glass is always half empty to them until you prove to them that it's half full. I like those types of people for bouncing ideas off of them and realizing that they're not consciously trying to hate but rather gather information so they can believe in what you're saying. They challenge you in the right ways so you can justify and double down on what you're trying to do or maybe even gain some insider knowledge to make what you're doing better.

Those kinds of critics are the people with the experience and righteous authority to make objective evaluations on some idea that you have or some way that you're functioning. The difference between that critique or criticism and hate is the scope and quality of the commentary. Criticism is usually responsive rather than instigating. I might offer criticism to someone in response to something that they've said or written, carefully focusing on the logical fallacies, never intending to attack someone on a personal level.

You have to find people who will truly tell you like it is that you can trust. My good friend, Sharran Srivatsaa, I go to him quite a bit for conversations and to bounce ideas off of him. He's got a great podcast called Business School. Check it out if you haven't. He had this term that I refer to him as a sniper mentor. I can bounce a single statement off of him, and he's going to shoot straight and say, “Kofi, this is how you should do that. This is how you should attack it.”

It may come across as criticism or critique. He once told me about myself and about how I was falling short based on even gifts that I had and how I could do something better. I’m like, “I love you,” because he was willing to cut through it. You have to have those people in your lives. He's nowhere near a hater. He’s not an example of a hater, but these other people who come across as cynics, you can sometimes use them for that sniper mentorship where you go to them with a quick idea or a quick subject, and you're going to get that feedback. You're going to get those questions that make you better.

That feedback can move us all forward in thought. It makes us sharper in our methods and arguments. To some extent, some of the work that we have to do with ourselves is to understand whether someone is hating per se or is this someone who's trying to give me frank and honest feedback. Am I in a position to be able to receive that?

I also want to say it's a check for authenticity. That's a big one. It's a way to know that you are on the right path for you, by you, of you, and through to you. This is something I had to call myself out on years ago. It was like, “I get along with about everybody in my world. If I’m getting along with everybody, there's some part of my truth that I’m not truly embracing and not truly living.”

The true version of me can't rub everybody the right way. It's not true. You've been with me for many years. You've probably even seen part of that shift to call more things like I see them, to push people in ways that I think they could be better, to solicit unsolicited advice from people because I’m often giving unsolicited advice for that exact reason. I want it back. I want people to tell me how I can be better, but it's helped me live in my truth. Even a declaration I made a few years back was, “This is a year I’m going to transition to bringing out my haters.” It means I’m going to be living in my authenticity.

Everybody has a certain particular flavor. There's a certain particular flair. It can't suit all pallets. You do have to get to a place of comfort with yourself. That's a real sign of leadership, what you're describing, that process growth in leadership where you are willing to stand for what you believe in and recognize that it's not going to be what everybody believes in. That's what it is. I know that I’m not everybody's particular cup of tea, but then again, everybody doesn't necessarily have good taste. I’m just having a little fun. You have to be willing to have a little bit of controversy and conflict in order to walk in your real truth toward your purpose.

I love it because that authenticity that you bring to what you're doing creates more alignment with your inner being, your inner self. It creates more connection with what I call your tribe. The people who align with your line of thinking will embrace that. You'll even notice it in your social media feed, on your Facebook pages, and on your websites because when you make a statement that's bringing out the haters that are potentially controversial, they'll go to bat for you because they align with your thinking.

That's what I try to do, and that's how I try to function in my social media spaces. Beyond people that I’m friends with, I try to create a social media network that I think is in alignment with what I like. There's that reinforcing energy towards my goals, creating all of the different kinds of psychological cues to push me forward and help me be more authentic in the truth that I want to live.

Some of your haters, you can embrace for your own advantage. You can feed certain people who you know are haters or are rumor spreaders or who like to run and tell that. You can feed them certain information that's going to help your overall journey. It's going to help your overall messaging, and it's going to get you more clicks. You can use your haters who are trying to hate on you.

I love that, and maybe this is something that we can talk about in a future episode. There are a lot of ways to have other people and even leverage objects and opportunities to fight battles for you so that you don't have to spend too much energy or time fighting certain particular battles. You definitely can figure out how to leverage other people, opportunities, or objects.

We're going to do an episode on that. It was very controversial too. It was probably one of my most controversial social media posts. I had a social media post that I said, “Sometimes I let my clothes fight my battles. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Prada hit pretty hard.” People came out of the woodwork. Some people loved it, some people hated it. “You’re materialistic.”

Yes, you're right because it does do some of your speaking and communicating for you in whatever direction you're trying to take it. We're going to do an episode on that, for sure. I love this idea of leaning into it to find your tribe and embrace your authenticity because it means you're on the right path. It reminds me of that Drake song. I won't say the title of the song, but he's got the chorus that says, “More money, more problems. Bring on the problems.”

More money, more problems, bring on the problems because that's bringing on the money. That's part of the process. Let's talk a little bit about when to avoid them. We're coming up on time here, but I definitely want to make sure we cover when to fully avoid them or anything critical that we missed on the other two parts.

Right before we get into when to avoid them, I want to drop one little bit of knowledge on when to face your haters. We did talk about institutional haters, and I have to say I am an INFJ personality. People who do personality assessments will understand that. I am an advocate. People like MLK Jr. share my same personality type. I want to say we always need to confront haters that are on the institutional level. That's part of our purpose, part of our mission, and part of bettering ourselves as humankind. We need to be willing to face and confront haters on that level, whether cultural haters or institutional haters.

We always need to confront haters that are on the institutional level. That's part of our purpose, part of our mission, and part of bettering ourselves as humankind. Click To Tweet

I’m going to piggyback on that, shout you out for that, and make sure that you guys processed what she's saying because I’ve seen it. You are an advocate. You are willing to take on the institution, take on the haters, not just for yourself, but even more so willing to take it on, on behalf of others, and on behalf of institutional challenges and institutional level hate. Not even just the individual level, but how do you change institutional problems without embracing them, facing them, and challenging them the way that you do? Shout out to you for that.

I want to encourage everybody to find your advocacy. Sometimes it does look like something that's confrontational. You can't be conflict-avoidant at all times. Also, it could be in the form of starting something new, starting organizations for women in a particular organization, or for people of color. That's the advocacy. That's when we need to stand up and take on institutions and face that kind of hate.

As we wrap up, let's talk about a few times or instances or reasons to avoid your haters. One of the first things that comes to mind for me is what I call castle building. When you're castle building, when you're building your big idea, or when you're building your identity, you have to protect that concrete until it firms up. You have to protect that foundation.

If you're building a house, you can't build on top of the foundation while the concrete is still wet. If you let negativity penetrate that concrete, you're going to have that negativity and that doubt all throughout the rest of the building process. When you have a new idea, sometimes it's better to keep it to yourself. Can you keep a secret? I can't. Sometimes you have to keep that.

It's even part of my focus and finish mantra. Focus on this or finish that before announcing it before sharing it because I’m building a new castle and I need to protect the purity of it. I need to protect the emotional fragility of that idea until I get to a place where I can share it with the world with confidence, and the negativity will bounce off or make it better.

I love considering timing as far as when it’s time to avoid haters. I want to talk about time and space. These are always good organizing principles. It's most important to avoid haters that have close proximity to you physically and emotionally. The impact of haters is usually a function of their proximity. If someone is close to you emotionally, they can do so much more damage to you mentally and emotionally as they try to disempower you. Think about those people that you might share something deeply personal or painful, and then later, they attempt to use that very same thing to try to tear you down.

It's the people closest to you that know how to use it against you to tear you down later.

Once I realize that kind of person in my life, I have a pretty absolute policy about those haters in close proximity. I cut them out swiftly, decisively, and without regret. I think of it as part of my process of being a highly self-disciplined self. Self-discipline is doing the things that you need to do even if you don't want to do it. I could face some social rejection on some level by cutting certain people out of my life. I need to be disciplined. If I’m serious about my goals, my process, and who I want to be and lining up with what I think God's vision is for my life, I need to be disciplined and remove those kinds of people out of my inner circles who I can't trust to be genuinely supportive of my process.

I want to clap. It's good, and it's also one of these moments. I always bring up how we don't compare notes until we get here, but you summarized three points for me. That is, 1) Considering the messenger. You have to consider the messenger. Sometimes certain messengers you have to avoid. 2) It ties into unhealthy emotional baggage or if it's purely a distraction. That unhealthy emotional baggage can also tie into who the messenger is if it is somebody who is closest to you. 3) That willingness to cut people out, that willingness to keep people at arm's length and even take it a step further and cut them out of your lives.

Some people don't belong on the same train, on the same bus, on the same mission that you are on. You can wave at them from the window. Peace. See you later. As a matter of fact, some people, you love them, but they can't be on the journey. They can't be on the bus. When you get there, “I’ll save a seat for you at the table.”

I found it fascinating because it's interesting some of these haters are in so much disbelief when you deny them access. At the end of the day, my passions and my pursuits are too important to me to let that dynamic thrive. You need energy to fulfill your purpose, and you can't afford to have those haters in close proximity to you, chipping away at that energy and at that passion that you have.

For my salespeople out there, too, sometimes we get nervous about living our truths and being authentic. “Kofi, I might lose clients, I might lose people.” The people that you're meant to work with, the people that you're meant to have in your inner circle, it is those people. The truer you are and the more authentic you are, the faster they'll show up. I’m not saying go make crazy political statements or go crazy. No, don't do that. Use some wisdom. You have to live in that authentic truth and don't deny yourself of that because that also will eat away at your core.

I want to throw something out about living in your authentic truth. As a little tip on that, it's important for us to focus on what we are in favor of and what we're more in support of rather than making big, bold statements about what we are against. Take a more positive and constructive approach to making statements about what you're for rather than even me saying, “I’m against this injustice or this bias. I’m actually for inclusion, love, and equity.” When you put things in a constructive way, it's also a lot easier to live in your truth in a way that's going to be sustainable and inclusive. You're still going to find people who hate you, but you're on your path toward your highest and best self.

Focus on what we are in favor of and what we're more in support of rather than making big, bold statements about what we are against. Click To Tweet

Let's wrap this up. We've covered quite a bit here. Hopefully, we've said something controversial enough that we'll bring some haters to the table who will debate with us in a healthy debate. If they're not equipped for a healthy debate, then we'll teach them, as the doctor said. My last little thing here is fortifying yourself. Know what your goals are. We talk about definite chief aims, if you're familiar with that statement.

Knowing what your goal is to the extent that when you're castle building, when you've reached a point that you can share it, when you can invite those constructive critics in, those half-empty haters, you know when to avoid the people who have access to your emotional sensitivities. You know when to embrace them and use them. You have to build up enough fortitude and enough momentum that they bounce off of you when they're supposed to bounce off of you. Sometimes you're pulling that Neo and The Matrix and you're avoiding them all together.

You did a beautiful summary. The only thing I would offer in addition is, if you are trying to be successful and you're trying to be great, this is a part of the process. We're trying to offer, as Kofi has summarized so beautifully, some different strategies, some different guidelines, and some methods for you to begin to figure out how to address this because it is a part of the journey. Know that as those haters come out, look at it as an indication of, “I’m on my way.”

I’ve risen to a certain level of success or visibility that now the haters can finally see me. Let them come. Let them support your ambitions and your journey as a way of knowing that you are on your way. Thank you, Dr. Mimi Nartey. Thank you, wife. Thanks to Mogul Nation. Please comment. Send us notes on social media. Go to the website FullMogul.com. Share this show with someone. Secretly share it with your haters. We will see you on the next episode as we continue this mogul journey. Thanks. 

Important Links

• Dr. Mimi Nartey
• Business School

Are you a creature of habit? Does your day go by routinely? If yes, then you are already set for a bright future! In this episode, Kofi Nartey is joined by none other than his beautiful wife and social entrepreneur, Mimi Nartey, to discuss how creating a daily routine sets you up for lifetime success. Mimi dives deep into the biggest challenges many of us face when creating these day-to-day habits and shares how we can overcome them. She provides the strategies to help you create daily success habits, so you can fully be the master of your life. Full of insights on our psychology and identity, this conversation helps us see which parts of our lives push or limit us from reaching our full potential. Small habits build momentum towards excellence. Join Kofi and Mimi as they guide you towards this pathway to success.

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Listen to the podcast here

Daily Routine Or Daily Failure With Mimi Nartey

Why It's Important To Have A Daily Routine And How To Create One.

I'm super excited. I'm always excited to share with you guys and to do this. In particular, we're going to talk about a very popular subject, daily routine/daily habits. We're calling it Daily Routine Equals Lifetime Success: Why a Daily Routine is Important and How to Create One. I'm joined by a special guest who's been here before. Speaking of daily routine, my forever guest, my beautiful wife, Dr. Mimi Nartey. Please say hello.

Hello, guys. Thanks again for having me, Kofi.

Let's jump right into this. We are going to get to some great bullet points on how to start your day and how to build out your daily success routine and habits. Let's start with the why because if we're not motivated to do something, we'll never do it. Why is it important to have a daily routine?

I'm excited to talk about this as well. The why is critical. I'm going to jump in a little hot and heavy with a big idea here.

Brace yourselves, guys. We normally warm up and build into it. We're jumping right in. I don't know what she's going to say, so let's go.

Daily routines are important to address your subconscious programming. The single biggest challenge that we face is our subconscious programming, which are the subconscious thoughts, beliefs, and values that we hold that inform us about the relationship between constructs. What do I mean by that? I mean what's the relationship between success and struggle that we believe? Do we believe that there can't be success without significant struggle? What's the relationship between people who come from places we come from and ultra wealth that we're holding in our mind?

Do we think that a certain level of wealth isn't for people from our backgrounds? This is where all of our limiting beliefs come from. We have this subconscious programming, things that we've picked up from the way that we've been raised, from what we've been exposed to, or what we haven't been exposed to. A daily routine is a key strategy to address subconscious programming by building in daily. 1) Time to work on your mindset and 2) Actions that support the new beliefs that you want to hold about yourself and your potential.

That is heavy. That was the doctor and Dr. Mimi Nartey right there. My first bullet point was it starts with an idea. Why do you need a daily routine? It’s because you have to have an idea, a plan, or a goal that you're working towards. That daily routine in those daily success habits is part of the plan to get there. Now everything you said, and I had no idea where you were going to go with it, seems to fit neatly, messily, strategically, or perfectly in the middle of what I'm saying.

It starts with an idea or goal, and then there's the plan to get there. Part of what you are addressing and what you dropped in terms of knowledge is our psychology which helps us, prevents us, aids us, and slows us down in whatever capacity from getting there. How a daily routine or daily habits will help us break through those limiting beliefs or limitations that we have on a personality or psychological level.

We're going to use the words habit and routine synonymously. I know that they're slightly different, but we talk about daily habits and daily routines. You can google the daily habits or success habits of certain people or industries, and it's a very popular topic. If you say habit, it’s the same as routine. Routine is the same as a habit.

I'm passionate about the pathway to success, even this full mogul journey that we're on in the show, and what it's about. Let's talk a little bit about that and even dig a little deeper into what you dropped as your framework for this and the personality limitations. We're setting those goals and talking about the steps to get to those goals. How do this daily routine and daily habit factor in?

One thing about myself is I'm intentional. Again, I'm exposed to a lot of people that I see. They’re promoting or trying to influence with their different daily routines. It's worth it for me to dig deeper to understand why. How is this servicing them? Beyond quality skincare routine and getting that glow, how is this making a difference and amounting to a difference in people's lives? I want to believe that. I know it makes a difference in people's lives because I do know that there are certain habits or routines for highly successful people.

As I'm saying, it starts with this mental framework. That's so important for your success. You have to release certain things that are holding you back mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. Another challenge that we face as ambitious people in entrepreneurship, sports, or whatever it is that we're doing is, from time to time, we all lack motivation. Effectively having a daily routine keeps you moving one foot over the other even when you feel tired, burnt out, or not that into it. That's the importance.

Effectively having a daily routine keeps you moving one foot over the other even when you feel tired, burnt out, or not that into it. Click To Tweet

I 100% love that. I feel like the words habit and routine are synonymous. It makes me think about the speaking that I do sometimes from stages. Whether I'm teaching a class, I'm doing training for agents, I'm talking to professional athletes, people in sports and entertainment, or the kids, I'm sharing from my heart. When I say sharing from my heart, I'm sharing from my gift. I get passionate about it.

I might start off slow, but I build quickly and I talk fast. I talk with a lot of energy and people can feel that energy, but that has to be converted into action items. I tell people that enthusiasm, the momentum you want to build, and the excitement are like caffeine. It wears off unless you turn it into action items. Habits can convert that enthusiasm and momentum into routines that lead to success.

That's so important because you do get a lot of people that are passionate and energetic, but translating that into meaningful change in their life or progress towards their goals, usually, it's a black box. That's what this is. This idea of establishing your habits or routines each day from morning and night is going to deconstruct the mystery and help you move. As I said, one foot over the other when you're passionate and enthusiastic and even when you're lacking a little bit of passion and enthusiasm.

It connected even to my point about motivation. Daily habits are also important when you are dealing with grief, pain, or illness and as a way to keep going when you feel you can't go on. Effectively, your routines create your mindset and your mindset creates your identity. When you are challenged in your identity by some level of trauma, it is your routines that are going to help you find your way back to yourself.

It ties, again, into my theory of alignment. We align with our emotions more so than we should. A lot of times, we need to align with the person that we truly are aiming to be owning that identity and finding ways to get back to that alignment. It’s like you wake up feeling depressed. I always say, “That's the day you need to put on your best outfit because it's going to help you align with the true version of yourself that you're pursuing, which is who you actually are.”

Those habits are routines. They help you stick to the plan, and you can't plan without a desired outcome in mind. If you're having routines and habits toward nothing, you're going to end at nothing. You need to establish that goal or that plan ahead of time because then, you can create the routines and habits to get there. Also, it lets you know once you have achieved that goal.

Right there, we see the benefit of routines all the way around for helping you to establish your identity and how that can be so protective. It is so that you don't skip beats in the pursuit of your goal because of natural burnout and lack of motivation. If you are interrupted by something that is traumatic or disruptive, you have a way to fall right back into what you know is a part of your true identity.

I have a Kofi-ism that says, “Don't let a moment ruin your momentum.” I can't tell you how many days I've set out with big plans for the day. I get to the office and I forgot my computer charger. Now I don't have a computer. You get distracted by a terrible email or a fire you need to put out at work, but it's a moment. Those things are going to pop up every day or every week. They're part of your journey.

You have to make sure that your routines and habits keep you on track and on the road. Those things are distractions that are thrown at you to challenge you to confirm and verify how focused you are. Are you focused and committed to getting from A to Z, reaching your goal, and reaching your outcome? You won't know that until it's tested.

I couldn't agree more with what you're saying. I have a Post-it Note on my computer keyboard that simply says, “Are you sticking with the plan?” I do think that if I break that down, what is questioning me is, “Am I in alignment with the routines and the habits that I believe are going to get me towards to arrive at the goals that I'm aiming for or striving for?” To your point, regardless of what happens during the day, as a mompreneur, there are always things that come up. I could be right in the middle of my fluid zone, and then I get a call from the school that somebody is sick.

That may not even be your kid.

In a post-COVID world, that's true. You do have these disruptions. Do I have a certain number of things that are targets for my day that are still moving me towards what I want, even if somehow, the bulk of my day gets rerouted or rescheduled in some ways?

Those habits allow you to own your day instead of your day owning you. I remember hearing this podcast that if you don't take control of your day, you wake up and you start checking emails right away instead of focusing on your list and your priorities. Your inbox from your emails becomes your to-do list and you let other people determine your priorities. You let other people determine what you're going to do with your morning, your middle of the day, and your afternoon. These habits and routines give you control. You wake up and start with your goal in mind versus reacting to what the world throws at you.

To even push your point a little bit further, not only will people be dictating what your to-do list is, but they will be taking you on their emotional rollercoaster. Having your own routines and habits are for you to be the master of your own emotions at different points during the day.

We need to quit and spend another minute or two on that because it's so important to guard ourselves against external emotions. You can only control your reaction and response to those things. Your reaction is usually an emotional reaction. Your response is thoughtful response. I always say, “Don't react but respond. The reaction is with emotion and response is with thought.” You also have to guard yourself against other people's emotions. I did a Full Mogul focus and finished a Friday post on Instagram about, “You've got to stop building up your emotional armor. Instead, start dodging the bullets.”

You don't want to keep getting stronger. I can take this from external pressures and external people and take on other people's problems and emotions. Sometimes, you have to pull a matrix and avoid other people's emotions. Block other people out of your world and stay focused on what you're doing. There's a time and a place where you can engage with other people and take on some of their challenges. There are other times and places that are even more important where you have to stay focused on your own.

I agree 100%. I would say in the roles that I have as a wife and as a mother, there is a lot of sharing the emotional processes of other people. It is what makes it so important that I dedicate time in my day to manage my own emotions and focus on getting myself into a routine that's going to have me balanced and aligned emotionally and psychologically.

If there's an inevitable part of your day where you have to take on other people, that's part of the role. It's important, as Mimi pointed out, to guard part of your day for yourself.

I used to do a lot of work in social justice parenting. You'll have my platform going and some different things that I do there. Social justice work is heavy work, and it is emotional work. What you are doing is saying, “I would facilitate crucial conversations or difficult conversations for people, where we're talking about social identity hot-button things around parenting their children.” I was basically holding the safe space emotionally for that. What I realize is I need routines. I need time to retreat, recover, and fill my tank up. Connecting back to myself through a certain process is my way to keep myself safe and continue to be able to give at that level.

That routine and those habits are systems that we create for consistency so that being human doesn't have to get in the way because we are all human. We have faults as humans. If we can create systems that we are dedicated to and committed to, that's how we move forward. We break through the inconsistency of being human, having these emotions, being on these rollercoasters sometimes, and having to deal with other people, but knowing that we have an endgame in mind.

Even owning that identity as we talked about it, it's a reframing. We always talk about the be, do, have versus do, be, have. The be, do, have is owning the identity and letting those habits and routines align with that identity. As an example, you want to start working out because you want to be fitter. Reframing that as, “I'm already a fit person. Now, what are my habits?”

It’s like, “I work out because I am a fit person.”

Exactly. Let's jump into a little bit more of the content. We're racing through time here. I know we've got a few more things we want to share. We want to jump into how to create daily success habits. Before we do that, let's talk a little bit more abound some of the strategies and things you're approaching in creating habits, why it's important, routines that we are using ourselves, or things you want to share.

It's around this idea of how I get started. How do I create a daily routine? What is that going to look like? From the MIMI Method perspective, there are several things that need to be part of your daily habits. It’s several things that need to happen on a daily basis. First of that is meditation.

We did an episode on the MIMI Method, but tell people what MIMI Method stands for. It's an acronym.

It’s Minimizing Inefficiency to Maximize Impact. That's a method about being really strategic, focusing on efficiency, and having the biggest impact that you can on the lives of others while reaching your fullest potential. For the most important daily habits, I've got meditation. That's worship, prayer, gratitude, and reflection. For me, on some days, that's fasting. Whatever that process looks like for each person, it's about that connecting on a spiritual level, That's what's important as one major component of a daily habit. Another one is movement. That's exercise or stretching. It could be yoga, bodywork, or something that gets your blood flowing. Those are my first two.

Those are amazing. It's important even as you're approaching and creating it. Now we're getting into that content. We're getting into the second part. How do you create your daily habits? These are strategies and tips for creating those daily habits. You have to identify your full mogul buckets. By this show, hopefully, you've tuned into the first episode, which gives you advice and tips on how to get started on your full mogul journey.

You have to know the buckets that you're feeding into and the identity that you are owning that these daily habits will support. If you haven't identified your full buckets, now is a great time to revisit that. Who am I as a person? What am I trying to accomplish? What impact am I trying to have? Who am I trying to help? Who do I need help from? How do I stay aligned with all of these different buckets?

All of that precedes this. You understand who it is that you want to be, and then these are the important bits that need to be a part of your day so that you can make sure you can execute that identity. As I said, firstly, this idea of meditation and reflection. It’s something that's spiritual and philosophical. The movement being another one. Let me add another one, which is learning. Learning needs to be a part of your daily habits because you need to be on a daily basis developing your expertise and staying intellectually stimulated.

Learning needs to be a part of your daily habits because you need to be developing your expertise and staying intellectually stimulated on a daily basis. Click To Tweet

That's something that is part of my daily success habits that I presented at Inman. I took the main stage at Inman. It's a big real estate conference. There are a lot of entrepreneurs and techpreneurs. Mostly, real estate people. They had me present my ten daily success habits. You can find it on YouTube. It's a ten-minute video on YouTube. Google my name and put daily success habits. It'll pop up. Read and reread is one of them.

I always share that with the agents that I train and the people that I talk to. It's not about reading a bunch of new books every year. It's about rereading books that you've read because it's about retention and the information that you can own and apply. When you're reading, highlight the parts that stand out to you. Usually, you will highlight about 30% to 40% of a book. When you reread, only reread those highlighted parts. That's part of learning. It tied directly into what you said.

As I said, you're learning to develop expertise. It's not about necessarily exposing yourself to everything. I was a college professor for a couple of years. I would always tell my students, “What does it mean to be intelligent? It means that you know how to know things. It’s not that you know everything. We're not going to be successful at knowing everything.” I would challenge them to swing by the library after class and look at all the books they're never going to read before they die. It's not about accessing every single thing, but it's about finding one particular practice, epistemology, and philosophy. It’s finding the things that reinforce that and getting mastery of that concept and process.

Coming back to Bruce Lee’s quote, “I fear not the man who studied 10,000 kicks, but the man who studied one kick 10,000 times.” It's mastery. It even ties into the 10,000 hours.

Ten thousand hours invested into one process will make you a prodigy. That's Malcolm Gladwell.

You also have to have specific guidelines that apply to your personality and plans. If you google daily habits or if you watch mine, for example, it may not apply to your plan or your personality. I'll give you an example. When I was doing daily mantras and affirmations, and I had a list of things, the consistent words that I saw on my full-page list of affirmations were focus and finish. That's what applied to me as a serial entrepreneur. It was like, “Focus on this before starting the next task. Finish this before announcing it. Finish this before starting a new venture.” That's what applied to my personality and needed to be ingrained in my daily habits.

I love that you're saying that and talking about personalizing what it is that you're doing to yourself. I would say these elements that I'm offering are elements that you are going to operationalize in a way that makes sense for you. For the most part, based on what I've seen as far as different successful people. What are the components of their day? What has worked for me? What am I observing that has worked for you? What are we trying to instill in our kids?

These are the general most important things that need to be part of your daily habits. They do need to be personalized and align with your brand, your personal goals, and the identity that you are taking on. No matter what that is, there should be some component of meditation, movement, and learning. This one is planning and scheduling on a daily basis to assure that you are organized. You are moving towards your goals, you are building your brand and you're feeling accomplished on a daily basis.

A couple of notes on that specifically. It should align with the highest and best version of yourself and the most centered version of yourself. You have to have something in your daily routine that you know is centering for you. For me, it's working out. If I can work out, I know that's one part of the day that I fully own for myself. It's very centering. That's why I'll even do my no-sweat quickset.

I'll go in my work clothes. If I don't have time for a full workout, I'll do a ten-minute workout because I get to own those ten minutes. I'll do one exercise, except pull-downs, leg breasts, leg extensions, or whatever it is where I won't do enough to break a sweat. I keep the momentum for that bucket in my life because it's a very centering bucket for me.

One thing to point out because this is important as it relates to the philosophy of the whole conversation that we're having is that your daily routine is not your daily to-do list. It's a different thing. Your daily routine would be like for me, working out. My daily to-do list would be what I'm going to do exactly for working out. In my daily routine, I need to lead generate for my business. For my daily to-do list, how many calls am I going to make? Who am I reaching out to? What am I saying?

That's an important point, too. Your daily routine is the things that you're making sure of, the boxes you're checking, and the buckets that you're touching on a daily basis regularly to keep you centered and motivated. It’s to make sure that you are moving every day towards your goals, regardless of what life throws at you each day.

Even for us, part of our weekly routines is our walks. It's about a 2-mile roundabout walk and we talk about all this stuff. We might have season two of the show be our conversations from our walks as well.

I wish we could record this one.

They're so good. I remember on one of our walks, we were talking about daily habits and you talked about the idea of sequencing. I thought that was great because certain things build on other things. Certain habits build on other habits and certain habits set up the next habit. Do you remember part of that conversation?

I do. It's related to a concept called Habit Stacking. You have to stack certain habits on top of each other in order to be full and stable in your identity. This is important because sometimes we have a bunch of habits, but we're still not executing on our identity and thus, not executing on our goals. It’s because maybe the foundational habit is not there. All of those habits that you have aligned with either a different identity or some aspect of the same identity. If the foundational habits and identity aren’t in place, then you are on unstable ground.

You have to stack certain habits on top of each other in order to be full and stable in your identity. Click To Tweet

Let's give an example of something like that. Is there anything that comes to mind? I've got a couple of things that come to mind like making your bed. That's an example that we talked about. You talking about that with even the kids and the importance of making your bed and even doing it in an excellent way.

You have to be certain to embed excellence and efficiency into your day. I was going to talk about this a little bit more when I talk about certain supplements of a morning routine versus an evening routine. It's important that you have, in your morning, intention setting and planning. As I was mentioning, some kind of self-care routine, which is pretty normal. We all are hygienic, but then also have small projects that build momentum toward excellence. That's because excellent execution builds momentum for your day.

Small projects that build momentum towards excellence. It’s such a good statement. If you're not driving, write that one down.

When I say small projects, what do I mean? The scale is making your bed as I said. We've got children that are pretty clever and sometimes they use that cleverness for good and sometimes they use it to try to work my nerves. I'll get comments like, “Why do we need to make the bed if we're going back into bed in the evening?” It is a small project that they can execute in an excellent way that starts to build momentum in their day toward excellence. They start the day being organized, tidy, and getting themselves going in this momentum.

It touches on all of that just making your bed. Remember the event we went to for the Navy SEALs Foundation? It was Admiral William McRaven. He wrote a book called Make Your Bed. He was talking about this idea of making your bed in the morning. You think about the military and the precision with which they do everything. He even said he brought that precision to making his bed.

It’s exactly what we're talking about. It starts your day in a certain way. It’s a certain level of organization, detail, and excellence. What I loved is he gave the story of the whole writing-the-book process and why he wrote the book. He also said, “At the end of your day, if your day has been bad, at least you have a beautiful bed to come back to.”

I'm going to give a couple of other little tips and hacks for starting to figure out how to put together your daily habits and daily routines. I've used acronyms and cheat codes to help me remember the broader ideas or things that I need to do that day. I'll give an example. I'll give last year's first. In 2022, I did 531. It was my cheat code.

Every day, I was going to have five personal touches for my business and for my life. I was going to make three deals happen. What do I mean by making a deal happen? For my people in real estate, they'll understand this. If you have a listing or a buyer, you have to be proactive in getting the house sold or finding a house. Making a deal happen meant that if my buyer had seen everything on the market, how do I find off-market opportunities?

How do I reach out to agents who might have new listings coming? What doors can I knock on to see if people are willing to sell? If I have a listing that hasn't sold yet, what agents can I put it in front of? What buyers can I put it in front of? How can I reframe it, reposition it, and share new videos and photos that I haven't done before? That's my making a deal happen and then one personal interaction with a center of influencer or key person that I needed to continue building a relationship with.

Fast forward to now, WILL. Every day, WILL. W stands for Workout. Every day I want to do something, whether it's a little walk or a full-on hour-long workout. If I have the time, it's great. Sometimes my no-sweat quick set where I go a ten-minute break in my office. I go to the gym next door, do that set, and come back. The I in WILL is for Impact. I want to have an impact every day on somebody in my firm or my life.

The two Ls are for Lead Generation For My Firm, so building the brand, getting the name out there, and creating opportunities for our agents. The second L is Lead Generation For My Clients and My Business. Come up with your own acronym. These are little hacks you can use. Come up with your own cheat code so that every day you're not reinventing the wheel. This is part of the daily routine.

I love that because I started going through that list of important things to incorporate into a daily habit. I talked about meditation, moving, learning, planning, and scheduling. This is also a way for you to even add additional emphasis and priority to certain aspects that are important to you. I want to throw in a few more that I didn't get to mention as far as what should be a part of your daily routine, and what should be a part of your life and practice on a daily basis.

Romanticized moment. As an individual, you should have certain moments and beats in your day that are designed to be a little bit more romantic, beautiful, elegant, and luxurious. That could be the skincare process and routine. We see that all the time. Influencers show this elaborate skincare routine where they're lavishing themselves with all kinds of beautiful creams and rubs. It could be getting dressed. If you're into fashion as I am, that moment is a romantic moment of styling yourself, pausing, and making sure something is beautiful and intentional.

As an individual, you should have certain moments and beats in your day that are designed to be a little bit more romantic, beautiful, elegant, and luxurious. Click To Tweet

The one that I use all the time that I do on a daily basis for sure is a coffee break. I have a pretty expensive espresso machine. I'm not going to say it on air because I don't think my husband knows exactly how much I paid for it. I've got a beautiful espresso machine and lovely coffee. It’s a whole coffee syrup bar. At different points during my day, I will take a beat, come down, and have that process.

That, to me, feels romantic, beautiful, luxurious, intentional, and personal. That's an important beat in my day and it's part of my routine. Everybody should have certain elements of their day that are romantic in that way. That could be going for a walk, spending time in nature, whatever that means or looks like for you. That's because synthesizing things gives us inspiration. It feeds our souls in a certain way.

I'm going to find out how much this thing costs but I will vouch for it. I call it your coffee bar because you created it. You ordered that machine. You've got the coffees laid out. You have the syrups and the different vanilla and coconut flavoring. It's beautiful. The product is good. When you make a cup of coffee for me, it beats Starbucks and Coffee Bean. It's amazing. I can imagine that being part of your day is a chance to have that romantic moment.

Two more things really quick that need to be part of your day. I would say connection with your partner. You already dropped that. We’re trying to go for walks. That's important because on a daily basis when you're in a relationship, you want to be able to offer support and get support. Connection with your kids is the same thing. You want to be able to make sure that you're hitting the beats with them. The relationships that really matter to you, you're investing in them in some way, big or small, on a daily basis.

In some way, big or small, you are investing in the relationships that really matter to you on a daily basis. Click To Tweet

Another one is knowing how to identify the things that will make that day a success. You have to identify the things that if that thing gets done, this day is a success. If it doesn't get done, the day is a failure. That comes from The Science of Getting Rich, the book that we've both read and listened to on audio multiple times. That has to be part of your day.

It's funny because I had that as a key element of a morning routine. Remember, I was saying you need to do some intention setting and planning so that you have your schedule together on a daily basis. You need to have your self-care routine and small projects that are building momentum. Also, you need to address the one big thing that gets checked off on your to-do list for the day that will already make the day more or less a success or something that's important.

A bigger-picture goal that you're working on. You need to get that activity done to make sure that you are foot right over left moving towards what you want. For example, we have children that are athletes. For our daughter, that's soccer training in the morning. You make sure you get that done and out of the way. That also prioritizes the identity soccer player in her own mindset because we are servicing that identity initially in the morning and then right after that, jumping into schoolwork.

Considering that example brings me to my next point. It can be dynamic. Your daily habits can change based on your goals. That is why we said you have to have a plan or something that you're working towards in those daily habits, and routines will get you there. You have to be able to pivot sometimes, update the habits, and change the habits. You want to have some foundational consistency or some things that do align with you.

For me, the working out or even those romantic moments that you are describing. Those things align with your inner core or inner child, the happy being inside of you that you want to make sure you're taken care of. Don't be afraid to make your habits dynamic as it relates to whatever the goal is at that time, whatever the plan is that you're trying to fulfill or things you're trying to reach, and give yourself grace along the way.

It's so funny because we did not plan to do this together. I have here that you need to reevaluate and redevelop your daily routine periodically to make sure that you're executing the routine that is in alignment with the next level of you. You have the routine that you're establishing. It constantly needs to be revised. If you think about it in terms of, say a life course theory.

You need to reevaluate and redevelop your daily routine periodically to ensure that you're executing the routine that aligns with the next level of you. Click To Tweet

The routine that you have established at 5 is not the routine that you'll have established at 15 is not the routine that you'll have established at 25 because you're a different age and there are different things in your life. You can look at it as, “Who I am right now as an entrepreneur? My equivalent 5-year-old child entrepreneur self will not have the same habits as my 30-year-old entrepreneur self.” Not necessarily with 30 years invested, but where you've come in terms of the maturation of your business.

Even to double down on part of what you say. The most important part of even that sentence was the next level of you. Your daily habits aren't to maintain the status quo. Your daily habits are to take you to the next level of you.

The Harvard Business School in the past year usually does international trips to Asia, Hong Kong, or Thailand. Harvard Business School went to Ghana. That's amazing and remarkable. Side note, it’s cool that there's an interest on that level academically in what's going on in Africa. I thought it was so interesting that there was a student from the Harvard Business School, who had the opportunity to ask the president of Ghana anything.

The question that she asked was, “What is a typical day in the life of an African head of state?” It connects to this because what we have is an ambitious business student, a young woman who is trying to run a major Fortune 500 company or a nation potentially at some point. What she's asking is, what is effectively your daily routine so that I can glean some insight and wisdom and align my routine with what your routine might be? Think about that. If I align my routine with what the president's routine might be, even if I don't end up president, it's going to take me far.

I've been saying it a lot, but I love that too because it's so important. Another Kofi-ism is listening with selfish ears. If you ask questions like that, the answer is going to be something that you can pull out of what you need as it relates to your daily process. For example, if they say, “I read this and that every day.” That means they read every day.

It doesn't mean you need to read the exact same thing because you might be in a different industry, but they're reading every day. They meditate or go for walks. I hear exercise in there, getting centered again, and getting back to my foundational thought processes. How do I access those? How do I do that for my life? That becomes something that you can emulate and that takes you towards your goals.

It helps you establish that identity. That's that next level of you.

This has been super-duper amazing. I want to bring us home with a couple of final points. As I shared my daily mantra on the Inman stage, I'll share it here too. I don't say it as much anymore, but it was, “A great way to become more centered to revisit who I am. Not even who I was becoming, but who I actually was.” Give us a couple more points as we look to wrap up here.

I've got maybe a couple more little hacks for establishing your daily routine. One thing that I'll share is I have distinctly different identities on a day-to-day basis. I have different kinds of businesses that I participate in. I work and manage the foundation and the charitable giving arm of your real estate company. I'm a homeschooling mom. I like to organize those different identities day by day.

Fortunately, our daughter is in the homeschooling program and it's a hybrid program. She does go to school two days a week. I take on a different identity on the two days that I have both kids out of the house. All that to say, I have different routines for different days because that's how I satisfy all of the buckets that I'm pursuing in my full mogul journey.

I'll give another hack that piggybacks on that in a different way. It's accessing the different parts of your personality that apply to those different pursuits and obligations. One hack that I came up with, and I kept it to myself because I thought people would laugh at it, is I created a name that combined the personalities of all these different people whom I pull different things from.

For three years, I never told anybody, but I refer to myself as Kofi Kobama Jordartey Wallusk. Now, I'm sure you hear some names built into that, but I'll make it all completely clear for you. Kofi, of course, and the next Ko was for Kobe Bryant, Mamba Mentality. The Kobama was Obama. His tranquil approach to things that would typically be stressful to other people. That's what I pulled from him.

Jordartey Wallace. Jordan is Michael Jordan, this killer instincts. Artey was part of my last name, Nartey. Wallace was William Wallace from Braveheart because he was such a dynamic person. He was a warrior, a lover, a thespian, and everything. He was amazing. Usk as an Elon Musk. There are a lot of things I don't about Elon Musk. There are a lot of things that don't make him a full mogul because he doesn't keep certain aspects of his life together, his fatherhood, and so forth, but he's so ambitious in what he does.

He thinks so big. From that, I can extract big-thinking ideas. Another hack, if you want to come up with your combined name, think of the people that you pull from, even if they're fictional characters like William Wallace. There are aspects of those people or your mentors, people that you admire, and can glean something from in those moments where your personality needs to pull that out and apply it.

I only have a couple more. The second to last one is for a family. You may want to see how you can integrate morning and nighttime routines with the other members of your family. This creates rhythm and healthy codependence with your family. That's what a family is. That's your family culture and family rhythm where you have a partner, a partner and children, or just children.

You want to try to make sure that some aspects of those routines, maybe that's having dinner together as a family, which we often do, or it’s date night, which is not a daily thing. It is a weekly thing that's part of my daily routine on certain days. Those integrating and shared routines are also an important foundation for a strong family.

The last one is you want to create environments that reinforce your routine. That means you're adding or removing people, objects, energies, or attitudes. You want to have environmental cues that are moving you towards who you want to be that are aligned with the routine and the identity. Take things out of your environment that are moving, detracting, or pulling you away from those goals. An important hack for your daily routine is to check the environment.

I can attest to this. I'm shaking my head and I am agreeing because, in our house, Mimi is constantly changing things about the environment. She's created some beautiful, luxurious, comfortable mindset-changing environments in our home. it's an ongoing process. My only concern is that she's going to swap me out. We swapped out couches, lighting, and fixtures. The next thing you know I'm getting swapped out, but no. It contributes to how you feel in your space.

I've got a mini routine when I come into my office. I have a statue of a rhinoceros. I got a rhinoceros because the adult rhinoceros has no natural predators. That's how I feel in my career at this point. I don't have any natural predators.

I rub the rhinoceros’ back and then I have a candle every day. That candle is strategically positioned right behind the rhinoceros so I light a fire under his ass. It’s because you have to keep your own fire going and stay obsessed with your mission. If you don't burn or light a fire or don't feel that fire, then what are you doing? You're working from a place of lack of energy. It's one of those reminders.

I'm going to finish with the part of my daily mantra. That was the identity piece. This was one part of my daily habits. I did say it on stage. I'll share it quickly and then we'll wrap things up. I would get up every morning, look in the mirror, and say the following, “I am Kofi Nartey, strong, husband, father, full mogul millionaire, and man of God. I will build my business and build others through discipline execution and my ability to focus and finish.”

I would say that three times every day. It got to the point where the kids would overhear me and they would walk around the house saying, “I am Kofi Nartey.” It helped me own that identity to the extent that my kids even recognized those were the different aspects of daddy's identity. That's what the daily success habits or daily routine are about. It's about identity cementation, cementing who you are.

We're going to wrap it up. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. We hope this was helpful. Share with us on social media. You can go to Mimi Nartey @MimiNartey on Instagram or @Kofi_Sellebrity on Instagram. DM us. Let us know if this was helpful or things that you are doing in your daily routine. You can go to the FullMogul.com website and punch in some information there to make sure you get updates on the show. Share this show with somebody you think it'll be helpful. We continue to look forward to this full mogul journey that we're on with you guys.

Thanks so much for having me again. I’m looking forward to hearing from everyone.

You got it. Thanks again. That's a wrap.

Important Links

• Dr. Mimi Nartey
• Full Mogul: An Introduction + 5 Tips For Starting Your Journey – Past Episode
• Ten Daily Success Habits
• Make Your Bed
• The Science Of Getting Rich
• @MimiNartey – Instagram
• @Kofi_Sellebrity - Instagram

You are not defined by your actions but by how you do them. Show up as a person worthy of trust and respect by doing everything you can to commit to excellence. Kofi Nartey shares ten amazing tips and tools to pursue excellence in every aspect of your life and business. Learn how to nurture relationships, build a good reputation, create lasting connections, and design a thriving lifestyle with excellence as your North Star.

Listen to the podcast here

What Happens When You Commit To Excellence?

10 Ways to Use Excellence to Change Your Life and Business

I'm super excited. We're going to talk about commitment to excellence. I'm sure you guys have heard about that from the Raiders. I spent a few minutes with the Raiders. I first heard about the commitment to excellence through that organization. We're going to expand on that and tell you why excellence needs to be your new best friend. I'm going to give you ten amazing tips and tools to help bring excellence to everything that you're doing.

I love sharing things like this that hit across all industries and all aspects of your life. We aren't truly defined by what we do but rather by how we do it. Excellence is a critical part of what you do and how you do it. If we can improve that how in everything that you do, it translates to what you're doing. You bring that to your business, life, parenting, friendships, relationships, and workouts. That how becomes how you define yourself. Excellence is one of the fastest ways to improve your how.

For the real estate industry, we have been in transitioning or shifting market. It's settling down. It's balancing out or whatever words you want to use, but most industries have some aspect, time or period where there is a shift or change. Even in your own personal life, there is a shift, change or moment where you have to stop, brace yourself, and prepare for what's next.

There are some times when things are going good, and we have to think about how we are going to take them to great. That change or shift is usually not a huge shift but a small shift. Let's jump right into this topic and talk about how excellence needs to be your new best friend, and excellence is something that you want to bring to your how that will impact your what and everything that you're doing in life.

I gave this talk to my own team and firm. I had a chance to deliver the same talk at an event called Leaders in Luxury. It's a real estate event. It was at the Four Seasons in Denver. They have beautiful residences. We did a cool tour up there, and the feedback from that was so moving that I wanted to share it with you, my Full Mogul community. I first heard about commitment to excellence with the Raiders organization. I spent a very short time there but as I always tell you, there's something to pull from every experience, whether it's a short amount of time or a long amount of time. Commitment to excellence is one of them.

I'm going to start with a quote from Vince Lombardi, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence." We want to look at, are the things that you're doing being done in an excellent way? If not, how can you improve them? I'm going to run through these ten things. Make sure you go back to it and share it with somebody else that needs it. Let's jump right in.

The quality of a person's life is directly proportional to their commitment to excellence. Click To Tweet

Pay Attention To Details

Number one, pay attention to details. It's all about the little things. You have heard about paying attention to details before. What I'm going to add to it is to extract the details. When we're talking about how we do things, there is surface-level communication as to how we do things and what we do. There are steps A, step B, and step C. What if we have A, 1 to 9, B, 1 to 9, and C, 1 to 9? Each step needs to be unpacked so that you can extract the opportunities to elevate the details that you are paying attention to and bringing to what you're doing.

For example, if you're working out. I can say, “Yes, I'm going to have an excellent workout.” That’s way too generic.” What does that mean? Does that mean I'm going to start earlier? What does that mean? Does that mean I'm going to start at 6:00 instead of 7:00. I go to the gym. What am I going to do? Am I going to start with a warm-up? Am I going to start with specific numbers of specific sets for my warm-up? Am I going to do specific weights with specific reps? What is it that I can get very detailed about to elevate the excellence that I'm bringing to it?

You have to do that in life and your jobs. Break down the process to the level of minutia. You don't do this every single day, but if you're looking at ways to be excellent or to elevate what you're doing, you have to unpack each step, each sub-step, and each sub-sub-step to what you're doing. At that point, you could see how to make it better and excellent.

Be Consistent And Persistent

Number two, be consistent and persistent. When we talk about excellence even in luxury real estate, part of that is predictability. That means that you're doing things in a consistent way. That's excellence. Excellence isn't winning one game all season. It's winning consistently. It's performing at your highest and best level consistently. It's taking each step each day in your job and relationship to perform at the best level that you know how at that point in time.

Even in our process with our employees, our friendships or our clients, the other part of being consistent is focusing on not just completion because completing every task is a part of excellence but the journey. The journey is what can make it excellent beyond being normal. Completion is important, but the journey each step of the way is even more important.

I'm in LA in my studio here in Beverly Hills. If I hop on a flight to New York and I'm sitting in commercial seating, I'm going to get there soon. If I'm sitting in first class, it's a different journey and experience. It is leveled up and it is approaching excellence. What aspects of the journey can you elevate as you're chasing down completion? If you don't complete the task, most of the time, that's not excellence.

Always Be On The Road To Be Better

Number three, always be on the road to better. Michael Jordan once said, “I never lost a game. I just ran out of time.” You guys may have heard that before. If we approach each thing that we're doing in life like that, we can always be on the road towards better. I have an acronym for failure. Some of my greatest successes in life are failures, even around Michael Jordan. I listed Michael Jordan's house which had been on the market for years. The house is in Chicago.

I listed it for one year and brought more attention, more video views, and more media than anyone ever had. I changed firm and the listing stayed with my old firm. I had to move on and the property is still for sale. Some people could say that's a failure. I take the word fail as an acronym for Find All Important Lessons. I learned a lot from that and it became a great success for my overall career, the impact that it had, the visibility that it gave me, and even the things that I learned around marketing a property at that level.

Win or lose, ask for feedback. You have blind spots. Even if you think, “This failed because of this. It didn't work because of that.” There may be some things that you missed that you will only extract by asking for feedback. Whether you think you did it right or wrong, ask for feedback and leave it open-ended. Don't guide the person that you're asking. That's the only way to get true unfiltered feedback, and tell them that's what you want. You might even have to do blind surveys because some people don't have the guts to tell you how it is. Some people won't call you out on what you're doing wrong. Make sure you have ways to get that true feedback.

Commit To Excellence: Ask for feedback and leave it open-ended if you think you did something wrong. Don't guide the person that you're asking. That's the only way to get true and unfiltered feedback.

Self-Respect And Pride

Number four, self-respect and pride. What I mean by this is a couple of things. Show up to be excellent. Have enough self-respect and pride in anything that you're doing. Whatever you show up for, you're showing up to be excellent. I'll give you an example. It's a fun story. Some of you know that I did acting for years. One of the films that I worked on was Fast and Furious. I was in Fast and Furious 4. Go back, and watch it. I'm in a handful of scenes. You will see me had a good time.

I had the great experience of going to Mexico with a handful of the cast members, Paul Walker, John Ortiz, Laz Alonso, Vin Diesel, and a lot of extras in this little town in Mexico. We had a chance to hang out that month. We were down there. We get to know each other a lot better. Vin Diesel is a superstar. He had his own huge trailer. He had a separate trailer that had a whole gym in it. He let me workout in it. Thanks for that. That was fun. He was always late to set. Vin knows this. The people who worked with him know he was always late to set.

What he told me one day was, “Kofi, I'm showing up to be immortalized.” What he meant was he was going to be on camera. This is going to be a movie that plays and plays. He wanted to make sure that he had his lines ready the way he wanted, his wardrobe the way he wanted to look, and the feel and the energy of the character were right where he wanted for him to be then immortalized.

When we show up in life, appointments, meetings, as a parent and in relationships, we're showing up at that moment to be immortalized. Make sure that you have enough self-pride and respect for yourself to show up with a level of excellence and pride. On top of that, what's your minimum standard? This is still part of number four. What's your minimum standard for that self-respect and pride?

I will give you another quick story. My wife and I took our daughter to Sweden. My wife coached the soccer team. She's a former World Cup player, and our daughter is playing club soccer. My wife put together a team that we took to the Gothia Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was an amazing epic experience. My daughter had three goals in the tournament. She played extremely well. Part of what I told her when we got back was, “You are not the same player now that you were before we left. You have a new bar. You have a new standard. At this point, you can't drop below that bar. You will be doing yourself a disservice.”

When we think about our own lives, the journeys, the jobs that we've worked, the experiences that we've had, the failures and opportunities to find all important lessons, those create new bars and standards for you to live by, stand on and build from. Why is it important to remember that? It’s because we all have moments of challenge.

I woke up one morning and my back was a little bit sore. I worked out the day before. My knees were a little bit sore. I came in. I have clients that are happy and clients that are upset. There are always going to be challenges and things that pull your energy down. Sometimes they are heavier and deeper than that like the loss of a family member, relapses, and things that you shouldn't be doing in life, but those are the most important moments to remember that you have a new bar. You don't fall or slip back into that old self or that old way of being. Those things are detrimental to your health, life and sanity. Screw that. There is a new you and a new bar. Don't go below it. Keep building on what you've done.

Commit To Excellence: There will always be challenges and things that pull your energy down. But those are the most important moments to remember that you have a new bar. You don't fall or slip back to your old self.

Respect Others

Number five is respecting others. We talked about self-respect. The other part is respecting others. This is part of excellence. We have to respect others. We have to respect their time. Time is one of the greatest luxuries that we have. If you are being excellent, usually, that means you are doing something in service to others. You are working with others in some capacity. You are delivering value in some capacity. You have to be respectful of others and their times.

You also have to respect other people's intelligence. This is tied to being excellent. That means respecting their excellence, which means respecting their intelligence. Being straightforward and honest with people is a way of respecting their intelligence. Don't beat around the bush. Don't make up excuses. People can handle great information, but even bad information, challenging information, or difficult information if you are straightforward and honest. Don't be patronizing. Respect people's intelligence and they will respect you more for that.

Take Ownership And Responsibility For Your Reaction

Number six, take ownership and responsibility for your actions. You can only control what you take responsibility for. How many times have I had conversations with people where the first thing they want to say is what somebody else did wrong. They are blaming somebody else for their own actions and life choices. The life choices that you made are life choices that you made. They may have been impacted or influenced by other people. If you don't take control of your narrative, outcome, and daily steps that lead to your big goals, you will not reach your fullest potential, and you will not be able to strive through excellence.

Whatever it is, own it. Own the process. Don't be married to the negative aspects. Don't be married to the setbacks. Own the idea that I control what my next move is going to be and what my next step is going to be. I don't give a whatever about what happened in the first part of my day, last week, last year, or when I was seven years old on the playground. I don't care. I control the next thing that I'm going to do in this next moment. I take responsibility for that. If I mess up, I also will own it. I will apologize. I will learn from it. I will grow from it. I will make it better if I can, and I will build from there, but you have to take ownership and responsibility for that.

Be Accountable

Number seven is similar but different. Be accountable to yourself and others. We achieve accountability by habituation, training, and doing things over and over. I think it was Aristotle that said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit.” We have to make sure that we are practicing working on feeding our brains the information, tools, tips, and the things that we need to stay in the right place to be working from the right mental standpoint on a daily basis.

Super simple life hacks. I was listening to a good friend of mine, Sharran. He got an amazing podcast called The Business School. One of the things he said on there was he listens to a podcast every morning. Here I am listening to his podcast, and he was talking about how he listens to a podcast every morning. What have I done over the last few months was every day and every morning in my car, it doesn't matter if my jam is on, was when the radio comes on, I'm putting on a podcast. Thanks, Sharran, for that.

I'm listening to some great podcasts, but it's every day. Its habits. It's doing what other people won't do so you can live how other people will never have the opportunity to live. In one of those podcasts, I also heard a great takeaway, “Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong.” Let that sink in. Let success and excellence be second nature to you.

Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong. Click To Tweet

T.T.I.N.

Number eight, TTIN. What does TTIN stand for? The Time Is Now. This came from my days at Cal. I played football at Cal. One season leading up to the season, they gave the whole team t-shirts that had, “TTIN, The Time Is Now.” That stuck with me. When we talk about excellence, the next thing that we're going to do, and our full mogul journey, we're going to have a certain amount of information, tools, and resources, but at a certain point, it's time to go. It's time to do it. That time is now.

Start your commitment to excellence now. Even if you don't know how it's going to apply to all aspects of your life, every part of your job, every part of your career, every part of your relationship, there's at least one part of your day-to-day, the balance of your day or your day tomorrow, where you know you can elevate that thing to excellence. I know it's in you. You know it's in you. Start now and ask yourself every day, every hour, and every minute, “Is this the highest and best use of my time?”

Be Passionate About Excellence

Number nine, be passionate about excellence. You have to obsess over excellence. Obsessing over excellence means you're obsessing over the highest and best version of yourself. I'm telling you, you reach a certain point, tools, education and experiences. The highest and best version of you is excellence. That is what we're striving for. That's what we want to unlock and unleash. You have to be passionate about excellence.

For those of you who are running companies, teams, organizations and households, keep this in mind. This is a quote from Steve Jobs. I love it because it's true, “Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.” They are okay with mediocrity and half-assing it. If you are an environment creator, culture creator, running a team, a household or a business, you can try to get those people to conform. Better yet, you can change the environment so it exudes excellence. It screams excellence. It's a culture of excellence. Anyone who's a part of that environment has no choice but to conform. Otherwise, they need to get off the ship or you need to kick them off the ship because that's part of life.

If Not Excellence, Then What?

Number ten, if not excellence, then what? This is not something that is truly a choice. If you're tuning in to this show, that’s because you want to unlock and unleash your full potential across all aspects of your life. That means that doing things in an excellent way at an excellent level is not a choice. It's an obligation. When we look around while walking down the street in our daily lives, we see many people with so much stress, pain, and tension in their eyes and faces.

When you talk to people about life, people suffer from so much depression because they haven't had the opportunity, the willpower, the desire or the commitment to strive for excellence. Mediocrity leads to underperformance, which leads to not utilizing your potential, which leads to disappointment and depression in life.

It's not trying your best and doing your best that makes you sad if you don't succeed. It was knowing that you left something out there that you should have done. There was the effort that you could have put in. There was one more level that you could have taken it to and you quit before getting to that level. One more call you could have made. One more person you could have serviced. One more somebody you could have helped. That little bit of extra effort that you left behind. That's what leads to depression.

People in life look back and say, “I would have, I could have, I should have.” We have an opportunity to erase that terminology from your future and get after it now. Remind yourself of your why. You got to tie all of this. Tie excellence to your why and hold the vision for that. In those moments where you're slowing down, depressed or have doubt, you can remind yourself of the why. It's not even about a huge shift. It's about a small shift and taking one step towards getting back to that level of momentum and excellence.

You got to tell yourself, "I owe it to me to be me." That sounds a little bit like Terrell Owens when he said, "I love me some me." To be honest, there's something to that. I owe it to me to be me because we have a responsibility during our lifetimes to realize all of our God-given gifts and share them with the world. That means I owe it to me to be me. It's another way of saying, "I owe it to be me." If I am the best version of myself, the world will be rewarded. If you are the best version of yourself, the world will be rewarded.

A quick recap. Number one, attention to detail but more importantly, extract the details. Number two, be consistent and persistent. Make sure you're striving towards completion, but the journey is part of the excellence. Number three, always be on the road towards better. Remember FAIL is to Find All Important Lessons. Win or lose, always ask for feedback. Number four, self-respect and pride. Show up to be excellent. Number five, respect others. Respecting their time and intelligence. Number six, take ownership and responsibility. You can only control what you take responsibility for, good or bad.

Number seven, be accountable to yourself and others. We achieve this by training and habituation. Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong. Number eight, the time is now. Start your commitment to excellence now. Ask yourself every day, every hour, and every minute, “Is this the highest and best use of my time?” Number nine, be passionate about excellence. You guys are full moguls. I know the passion is there. Tap into it and be passionate about excellence. Number ten, if not excellence, then what? If we're not on full mogul journeys, what are we doing? If we're not chasing, unlocking, and unleashing the best versions of ourselves, what are we doing?

That brings us to the end of our episode. If you like this message, if it resonated with you or if it's going to move the needle in your business in any capacity, let me know. Like and share the show. DM me on social media and say, “I tuned into your show. It was amazing. I had this specific takeaway." Let's keep building. Let's keep growing. Let's keep going, full mogul.

Important Links

• Leaders in Luxury
• The Business School

Are you considering launching a new business or adding a new product or service to your existing business? If yes, then you MUST listen to this podcast first. We will discuss the problem with a traditional SWOT Analysis, as well as the importance of TAM and PMF. Learn how to embrace one good opportunity that will bring you rewarding results and help bridge gaps in the marketplace – even if it will not be your life-long venture.

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Listen to the podcast here

Launching A New Business: SWOT vs. OTSW

The Most Important Podcast You Can Listen To Before Launching A New Business

I’m super excited to have you back on this Full Mogul journey, which is the relentless pursuit of the best version of yourself across all aspects of your life. You are on the Full Mogul journey with me. I'm excited to be a part of your journey. Hopefully, it's been helpful. This is going to be one of my favorite episodes so far. It's going to be a quick one but a critical one. The title of this episode is Launching A New Business, SWOT versus OTSW. This may be the most important episode you are going to read before launching a new business or adding a new product or service to your business.

I know a lot of you guys out there are entrepreneurs. A lot of you are in the real estate industry like I am, investors and financial planners and there are a lot of athletes out there but all of us have those moments where we're going to launch something new. There's been a spark in us that tells us we have the talent, gift and idea that we want to bring to the world. If we're going to do something like this, there's a little bit of analysis that immediately comes into play.

What Is SWOT?

Let's start at the beginning. What is SWOT? Let's define SWOT because this applies to whether you're launching a new business, adding an arm or service to your business, a new partnership in your business and anything that is going to be different from what you're doing in terms of starting from scratch, adding on, in addition to, will do something similar to a SWOT analysis. It's an old-school business term.

It still comes up from time to time but SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is a term that's used in business school training. It's evolved quite a bit. We look at something called the total addressable market. You can google that. It's another version of a SWOT analysis. It's the total addressable market that you'll have for your product or service. Take a read at that as well.

For this episode’s purposes, we're going to stick with SWOT because it ties into re-engineering those letters into what I described as OTSW. Starting with the idea, “I'm good at something. I've created something cool so I want to make a business out of it. I want to create a service, company, storefront or online store but is there a market for it?” Let's jump right into that.

There are some benefits of SWOT. If we even break it down, it is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. What are the strengths that you have? Normally, that's the easiest thing to identify because the idea, concept, theory and service were born out of strength. That gift that you have gave you that creative spark to say, “I'm going to turn this into a business.” It's not too hard to identify the strengths. Weaknesses are a little bit harder to identify but some of them are blind spots.

Also, you look at the business you want to get into or start and there might be some glaring weaknesses like licensing or a location that you need and a certain skillset that you don't have. Those are all weaknesses that will be part of your analysis as to whether or not this is a viable thing to pursue. What opportunities exist in the marketplace for this service, product and strength that you're bringing? Is there a TAM or Total Addressable Market? How big is that marketplace? Those are also something that has to be addressed.

The T is for Threats. What are the threats to the business or idea that you have? Who's the competition for the business or idea that you have? When we look at the competition, we have to look at it beyond who's doing what you're doing in the marketplace. Just because there's somebody who's doing it, doesn't mean that you can't do it too and you can't do it better.

Just because somebody is doing something doesn’t mean you can’t do it too or do it better. Click To Tweet

Sometimes that lets you know that there's an addressable market for it. If that company is already thriving but there's no competition and they're not dominating the market, they're doing well, that might be an indication that with that threat or particular competitor, there's room to take them down or gain market share that they don't have access to or you can claw away from them.

There's also the threat of technology. A lot of times businesses don't think that they can be undercut by technology. You think of simple things like the Polaroid camera but then we went to digital. People got rid of the film. Kodak lost a lot of money because they created film then we went to digital and SIM cards. Everything's in the cloud. These are technological threats to select business models. Almost every industry, service and product needs to consider technological threats.

“Can AI or Artificial Intelligence replace what you're doing? Can a computer do it much faster and more efficiently? When people turn to that before they turn to you, what is your value add?” These are all threats. Coming back to the overall SWOT analysis, it can be a great filter to run your idea through, “What are my strengths? What are the weaknesses that I need to make up for or mitigate? What are the opportunities in the marketplace? What are the threats as well?” The challenge with this is if you start and lead with just your strengths and bull rush or move forward into a market, into what is “opportunity,” you may fall flat on your face. I'm going to tell you why.

What Is OTSW?

Let's reverse-engineer those letters. It's not exactly backward but we're reverse-engineering it. For the acronym's sake, we're going to call it OTSW. The reason that I full-heartedly believe in OTSW and why I've leaned into this concept is because you have to start with the opportunity in a marketplace. Where does the opportunity lie? What is not being serviced to the level or the extent that the consumer wants, needs or would appreciate if it occurs? That's where the opportunity lies.

We have to start with where the opportunity is. We look at the threats and then next to the strengths. We look at our strengths, the strengths of our product, service and skillset or whatever we're harnessing, putting together for this new venture. “What are the strengths that me, my service or my product has to fill that opportunity?”

New Business: Look at your strengths, as well as the strengths of your offers and skill sets, when putting together a new venture that can fill a market opportunity.

When we look at overall business success, the overall wealth that can be created, the overall size of a business and growth and scale, it's where the quality meets the quantity. The quality of the service that you're providing, the need for that service and the quantity at which you can provide it. It’s that scale at which you can provide it.

You look at things like Amazon. It has a great quality of service and a huge scale in terms of the market. Even Starbucks. The coffee is pretty good. You might like Coffee Bean better, your local Blue Bottle or whatever coffee shop you go to in your neighborhood. There's a huge addressable market, the efficiency of that. Other things tie into Starbucks like the brand. They've created a great brand for themselves, a culture of being tied to Starbucks but there's a huge addressable market and then they applied their strengths to that market.

I did mention at the top that SWOT has been replaced with product market fit and that's the degree to which your product satisfies strong market demand. This is something about Marc Andreessen, a famous entrepreneur. Google him if you haven't read about him. There is a lot to learn there but he coined this phrase back in 2007. We look at that product market fit, the opportunities in the marketplace and what strengths we have to fill them.

Real-Life Examples

I'll give you a couple of real-life examples. I got into real estate in 2003. I got my broker's license in 2006. It’s been rocking and rolling ever since. It's been a huge learning curve since the beginning. I feel like I'm a 5th-degree black belt but still have more stripes to add to my belt. There's always something new to learn. When I got into real estate, I quickly realized that it was a huge market. There was total demand for the market but you also had to have a specialization or a niche within the market.

Real estate is a huge market. Despite having high demand, you must have a specialization or niche within it. Click To Tweet

There were so many real estate agents in 2003. Everybody I knew was either doing something in real estate or acting in LA. Here I am, I was doing both. I was an actor and a real estate agent so I needed to have a focus. I initially focused on condos and townhomes but I'm going to fast forward to when I transitioned into luxury real estate, more specifically sports and entertainment as a niche.

I looked at the opportunities, threats and competition but I also first recognized that there was a void in servicing sports and entertainment clients in understanding their lifestyle, the ebbs and flows of income, the need for privacy or security, the quick transitions that they often have to make, the traveling for work, the doing a $2 billion movie 1 year and not working for 3 years but you have the funds to get financed.

Lenders understand that there were all these nuanced differences in working with this type of clientele. I was in the heart of the entertainment industry here in LA. I had been part of the industry and sports world with my sports experience at Berkeley with my shot at the NFL with the Raiders. I had seen all of these aspects and nuances of this specific clientele. I saw that it was under service and no one owned that niche or specialized in it. That's where the opportunity was.

I looked at my strengths to apply. I had exposure to the niche and an understanding of their lifestyle. I knew a lot about real estate at that time. I had my broker's license. I had already been managing other people so I had a lot of contractual experience. I was good in my field and now I was going to take it to another level of specialization to service that market that was underserviced where there was a huge opportunity.

I've seen agents because I've built a great national brand with that. I get to speak around the country. It's a blessing to do and share that. A lot of agents want to get into sports and entertainment. The first thing I ask them is, “Is there a marketplace for it? Is there an opportunity?” They'll say, “John Elway lives down the street from me and I'd love to get his business.” “It's John Elway's third home in an area of Texas where he likes to fish.” There are no other sports teams or celebrities. I'm just making up this example.

You have to make sure that the opportunity is there. I've seen it with entrepreneurs whom we've given guidance to. I've given advisory services to help them with creating their brand, idea and strategy but they create an amazing widget or they're a technopreneur or an engineer. They're great at computer science. They can create an amazing backend and they feel great about their product but there isn't truly an addressable market. There isn't an opportunity that is truly scalable for what they've built.

Sometimes there is and there are other aspects that are missing like the right marketing strategy, packaging, branding and messaging, what type of marketing you're going to use and the name of your product. We'll get into some of that other stuff later. The first thing is to take that because we are entrepreneurs.

Moguls tend to be entrepreneurs. We're not going to deny the fact that it often starts with strength and sparks an idea but then we take that idea before we launch or move forward and we hold it up against OTSW. “What are the opportunities? Where does the opportunity lie? Where is the total addressable market? How big is that total addressable market? What is that product market fit? What are the threats to it? What are my strengths in service and bringing this to the marketplace in a unique way or a Blue Ocean Strategy way that I'm creating in a non-competitive space because what I'm doing is nuanced and different enough that I can excel without competition or at least get a huge head start on my competition in this industry?” We then finally move forward.

We are looking at the W, the Weaknesses and what gaps we need to fill. What things do we need to put in place to increase our chances of major success? Another great book to read is Blue Ocean Strategy. It's by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. I read it in business school. I have reread it 2 or 3 times. It’s another great book recommendation.

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

That blue ocean is defined as the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and create new demand. That's how they defined it in the book. It's about capturing the uncontested marketplace, the market space that doesn't have the same level as the red ocean, which is all the sharks, blood and where everybody is competing. That way, if you go to the blue ocean, you're making that competition irrelevant. You always got to move and swim towards the blue ocean, looking towards that ocean, where the O or Opportunities lie and where your strengths have the greatest chance of success.

Questioning Yourself

It comes back to questions. I have people say, “Does this limit me to doing things that fill gaps in the marketplace? Do I have to start by looking for those gaps in the marketplace? What if I'm not passionate about filling those voids? What if I want to do my thing?” You're an entrepreneur, which means you have to think through this process. You may have 1, 2, 3 or 4 gifts. I know you do. You have to look at which gift has the largest opportunity to help you reach the highest and best version of yourself as a Full Mogul.

You also have to realize that this is not always a lifetime commitment but it's something that you owe yourself to exercise that opportunity and that gift, take it to its highest level of potential where what you have achieved and the ultimate potential of that gift are staring each other eye to eye, then you can move on to the next thing.

Part of that process is whatever strength you've identified running it through OTSW. It has to be something that you do have a genuine passion for. You shouldn't do something that you dislike. You do have to do something that you have passion about but it doesn't necessarily have to be your life's work or the thing you're going to do for the next 30, 40 or 50 years. You might do it for 5 to 10 years and say, “I'm liking this. I've scaled. I'm going to do it for ten more.”

I've been in real estate for many years. There's a natural progression to how I've built my business, growing from just being an agent, to then being a broker, being an assistant manager, launching offices, building my team, specializing in sports and entertainment, building a national brand, expanding into new development, having my firm and residential agents that I support their growth. We have a new development team and investment arm. That has allowed me to add chapter after chapter to a book that continues to be interesting to me.

Some people reach a certain point and need to change industries. Think of what you're applying your gift to, this product, service, idea, additional arm to your business and this new service you want to launch. You've run it through the filter. You're going to do it. It may not be your life's work forever but it can be an amazing chapter in your book.

Sometimes, it's a new book. Don't be afraid to say, “The chapters of that particular book are done. It's time for me to write a new book with new chapters and a new vision for my life.” It might start with this amazing new idea that you have. The process, outcome or impact is going to be based on the passion that you have that gets you up every day, moving towards this success that you have calculated based on switching SWOT to OTSW.

I’ll give you one Kofism before we conclude here. Kofism is my life philosophy, “None of us were born to do what we are doing. The more we can overlay our gifts, passions, hard skills and soft skills, the more we will find alignment with what we're doing and joy in what we're doing.” Here’s a personal example. Was I born to do real estate? I don't think so. Could I apply my gifts to other things? Definitely.

I found so much alignment in this career with things that I'm passionate about, good at and like to do, everything from marketing to creativity, business strategy, negotiations, working with people and loving properties, architecture and building a real estate firm. Also, aspects of development, new development and the investment that can build generational wealth for myself and my clients. That's a lot. As long as I get to apply my gifts toward these pursuits for myself for the agents that work with me and my clients, I'm winning. It keeps my passion going.

In conclusion, SWOT versus OTSW before launching a new business, adding a new product or service to your line of business, company or store, try to find the biggest, most lucrative or scalable and self-fulfilling gap in the marketplace that you can fill. With that, this concludes this episode. I hope you enjoyed this. Please share. If you want to add to the story of SWOT versus OTSW, product market fit and total addressable market, please ping me. Find me on Instagram, @Kofi_Celebrity. Ping me on the website, FullMogul.com. I love to hear from you and your feedback. Let's keep going on this Full Mogul journey together. Take care. Bye.

Important Links

• Blue Ocean Strategy
• @Kofi_Celebrity – Instagram

It's not about winning or losing. It's about always winning! This is what a winning mindset is all about. And if we are going to be ruthlessly honest with each other, we need that kind of mindset, whether in sports, business or life. Nobody is going to give you a participation trophy in real life. And if we don't value winning, we're keeping ourselves from to the best version of ourselves. How do we embody this winning mindset, then? Join in as Kofi Nartey discusses this hot topic with his better half Mimi Nartey.

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Listen to the podcast here

It’s About Always Winning! With Mimi Nartey

3 Ways To Having A Winning Mindset

I'm super excited to talk about something that gets talked about a lot in our society and that's winning or losing or this idea of participation awards and what I call BS on that. This episode is called It's Not About Winning or Losing, It's About Always Winning. I have my special guest/permanent guest. I put a ring on it and I'm stuck with my lifetime guest who's going to be joining me on quite a bit of this show.

It's great to have another great mind at the table to bounce these ideas off of, specifically in this situation. I've got my wife here, Dr. Mimi Nartey. She's also a former World Cup athlete and a former silver medalist in the African Cup of Nations. She gets it and will bring all of that knowledge and ability to the world of even business consulting. She's the CEO whisperer in my life. Welcome back.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be on, especially to talk about this. One thing about us is we both share a passion for winning. That's for sure.

We both have that mama mentality as well. Where did this idea even start? Bear with us. We're going to race through a lot of great concepts and leave you with at least three ways to have a winning mindset. We had different approaches to this so you might even get six ways to have a winning mindset but this was born out of this whole idea of participation awards. In 2022, our 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son both played sports. The note to self that made me say, “I'm going to do an episode on this,” is my high school daughter. They had a meeting at the school with the athletic director. He was standing there and said, "It's not about wins or losses. It's about building a positive culture.” At that moment, my gut yelled BS.

We both looked at each other and we were like, "What?"

What did your gut say at that moment?

It's pretty much the same thing. I understand where some of this is coming from. Especially for young players, we want to look at prioritizing development. Even as business leaders, we are trying to develop ourselves but I don't think that we have to shy away from the framework of winning as we pursue that development because there are a lot of benefits that come from the Pursuit of the W.

I want to touch on both what it means as it relates to sports and business, even a few bullet points and then we're going to finish with those ways to have a winning mindset. The whole concept was born out of sports and this idea of participation awards. My only caveat for this is the idea of it's always about winning. It kicks in at the competitive level. When you're a child or a toddler learning the sport, participation is fine.

Parents like us are keeping score on the sideline but you don't even keep score. If the kids don't keep score, it's fine. Everybody gets a medal so you feel good about it. To be honest, even if everybody gets a medal, it lends itself to the argument that we're ultimately going to make that winning means something. It’s because, at a later stage, when it does get competitive, you only get the medal when you win. You've seen some of this whole participation thing. What is your disclaimer for this?

The disclaimer piggybacks on what you're talking about that there is a certain stage when someone is being introduced to something where we're trying to give a very foundational basis. We're not going to emphasize winning or losing as much but still, the object of the game is to win. I feel like whenever the context is there's a winner and a loser, winning matters.

If you're not the winner, then you're what?

You're the loser. One more little frame for the disclaimer. On the corporate side, people have also been trying to implement and pull this into business because they're trying to pit cooperation against a winning mentality. These are not the right things.

As we talk about sports and this idea of participating, creating a culture and what it's about, the challenge that a lot of these athletic directors and coaches have is they're not just being judged on their wins and losses. They are being judged on culture and trying to have what I call a great podium to speak on. When I was at Cal and played football at Berkeley, we had three different head coaches. We had one coach who had come off a national championship. We had Steve Mariucci who was there for one year, then got picked up by the Niners, then we had our third coach, I won't name, who was great at the podium but not great as a head coach. This whole idea of building a positive culture is about keeping your job at the podium.

It's not about what's ultimately in the interest of the players and even that, keeping your job at the podium is a short-term view because if you want to build the right and sustainable culture, it has to be a culture built on a winning mindset. Winning matters because having that winning mindset affects how you prepare, perform and self-evaluate host game time.

If you want to really build the right culture, a sustainable culture, it has to be a culture built on a winning mindset. Click To Tweet

At the end of the day, I feel like it didn't make him noble. Coaches and athletic directors, in general, don't make them any noble or you're on some higher plane to say it's not about winning. It's an oversimplified podium talk. I don't know if this is the reason why but within a couple of months later, that athletic director was gone. It was interesting too because we had all of the different coaches in the room for the different sports. The athletic director kicked off the event and then they opened it up for you to go meet the other coaches. We have soccer coaches and there were track coaches that we were interested in speaking with. One of the first things they said was, "For us, it's about winning.”

It's going to affect the mindset that the players come to that sport with. It's setting the expectations so that you can push yourself further in your preparation time so that I can ask more of you in real-time in the game because this is what we're pursuing. In post-game, whether we did win or lose, because the objective was winning, we have something to evaluate.

Even as we start at that early age and transition into the competitive level, it does need to be a healthy environment but healthy doesn't mean it's not competitive. It becomes a healthy competition and some of the greatest takeaways in sports. I met with 30 of the Arizona Cardinals. They flew me out to Phoenix and I had a great session with them. Half of it is about real estate but the other half is about life and transferable skills. Some of the skills you take away from sports are resiliency, dealing with challenges, heartache, loss and winning.

One of the big benefits of winning is that it can show you what's possible. That's been my experience as an athlete, having played at the Division one college level, national team level and professionally. There have been moments where I have stretched myself and I've seen us as a team stretch ourselves further than what we ever believed, particularly we’re representing the Women's National Team of Ghana. I have a TEDx Talk where I talk about the impact of soccer on the lives of these women and how it's such an empowerment vehicle to be able to have access to sports. A big part of that is because there's the opportunity for them to show themselves that they are winners in a literal and metaphorical sense. I talk a great deal about that in that.

One of the big benefits of winning is that it shows you what's possible. Click To Tweet

What's cool is that once you've had that experience and feeling, it can never be taken away from you. When you have those moments of victory in sports, even a game-winning shot and scoring a goal in a loss, it's a personal win for you. You never even forget the goals and the touchdowns you scored and the three-pointers you hit. I was in fifth grade and had the kickball kick to win the game. It was a walk-off homer kickball kick. I'll never forget the feeling it gave me.

On the flip side of this, what's also important is I feel that losing may be the only path to authentic self-acceptance but only if you are trying to win. Losing is probably one of the only paths to authentic self-acceptance but only in a situation where you are trying to win. If you were not able to win at that moment, you have to deal with that loss, look at yourself in the mirror, accept yourself and pick yourself back up. That is a level of self-acceptance. It comes through the process of attempting the win and falling short.

That's deep because it's easy to accept a winner. It's harder to accept a loss and “a loser.” You still remember how you were wired. You also can even reference the work you put in, which brings me to another point as it relates to sports. If we're not trying to win, then what are we practicing for, especially at the competitive level? When the coaches are saying, “We can do this better. You should turn this way and you need to do this,” what is that for? It's for a specific outcome. What's that outcome? It’s winning.

If we're not trying to win, then what the heck are we practicing for? Click To Tweet

I've also spent a lot of years, probably about 25 years, as a competitive youth soccer coach. Not only have I experienced this on the player side but I've also experienced this on the coaching side. Not to toot my own horn but I've only had one losing season as a coach ever and that was the year of COVID. We had been promoted to a new league because we had won our previous league. We were all set back and I had these eleven-year-old girls that were going through this global pandemic.

As we know, children bore the brunt of this. It was a very tough season because we suffered loss after loss. It was difficult to train and for us to find a rhythm but once we started winning again, the wins were what indicated that we had weathered this storm. That was our indicator that we were back. We have survived this and this chapter has closed. We are moving back into a new chapter for ourselves.

That term resiliency comes up there. You are your adjectives, not your nouns. It's your adjectives that you bring to everything you're doing. Being resilient is an adjective. If you can bring that not only to sports but to life, it's a life tool that will take you places because life is not easy. Even every mogul that we know that we read about, if you read their autobiographies and get the truth, they're on such a rollercoaster ride of successes and failures and wins and losses. We see them at the pinnacle of where they are not knowing that the journey was full of that. Resiliency is something that you can even learn from sports to carry you into those business pursuits.

How do you know that you've been resilient? Ultimately, there has to be an external objective evaluation tool measure. It's back when you are able to find the way to win. That's resilience.

Even that loss, it's all about getting better. If you think about the athletes that lose a championship game, they stay on the field to see the other teams celebrate. I love those moments because they want to remember that feeling and use it as motivation. I always say, “Progress doesn't mean that you don't have feelings.” It's about how you manage the feelings. Sometimes, it’s nice to own the challenging feeling, own the negative feeling and remember what that feeling's like so that you can stand on that feeling and be motivated by that feeling to do better, tweak the things you need, improve the ways you need to improve and not have that feeling again.

Emotions are important tools for us if we know how to leverage them appropriately.

Even simply stated as a full mogul philosophy. If we don't value winning, we're cheating ourselves and pushing ourselves to be the best version of ourselves. Only through valuing winning that you say, “How do I win? How do I maximize, unlock and unleash my potential to get me to the place where I'm positioned for success?”

It's funny that you say that because I was thinking about it on the way here. I don't think I do anything without defining what the win is for me. Even simple things seem almost irrelevant but that's the way that you get that sense of empowerment and satisfaction. You're able to glean information from what you're experiencing to move forward and leverage it into other things.

This made me think about a couple of 30,000-foot philosophical ideas I want to share. I want to jump into the business side. One of the ideas was Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is tied to the hierarchy of needs. Self-actualization is at the highest part of the pyramid. It refers to self-actualization as the desire to be the best one can be. As part of your hierarchy of needs as a human, there's a desire to be the best version of yourself that you can be.

It's even built-in to full mogul, winning and pursuing winning because the best version of yourself isn't preparing to lose. It's preparing to win. Even if you don't win, it's the preparation that has pushed you to your highest level of potential. The loss gives you things to take away and learn from but that makes you feel good knowing that you left it all on the field.

When you're saying that, people are trying to shift towards being process-oriented but it's the process towards winning.

Some people have heard the story of Hernán Cortéz of Spain. In early 1500, they went to war and burned their boats so there was no way to go back, even if we go back further to 300 or 400 BC. There was the book, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. He introduced the idea of burning the boats and bridges, supporting the arguments that soldiers without the option of taking flight are more likely to prevail over their objective. When we look at winning and if we are going into winning saying, “It's not about whether we win or lose. It's about the culture of the team and this, that and the other,” you’ve already introduced the concept that losing is okay. You're not fighting to be your best at that moment because you've already been given a way out. I don't like that.

I agree with you. It is a matter of having the courage to be vulnerable and articulate that you desire to win. You stand behind that whether you win or lose. It's character-building.

I promise we're going to jump into the business side of things but I wanted to touch on this idea of the win versus the spin, where we focus on the actual win versus using that spin language to cover up or make a loss okay like, “It's okay.” There are teachable and coachable moments but we have to embrace and own the outcomes that have come from even a loss. By owning that is the only way you can control it to get better. It's the accountability and responsibility piece for your actions.

Sometimes in competitions, you are outmatched objectively. Every game can be deconstructed into moments of equality or even dominance. Your genius comes in the decisions that shift the momentum towards those exceptional moments and opportunities. This is the same in business in life. I know you're saying you want to transition but it's not about the spin to your point. There are times when you are legitimately outmatched. Can you do the critical analysis to find those moments that you can exploit to find victory?

Winning in sports is what we've touched on. This is the participation award version for business. Let's make it a win-win for both sides. It's podium talk in business. You go into negotiations with everything, whether you own your business or you're in sales or not. There are so many moments in business that are actual negotiations and there are negotiations where someone is going to win and someone is going to lose.

Someone is going to feel good about it and not so good about it. Both sides will feel okay about it. There's some version of that. That's happening whether you are trying to get a job, negotiating for a new position, a new salary or in a group setting for your thoughts to be heard. All of these things are small wins or small losses. Business fully has to integrate this concept of winning or losing.

What you've said ties back to what I was saying that whenever there's a context, a clear winner or loser and it's going up against someone else for a specific contract, a grant or whatever it is that you're doing, there's going to be the one person who is awarded that thing. There will be the rest of the people who were not awarded so it is a competitive context in all different realms of business. You can find those moments where it's only going to one person. Nobody is going to give you a participation award and you're not going to be able to pay your bills with that participation trophy. It does boil down to being able to leverage a winning mindset in those situations.

You hear this idea of winning at all costs. It's not about winning at all costs. It is about winning with integrity and ethics. The way that you do that is, at least to me personally, I put pressure on myself to win in those moments and win with ethics and integrity. The pressure causes me to prepare better for the meeting, the conversation and the negotiation I'm going into. What does that look like in terms of tangible takeaways? I'm going to run my numbers 2 or 3 times and know those numbers.

It's not about winning at all costs. It is about winning with integrity and with ethics. Click To Tweet

I'm going to run my market comp as it comes to real estate. I'm going to know what's sold and what hasn't sold. If it's about inspections and negotiating on that, I'm going to know the pricing around the things I'm negotiating. I'm going to try to figure out the desired outcome of the person I'm talking to because if I can speak to the desired outcome, that's going to get me closer to getting to the desired outcome for me and my clients. It's that pressure to win that helps me to prepare to have a better chance of “winning.”

Leverage all of the different resources that are available to you at your disposal because that's also what it takes in a moment of competition. It's that creative leveraging of resources that comes from attempting to win.

My goal in this “let's make it a win-win” is that my win is in all caps and the other side's win is in lower caps. I don't want them to feel bad but I want to win. I want to know that at the end of the day, we did a little bit better and I did a little bit better for my clients. That cap-out, meet in the middle, compromise. I'd rather meet a little bit closer to my side than the actual middle.

It's more of a win-learn. You win. They learn.

No matter what, one person is truly going to prevail. Let's look at some ways to have a winning mindset. If there's anything that you wanted to share that we've missed, let's throw it in here at this time as well. Let's have a fast-paced strategy for having a winning mindset.

Let's jump into the winning mindset. The number one thing for me in terms of a winning mindset is ruthless optimism. I talk about this all the time because I feel like this is my core value. My particular superpower is ruthless optimism. You know how much I love that quote from Michael Jordan, “I never lost a game. I only ran out of time.” To me, that is the manifestation of ruthless optimism. It means that you feel that no matter what, you would be able to creatively find a way to persevere in all circumstances. I do think that it starts with that faith and optimism to have a winning mindset.

I'll give you the first one from my list. Mine are all Mamba mentality and also that Jordan mentality, which is, “Play to win and not to win friends.” To your point and we have some overlapping thoughts here, it affects how you prepare, how you're performing and your ability to tweak, make changes and self-evaluate what you're doing. When you look at Kobe Bryants of the world and the Michael Jordans of the world who have led others to championships and victory, it's not a pretty process. It's not a process of making friends. On the other side of it, you have champions and no one is going to complain about wearing that championship ring, let alone wearing it six times in Michael Jordan's case. Give me another one.

The other piece of a winning mindset is self-belief. Connecting it back to my experience with these African women I've developed this sisterhood and bond with, the circumstances of their lives were extremely challenging. That inner feeling of self-belief was amazing. The biggest gift that they gave me was for me to be able to witness and watch the circumstances that they came from to come into a World Cup and believe that you can take over the world. Literally or metaphorically, you can take over the world from wherever you come from. That's why I love the World Cup and seeing all of these teams from all these different places. The passion that they play with is about self-belief.

You can't make this stuff up but mine overlaps with yours. I put some notes together. You put some notes together independently. I told you don't look at my notes even if I leave them out. I didn't look at your notes but it ties into that feeling of self-belief and my number two, which is dominating, don't play Kate. It's not about dominating even your opponent. It's about dominating your potential. That means realizing your potential and your opponent happens to be in the way. Sorry for you but this is my potential running your ass over. This is where we have to not make friends and lean into our full potential. Realize that every time we step on the field, we negotiate an opportunity to demonstrate our full potential and what we're capable of.

It's having that courage to be vulnerable.

Even in business, it's not even about yelling, being aggressive or angry. Sometimes it's about finesse but having finesse means you know the craft so well that you can maneuver and manipulate in ways that others can't.

It’s something we didn't mention, though. Another reason why winning is important and you made me think of this is because winning creates new opportunities and establishes your expertise. That connects to what you said. As you're speaking, I was thinking that way.

Even as children as they reach that competitive level, winning keeps them engaged in the game. In the sport, it makes them want to play more. I haven't seen kids who have lost consistently but it's great because they had good juice boxes at the end of the game. They want to keep playing. It's the winning that makes them want to keep playing. My last note on this was don't let the loss get lost. That means learning from it. You repurpose the hurt and pain into productive activities that will make the next time better. This is both for business and sports. It brings me back to my acronym for FAIL, which is Find All Important Lessons.

Don't let the loss get lost. Repurpose the hurt and the pain into productive activities that will make the next time better. Click To Tweet

The last one on the winning mindset is interesting. You need to have a little bit of a defensive sensibility to be a winner too, which means you have an awareness of your weaknesses and are looking to negotiate or address your weaknesses as you're pushing forward on your strengths.

I'll finish piggybacking on that, pushing those strengths even to the point of unfair advantage. I love when people unlock their full potential by leaning into their strengths, not necessarily looking to balance out all of their skills but pushing their strengths to the point of unfair advantage. With that, we're going to wrap up this episode.

If this was helpful for you, please tag it, follow it and subscribe to the show. I'm going to ask one last thing. I came here to win. If I beat Mimi in this episode and my points were better, I want you to comment on social media. Follow me or unfollow her. This is about dominance. You happen to be in the way. Thanks for joining us. Get back to your full mogul journey and we'll see you in the next episode. Thank you.

Important Links

• Dr. Mimi Nartey
• TEDx Talk - African Women’s Soccer and Empowerment: Memoirs of a Black Queen
• The Art of War

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Want to get valuable stories, tips, and advice on unlocking success in business and in life? you’re in the right place! This is the Full Mogul podcast with Kofi Nartey.  A leading authority on luxury real estate, Kofi is the go-to broker for celebrities, prominent sports figures, and affluent clientele around the globe. Today, he shares 5 tips for starting your full mogul journey. Stay tuned and be on your first step to becoming a full mogul!

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Full Mogul: An Introduction + 5 Tips For Starting Your Journey

What Is Full Mogul

Welcome to the Full Mogul Podcast, where I will share valuable stories, tips, and advice on unlocking success in business and life. This podcast is the answer to your relentless pursuit of the best version of yourself across all aspects of becoming a full mogul across all aspects of your life. First, let's define full mogul. Full mogul, as a verb, is the relentless pursuit of the best version of yourself across all aspects of your life. Full mogul, as a noun, is one who pursues the best version of themselves across all aspects of your life.

Let's talk a little bit about the origins of this and how I came up with full mogul as a phrase or as a term. It was about the pursuit of not just the best business version of Kofi, of not just the best physical version of Kofi, not just the best dad version of Kofi, but how I find the best pursuit and the best version of myself across all of those aspects of my life.

I'll give you an example. I've met people who are great business leaders, and they're terrible parents. I've met people who are great parents, but they let their health and their fitness go, or they're sacrificing their jobs or work. How do we go full, not just becoming a mogul, but a full mogul where all aspects of your life are exceeding, pursuing, approaching that highest and best potential that you have for those aspects of your life? That's what this show is about.

This is my first entrée into podcasting, so I'm jumping right in. I was supposed to start this a few weeks back, but I was trying to find my podcast feet. Forgive me. Podcast 1 versus podcasts 10, 15, and 20 are probably going to be totally different, totally better. It's going to grow over time. It's going to get much better as we go, but I had to get started. Maybe that's lesson number one for all of us is you’ve got to get started. Whatever it is you're pursuing, you’ve got to jump right in. It's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be teed up as perfect, but if you don't get started, you're never going to get to the place where you want to be and where you deserve to be.

Who Is Kofi Nartey?

My name is Kofi Nartey. I'm going to be your guide on this Full Mogul journey, but I'm not going to be the only guide. I'm also going to interview highly successful people in business, sports, entertainment and more, who are also on their full mogul journeys. Lastly, you're also a guide. Your feedback, ideas, and interaction with our Full Mogul community will round out our collective sharing.

Today is just about an introduction to the podcast, and then I'm going to give you five tips for starting your Full Mogul journey. First, a little background about myself. I'm the Founder and CEO of Global Real Estate and Development, known as Globl RED. We're a private real estate firm based here in Beverly Hills that does luxury real estate in Southern California, as well as commercial real estate development projects throughout the Americas, and also sports and entertainment real estate across the country and sometimes around the globe.

Prior to this, I launched and ran the National Sports and Entertainment Division for Compass, which was a huge passion project for me at the time, as well as management stints at the agency, boutique real estate firm, and Keller Williams before that. I'm also a not-so-silent partner in a marketing and branding agency. I've always said if I didn't do real estate, I would be focused on creative marketing and branding as I've got an extra creative bone in my body that always needs to get exercised.

I also sit on several advisory boards. I've given talks and training on topics including marketing, branding, leadership, real estate, business strategy, effective goal setting, and more. Prior to getting my MBA and these business pursuits, I was also an actor for ten years. I never made it big. I never made it to a household name, but I worked a lot. I met a lot of amazing people, and I'm going to be sharing some of those stories as well.

Before acting, I completed my undergraduate degree at Berkeley Cal, where I also played football as a wide receiver, and that culminated in a shot with the Oakland Raiders. Now, they are the Las Vegas Raiders. I’m dating myself a little bit, but with dating myself comes experience, so it's all good. Let's jump right in. Injuries cut my sports career short, as it has for many, but the connections that I made and the lessons that I've learned from that serve me to this very day. You're going to get a lot of sports and entertainment stories, and we're going to get a lot of tools and tips from my sports and entertainment experience, things that have worked for me that hopefully will work for you.

I'm going to pause for a second because I think it's important to give you guys my very first Kofi-ism. Kofi-isms are things that I've learned. I'm like a 10% philosopher. As any entrepreneur who reads a lot, studies a lot, and listens to a lot of podcasts, you start to have your own philosophies that derive from all the information that you've gleaned.

The first one that I have is to listen with selfish ears. This is relevant to the podcasting world. If you're listening to a podcast, some of the information is going to be great, some of it is going to be entertaining, some of it seems like it has nothing to do with your life. If you listen with selfish ears, you listen for the things that resonate with you, your business, your life, your parenting, whatever it is you're pursuing, and can convert those things into action items right away, then you're winning. That's what listening with selfish ears is all about.

I've had a long stint of going to conferences of hearing people speak. I can attend a three-day conference now, and there might be one thing that one person says in one minute of a speech that changed my business. I'm hoping to do the same for you with the podcast that I'm sharing. It might be that one tool or even hearing something in a different way that changes your life.

At the end of the day, for me, I've won, I've lost, I've succeeded, I've failed, but I've converted failing into an acronym, FAIL, Fina All Important Lessons. Like Michael Jordan once said, “I never lost a game. I just ran out of time.” I've got some good Jordan stories for you too. Life and business are really like a game. It's a game that requires strategy, perseverance, consistency, excellence, and commitment. As long as we stay committed, as long as we stay in the game, we will ultimately win.

Life and business are like a game that requires strategy, perseverance, consistency, excellence, and commitment. As long as we stay committed and stay in the game, we will ultimately win. Click To Tweet

One of my best clients had a great conversation with UFC fighter Chuck Liddell. Chuck told him, “If I have enough energy to tap out, I have enough energy to find a way out.” That is so important, especially as we struggle through life and some of the challenges, and some of these challenges beat us down. Some of these moments beat us down. Some of these seasons beat us down. If you have enough energy to tap out, to check out, to form your mouth to say the words, “I quit,” you also have enough energy to get back in the game, to figure out a way out to say, “I won't quit.” That's part of what the journey is about.

Achieving success across multiple aspects of your life is a difficult undertaking. I'm also a husband, a father, I've got two amazing kids. Sometimes you may think you're not living up to your potential. It can feel frustrating with the slow pace of reaching your goals or setbacks. This negative mindset can bring you underlying disappointment and shame that can hold you back from what you're truly capable of.

Let's discover how to unlock your inner gifts, share them with the world, and find success on your terms. Being a full mogul is really about that. It's about unlocking and unleashing your full potential. Listen with selfish years, glean those things that resonate with you and your personality because there's so much noise out there, there's so much content that you have to listen with selfish ears. Like I said, if you do that one thing, that one nuance, that one tool, that one tip that changes your life, your business, and the future for your generations.

Your Full Mogul Journey

The bottom line is you won't be the same after today. You can't be the same after today. How will you be different? Let's find out. Let's jump right into the five tips for starting your Full Mogul journey. I'd love to tell you that you made the right decision to go full mogul. It's not even a decision. It's more of an obligation to yourself. It was just a matter of time until you found this path, this community, and double down on the best version of yourself. As I stated, I have these Kofi-isms. I'm going to give you one more, and then I'm going to give you five tips. You have a responsibility during your lifetime to realize all of your God-given gifts and share them to the world.

Full Mogul: You have a responsibility to realize all of your God-given gifts and share them with the world.

Let's jump into the Full Mogul journey. Tip number one for starting your Full Mogul journey, set a vision for what the full mogul version of your life looks like. Set a vision for what you want it to be. At a certain stage of life, you have a good sense of what your gifts, talents, and passions are. They may grow and evolve over time, but you have a strong idea, a decent sense of self.

Then the question to ask yourself is, “If I realized all of my potential based on these gifts, talents, and passions, what would my life look like? How would I enjoy the fruits of my labor? How would it change my life, my family's life, and generations to come?” The answer to this becomes your why. It's the anchoring reminder of what you are working towards. When times get hard and tough, you can come right back to that anchor and remind yourself, “This is why I'm doing it.” Things will start to bounce off of you. Those challenges, those negative people start to bounce off of you.

Number two, identify your Full Mogul buckets. It's important to remember that you can't just go full mogul in one area of your life at the total expense of the other areas. What are the key areas that you're working to realize your full potential in? Is it health, fitness, career, relationships, your marriages, your dating partners, your faith? We look at what those buckets are. Something that's very important to remember, and you're going to hear this a lot, we are working not to find balance because you hear that nonsense or that BS about work-life balance. I'm going to call BS on that. There's no such thing as work-life balance. There's no such thing. Things are never balanced across the board.

What you should be working towards is work-life peace. Let that sit in for a moment. Things are going to be chaotic and imbalanced, but if you're at peace with where each bucket is, that's when you're winning. To give you a perfect example, for myself, I might have long work days where I work until 6:00, 7:00 at night, or sometimes I have to work on the weekend sporadically.

The peace comes in knowing that I'm still going to be at my kids' soccer games. I might have to make a couple calls at halftime, but I'm still there. I'm at peace with what's going on. I may not have an hour workout, but I've got a 45-minute workout, I've got time to get that in, and I get that done. It's called my BTN workouts, Better Than Nothing. I'm at peace because I still check that box for that day. What are the buckets? Identify your buckets, and we're going to talk about achieving work-life peace with those buckets.

Number three, determine your long-term goals and short-term milestones. This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Even with that, you want to attack your journey with small measurable steps. One of my personal mantras is focus and finish. It is to focus on the small steps that lead to your big goals. At the end, you have to commit to the journey, and not the outcome. The beauty is in the overall journey, but the wins along the way are also important, to notice, acknowledge, give gratitude for, and sometimes even celebrate because that's part of the journey as well.

Number four, write it out. If it's not on a list, it doesn't exist. Let's put it a little differently. If it's not on a list, it shouldn't exist. For us entrepreneurs out there, for those of us who suffer from Shiny Object syndrome, I'm guilty of it. I'll make my focus and finish list each day, I write it all out, I open my computer, and then I start doing something that's not on the list. Half of it is about writing it out, but more importantly, staying focused on that list. It will keep you on track on what you're supposed to do on a regular basis.

Even more so, it triggers your RAS or your Reticular Activating System. That way, when you know what you're focused on, not just on your daily list, but in life, you have certain things that will be attracted to you. When you think of buying a new car and let's call it the new Hummer EV, now I start to notice them when they're on the road. That's your Reticular Activating System, things that you notice because something has triggered that within you.

When you write out things, when you have a vision board, those will trigger things that now are important to you. It will also help you recognize things that aren't important, that things that shouldn't be on the list. Again, if it's not on the list, it doesn't exist. More importantly, if it's not on the list, it shouldn't exist. Always write it out.

Number five, last but probably most important, get started. You can't wait for everything to be perfect because it never will be. Full disclosure, I came in this podcast room to record this podcast a week ago. I was trying to find my words. I didn't have all my notes organized. I've got some notes, but I never write out speeches. It just didn't go that well. I'm back in here today giving myself grace and giving myself the opportunity to move forward. Stumbling and talking too long, whatever it is, we're getting started. We're starting this journey together. This is where you guys come into play as part of the Full Mogul community. We are going to grow and learn and build together. Half of that is getting started.

I remember when I went to business school, I did my MBA at Pepperdine. It was a two-year program called the PKE Program at Pepperdine, the Presidential and Key Executive Program. It was an executive program like I mentioned, but an amazing program. We did all the traditional things, marketing, econ, finance. We had an international trip. It was amazing. The first four days of the program, we did things like mindful awareness, meditation, and yoga. The reason was this program was geared towards business owners or C-suite executives. They told us, “You're never going to have perfect information at best for your company. You're going to have 80% to 85% of the information that you need to make a decision. That last 15%, sometimes even 20%, is being able to sit still, trust your gut, and make a decision.”

Full Mogul: Sit still, trust your gut, and make a decision.

Keep that in mind. Be ready to work from partial information, good information, more information, then no information, but be ready to start. A quick recap. Number one, set a vision for what your full mogul version of yourself looks like. What are those buckets that you're looking to fill? Number two, identify your buckets. Number three, determine your long-term goals and short-term milestones. Make sure you're celebrating those along the way, also learning from them along the way. Number four, write it out. If it's not on a list, it doesn't exist. Remember what I said, if it's not on the list, it shouldn't exist. Number five, get started. The fact that you're reading this now means you have started.

That wraps it up for our first episode. There are going to be many more to come. We're going to have some great guests coming up. We're going to have some great conversations. I'm going to be sharing along the journey as well. I'm going to be sharing some of the real-time stuff on Instagram and Facebook. Follow me there. Let's get connected there and comment. If this is helpful to you, if this is something that you want to hear more of, if you are saying, “Yes, sign me up for the Full Mogul community and journey,” hit me up on social media and on my website. You can go to FullMogul.com. You can also follow me on Instagram, @Kofi_Sellebrity. This is it, guys. Thanks for joining us. Let's keep going. Let's keep growing. Let's build a Full Mogul style.

Important Links

• Globl RED
• National Sports and Entertainment Division for Compass
• Facebook – Kofi's Sellebrity Real Estate
• @Kofi_Sellebrity on Instagram
• FullMogul.com

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With 20 years in the industry, California Listings expert Kofi Nartey is a well-established and highly sought after leader in residential real estate. But when Kofi decided to rebrand Society Brokers into Globl Red in 2021, he had international development dreams in mind.

Globl Red didn’t just mark a name change—it was a change in philosophy. Kofi and his team have become the go-to brokers for affluent clientele and celebrities, as well as a global business leaders, looking to expand their real estate holdings with investment properties both domestic and international. Now, we’re talking all things development with Kofi to learn the ins and outs of real estate development.

You’re already a rockstar in residential real estate sales, so what inspired this pivot to a broader portfolio with Globl Red?
Kofi: Our industry has been underdeveloped for years. Agents help with the largest transactions of most people’s lives and then disappear. I want our industry to transition from sales agents to real estate advisors. Our firm is focused on servicing the full real estate portfolios of our clients. Our core competency is still residential real estate, but we have professionals to help with new construction, multi-family investing, commercial real estate and international development.

What investment opportunities are you offering from Globl Red?
Kofi: In our first year, we focused on single-family flips. We have now built out our investment offering infrastructure, and have expanded to multi-family units and mixed use developments nationally and globally.

Who is your target investor and why?
Kofi: One target is the newer investor who wants to get into real estate investing, but may not have the experience or capital to take on a full project by themselves. We have also exposed real estate investing to hundreds of our professional athletes and entertainment clients. Also, we are starting to work with larger family offices and institutional level investors as our reach and deal size continue to grow.

What has success looked like in year one at Globl Red?
Kofi: Within the first year of launching our investment arm, we purchased over $25M million of investment properties with over 30 investors. Globl Red was also brought on to oversee real estate development and sales for a $1 billion mixed-use project in Belize.

Aside from having a stack of cash ready, how do we get started?
Kofi: It’s easy to get started as an accredited investor. You can reach out to me or our Chief Investment Officer, Daron Campbell. We can share current and upcoming opportunities that we have. Our initial opportunities started with a $50,000 minimum investment, but we also have $1 million-plus opportunities that some of our clients have opted into.