Life forces us to deal with different emotions when we are faced with adversity. It’s up to you how you’re going to frame your experience. Are you going to wallow in negativity or focus on joy? How exactly do we attain joy when everything else seems to be falling apart? Join Mitch Russo and the Ambassador of Joy Barry Shore as they delve into focusing on joy to live the happier, healthier and wealthier life you want. Barry Shore shares personal stories that he experienced throughout his life while thinking about contemplating, living, growing in joy regularly. Smile and love life through this episode as he discusses breaking through limitations and instilling habits that would help you achieve and create the life that you desire.
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Breaking Through Your Limitations And Focusing on Joy With Barry Shore
Our goal is to help you be a better leader, inspire more people, create the passion your community wants and profit from the experience. Since this is still a pretty new show, I want to hear from you. I want you to tell me what you want. I want you to tell me who you are interested in reading about and what action you take from every amazing guest I bring to you. Our guest started out as a professional wholesale diamond dealer.
Within a few years, he and his partner had bought and sold over $100 million of diamonds. They advise the New York Trust Fund on a $20 million diamond fund, authored a book on investing in diamonds, sold 3,000 copies and brought out the first United States limited partnership in diamond gem investments in the state of California. In 1980, a venture capital company approached the team and made them a godfather offer. You know what a godfather offer is. It’s an offer you can’t refuse. My guest started in the field teaching and training about diamonds and gems. Unfortunately, tragedy struck.
He became a quadriplegic overnight from a rare neurological disease called Guillain-Barré Syndrome, GBS, also known as French polio and his journey to regain partial mobility lasted several years and caused him to go MAD, which is his acronym for go Make A Difference. This means that he is combining a positive, purposeful, powerful, pleasant attitude with a zest for life based on joy. While paralyzed, Barry envisioned a site or a portal that would enable people to live in joy daily and that is The Joy of Living community, which is now his lifetime work. Barry Shore, welcome to the show.
Good day, beautiful, bountiful, beloved immortal beings and good-looking people. Mitch, how can I make the categorical statement that all the tens of thousands of people that are reading are all good-looking? By definition, if they read your blog, they know that they’re always looking for and finding the good. That’s the real definition of a good-looking person, looking for and finding good. It is a pleasure and a delight to be with you.
It's your obligation to live your life exuberantly. Share on XThank you very much for that intro. In case you didn’t catch on by now, readers, Barry and I are friends. It’s my pleasure to have him here and spend some time with him but he has a great story to tell and an incredible mission that he’s on, which once you know, you’ll want to participate as I have as well. Barry, let’s go back to the beginning and let’s tell the story about how this all got started.
Let’s begin at this particular point in my life. Imagine standing up, hale and hearty, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and then that evening, be in the hospital, completely paralyzed. Not from an automobile accident and not a spinal injury but this rare disease, which I never heard of before and is Guillain-Barré Syndrome, GBS or French polio. I was in the hospital for 144 days paralyzed and in a hospital bed in my own home for years, paralyzed. I couldn’t turn it over by myself. Four years in a wheelchair. I had braces on both my legs, my hips to my ankles and that was progress. Thank God, Mitch, I’m able to be vertical and ambulatory with the help of a seven-foot walking wand but I still can’t walk up a curb and a stair by myself. I have help 12 hours a day, 7 days a week but you hear my voice, positive, purposeful, powerful, pleasant and it’s all because of one word.
One word has animated me and enabled me to not go through this but to grow through this situation and be able to bring to the world one of the greatest tribes that is now emerging and is going to make a difference in the world. That one word is SMILE. I thought you were going to talk about joy. We will talk about joy but SMILE is an amazing acronym and it stands for Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday. What we do in our tribe and community and what we share with people is that we live with three fundamentals of life.
They are, number one, life has a purpose. When you lead a purpose-driven life, as I’m sure every person here reading does then you can do number two, which is go MAD. That is a great acronym that stands for Make A Difference. You lead a purpose-driven life and you make a difference for yourself, family, friends and other beings. Number three, one of the most important fundamentals is to uncover the power and the secrets of everyday words and terms. As an example, pre-COVID when we used to be able to speak with people. Remember large gatherings? Thank God this pandemic is going to be through and we’ll be doing it again in person. It’s about 5,000 plus people in the audience. I tell the story about Barry Shore, about being successful in business, multi-million dollar exits, three patents and all that stuff and then paralyzed.
I talked about Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday. Hands go up and say, “Barry Shore, I’ve been here for hours but I haven’t seen the miracles.” You know how people are. I asked them, “Are you here? Can you hear, see, stand and walk? Do you have water to drink, food to eat, a place to sleep, family and friends? Every single one of those is a miracle when you learn how to see.” What’s the simple proof? The simple proof is 1 million-plus people did not get out of bed this morning, Mitch. Do you know why? They died. If you’re reading this, you didn’t. By definition, you have life. It’s your obligation to live exuberantly, not just to be.
You’re reading about Mitch Russo. Everybody knows who reads about Mitch that this is an energizing being who knows how to build and grow businesses, which are here to serve, make money and help people do lots of things. You’re here to live exuberantly. That’s the genius of what Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday, is that we’ve worked with many words to be able to understand the vibrancy, the life that is uncovered when you understand the meaning of words. We’ll talk about tribe as soon as you ask me the next question.
Apparently, it’s not going to be hard to get you going so that that’s good to hear but I want to go back a little bit. Before you were stricken with this incredible syndrome, were you this happy? Were you this driven for joy or were you like everybody else who was grinding it out, enjoying life and doing well? Was this part of that mission? When you got struck with this, did you tell the story of what happened to you? Emotionally, did you go into a depression? I’m sure you didn’t come out of a coma or realize that all of a sudden, you’re a quadriplegic and go, “Now I have a new mission.” I’m sure there was some period where you needed to work on your attitude and change it. Tell us about that.
I do appreciate the question and you are asking me in simple terms, “Are you human, Barry Shore?” The simple answer is I’m human. I’ve been through stuff. A more nuanced and complex answer because that’s the nature of the human being, is that even prior to this, I was involved with thinking about contemplating, living and growing in joy regularly. I am exponential because now the mission is even greater and larger. Did I ever go into depression? The answer is no. However, I will tell you one story and then I’m going to follow with another story.
This story occurred about weeks after I was first struck in the hospital, a quadriplegic. I can’t move and nothing happens. They’re moving me about from place to place on a gurney. I had this particular male nurse who has been with me for days, taking care of me, moving back and forth with tests and all kinds of things. They understood what was Guillain-Barré Syndrome, how to arrest it from completely taking over my lungs and my body and killing me because 5% of the people that get it die.
He was moving me back to the room, stops the gurney, bends down and asks me. He said, “Mr. Shore, can I ask you a personal question?” I have to mention at the moment that not only was my physical being compromised, I could barely speak. I can’t move anything. I’m not nodding my head and moving my arms. He asked me, “Mr. Shore, I’m a nurse and I specialize in people that are in situations like you. Everybody I’ve met, they’re bitter, angry and complaining. How come you don’t look like you’re bitter or you’re angry. Why?” I realized he was asking me at that moment the great existential question, which is, “Why me, God? Why did you do this to me?”
That’s not what I was asking in my mind. I was asking, “I’m a regular and nice guy. I’m happy with a wonderful wife, good son, family and friends. Why? What is my purpose now, dear Lord? You got my attention.” I was doing a lot of stuff in the world, doing all kinds of good. I thought, “What are you going to do?” At that moment, at 55 years of age, the greatest calm that I had ever known in my life, assured that no matter what was going to be the result, it was going to be of benefit, positive, purposeful, powerful and pleasant. I couldn’t move and didn’t move for years but at that moment, I understood fully. Something was going to be fine.
Barry, before you tell that story. I want to also share something that I learned many years ago and it came to me at the intersection of almost dying from an overdose of heroin. I had the realization that everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to. Even if you don’t think it does or is at the time, it’s almost exclusively many years, sometimes later in life, that you look back and say, “If that would not have happened, I would not be, do or have this.”
You were able to have the spiritual strength to see that early enough in your illness and have that switch go up in your mind that says, “It happened and now I’m going to be the best Barry Shore I could possibly be in whatever state God leaves me.” That is a very powerful place to be. Everybody else is going, “Why me? Now I have to kill myself because I’m useless and all this other stuff.” A lot of people might go through that but you didn’t even come close to that and that is the gift that I see from everything you’ve said so far.
Thank you, Mitch. You’re making an important distinction and point. One of the reasons that our community is growing, thriving and God willing, is touching people already in different parts of the world and the goal is to touch as many millions of people as possible. It’s because people hear the story, jaw drop and then say, “If that’s true, in my life, X, Y and Z, what can I do? I can make a difference.” It brings people not just hope. This is even the next part. What we do is don’t just bring people HOPE, which stands for Helping Others Progress Everyday. That’s what hope is. We bring people confidence that each person has the ability to go forth and to succeed. There are no barriers.
That is how people, if they choose to see life this way, can truly uncover and exploit their true purpose in life. Whether you’re a paraplegic or not, these opportunities are available to all of us. Let’s get to the business of tribe building for a minute because I want to hear your other stories as well. We have a job here. We need to help people create their communities. Since you’re a community creator, we need to extract that wisdom from you. Let’s start with this. How many people are you leading in your tribe?
The number is approximately 1,293. People are joining on a daily basis.
Who wouldn’t want to? How long did it take you to get to this point? Not a number of people but the evolution of your community, too.
This is a very important point that Mitch is pressing. The process and the progress from what we call the wanting to do it, to doing it, to the actual launch and then the progression covered almost 30 months. Some people would say, “Thirty months, that sounds like a long time.” It is and it isn’t. Let’s use the image of the famous iceberg. Everybody knows what an iceberg looks like, the famous picture of the iceberg and the story of the Titanic. An iceberg, what you’re basically looking at, is somewhere between 5% and 10% above the waterline and therefore by definition, 90% to 95% below the waterline. The key is the growth of the iceberg that happened below the waterline, it takes an outline, plan, research, desire and budget to prepare oneself for building a community or tribe.
You have to be willing to work for a life you’ll be proud of. Share on XWe work with words a lot and in our community because words make a difference for people in communication. How you speak and what you say is essential in enabling people to live better. Our goal in the community is very simple. By joining a community and participating, you will be happier, healthier and wealthier. Who doesn’t want that? That’s the goal that took almost a year to articulate in its concise, clear format because if you don’t have that, what’s the result? What’s all that that you don’t ever get to someplace? In order to have our show, Mitch, I want to make an acronym for TRIBE. I’ve been working on it for a long time anyway, relatively speaking, for months but I did it in honor of you. If you want to use it, you’re welcome to. If you don’t, that’s up to you. For me and for the people that I work with, TRIBE is an acronym that stands for Togetherness Results In Becoming Excellent
I’m going to go back into your past a little bit, not about your heroin use, although that might overlap but you were with one of the greatest names in the history of motivation and enabling people to break through any limitations they may think they have. Barry Shore is an exponent and we talk about breaking through limitations. Barry Shore now swims 2 miles a day, 6 days a week and has been doing that for years. I’ve accumulated over 8,166 miles, which coming from Florida across the Atlantic, through the Straits of Gibraltar, across the Mediterranean, up to Jerusalem and down to Mumbai. That’s a lot of miles.
Can I share one thing with you real quick? I have a photograph that I took in Greenland and it is exactly what Barry said. It’s an iceberg. It’s the 10% that sits above the water. I took this photograph from my drone, which was 400 feet above the iceberg itself. I’m going to get back to your story. Thank you for the TRIBE. That made a lot of sense and I am going to R and D that from you. Do you know what R&D stands for?
Everybody should know what Mitch taught me years ago about R&D.
I’m going to Rip off and Deploy it. That’s R&D.
I urged you because I was the one who offered it in advance. I want this to be shared with as many people as possible. By the way, SHARE stands for Spreading Happiness And Rejuvenating Energy. Everything that we do in our tribe and community is geared towards bringing about a new, higher level of energy because that’s why people join. People join not for information. That’s readily available in thousands and millions of places. People join for transformation. Incremental, as well as giant.
There’s another real reason why communities form, why people lead communities and more importantly, why people join communities. It comes down to something that I would call polarization. What I have discovered after creating many tribes on my own, as part of my business coaching, is we build communities and culture for companies. One of the most important elements is the polarization of opinion of the leader but polarization is both inclusive and exclusive. In other words, it’s not only what you stand for, Barry. It’s what you repel, what you don’t stand for. That becomes almost more powerful in some ways than what you do because it allows people quickly to decide whether or not they’re in your camp or not. That, for you, is a perfect scenario.
This is the great discussion that Mitch and I are having. This is a conversation and you’re able to read it. This show has very little to do with Barry Shore. Even it has very little to do with Mitch Russo. This show is all about YOU. That’s why he does it and I am humbled and honored that he asked me and I’m here to share as well because it’s about you. He’s now giving over a piece of wisdom that is truly valuable. I didn’t say invaluable. You want to value this and repel 99% of all the people who think they want to join with you. If you’re out there and say, “Everybody can join my community,” then that’s for nobody.
The exclusivity element in a community is very important. It becomes a self-exclusion process oftentimes because you do articulate what the values and goals are. You urge people to understand that this is not sophistry and it’s not baby oil on the back. It’s about work in the most positive, purposeful, powerful and pleasant way. You love work, which Mitch, Barry and anybody who’s reading do. We love work. We enjoy it. We gather the money with a zest. It still takes me ten minutes to get out of bed but I get out of bed. The ability to say, “I’m here doing what I do because I love what I do and I want as many people to be touched by it, who understand what I do.” That means a lot of people won’t.
Going back to the iceberg point. In order to be able to lay the foundation and build the process for the community, it does take thought and research. You need to write down and decide who it is that you think you want to attract, what we call the avatar. You want to have a female and male avatar and if you want to do several other ways, that’s up to you. Who is your perfect member? Understand what it is that they do, what do they read, what do they listen to, where do they visit and what is it they want? Do they want to go from being what I call an amateur in life? We all start out as amateurs in life and grow to become adept.
For those of you who don’t know, an adept is a very technical term in the world of Zen meditation or in martial arts and such. An adept is someone who is at the level of capability of becoming a teacher. That’s what people are. One of my greatest teachers many years ago, her name is Burma and she uses a great phrase that I often repeat as much as I can with credit to her. It goes specifically for parents, the lots of friends and for anybody that is in your orbit. “Teach with everything you do. If necessary, use words.” That’s what it is.
Barry, we’re going to go to the next question here because we’re trying to educate and this is going to help a lot. One of the things that you’ve done is you’ve given a lot of thought to the benefits of being a member of your tribe. What are the benefits of membership in your community?
The three major ones are the following. Number one, you will be on a journey from recognizing that you are an amateur in life. I’ll tell you what amateur means, through 3 to 4 new stages to becoming adept. The technical definition of amateur is amator from Latin, meaning a lover. I’m an amateur of life. I love life. Do I make mistakes? “Yes, fine. I’m a regular person.” That’s an amateur in life. It’s a duffer. A duffer is a person who plays golf and say, “Okay, fine.” If it’s tennis, “Would you like to play well?” “Yeah.” “Would you be willing to work at it for a half-hour a day?” “Come on.” That’s an amateur. To be able to enter into that realm and, this is the key, admit, “I’m an amateur and I want to get better. I want to become adept. I’d like to go through the stages and learn.” That’s the first benefit that we offer people. The next benefit is we teach people how to, what I call, play ball. Remember, this is going to be an acronym. What does PLAY BALL stands for? PLAY stands for Purposeful Living Aligning wiselY, that’s the Y. BALL stands for Become A Lifelong Learner.
People come into the community initially and say, “I’m already that.” We ask certain questions. What do you read? How often do you read? What do you listen to? Who do you listen to? In other words, begin to ask people to put it down on paper. I happen to be very old-fashioned. I can pull it off because I have a white beard and I can talk to people about something called a pen or a pencil and a piece of paper. I am of the school that it makes a far greater impact upon the human being to use pen or pencil, fountain pen, quill or whatever you want on a piece of paper to write down words that you begin to articulate part of who you are and what you do. One of those is what are your reading habits, your viewing habits, etc.? In other words, begin to look at oneself.
You’re helping people take a look at their habits and the processes that they use to create a life every day and maybe examine them a little deeper than they might have otherwise.
Here’s a wonderful word you just used. To create. We work with a lot of words and acronyms. CREATE is one of the most remarkable words, Mitch. It stands for Causing Rethinking Enabling All To Excel. Causing rethinking, we have a mind and we have a brain. They’re not exactly the same but we have a brain. You have 100 billion-plus brain cells. You have 120 trillion synapses connecting all the brain cells. They’re there for more than deciding what kind of latte you want this morning. It’s called in our world neurolinguistic programming that we do for ourselves. That’s a second great benefit, recognizing that you are able to program for yourself.
The genius of community is number three. When you enter into a community, you are able to share with like-minded, conscientious, caring beings. The whole purpose of a community is to say, “I’m safe. I can admit that I have difficulty with this or with that. I’m worried, anxious and stressed.” “Great.” “Hello? Anybody else out there is stressed?” A thousand hands went up. What do you do? You begin to feel the ability to say and speak openly. That’s the third great benefit. When you can do that in that tribe and community, you can have people grow.
Readers, if you’re enjoying our conversation, Barry has a very special free gift for us, which we’ll talk about later in the show. Barry, everybody knows that you need to have benefits to bring to tribe members. What would you say is the greatest benefit that your members bring to you?
For me personally and for the founding members, who are about 163 people who got in very early and I’ve heard this many times, it is the energy. It is that ongoing, positive, purposeful, powerful and pleasant energy that comes above the a-ha moments that people have when they relate. I use this particular strategy and we’ll call it the get uncomfortable. People go, “What do you mean get uncomfortable?” I say, “Get uncomfortable.” We’re not talking about wearing a hair shirt or putting a pebble in your shoe walking around for miles. I’m talking about getting uncomfortable as simple as this. Using your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth. What does that do? To one of your friends, partners, former partners, Tony Robbins speaks about PI, Pattern Interrupters. I call them Positive interrupters.
The ability to recognize that instead of doing something in a mindless manner, we can do it in a mindful manner and getting uncomfortable, just a gentle shift. Here’s the genius of life. Shift happens. I have found many people that somehow can’t pronounce the F and shift and they leave other stuff but shift happens and we’re talking about subtle shifts. To see people rave, be excited and enthused by it and tell stories like this. People are asking me, “What happened to you? What’s going on in your life?” That is the greatest benefit to me.
I also want to share a quick story with you at a retreat with friends. His name is Yanik Silver. He runs the Mavericks group. He gave us an exercise. He says, “Go out into the woods.” We’re in a beautiful wooded area and he says, “Take a pencil and paper with you, not a cell phone and I want you to write whatever comes to you but you must write with your non-dominant hand.” My first thought was, “I can’t write with my non-dominant hand.”
What I came to discover was that not only could I write and it wasn’t very pretty but what I wrote was astounding. It was as if writing with my non-dominant hand tapped into an element of my mind that I had not accessed previously. I wanted to share that story because it’s about the simplest thing anyone could do but when you do it, you discover things about yourself no matter how old or young you are, that might astound you. Thanks for sharing that point and reminding me of that story.
I am touched by that because of two things. The first words out of Mitch’s mouth were and his thinking was, “I can’t.” When he resolved to say, “I’m going to at least try.” He didn’t say, “I can.” He said, “At least try.” The result of it, that’s what a tribe and community are about. The community it’s built on, what’s the result? When you ask, “What’s the benefit?” What is the result that will happen to people? You said, “You’ll be happier, healthier and wealthier.” I can’t think of anything better. If you can, let me know. I’m open to hearing. It doesn’t matter how happy you are, you can be Barry Shore. Be you. Real wealth, we all know, has very little to do with the number of zeros in your bank account, as long as you’re followed by positive energy before that. The point is that these are things that have depth to them as well as height. That’s the beauty of having a tribe, having a community and building together on something. With your permission, I’d like to talk for a moment about dog poop.
We work with acronyms because they are great hooks for people to remember things and to be able to smile about it but I might even use it on the show even without your permission, the F You word. I used the four-letter F You word because it’s fun for the shock value. DOG POOP is a fantastic acronym that when you hear it, you say, “Everybody knows what dog poop is.” I’m waiting for Mitch to say, “Barry, I’m going to pull up a picture of dog poop.” He’s not looking for it. His drone did do that but everybody knows that you either walked in it, stepped or walked by it or you picked it up because that’s what happens. DOG POOP stands for Doing Of Good, Power Of One Person. I’m going to ask you a question, Mitch. When you went on this retreat and if you articulate the person’s name and you ask each person to use a pencil and some paper to go into the woods, I think he probably asked each person to go by themselves. Is that true?
When you begin to recognize that you as an individual make a difference and that the power of one person to influence you and that you are an influence to someone else, that one person to another, in our country and in the world in the year 2021, we have a big joy deficit in the country, I think you’d agree. I am here. A part of my mission, our tribe and community, is to create a joy surplus without printing trillions of dollars. You don’t need it. It’s all built on DOG POOP. It’s everyone doing someone positive, purposeful, powerful and pleasant because The Joy of Living, which is the name of our community and tribe, can be summed up in one word. That word is giving. When you shift to become a giver, you make a difference in the world.
See miracles in life every day because you have a purpose. Share on XIt’s very meaningful and this leads me to my next question, which is giving some friendly advice to anyone who’s reading about this about their own community. Do you believe that they should have a product or a service before beginning to build a tribe? Should they first have that and then build a tribe?
Let’s posit a third alternative. If you don’t have any product or service and you want to build a tribe, go forth and do it with this caveat. Remember about the iceberg? Research and work, it takes time, effort and thought to go on whatever search engines you want to use to look at your idea, see who’s doing it now and how they’re doing it. If it doesn’t exist, maybe it doesn’t exist for a reason and if it does exist, what can you do that’s faster, better and cheaper? If you do have a product or service, how can you adapt it so that the product or service integrates with the community? It’s the key to that it is a natural concomitant to a community. The community members want to buy what you have and what I have. We have a course. Our courses, videos, my book and other books that we’re printing and such, they want more because they’ve recognized I’m healthier, happier and wealthier. I love this gig.
What about the mechanics of running a tribe? Do you use software to help you maintain communication? What do you feel that someone starting out would need to acquire other than having a computer, an internet connection and a microphone? That’s about all most people need, I would think but there’s software that runs communities. There’s social media marketing and scheduling software. Do you have any feel for maybe what some of those products might be and what people need to start thinking about before they start?
The simple answer is yes. I want to emphasize the last word you use before they start. I am not just a believer but a firm believer and it’s worked well for my life and the life of many thousands of people that I’ve helped. The most important aspect of building something is to start and begin. I don’t care if it’s seven minutes a day that you say, “I am listening to this guy, Barry Shore.” Write that down. “I am making a commitment to invest seven minutes a day, every single day for the next X,” 30 days, 60 days, 100, whatever the time is. Put it in writing. I’m committed. Don’t do six hours because you’re not going to do that. Put in some time that is to your ability and then use that time to do the first thing, research some of these potential processes that are available either for free or small costs.
I have chosen to use a great gig that I like is the fellow’s name is Stu McLaren and if everybody wants to, just research it. He’s a wonderful fellow who’s dedicated to helping people build communities as I am. I chose to use his processes because I found them to be the most user-friendly because I didn’t want to become adept. I chose not to become adept at technology. I’m pouring all my efforts, time and energy into channeling me into the community. My humble advice is to do as little as possible in the technology aspect and as much as possible in the You aspect.
To summarize, what I loved about what you said is that the very first step in starting, building or even growing a community would be to set aside a small amount of time and be consistent every single day to work on that, beginning with research. One of the things that one of my other guests had talked about, which I thought was brilliant, was the writing of a manifesto. Tell me about your view on writing a manifesto before starting or creating your tribe?
I am a whole-hearted endorser of such. Whoever’s reading, if you are contemplating or already growing, already have and growing one and maybe you want to make it a much more robust tribe and community, I urge you that we must recognize that what we bring to the community as the leader. Maybe you have a team so you’re the leader of the team of more than one person but the point is, you’re a leader. You’re maybe the leader or a leader. It’s that authority rests in you. You and I cannot emphasize enough how much authority means to people who are going to follow your lead.
There’s no other aspect to authority that uses the same first sounds and letters and that is authenticity. You can be an authority but you may not be authentic. You may be authentic but you may not be an authority. Be an authentic authority in the tribe community you’ve chosen to lead. It means that you MUST put in writing, either the manifesto or it could be a page, 5 pages or 10 pages. The shorter, the better, generally speaking, in a manifesto but if you don’t have a book, which can be as little as 25 pages, don’t make it more than 100 or 125 pages. Do not write a 200-page book but something between 25 pages and 125 pages and self-publish. The point is when you write a book, you’re an authority. It makes a difference. The ability to write a book comes down to this, eleven minutes a day, every single day. There are no excuses.
I’m going to add one more word to the two that you gave us before and it’s a word that all leaders must take into account before they write their manifesto. That third word is responsibility because when you are leading a group of people whether it’s 12 people or 1,200 people, you must understand your role. You have a responsibility to lead both deliberately and with authority. I’ll tell you a quick story. The very first tribe I ever built was 350 people and it was my certified consultant community or Timeslips Corporation, which is a software company that I founded in 1985. We had a symposium and we brought hundreds of these certified consultants in from all over the country and the world.
During the meeting, one person and this particular person is a colorful individual, stood up in front of the whole room to argue with me on one of the points I had made from the stage. All of a sudden, the room became quiet because they wanted to see what was going to happen next. Someone was challenging the leader of the tribe and my answer was very simple. I said, “If you don’t like it, you should go. We don’t have a place for people who don’t understand what we’re doing and agree with it.” Everybody clapped everybody. All of a sudden, they erupted in laughter and clapped and you know how somebody goes, “The heck with it.” He waved like that, sat down and that was the end of that entire interaction.
It turned out I did that almost completely without thinking and off the cuff. What I learned from that is because I valued my own community so much, I wouldn’t allow that individual to pollute it with negativity or his own backward thinking. Everybody appreciated it. What that did, it did two things. Number one, it’s solidified the community and number two, made it clear what my values were. That’s what I said before about a manifesto. You must state your values. You must include those people who believe in the same values you do and exclude those who do not. It’s super important as I’m sure you practice every day in your own community.
I thank you for that story because it’s emblematic of something that Mitch is giving over to us, the ability to have asserted himself without being assertive. In other words, you weren’t, “Don’t you realize this is my stage and you’re here at my behest.” He didn’t use that in his voice and didn’t do that. He wasn’t shocked. He didn’t have a deer in the headlight’s idea. He merely stated, “If that’s your opinion then this is not the place for you.” Everybody felt that because that was authentic.
To go to the manifesto again, the reason why I mentioned if you’re going to begin a community and tribe, it’s the 90% below the waterline, the research, time and effort to think the way your members think. What is this avatar? What is he or she? What kind of words they use? What are they thinking about? What are their concerns? Whether they’re anxious or worried, what do they worry about? What do they care about? What do they want to do?
When you start writing those down, if you can, I urge people to put down your values as many as they can in the beginning. You should try and get close to somewhere between 4 and 6. It’s not magic numbers but it helps because, first of all, they become capable of being known, not just by you but by everybody else. People can say, “I get that.” Authenticity, we use integrity and don’t use them as words.
What does it mean to be honest and have integrity? Ask people and you’d be surprised. The genius of humanity is I don’t care if you have 12 people or 12,000. You’re going to get input and that’s great. That’s what you want. That’s dynamic. Remember, Mitch has told us it’s dynamism. You want dynamic. This is not static. This is all about not going through something but growing from something as a transformation.
Barry, we’re going to play a game called let’s peek into the future. My favorite question on this show is this. What does the future look like for you when you take this two years into the future?
I have our 1-year, 2-year, 5-year, forever plan. The two-year plan is exceeding the number 10,000. The five-year plan exceeds the number 75,000. We grow because, for us, it’s about building and creating nodes in different places. Let’s say we have three people in Japan. Japan is a country. It’s a huge place but the point is that it will be wonderful and nice that that node exists in Nagasaki or in Tokyo and there are 1,500 people that can speak to each other in their own native way. As well as being able to be connected through webinars, which we call in our world use the same letters as webinars. We call them webrain. Isn’t that great? That’s what it’s about.
Real wealth has very little to do with the number of zeros in your bank account. Share on XI’ve got a nice input from somebody in Indonesia. We have two people in Indonesia. There is great suffering in Indonesia because under 5% of the population has anything even access to the vaccine. They’re not vaccinated. There are people dying in the streets and sending me notes saying, “I’m so happy that I’m part of this group because I believe this keeps me healthy.” What a mindset. Remember, you’re here. Our purpose in our community is you’re happier, healthier and wealthier. This is from a human being saying that to us.
Barry, you sure have done a great job. You’re a great ambassador for your community. You’ve done an amazing job of showing us that you live your story of what it’s like and it’s very appreciated. I understand that you have a pretty interesting and valuable free gift. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is?
I love using four-letter words, life, love, hope, grow, free, gift. Our gift is our free introduction course to what we do. You can listen to and watch Barry Shore short videos, 3 minutes, one is 20 minutes and it’s free. It’s worth it, as they say in the commercial, priceless retail value. The street value is $97 but it’s yours.
Barry, this has been an incredible learning experience for me and I hope for everybody reading. What is the website that people can find you at? How would they get a hold of you if they wanted to maybe talk to you or find out more in-depth about what you do other than the free course itself?
Thank you for asking and the best way to go is to go to my website, which is WWW, stands for What a Wonderful World, www.BarryShore.com. There are a lot of great resources there and you’ll see all kinds of things about the show, what we do and how we do it. We welcome people who want to be happier, healthier and wealthier and want to work at it. “I want to be transformed.”
Do you mean the government is not going to give us happier, healthier and wealthier? I thought we’ll now sit around and wait for it to come to us.
That is the drug that they are trying to drug us with and keep us all under their thumb but we’re not going to let that happen. We are Americans. Remember, we have a joy deficit. We’re going to have a joy surplus without printing trillions. Therefore, that’s the genius of being a free being and a free radical.
Barry, if you are nothing else, you are a free radical. Thank you so much for all of the wisdom that you shared and readers, if you don’t go ahead and grab that free course then I’m going to have to go over to your house and slap you. You’re going to open the door and you’re going to say, “What are you doing here?” “I’m going to slap you.” Go and get that free course. Barry, thank you. I look forward to the time we get a chance to talk again soon.
Mitch, if I may, I’d like to do two things. One is to give you a hug in front of tens of thousands of people and number two is to leave everybody with a blessing. Can I do that? HUG stands for Harmonizing Unlimited Giving. Our blessing to everybody is to go forth, live exuberantly, spread the seeds of joy, happiness, peace and love. Go MAD. Go make a difference.
Thank you, Barry.
Important Links
- Barry Shore
- Stu McLaren
- Gift – The Joy of Living Course
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