Starting from Nothing The Foundation Podcast Introduction: Welcome to Starting from Nothing The Foundation Podcast, the place where incredible entrepreneur show you how they built their businesses entirely from scratch before they knew what the heck they were doing. Dane: In today s solo podcast of Starting from Nothing, the Wednesday episode where you hear from the one and only me, we re talking out about John D. Rockefeller, the man, the myth the legend. Currently, the world s richest man if he was still alive. If you were to combine BP, Conoco, Chevron, Phillips and all the other oil companies that I can t even think of, just know that John D. Rockefeller owned all of them at one point. How did he go from being a broken son to a broken family, to a father who stole things from him where he had nothing to becoming one of the world s richest men? Well, he has 16 personality traits, some skills, some habits and flaws. We re going to be talking about John D. Rockefeller today and a little bit about how he coincides and conflicts with Walt Disney. We re going to be comparing these two remarkable men. This week, you ll hear a lot about Rockefeller and I can t wait to hear what you think. Listen on and enjoy. Some days require planning, some days require thought, and other days, I just want to be in flow. Today, I am recording a Wednesday solo podcast. Before I begin with this podcast, I just want to set context. First, I m going to be speaking deeply into what I consider critical topics for success, happiness, and freedom in entrepreneurship. Generally, this is off the cuff and spoken into one key idea except for today, it s going to be spoken completely off the cuff and it s going to be on a theme, it s going to be on John D. Rockefeller, one of the world s richest men, versus Walt Disney. Three, I m going to be speaking from my own personal experiences and truth that I ve discovered and read about these two remarkable men. Four, these are designed for the purpose of making entrepreneurship a possibility. In general today, this podcast is designed with the purpose of showing you possibility in general beyond entrepreneurship and inspiring you. I m doing this all. I hit record just a few minutes ago and I m speaking into this mic for one reason: for your freedom. And because I love to talk about this stuff too, but today, these days I ve been waking up. It s far beyond me at this point. What
we re doing is far beyond what I ever even imagined. Today, I want to talk to you about John D. Rockefeller and Walt Disney. You know what inspires me, you know what moves me to tears, the kind of tears of relief that I m home are reading about remarkable men. Because when I read about remarkable men, it gives me the hope that I can be remarkable too. Yes, there are many remarkable women in the world, and I just don t feel drawn to read those biographies right now; maybe at a later point in my life. But if I were to tell you, you guys want to read the Success Secrets or Success Principles or Secrets of Success or Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill which talks about all these great men, you can read these books that aggregate and condensed and talk about success, but I tell you what, nothing moves me like reading about one remarkable man. I still remember when my partner, Andy, was reading about Richard Branson. He wouldn t shut up about it. Every single time I talk to him he s like, Do you want to hear what Richard Branson did now? Did you want to hear about what Richard Branson did then? There s something that s so inspiring about reading about remarkable men. Because for me, reading about remarkable men inspires me to know what s possible. When I m surrounded in a world of people, when I m surrounded in this environment where I start to question possibility, where I start to feel lost, I can read these biographies and reconnect to the unlimited possibility of life. I love reading about men who seem to have no limits to what they can do. Right now, the garbage man is outside my place and he s emptying the garbage. I wonder if he s happy with his life. I hope he s happy with his life. I just let my mind go to that distraction for a minute as we jump back to talking about John versus Walt. These men could not be more opposite and yet both of these men have impacted our American culture in ways that are even really hard to fathom, or comprehend, or make sense of. John D. Rockefeller made oil affordable for people so that people could light their homes. How many people could see at night to read another book, to write another letter for one of their lovers or friends, or to see their partner or their child while they tuck them in instead of it being pitch black? How many nights of lives have been changed by John because of his ability to make oil affordable, or Walt Disney whose impact is more easily seen days with all of the Disney movies, with all of the Disney Worlds and Disneyland s. What child hasn t been touched by Walt Disney? I m in Africa donating my time for this charity event thing, and I m playing with kids who have Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Is Donald Duck Disney? I think he
is. They had Mickey Mouse on their shirts. Walt Disney has infiltrated the world. Now, Walt Disney is just one man. John Rockefeller is just one man. I have wanted to write a book for a while a number of books. One of the book ideas I ve had is a book called Why You re Not Successful Yet. In this book, the only thing that I would talk about is it would take some of ten of the greatest figures from history and all it would do is tell all of their failure stories. That s it. It would not tell a single success story, it would only tell their failure stories. Why aren t you successful yet? If you re not If you already are and you re listening to this, more power to you. I hope you re making the world a better place with the freedom that you now have. But why aren t you successful yet? Successful people just do more stuff. They do more things, they do more activities, and they just do so much. When John Rockefeller wanted to get hired as an accountant, he went in to a city and he went in to all 300 businesses in his city, all 300 businesses, and he offered his services as an accountant. After he got to all 300 and not a single one hired him, what do you think he did? He went through all 300, no one hired him. What do you think he did? He went back to the beginning, back to the first business that he frequented, and he kept going through the list until he finally found the man who hired him. That s 300 failures, 300 different businesses. Hopefully the beeping in the background isn t bothering you too much. It bothers me a little bit as I speak into this but I also just want to notice it and be present to it and come back to the man that is John Rockefeller. How many times did he fail? 300. Just getting hired as an accountant. This podcast is going to be real today. You may hear Winny barking, you may hear people in the other room, but I want you to listen to my voice as I tell you why aren t you successful yet? Because you re not doing enough, yet. John failed 300 times, he went back. As soon as he stopped, as soon as he got to the end, what did he do? John D. Rockefeller became one of the world s wealthiest men and his success can be traced back to the little instances and stories like this. How did John make oil so affordable for the world? When John was a child and he was By the way John missed one weekend of church his entire life. John believed that oil was God s gift to the world and he thought that he was the servant to bring it out to the world. John had a deep belief in what he was doing, given and directed and driven by God. And even Winny, my dog barking in the background, agrees. When John volunteered at churches, do you know what he did? He volunteered at churches. Back then it was all candles. As each pew would empty at the church, he would immediately turn out the candles. Most of the other
volunteers would wait until the entire church was empty, but John would empty as each pew would empty, he would turn out the candle. That kind of shrewd attention to efficiency and shrewd attention to detail is the same shrewd attention to detail that he put into his businesses. You see, when you look at guys like John Rockefeller, you know what depresses me is people thinking like, Oh, I can never be like John Rockefeller. You know what, yes you could. You could be. You could embody the same qualities that he has. Of course, I want you to be yourself. You want you to be yourself. But could you I want to take that back. It s not that I want you to you could be like John Rockefeller, but you could embody his same success habits and same success principles, and the same ways that he lived. When John Rockefeller was 13 years old he started working. He had a terrible relationship with his father. His father stole money from John, so John would hide it. But John was working for a potato farmer when he was 13 years old. John saved every penny for a year and a half. After a year and a half, the potato farmer needed a loan and John loaned a dollar and fifty to this potato farmer at 7% interest. John was making passive income on interest when he was 14 years old. Blows me away. It absolutely liberates me into the excitement of possibility when I see John is the richest man in the world today. If you combine all of John s companies from Exxon, to Conoco, to Phillips, all these oil companies, they were his at one point before they got divide up. They were all his. When you look at his success and you see that it all stems from the stories of his childhood. I calculated 16 different personality traits for John Rockefeller 16 different personality traits. You know why I know so much about John Rockefeller? It s because I have the financial freedom to travel the world and read the books that I want to read. I was taking a 90-day trip around the world and I got so bored traveling that I wanted to create and learn more. So I read John Rockefeller s biography, Titan. I condensed that book, Titan, into a 38-page summary. I condensed an 800-page biography into 36 pages of the most hard-hitting parts of John s biography. That s how inspired I was by him. I was so inspired by John that I went to the laborious task to be so focused and have so much attention on 800 pages of a book to condensing them to 36 pages. Why? Because I found so many repeatable patterns in John that if the world only knew about these things that they would become they could become successful like John.
This report has been downloaded thousands of times and I still get letters about how it s changed people s lives. John D. Rockefeller was a legend. I gained far more reading John s biography than I ever did by reading any success book. Now, the success books are super helpful and they have their place. John s biography just ranks up there as a book that transformed me and inspired me. Because I saw that if a man that grew up in such a tumultuous time with such a terrible father, and such a terrible upbringing with no circumstances from absolutely nothing could go on to become whatever he wanted to be. In this case it was the world s richest man, also the world s most generous man. John was making so much money that he hired that people were sending letters from all around the world. John was making and John opened up every single letter asking for money. John opened up himself because he viewed the money not as his but God s because it came from the gift that God gave to the world which is oil so that he delivered that money and gave back. He killed himself almost and became sick to the point where he had to lay in bed because he was opening every letter that every person ever sent him asking for money. Can you imagine if you had that kind of purpose living in your life, how you could be just living like that, that full embodiment of a life that s driven and directed by this deep belief that you have. John was so overwhelmed with letters that he was the first man in the history of the world to hire a charitable department to disperse his wealth. John came from nothing. If John came from nothing and he can be successful then why aren t you, if you re not. Now, many of the people that I talk to that listen to this podcast are already successful by the world s standards. They ve done everything the world has done. I just talked to six or seven or eight different students yesterday. They re all successful, all making six figures, and none of them were fulfilled. All of them just Every single one common denominator every single one of them wanted to build their own thing. Yeah, it s great, yeah, they re having success, but they were lonely in their thoughts, and beliefs, and feelings and they just wanted to build their own thing. Hallelujah! Amen. Thank God the Foundation exists. I so wish The Foundation existed back when I was getting started. I needed The Foundation more than anything and my heart breaks that I didn t have it. That is the gift that we give now to you and the world. That is the gift that John Rockefeller gave to me when I was lonely, and I was building my businesses, and I was all by myself, and I was a wreck. I got to listen to John, and I got to read John, and I got to find hope in John, and I got to find solace in John. Biographies show you so much. Few men inspire me in the way that John did.
When John was in his late 80s, he always proclaimed that he wanted to live to a 100. He lived a very long time, especially for that time period. When he was in his late-80s, he had a grandson drop a nickel and the grandson almost didn t pick it up. You know what John said? The world s richest man, the world s first billionaire, I believe, hundreds of millions of dollars. He has hundreds of millions of dollars and do you know what he says to his grandson when his grandson is almost not about to pick up that nickel? He says, Son, don t waste that nickel. That s 5% interest on a dollar for a year. In that moment, that moment of time where John shows his personality for just a brief period, you learn so much about this man. When you see a nickel, what do you see? Do you see a nickel? When you see a dollar what do you see? Do you see a dollar? When you see five dollars, what do you see? Well, I know what I used to see. When I saw five dollars, when I saw a nickel, I just saw that. But after I read John you know what I saw? I saw 5% interest on a dollar. Because that s how billionaires view the world. That s how John viewed the world. As the candle flickers in the background, as I m present to that, as I m present to this noise, as I m present to the emotion that s flowing through me right now, this pure channel that I get to become as I share the inspiration of John Rockefeller to you so that you may have just an inkling to the hope and possibility that can fill your life and the limit was potential that can fill your life when you embody and read these great men. These men will change you if you read them, and you let them change you, and you let them guide you. Don t waste that nickel, son, because that is 5% interest on the dollar for a year. Can you imagine being worth hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not a billion, in like 1910 which is worth $500 billion or something today, and to value a nickel in that way. I could go on for ages. I could go on for days talking to you about this. But sadly, we must come to a close today. Sadly, we must come to a close because I haven t even got the chance to talk about Walt Disney. I haven t even got the chance to talk about how he compares with John. So next week I m going to talk about Walt Disney and I m going to talk about the man that he is and how different he is than John. I can t wait for you guys to hear the next episode on next Wednesday with Walt. I got carried away with John today but John s a man to get carried on about. I hope this has been inspiring to you. If you go to this page, if you re listening to this podcast, please come to thefoundation.com. I will be giving away that report that I wrote on John Rockefeller absolutely free. Come to this page, you ll find the report on John, you can hear about the remarkable man he is.
And I encourage you, also, if you have any interest in joining The Foundation, and being a part of this energy of possibility, this energy of potential, this energy of abundance where you can be who you are in your unlimited potential, we would love to have you, we would love to join you, and I would love to see what you build in the world. You can come and apply for our next program at thefoundation.com/family and you can learn more about John, you can learn more about Walt, you can be surrounded by this energy of possibility and potential. This is what I want for you. This is the life that I want for you. I want you to be able to live in these conversations, to live in this reality, because as you live in this world and have these conversations on a daily basis with people, your confidence expands, your energy expands, you become lighter, you become more free, because why wouldn t you when you get to talk about the magic and the possibility of the world. You can find these things in biographies. Find a name that resonates with you and go pick up a biography today and start reading it and watch it transform your heart if you allow it and if you let it. Please, if you would like to join our next program with The Foundation, we would love to have you, love to support you, and love to watch what you build. You can do so at thefoudation.com/family. Closing: Thank you for joining us. We ve taken this interview and created a custom action guide so you know exactly what action steps to take to grow your business. Just head over to thefoundationpodcast.com to download it for free. Thanks for listening and we ll see you next week.