3 Kids Working for SpaceX Altered My View on Life & Entrepreneurship
Oct 27, 2022Prefer to Listen? Checkout the Podcast!
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SUMMARY
- Join me LIVE on Nov.10, 2022! 2023: Your Best Year Ever! π₯Set Your Goals On Fireπ₯
Learn more & Register here π https://thesavagesecrets.com/2023 - I used to be an age snob thinking life experience was everything. This past weekend, 3 20-somethings rocked my world and have me re-thinking everything.
- Every company, every product, every service on Earth, solves a problem.
- Everything that exists today was once the idea in the mind of one person.
- A powerful vision, inspires the masses. We've seen this from big name companies and from thought leaders. Examples:
- As a business owner, this is a crucial step in creating a culture that inspires your team/ employees.
- I had conversations with 3 different 20-somethings that floored me.
- These are the lessons that I took away:
- 2023: Your Best Year Ever
- Click here to get free resources for entrepreneurs.
- If you have any questions about this, about your business, or about working with me, email me: [email protected]
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] I have a confession to make. I am an age snob. What's an age snob? Age snob is, you know, like you gotta have a whole bunch of experience in order to really know stuff, you have to go through life and have all these experiences. Well, guess what?
[00:00:15] I got slapped in the face last weekend and I learned three things from some 20 year olds, 22 year olds, 23 year olds, that absolutely blew my mind. I cannot wait to share those with you and the lessons that I learned from these three.
[00:00:31] It blew my mind and it absolutely has changed my outlook, my thought process, the way that I go about thinking about younger people and the value that they can bring to some of the older folks like me and maybe even like you. It blew my mind.
[00:00:47] I learned three things. Three amazing lessons from these 20 somethings that has completely reshaped the way that I go about things, and I absolutely cannot wait to share all three of those lessons with you.
[00:01:01] Hello, my fellow entrepreneurs. My name is Mike Savage and I am the host of the Savage Entrepreneur Show and founder of The Savage Secrets. Over the past 30 years, I've built several multimillion dollar companies, from scratch, had hundreds of employees, and over a quarter of a billion in sales. So, I've learned a thing or two about building businesses and chasing dreams.
[00:01:23] Now, my personal mission right now, I guess you can call it an obsession, is to help you win this hard hitting emotional and financial rollercoaster sport of entrepreneurship so you can be happy, healthy, confident as you build your company and chase your dreams. So let's get after it.
The Entrepreneur's Trilogy™
[00:01:41] I wanna start to share all of my lessons with you today on how a 22 year old completely reshaped my philosophy and my belief system. Now, before I jump into all of the specifics and all of the details, I gotta step you back just a little bit to the big picture philosophy that I have as it relates to entrepreneurship. I'm not gonna spend a ton of time here, but it's all related.
[00:02:08] This whole thing gets to the point: you're never too old to learn something new from someone young. But my vision and philosophy on building companies is that you and I star in three movies simultaneously every day of our lives as we build our companies.
HEARTset
[00:02:26] And I call those three movies, HEARTset, MINDset and SKILLset. Heartset is our health, the one thing we take for granted until it's taken away; our relationships: our friends, our family, our coworkers; and our happiness. If we have all three of those, guess what? We're kicking ass. We're taking names. We're really, really enjoying this thing.
MINDset
[00:02:46] The second movie is MINDset, which is, what's the stuff that you put in your mind? What is the motivation? What are the things that drive you? Your dreams, your vision, your goals. And finally, your movement. Like do you get off your butt and do stuff?
SKILLset
[00:02:59] And the third piece of the trilogy that you're the star of is what I call SKILLset, and it becomes very involved, very elaborate to build a company. As you know, it's not easy, It's a lot of work. But the SKILLset, which I call the heartbeat of business, is your product portfolio, your ideal client, and your strategic marketing plan.
[00:03:18] So all of these three things taken together to me represents the Entrepreneur's Trilogy™.
Today's Focus: MINDset
[00:03:24] Today I wanna focus some effort and some time on MINDset. The reason that I wanna focus on this is, like I said, MINDset is comprised of three pieces. The stuff that we put in our brain, our motivation, the things that drive us, that move us to take action.
[00:03:41] You can't just have a dream and sit on the couch and hope that it comes true, someone's gonna knock on your door with a million dollars. Doesn't happen. And then your movement. Where I wanna spend time today is on the motivation piece. This is the foundation of the stuff that completely reshaped the way I look at things.
[00:04:01] It's been a fascinating few days but I learned a lot as it relates to our vision, our dreams, and our goals. I was taught something, to me, an incredibly valuable lesson from some 20 somethings. Now, I'm 57 years old and I've experienced a few things, as I mentioned earlier, there are times where I can be an age snob, and I think that you gotta have 10, 20, 30, 40 years of experience in order to really have a grasp of this journey called life.
[00:04:28] But man, oh man, did I learn something of incredible value.
Visionary People & the Companies They Build
[00:04:32] Now, we're entrepreneurs, right? We build companies. So the first thing is to accept the reality that every product on earth, every product or service was once the idea in the mind of one person. Someone had a vision.
[00:04:47] This could be you, this could be whatever you're building. You can have a vision. This is what I wanna build, this is how I wanna change the world, this is how I wanna provide for my family, this is the impact I wanna make in my society. And it doesn't even have to be a for profit.
[00:05:00] It could be a non-profit. It's the same thing, but there's a vision that you have to make a difference, to change things, to get maybe it's money, maybe it's health, whatever it may be. Maybe it's just to build a legacy for your children, your grandchildren. But everything was, once the idea in the mind of one person, and every product or service on Earth exists to solve a problem.
[00:05:22] Every company, every product, every service, it solves a problem. And someone said, Hey, you know what? I got an idea. I'm gonna solve this problem.
[00:05:30] Now, everything that exists today was once the idea in the mind of one person. So I wanna ask you a question. What are some visionary companies that you can think of?
[00:05:41] What are some companies that inspire you? What are some companies always saying, Man? Oh man, they had this vision and they went after it. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple. Then there's all of the pharmaceutical companies in the world that are changing lives and allowing us to live better and happier through medicine. And engineering companies that are designing amazing things in the world to make our lives better.
[00:06:10] And there are companies that you may not have heard of. I've mentioned this story many times that I had a buddy, we were friends for a long time. His name was Kevin Gosnell, at 46 years old, he was given a death sentence. And the death sentence was, Hey Kev, you have Lou Gehrig's Disease, you have ALS, and you have 16 to 18 months to live.
[00:06:31] What Kevin did during those final 16 to 18 months is he built a company called ALS One. And his vision at that time as he just was given a death sentence, was, I wanna find a cure for ALS in four years or less. That was his vision. He shared this with me. My point is that there are visionary people out there.
[00:06:52] There are people that have ideas, and this may be you, but they had ideas and they didn't just talk about it. They took action. The companies that I mentioned, those are all major corporations. But it once started as an idea in the mind of one person. So let's think about just some great visionary companies.
Microsoft
[00:07:11] Let's talk about it. Microsoft is one of those companies started many, many years ago. You have Bill Gates and Paul Allen, they said this was their vision: I wanna put a micro computer on every desk, in every home, that's running Microsoft software. That was their vision. Man, oh man, they built an absolutely incredible company, and it does power millions, hundreds of millions of computer that are sitting on our desks.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
[00:07:40] Amazing. But it was once a vision. Now visionaries, guess what? They don't have to have a company. Here's a dude, Martin Luther King, Jr. He didn't have a company. But he had a dream. He had a vision. He went out into the world and he told his story and shared his vision with millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions.
[00:08:05] Shared his vision with the world, and his dream was that one day the nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and his dream is alive today. And God knows, we have a long way to go in our society. There are pockets of the world that just don't get it. They still live in the old ages, the dinosaur times.
Elon Musk & SpaceX
[00:08:33] Now, where am I going with all this? I wanna spend the bulk of our time together right now talking about this other dude who's a visionary. Elon Musk. And the reason that I wanna focus here is because the lessons that I learned over the last few days, those lessons were from kids, 20 somethings, that work for Elon Musk. They work for SpaceX. My daughter is one of them.
The SpaceX Vision
Now, the SpaceX vision is to revolutionize space technology with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
[00:09:13] Are you shitting me?? Talk about a dream. Talk about a far out whacked out dream.
The Google Vision
But you know what? The founders of Google had a dream once that said, I want the world's information to be available at the click of a mouse. The click of a button. That was their vision.
[00:09:34] How'd that work out? We all live off of that right now.
The Tesla Vision
Tesla is another company: "Create the most compelling car company in the 21st century by driving the world's transition to electric vehicles." It was not, I want to create a car company and make electric vehicles. That wasn't the vision.
[00:09:54] The vision was to transition the world, transition the world, not just make a car company. Transition the world to electric vehicle technology. To me, I find the guy fascinating. Some people may think he's a little whacked. Who cares? He's one of the richest, if not the richest man in the world. But he had a vision and the vision that he has, for SpaceX and for Tesla, is the vision that transcends the organization.
Your Company's Vision - Does it inspire?
And I would ask you, what is the vision that you have that transcends your organization? Does it inspire? Does it motivate? Does it drive people to go to that next level and work extra hard and have passion to talk about your organization and have passion to talk about your company.
3 Lessons I Learned from 3 (YOUNG) SpaceX Employees
[00:10:47] Well, I wanna share with you three of these lessons that I learned from three 20 somethings. Coworkers of my daughter, as I mentioned, who works at SpaceX. And I had the pleasure and the joy of spending time with them. You know, SpaceX recently had family day. Family Day is the only day of the year that civilians can go into their facility, obviously accompanied by employees, but can go into their facility and experience the world of SpaceX.
[00:11:14] I was blessed and grateful that my wife and my son and I went to visit my daughter out in California at Vanderburg Air Force Base and got to experience SpaceX.
[00:11:26] During this trip, during this, vacation to visit my daughter, I got to meet her friends. I got to meet her roommates, I got to meet her coworkers. They were all 22, 23, 24, 25. And I sat there in awe listening to these kids. You know, they're kids, they're obviously adults, but to me they're kids.
[00:11:44] Listening to them talk about their future, their vision, how working at this company has transcended the way that they approach things. They were all so happy and motivated and driven and they're working their asses off.
Story: "I love working 12 hour days here!"
[00:11:59] It just was so inspiring. So, as I was chatting with one of her roommates, Ryan, we're sitting there having dinner, and he had worked at another company, a technology company, Raytheon, and he said, I would never work this many hours for Raytheon. I love working 12 hour days here. Think about that. This isn't a knock on Raytheon. I don't know, maybe it is. But there is a culture that has been created within this organization of SpaceX, and I firmly believe that it was created based on the vision.
[00:12:32] The vision was not just, " Hey, I wanna shoot rockets into the air and, deploy satellites." It's much more than that. The vision of SpaceX is to allow us to live on another planet. Are you kidding me? How motivating and inspiring is that?
SpaceX Innovation
[00:12:51] And the other thing that SpaceX has done, that no one else was able to do, and I don't know if you understand rocket technology or the whole space program. I'll be the first to admit I didn't, and I probably wouldn't have unless my daughter was working there. But they've created rockets that they shoot into the universe, and up until recently, those rockets, they'd go up into the universe, they'd do their thing, and then they'd travel back down to the earth and splash into the ocean and sink to the bottom. The rockets were not reusable.
[00:13:22] SpaceX was the first company to say, "Wonder if we can make these suckers, shoot 'em up, and then instead of just dumping 'em into the ocean, what if we were able to bring 'em down and we could recycle them? We could use them again." And they've created the technology. The rockets go up and they come down and they land on a barge in the ocean.
[00:13:40] With technology, it's fascinating. So they're not taking these 30, 40, 50, a hundred million dollar rockets, shooting 'em up into space and having 'em come back and just splashing through the ocean, going-no! They salvage all of their technology.
[00:13:53] So this guy has created this culture within this organization that people want to work hard for him. They wanna work for this company.
[00:14:02] And maybe I'm glorifying this and maybe every employee doesn't feel this way, but I'm telling you what, the ones that I met, they did feel this way. They were inspired and they were driven to work hard. There was a culture there that, I've been in a lot of companies, I've been all over the world in warehouses and factories and large organizations, built companies myself, and what I experienced this weekend was just fascinating.
[00:14:26] The culture, and the leadership, and the belief system that the kids had, to me it is inspiring. So this is just one guy that made this comment. I love working 12 hour days. Think about your business. How cool would it be that someone was able to follow your dream and say, I love working 12 hour days, and maybe they're doing it.
[00:14:45] Congrats to you if that's the case.
Story: "I'm going to be President of the United States within 30 years."
[00:14:47] Another one of her roommates I was chatting with, I learned a little bit, sitting there, shooting the shit, having a conversation and I asked about their dreams, their vision, where they were looking to go. And the guy, 25 years old goes, Hey, Mike, yeah, I'm gonna be president of the United States within 30 years.
[00:15:02] And I'm like, Oh, you know, I love kids with a dream, that's great. And he paused for a minute and then he stared me in the eyes. He said, I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious. I'm like, Wow. This is phenomenal. This kid learned how to dream big and it's like dream really, really big, and to me, we don't learn this shit at school, right?
[00:15:25] They don't teach us how to do goal setting and have dreams and create visionary companies that has to come from elsewhere. And if you had parents or relatives or siblings that told you how to dream big and reach for the stars and go after your goals in life. Phenomenal.
[00:15:42] Congratulations. This kid obviously had that. Somebody influenced him or something influenced him to say, You know what, I'm gonna be president. And obviously as president of the United States the reality is, you would make a difference. You would make a difference in the world. So congrats. This charged me up.
[00:16:02] This got me so motivated like, God damn, that's a great vision. Flat-out loved it.
Story: "I'm going to fly to Mars in 2032."
[00:16:07] The third kid that shared with me what her vision was, was my daughter Bailey. This vision blew me away. Now here's a kid that graduated college, got a degree in engineering, and said, I have a vision, I wanna go work at SpaceX.
[00:16:23] Why? Don't know. Don't know where it came from. I don't have any experience in technology. My background is engineering, but I didn't know anything about SpaceX, quite frankly. Or, I didn't know the details. I knew about it. And I knew about Elon Musk. But, she had the vision to work at SpaceX based on something, and the kid, I'll give her all the credit in the world, she had 27 interviews. She traveled all over the country, multiple times, 27 interviews, finally got an opportunity out in California. When we were out there, we're sitting around, at dinner, have a glass of wine in our hand, and she goes, "Hey dad, I'm gonna fly to Mars in 2032." I'm like, Whoa. Like whoa. Blew my mind.
[00:17:06] She said, she asked my wife, Donna, she said, "Hey mom, can you create a graphic image of me on the Mars Mission in 2032?" So my wife, Donna, took an image of some astronauts and photoshopped her face onto one of the astronauts. And she has this image now that she's looking at, which I flat out encourage you, whatever your vision is, and I talk about dream board all the time like this.
Visualize Your Dreams
This is my vision board. You can see it, I got a whole bunch of, all of my dreams are on this vision board, but I have it right in front of me all the time. If there's something that you want in life, something that you aspire to, I encourage you, take that picture, take that image, stick it on your bathroom mirror and look at it every single morning.
But my point is on all this, I'm digressing a little bit, but her vision was that she wants to go to Mars. What?
[00:18:02] I gotta tell you, it floored me. It made me proud. But it floored me! It blew me away.
The Lessons I Learned from these Visionary 20-somethings
[00:18:07] My point is all three of these kids taught me something. They're 22, 23, 24 years old. They taught me something. I was blessed. I am blessed. I am grateful that I had this experience because it reshaped the way that I think about things.
[00:18:24] It reshaped some of my core beliefs about the young people in this country. I was blown away like, yeah, you need a lot of experience in order to, help guide people, which, you know what? I've got 30 years of experience building companies.
[00:18:36] I've had a boatload of, soul crushing defeats and Hollywood wins. So I've learned some things, and I know I can use this experience to help other entrepreneurs as they're going through this. But, damn, don't discount the young people in the world, they're making an amazing and incredible difference in the world that we live in.
Lesson #1: Visionaries Inspire Your Team
[00:18:53] So I'm gonna share with you, the three things that I learned from these 20 somethings. The first one was visionaries inspire your team. Visionaries inspire the people that you work with. If you are a visionary and you're working at an organization, you can inspire people with your energy and your belief system.
[00:19:15] If you are running a company, your teammates, your employees will be inspired if you can share with them your vision. I was on a call recently with one of my clients and they've got a pretty good sized business approaching a million bucks, a little bit over a million. They're talking about their team and they're talking about getting their team together, and their team is spread out all over the country. And we're talking about, Hey, how do you get the whole team together? How do you bring them together?
And two partners were running the business and you guys get to get up on stage and share with them the vision and have your team come together. And they go, Oh geez, that's pretty expensive. Gonna be 10, 20, $30,000 to bring all of our employees in. And I asked them, I said, " How important is your team to your success? How important is your team being motivated and inspired by you? How important is that to the success of your company?" And they said, it's everything. I said, Don't let 10 or 20, $30,000 stand in the way of you being able to inspire your team and lift them up and motivate them as they go into the next year.
[00:20:22] And the other point that I wanted to make about this company is, they're in the business of helping people get into college. And, I know I still got one in college and one just left. It's one unbelievably frigging expensive check to write. Lots of times families have this vision that they wanna send their kid to college. But then like, how do I get there? How can I afford it? What are the steps I need to take and when do I need to start? And this company helps them through that whole journey.
[00:20:49] And I said, You're not running a company helping people with the college application process. You are changing people's lives. You're changing the lives of families. These families have a dream. So they are gonna take that vision and share it with their employees. So, bottom line: visionaries can inspire. You can inspire your team if you have a phenomenal vision.
Lesson #2: Experience is Overrated
[00:21:10] Number two lesson I learned, Damn, this is a good one. Experience is overrated. I always say, you wanna improve your life, you wanna get to that next level? You need to hang around with and play the game with people that play differently or better than you do. You are the average of the people that you hang around with. And I'm sitting there saying, Damn, if I wanna, be able to grow a business, or if I want to build a hundred million dollar business, I better be hanging around with people that have built billion dollar companies.
[00:21:36] I wanna build a $10 million business. I better hang around with people that have already done that. If I wanna build a million dollar business, I wanna hang around with people that have already done that. So guess what? I still believe that. But you know what? Experience is not everything. Think about this. When you are a little kid or if you have children and they're growing up and, maybe they play sports and they wanna be a professional football player, professional basketball player, or they wanna be the president, or they wanna be, the first, female president.
[00:22:01] Maybe you have a daughter that wants to be in the Olympics, or a son that wants to excel in a certain area, maybe it's a sport or music or whatever it might be. That is beautiful and sometimes in life it gets sucked out of us. We become adults and we stop dreaming because we get punched and sometimes we get punched really hard.
[00:22:21] We can get punched financially. I've had my share of financial punches. We can get punched emotionally. We can lose loved ones in our lives at ages where you're not supposed to lose loved ones. So experience is overrated because young people have a vibrancy and an energy that just flat out blew me away.
[00:22:42] So I have changed my age snob mentality. It's just a fascinating thing.
Lesson #3: Am I Dreaming BIG ENOUGH?
And finally, I don't think I'm dreaming big enough. I teach this, I profess this. I share with people how to dream big. I'm not dreaming big enough. So I'm going back to my dreams and my goals and my vision for not just my companies, but also for myself and my wife Donna, and the impact that we wanna make on society.
[00:23:05] So I learned this through these three kids. Absolutely fascinating. So let me ask you a, Where are you right now? What is your vision? Where is your energy? What is the vision for you, for your life, for your business, for your company, financially, emotionally, spiritually? If the stuff that we talked about today, if any of this resonates with you, if there's an energy, it's like, yeah, I want to get to that next level.
2023: Your Best Year Ever
[00:23:29] I wanna share with you, I wanna invite you to hang out with a bunch of people that do want to play the game at the next level. They do want to figure out how to create that vision and strategize. I've got a hands on , two hour workshop coming out. It's called Your Best Year Ever. 2023: Your Best Year Ever. It's on Thursday, November 10th, 2022. It's 12 to 2p (EST). It's free. It's live. It's gonna be on Zoom.
If you're watching this video or you're listening to this podcast after this date. Well, I apologize for that. Unfortunately, the date's gone. I'm sure I'm gonna be putting on more workshops.
[00:24:03] This is a workshop. The reason I call it a workshop is because we're gonna be working. When you register for the event, I'm gonna give you my book, Dream Big and Crush your Goals. And I'm also gonna give you this workbook that it's designed to help you create your goals and your vision for next year.
[00:24:18] It's fill in the blank pdf. Everything is there for all these, I call 'em the six core areas of our life. And I'm gonna share all that with you. If any of this resonates, go to the link, https://thesavagesecrets.com/2023.
The link will also be in the show notes. I'd be honored and grateful if you join me and a bunch of leaders that are trying to take our lives and our business to the next level.
[00:24:42] We're gonna have some fun. We're gonna bust our butts. We're gonna get a bunch of stuff done.
Thank You! Please Like & Subscribe π
[00:24:45] So I just wanna thank you if you are watching this on YouTube, I would be grateful if you subscribe to my channel. If you liked it and you can share it with some friends. My ask is share it with three friends, and if you have any comments, please leave me comments.
[00:25:00] I always love to hear from you, what are some of the things you'd like to hear going forward? What are some of the trainings? What are some of the things that you maybe liked or disliked about the episode today? And, I got thick skin, so if you wanna call me an idiot or an asshole, I'll deal with it.
[00:25:13] If you're listening to this on a podcast, please subscribe to my podcast, and if you can gimme a rating, I'd love that as well. There is stars from one to five if, if you feel compelled and you wanna be my friend. I'm joking.
[00:25:24] If you liked it, give me a five. If you didn't like it, gimme one and tell me why. Always trying to improve.
[00:25:29] Let me just wish you a phenomenal day. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening or watching. Dream big and have an absolutely amazing day!
