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Apr 10, 2026
Interview with Sales Legend Ben Gay III
Interview with Sales Legend Ben Gay III
00:00
38:07
Transcript
0:00
My special guest today has not only been the president of the largest network marketing company in the world at the time, he's also the author of the number one best-selling book series on sales called The Closers.
0:15
It's likely if you're listening to this podcast, you're familiar with another all-time best-selling book called Think and Grow Rich by Dr. Napoleon Hill. My guest is also known as the last protege of Dr.
0:27
Hill, and his name is Benjamin Franklin Gaye III.
0:32
In this episode, Ben is going to share his insights on what it takes to be a peak performer and keep your life in balance while finding fulfillment in every important area of your life.
0:44
And now, let me introduce Ben Gaye III. [upbeat music] Welcome to The Summitiers Podcast, a show for peak performers who are seeking success and fulfillment in all the most important areas of their lives.
0:57
Each week, we explore what it really takes to create a life that you truly love in every way, a life that has meaning, purpose, and is balanced across every area of your life that matters. And now, here's your host, Dr.
1:11
Don Cote. All right, everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm Don Cote, your host, and I am here with my very dear and longtime friend, Ben Gaye III. Welcome, Ben. Thank you, sir.
1:23
So Ben and I met, uh, I think it was two thousand seventeen. He was the keynote speaker at the event, and I was the warm-up band, I guess.
1:33
And, uh, so I was up there speaking first, and, uh, there was this very-- this white-haired, very distinguished, uh, gentleman sitting in the back of the room, uh, doodling.
1:45
And, uh, didn't know who he was, but, um, when I got done, I said, "We've got a couple minutes left, and if you have any questions." And he raised his hand, and I-I said, "Sir."
1:54
And he stood up and said, um, "I just wanna thank you for reminding me of some things that Dr. Hill told me personally, taught me personally, and I just wanna say I appreciate it."
2:05
And he sat down, and I said, "Wait, what? Dr. Hill taught you personally?" [laughs] And at that time, there was only one other person in the whole world that I knew that knew Dr. Hill personally.
2:18
So now it's like, "I've gotta talk to this guy. I've gotta talk to this guy." And so when he got up and told his story, which I, I hope that he will do today, uh, for all of our listeners.
2:29
Um, when he got up and told the story about, uh, him and Dr. Hill and being what he is affectionately known now as the last protege of Dr. Hill, um, uh, I was so impressed.
2:40
And he said, "You know, I don't do these, uh, talks very much anymore, but, um, when I do, there's usually one person in the room that I become really good friends with. I just never know who it is."
2:51
And I ran over when he was done speaking, got down on one knee next to him and said, "It's me, it's me." And he said, "I know." [laughs] So we've been friends ever since.
3:00
So Ben, tell us a little bit about how you came to meet Dr. Hill and how he became your mentor. I was sitting in my office.
3:09
I was the president of Holiday Magic Cosmetics, the, uh, largest MLM network marketing company in the world at the time. And, uh, I, I had become president through a sales contest.
3:22
I didn't have the credentials or the training to be running a company that was soon taking in a million dollars a day. Hmm. In nine- in nineteen sixty-seven dollars. That's three and a half million now.
3:36
So I was sitting there minding my own business, suffering a little imposter syndrome. Sure.
3:41
Every time the door opened, I thought it would be the owner of the company, William Ben Patrick, saying, "I just discovered you're not qualified for this job. Get out." [laughs] Ouch.
3:52
And I would have shared his enthusiasm. Well, he, he knocked on the door this time and opened it, and there was Bill Patrick, and who's a tall, imposing guy, six-three, six-four, something like that.
4:06
And next to him, a little old man on a cane. And, uh, I thought, "Oh, great." Bill was always bringing people, old friends from the past, and say, "Build a company around him."
4:19
And so we would take the marketing-- established marketing plan, and we st- founded State Power Motor Oil Additives, and were the same concept as Holiday Magic and so on, 'cause he knew the guy who had the formula.
4:34
And that went on numerous times, and I'm looking at this guy. Nothing's been said yet. But I'm thinking, "Oh, great. Multi-level wheelchairs." Um. [laughs] Wow.
4:46
[laughs] So I got up and walked around my desk, big conference table thing, walked around my desk, and I said, "Hi, I'm Ben Gaye."
4:53
And Bill Patrick looked at me like I was crazy, and he said, "Ben, don't you recognize Dr. Napoleon Hill?" Well, I'd never seen a picture of him in the later years.
5:04
All I saw were those ones with the high collars that looked like- Oh, right... looked like he was being reborn. In his twenties, right? [laughs] Yeah. Uh, he said, "This is Dr. Napoleon Hill." I said, "Dr.
5:16
Hill, a pleasure to meet you." And he said, "Call me Nappy." And that began our first fight. We fought that for the next two and a half years. I'm a Southerner.
5:28
If you're older than I am, you're Mister or Missus or whatever. And if you're a doctor, you're Doctor. I don't care how you became a doctor, if that's part of your name. I said, "Dr. Hill, I will never call you that."
5:41
I didn't even say the word until he was dead, and I was telling funny stories about it. Then I started saying Nappy. But to me, he's Dr. Hill. And so I found out later from Bill Patrick and Dr.
5:54
Hill, they were walking down the hall, long building, went from the street back to the canal where we kept some of our boats. And he s- uh, he was walking him to send him back to South Carolina.
6:05
He was out there to present Bill with a plaqueSaying and a book in which he had said that Bill Patrick was one of the five greatest people, um, al-alive or something like that.
6:18
And, uh, I later found out later that day when I was signing a check from my consulting to Dr. Hill, and then another one, two fifty-thousand-dollar checks.
6:29
The second one was to be named one of the five greatest people in his book. [laughs] Interesting. So it was an interesting experience to me that not all things are as they appear. Mm.
6:42
And, uh, so anyway, on the way down the hall, apparently he had said to Dr. Hill, "I've got a young man doing-- running this business, he's doing a great job." He was our top salesman, that's how I became president.
6:54
"But I suspect there are times when he feels like he's in over his head, and he would like somebody to talk to, and he probably doesn't wanna make that long trip down the hall to my office to tell me that he's afraid or doesn't know what he's doing or whatever.
7:11
So I'd like you to be..." And I don't know what the term was. I don't think it was mentor, uh, or even coach. I think w-what it was to me was a friend. Mm. He hired a grandfather for me, and Dr.
7:24
Hill was old enough to be my great-grandfather. Biologically, I was twenty-five, he was eighty-four. So he said, "I'd like for you to take him on."
7:32
And they, and they agreed, and I don't know when the price was d-decided, but within an hour there was a check on my desk to be signed for fifty thousand dollars. So I know that was the first year, and Dr.
7:44
Hill became my friend. And, uh, he stayed at the house when he was out from South Carolina. He'd come out once or twice a month, spend two to three days there.
7:56
And what he did was, it wasn't the strict coaching mentor thing people pictured. He was my friend. I had a long conference table as a desk. To my left at the end of the table was a chair, and that was called Dr.
8:10
Hill's chair. When he was in town, that's where he sat. Nobody sat. They, they didn't sit there when they, when they didn't think he was in town, unless it was the only chair that was open and it was a big meeting. Yeah.
8:25
Short of that, it was always vacant. Just as up at the house, Dr. Hill's bedroom was never occupied unless he was in it. It was one of our guest bedrooms, obviously. Like, like the Lincoln bedroom, right?
8:37
[laughs] But one of the nicer ones. So yeah, sorta. So on that basis, we started out, and I remember... I forget whether it was the first day or the next day, but we went to a restaurant, just Dr. Hill and me,
8:49
and, uh, he started out. You know, it's a little stiff. He doesn't know if he's, if he's supposed to act like he's Dr. Hill. Right. And I'm supposed to act like I'm a humble student.
9:01
Uh, I, I wasn't humble, to say the least. That's how I became president of the company. But, uh, e-well, early in the meal, they had, they had just brought the salad, and Dr.
9:13
Hill stabbed into his salad, picked it up, and just as it got near his mouth, he said, "You know, there, uh, whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
9:27
And then he went to put the salad in his mouth, and I said, "Unless he's crazy." Wow, okay. [laughs] And, and he says, "What?" [laughs] And that became our second fight.
9:37
And I don't believe that whatever man-- the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve, period. It's a lofty motivational phrase, but it's not really true.
9:47
There's lots of people who will live their entire lives, uh, stuck in the mud, and there are people...
9:54
The insane asylums of the world are filled with people who believe they're Napoleon or the President of the United States or whatever. And so I, I said, "Unless he's crazy."
10:05
And he put his fork down and said, "What do you mean by that?" And I t-told him basically what I just told you. Mm. I said, "I've thought about it ever since I read, first read the book,
10:14
and I think it's inspirational and motivates people. I just... It's just the two of us here. I don't think it's true. It's aspirational, but it's not true." Mm.
10:26
And, uh, he-- we talked about it for a few minutes, and finally he agreed.
10:31
He said, "If I ever rewrite Think and Grow Rich, I'm gonna say, 'Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve, unless he's crazy.'" [laughs] So that's how we decided to end that debate.
10:47
And after that, he just, he just, he was-- he could go anywhere in the building without knocking, anywhere, any meeting, even with Bill Patrick. Uh, and
10:56
with me, he spent ninety percent of the time, if we were at the office, seated at the end of the table listening and writing, uh, on a legal pad.
11:06
Whatever his last book was, he wrote part of it in my office, another part of it up at the house, and some of it probably at home. I don't know what the last book was, but that's what he was doing, was writing a book.
11:21
Mm. But what he would do, he'd listen to what was going on. Didn't look like he was listening. Had his head down taking notes or n-or if not taking notes, writing in the book.
11:33
And then when people got up and left, and there'd be ten, 15 people sitting around the conference table, when they got up to leave, I trained myself to listen for the click of the door. Mm.
11:45
'Cause when the door clicked, his deal w-with me was, "I'll never ask you a pointed question or criticize you in front of anybody else. It's just you and me."
11:53
Uh, when the door clicked, if his head came up and I saw it out of my peripheral vision, I'd think, "Uh-oh." Wow. "I just did something wrong," or, "I'm about to get some..."
12:05
If he kept his head down and kept writing, I would think, "That must have gone pretty well." Mm-hmm. "He, he didn't look up. He, he's not telling me anything."
12:12
He told me one time-But when he attended, spread out over a couple, three weeks, several meetings on the same subject.
12:20
It was a product line we were coming out with for me-men's cosmetics, which was a breakthrough at the time, almost unheard of.
12:29
And, uh, he sat in the meeting, we discussed what we're gonna do, ten, twelve people around the table. I called it for the next week.
12:37
Next week he came, or next time he was back, he comes in by chance, same group of people talking about the same thing. And I said, "Okay, um, we'll gather here next Thursday or whatever, um, discuss this some more."
12:53
And when they, when the door went click, he looked up and he says, "What are you gonna know the next time you and that group meet that you don't know now?" And I said, "I don't, I don't really know."
13:06
And he said, "Ben, you're dithering. Take action." Yeah, dithering was a word of his generation. [laughs] Today I've had to... I tell that story, I have to explain to people what dithering is. He said, "You're dithering.
13:21
Take action." So I called the group back together.
13:25
M-Martha, my, Marty Connelly, my, uh, chief of staff, she was actually the boss of the company more than I realized, but she was officially my secretary, executive assistant, chief of staff for the business and my house.
13:39
She, she ran a lot of things in our house even though I had a wife. [laughs] So I said, "Bring them back in." So they all came back and I said, Dr.
13:48
Hill's sitting there writing on his pad like he had nothing to do with this. And I went around the table to the art guy, "What do you need extra to do your job here?" "No, I'm ready to go."
14:00
Bill Brogan, production, "What do you need to order the components?" "Nothing, I'm ready to go." "Legal department, do you still have any complaints or criticisms about the con?" "No, every-everybody's ready to go."
14:12
Finance guy, Harold Lipska, um, "No, the numbers work out. If it, if it sells, we'll make a good deal of money with this."
14:21
Thirty days later, sixty days at the most, we were selling this product line called High Tides and, uh, for men's cosmetics, colognes, and so on. Because Dr. Hill said I was dithering.
14:36
Another time, two of my other mentors, I had dozens of them fortunately, Wade Cannon and Ray Considine were out and they, killing time 'cause some other meeting was going on.
14:46
They were working on some copy I had given them for their approval.
14:50
And when they finished, the meeting finished and they were ready, they said, uh, one of them, I forget who it was, either way, Wade said, "Ben, you use a lot of exclamation marks."
15:01
And I said, "Yeah, that's the salt and pepper of writing it." When they left and the door went click, Dr. Hill's head came up, and I thought, "Uh-oh." And I said, "Yes, Dr. Hill?"
15:12
[laughs] And he said, "Ben, that wasn't a compliment. They're telling you that you don't yell every sentence, just like you don't yell in a conversation.
15:23
You yell- you might yell or raise your voice for emphasis, but you don't put an exclamation mark on the end of every sentence to punch it up."
15:32
Today, uh, earlier this morning, I was writing some copy for a b-book I'm ghostwriting, and I used an exclamation mark, and in my head, I heard Dr. Hill, "That's not a compliment."
15:45
And, and I said, "Okay, that's the only exclamation mark on this page. Uh, if I find a place that's really needed, then I'll take it off of the first one, but there won't be two exclamation marks in one page of copy."
15:58
That came from Dr. Hill. So Dr. Hill and I had a father-grandfather or great-grandfather-son relationship.
16:07
He was gentle, but he always told me, he said, "Ben, always have one person around you that will tell you the absolute truth, no matter what." And I said, "Well, you sort of serve that purpose."
16:20
And he said, "Yeah, but I'm not here all the time. You need other people around you who will tell you when you're full of bull," or however he phrased it. Mm. So there's another one.
16:32
Don, there isn't a day that goes by that two or three times a day I'm doing something, thinking something, writing something that I don't think about Dr. Hill and something he told me about that subject. Mm.
16:47
What a profound experience. My goodness. But you, you... Dr. Hill wasn't really the only person that was one of those big names that we, that we think about, um, you know, Earl Nightingale, Og Mandino.
17:00
Tell us a little bit about how you got around some of those peak performers and, um, and what you learned maybe from them, maybe one or two things that you've learned from them. Yeah.
17:10
I've, I've got a list that I send out to podcast interviewers if they don't know me and, you know, questions to ask and so on.
17:18
And among them is a partial list of some of the famous, infamous, interesting people Ben Gazes has known and worked with over the years, and they, at the top of the list is Dr.
17:27
Napoleon Hill, William Penn Patrick, Earl Nightingale, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Maxwell Maltz, Og Mandino, Bill Gove, Wade Cannon, Charlie Manson.
17:38
Uh, I spent nine hours in his cell at San Quentin, three three-hour visits chatting with him. And his favorite book, the only book in his cell, was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
17:51
And, and I could go on, Jay Douglas Edwards, Paul Meyer, uh, Success Motivation Institute. It's, uh, the astronauts, Apollo fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I was their attitude coach. Here's how that happened.
18:06
Speakers need a crowd to speak to. Mm.
18:09
We had hundreds of meetings of hundreds of peopleFive or six nights a week all across the country, and we were the only ones drawing, other than Billy Graham probably, drawing for special events fifteen, twenty thousand people.
18:26
If you want to talk in front of a crowd or become a regular in front of a crowd, you needed to get with Holiday Magic Cosmetics and our affiliated companies.
18:35
That was the natural place, and everybody on that list I just called out did, except for Charlie Manson. Right. [laughs] He was, he was otherwise occupied.
18:46
Which was one of those crazy people you were talking to Napoleon Hill about at breakfa-lunch that day. Yeah, good example. I hadn't, I hadn't met Charlie at, at that point, but yeah, Charlie Manson was one of those.
18:57
He was nuttier than a fruitcake, but highly effective. When I said to him, uh, "What an interesting book selection," as soon as I walked in the cell, I was focused on him and out of my left eye,
19:10
How to Win Friends and Influence People, which was on the top bunk. It was a two-person cell, but nobody wanted to sleep with Charlie Manson, so he used the top bunk as a bookcase, uh, for clothing and stuff like that.
19:22
But I said, "Char-uh, Charlie, what an interesting book selection." He said, "Ben, it's my Bible. I couldn't have built the Manson family without it." Wow. And, uh, if you stop and think about what's in that book- Mm.
19:38
Yeah, y-you could build, uh, the Manson family. You could build a huge church. I don't know any megachurch ministers that haven't read it and swear by it and quote from it and so on.
19:50
So it's like a lot of things, for good or evil, you can use a gun to protect your family or rob a bank. Right.
19:57
But to answer your basic question, if you want to speak in front of big crowds on a regular basis in the mid-'60s and into the early '70s, you had to come talk to me, 'cause I controlled who spoke at the big crowds and who could put you...
20:15
I could book a speaker three hundred days a year if I was really excited about them, so they came. Somebody asked me one time, "How, how did you meet Og Mandino?"
20:25
I said, "Well, as best I recall, I was going to the bathroom, and as I went down the hall, uh, he, he said, 'Hi, I'm Og Mandino.'" They said, "He was in your building?" I said, "Everyone was in our building."
20:38
[laughs] At one time or other, they were all there. So I was sort of the beneficiary of right place, right time, and a l- and a lot of luck. I had sales skills. That's how I got there, and speaking skills.
20:52
Uh, if I hadn't answered that little want ad in, uh, on, in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, uh, September 15th, 1965, Wednesday, so [laughs] it's not gonna make a big impact on me, I wouldn't have gone to the meeting, and at the meeting was the only other person who answered that ad, a young salesman named Zig Ziglar, and we both joined Holiday Magic on that same day.
21:14
And I had never looked at the want ads in a newspaper, never, not once. Mm. Picked them up once in my life, couldn't find a job I could do.
21:24
I wanted to make more money 'cause I had a wife in nursing school, and I didn't have a job, and she wasn't bringing in any money to speak of. So, uh, had I not picked up that newspaper, you and I would not be talking.
21:39
Amazing. And I said to him from a phone booth, and it used to have a sound to it, an echo like you were inside a trash can. Right.
21:47
I dialed the number in the ad, guy named Bill Dem- after I got through his secretary, a guy named Bill Dempsey, uh, answered the phone, and I began interviewing him.
21:57
The ad said, "If you know anything about marketing plans and wanna make more money, dial this number." That's all it said. I didn't know what a marketing plan was, but I qualified under the second condition.
22:08
I wanted to make more money. Mm. So I began interviewing him. "This is Ben Gay with Brown-Gay Food Brokerage Company," skipping over the fact that Gay in Brown-Gay was my father, not me.
22:20
[laughs] And, uh, after I asked him five or six questions to see if he qualified to hire me, he said, "Mr. Gay, where are you?" And I said, "I'm at the corner of whatever and whatever."
22:31
He said, "You're just a few blocks from my office. Let's clear something up. I'm not the man standing in a phone booth answering want ads. You are.
22:41
Be standing in front of my desk in ten minutes or never dial this number again," and he slammed down the phone. Wow. Your younger listeners may not know what that means 'cause now they just disconnect, click.
22:54
He slammed down the phone. And that phone booth thing, you can actually find in the museum someplace. [laughs] I know where the last one in Atlanta was, thank God, 'cause we didn't have a cell phone.
23:06
I would've forgotten about the ad before I got home. So that's how I got in that position and, uh, started up through the ranks in selling.
23:17
So Summiteers, as we both know, is about helping people that, um, have been successful in either sales, uh, which you're an expert in, or an entrepreneur, small business owner, but, um, have dedicated all their time and energy to that and, and probably haven't, um, spent as much time and energy on maybe other really important areas of life.
23:40
Any words of wisdom that you've learned from the greats, uh, over the years about how to have life balance? I have a really great answer. Dr. Hill asked me one time, he had not had a happy family life.
23:53
He was on his fourth or fifth wife, counting divorces and annulments and so on, and his kids didn't speak to him, and, uh, so o- and one thing I did have going was I had a good family life. My wife at the time,
24:08
Marsha, she's now passed away, uh, and our son, Ben IV, uh, he and I were in love. I mean, you know, hugging and kissing every time we saw each other and so on.
24:20
Um-And so he asked me one time, "You're, you're doing three hundred talks a year. How, how do you do..." A lot of them were two or three in the same day, but three hundred a year.
24:31
"How do you do that and keep your family life together?" 'Cause he'd stayed at the house, he knew I had a good family life. Mm. He didn't know that if he weren't in town, I might not be either.
24:42
[laughs] I might be out on the road somewhere. But from what he could tell, it was Ozzie and Harriet. Um, and, uh, so I said, "Well, uh, I take...
24:53
I do business, but then I take the family, and I put it into the nooks and crannies." He said, "Ah, we found the problem." I said, "What?"
25:02
And he said, "W- what we're gonna do is design a life for you that puts family first and puts the business in the nooks and crannies." Interesting. And he told me to get a, a, a day planner. Looks like a...
25:18
I won't hold it up since we're doing just audio, but, um, it looks like a Bible, and it had one page for every day, not the little bitty squares that you can't put a life in, a full page for every day.
25:32
And he-- so we, we got it. I sent somebody out for it or whatever, but before the day was over, I had a day planner. And, uh, uh, we sat down. He said, "Now, what do you do for relaxation?"
25:42
I said, "Well, we like to take a long weekend on the Northern California coast, Mendocino, preferably." Uh, and he said, "How often do you do that?" And I said, "Well, whenever it fits." He said, "No. No."
25:53
[laughs] "What we're go- we're going to plan it. How many times a year would you like to do it?" And I think I said four. We do four or five to this day.
26:03
And he said, "So let's go through the book, and if you need to get Marsha on the phone, call her, and let's plot out four long weekends at Mendocino now." We worked out that Wednesday would be a travel day.
26:18
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we'd be in Mendocino or on the coast, and Monday would be a go home day. And we blocked out four of those. He said, "Now, nothing else ever goes in those four weekends." Mm.
26:36
"How often do you have dinner with your wife?" I said, uh, "Nightly, if I'm in town." He said, "No, that's not good enough, 'cause nightly can slip, and there's a football game on television, and so on and so on.
26:50
What night would you like to take her out to a restaurant, just the two of you? Not you and your son and so on, just the two of you." And I said, "Well, I don't know. Friday's probably the almost natural."
27:02
He said, "Good." And he gave me a yellow highlighter pen. He said, "Now, we're gonna go through... It'll take a minute, but I want you to put a yellow line on the top line of every Friday between now and then."
27:16
And then he had me go back and write personal dinner or whatever I wrote at the time. Yeah, we call it date night. Yeah. Yeah, date night. So
27:25
I, I won't bore you anymore, but we sort of went through my personal life and blocked out times that were important that would not be messed with, and I still do it to this day.
27:35
We put in Friday, uh, Gigi and I, my wife, uh, Gigi and I put in Fridays, but we're open to, uh, it being, you know, if something's coming up on Friday, we can either skip it or make our date night Thursday, no later than Saturday.
27:53
So ninety percent of the time it's Friday night- Mm... or Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night, but it's sacrosanct. And if it goes over into one of the Mendocino weekends, that doesn't count.
28:06
Of course, you're gonna have dinner then. But, uh, it's a separate once a week thing. And then i- and the way this conversation began, uh, on a more... I, I had my directory, and I was starting to build the thing.
28:20
He walks out on the deck one Saturday morning, and I thought I was by myself. I was in my bathrobe trimming my toenails, looking out over San Francisco Bay, and he said, "What you doing?"
28:31
And I thought, "God, he startled me." He was in his bathrobe with a cup of coffee. I said, "I'm trimming my toenails. They got where they were snagging on my socks." He said, "Well, how often do you trim them?"
28:42
And I said, "Well, whenever they're needing." He said, "No, it's a biological question. Your toenails grow at a certain rate, so there is a number that is an answer to my question." Mm.
28:54
And I think we guessed four weeks or something. Uh, whatever. Now it's six weeks. I've adjusted. I found the right thing. And every Saturday morning on the sixth Saturday, it pops up in my calendar,
29:08
and I go in the bathroom now. I'm-- I don't fall for sitting out on the deck anymore. People show up and, [laughs] and change your life if you're not careful. If you're not careful.
29:18
[laughs] So, so every sixth Saturday, I trim my toenails. Hadn't snagged on my socks once since then. But that was the thing that he put in. It's not motivation. Motivation wears off. It's not I'll remember that.
29:34
Memory fades. I said to him one day, he told me something early in our relationship, it was pretty good, and I s- I said, uh, "That's good." He said, "Write it down." I said, "No, no, I'll remember."
29:44
He said, "No, you won't remember it. Write it down." So I looked around on that big conference table. I had lots of pieces of paper, but they w- they were there for a reason. They weren't for taking notes.
29:56
So he buzzed Marty or asked me to buzz Marty, and he said, "Get Mr. Gay some memo pads, a ream of memo pads."
30:06
Uh, Don, I have never been more than, unless I was walking across the room, more than four or five feet away from a memo pad since that day. Uh, there's one in my car.
30:18
Uh, there's one in the shipping department in case I'm there. There's one in the bedroom beside my bed on the, uh, night table.
30:25
There's one in my bathroom, my personal bathroom that I use, the little cubby that Gigi lets me have.
30:32
[laughs] Um, there's one in there.There's one on each of my desks here in the office, et cetera, because if something crosses my mind, I write it down. One day, um, there was a... Th-this popped in my mind just now.
30:48
It was a four-day weekend or long weekend, Fourth of July or something, and I didn't come to the office during that period, but I was taking notes wherever I was and so on.
30:59
So as I do every morning, I went and checked each memo pad location to see if I'd written anything on it, and I had on several of them.
31:09
And when I got to the office with the five sheets of paper or up to ten, whatever it was, I counted them up.
31:16
In that long weekend, I had had seventy-two new ideas or reminders to do things or new things I wanted to create. The odds of me remembering seventy-two things over a four-day w-weekend is zero.
31:34
I'd been lucky to, to remember one or two if something happened that it made it cross my mind again. But I had seventy-two ideas, all of which... Now I may have edited some out.
31:46
Something that looks good on a Thursday night, by Monday morning, going, "I don't even know why I wrote that down. That's stupid," you know. So there's some of those. But
31:55
early that Monday morning, uh, the seventy-two sur- the survivors of the seventy-two ideas were all in my daily planner.
32:06
And if they're time sensitive, highlighted in yellow, then I know it's not something I can get to whenever. Uh, it's to do today with a time. And it drives Gigi crazy, but she relies on it.
32:19
She'll say to me, uh, get off the phone with one of her lady friends and say, "I'm having, uh, lunch on..." One came up just the other day, "I'm having lunch on April 15th with Barbara," one of her dear friends.
32:29
I said, "What time?" She told me. "Where?" She told me. I wrote it on the memo pad beside the bed.
32:35
Then it went into the calendar, yellow highlighted, and the night before it happens, I remind her, and I put a note on her mirror, um, "Twelve o'clock tomorrow, Barbara and you at Buttercup Pantry."
32:51
And that, one of the great benefits is not just writing it down and doing it. It clears your mind. If you're trying to remember seventy-two things, you can't think of a seventy-third thing.
33:04
If it's written down and in the system, your mind is free to think of seventy-two more things. I have an issue that I struggle with. My mind, I have trouble shutting off my mind at night when I go to bed.
33:17
My wife has the, the good fortune of falling asleep instantly when her head hits the pillow, and I'm a little envious of that. But I have a n- a notepad by the bed because I'll have an idea, and I'll think...
33:29
I used to think, like, "I've got to remember that, I've got to remember that, I've got to remember that," and, and I couldn't get to sleep. Now, I just write it down, and then another idea comes, and I'll write it down.
33:39
When the ideas are done, I'm, I fall asleep, but then I have it all for tomorrow.
33:44
Because I've been saying to my students and coaching clients for years, "You know, these ideas that we get are each a gift from God, and they're fleeting.
33:52
If God gives you this idea, and you don't do something with it, He's gonna give it to somebody else." [chuckles] Right. Right. And so I try to- And quit giving you new ones. Right. Right.
34:01
So I try to recognize and put the, the correct importance on keep getting those ideas written down. And, and I too have those ideas where I go, "What was I thinking?" [laughs] And I forget about it.
34:13
But I want to leave the audience with, because we have, um... This has been so entertaining for me, and I know all these stories already, and it's still very entertaining for me and how informative for everybody else.
34:23
But, um, when I decided to create what is now called The Summitiers Community, um, I reached out to Ben, and I said, "So I have a question.
34:33
Um, I'm thinking of creating this community, um, and I want to help this group of people, and I want it to be a million people strong someday." Now, it was two of us in this conversation.
34:46
One of us wants to have a community of a million people. One of us already had built a community of a million people, and Ben, that's you.
34:55
[laughs] And so I asked him if he would grace me with the opportunity to be my business partner, and he has. So Ben and I are partners in The Summitiers, and he is my, my confidant. He is my Dr.
35:08
Napoleon Hill, and he has given me such great advice, and we wouldn't be where we are today. So Ben, I want to thank you for that. Well, thank you for the honor of working with you.
35:16
You're one of the smartest people I've ever worked with, and I'll give you a compliment. On the few occasions where maybe I've been able to give you a new idea,
35:26
o-one of the joys of being a coach, consultant, and mentor to people is when they actually do something. Mm.
35:33
And I'm forever telling Gigi, you know, "I'll have a talk with Don, and then it shows up at the founders meeting the next day, and it's part of our policy or program or what have you." It's so rewarding.
35:46
And back to what you're talking about, about getting fresh ideas, if you do something with the ones you got yesterday- Right...
35:51
uh, one of the things that has me thinking about you and your organization constantly is my reward, my feedback is you actually do something, or in conversation, we find an even better idea.
36:07
And from time to time, you've proven to me my ideas sucked. [laughs] Never. That's never happened. You're fibbing now. [laughs] So, uh, but any-anyway, seeing somebody do something with it is the most rewarding thing.
36:22
I've had coaching clients that when we end, get to the end of their retainer, their initial retainer, I don't renew them. Mm. I say, "It's, it's been nice, but it's frustrating.
36:33
I pour my heart and soul out to you with good ideas that are proven, that we've used somewhere else successfully, and you don't do anything." Yeah. "And you don't pay me enough to put up with that frustration.
36:46
So I wish you the best. Stay in touch. Goodbye." Wow. Well, I, I, I was blessed with another great mentor. That was my dad, as you know. Yeah. Gave me a lot of great advice.
36:58
But one of the things he taught me was, he said, "Son, it doesn't matter what you know. It only matters what you do with what you know." Right. And so taking action is, is the key, right?
37:07
If, if you don't take action, nothing changes. And so I, I, I honor all of the suggestions that you've given me and will continue to do so by putting them into action. I appreciate it. All right.
37:20
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for tuning in today, and I hope you got some value from my wonderful friend and, and, uh, mentor, uh, uh, I was gonna call you doctor, but you should be. [laughs] Uh, but Ben Gay, III.
37:32
Thanks, Ben. Thank you. [upbeat music] If something you heard today resonated with you, your next step is simple. Subscribe to the Summitiers newsletter. Download the free Peak Performers self-evaluation.
37:45
The link is below in the show notes. The self-evaluation will only take a few minutes to complete, and you will instantly know where you can make small changes that will make a big difference in your life.
37:55
And if you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast now, mark your calendar, and don't forget to tune in every Friday. Until next time, remember, climbing together is better.
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