From Broke Jazz Musician to Business Mogul: Jeff Lerner’s Blueprint for Life Transformation and Unstoppable Success (#384)

384 Jeff Lerner
===

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] From broke jazz musician to a hundred million dollars in online sales, Jeff Lerner's story and message are now inspiring millions. After a decade of building multiple online businesses to over eight figures. And twice landing on Inc. 5000, Jeff turned his focus to educating entrepreneurs about the power of digital business.

He's the founder of ENTRE Institute, one of the fastest growing education companies in the world, with over 250, 000 students. Jeff is also a devoted husband and father of four and believes a lot of his success is down to his marriage. Together with his wife Jacqueline, they are now sharing their tools of their success for building a life of balanced excellence through their workshops and boot camps in Utah.

You can discover more of these tools in Jeff's Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly best selling book, Unlock Your Potential. Jeff is also the host of Unlock Your Potential, a 1. 5 percent global ranking podcast interviewing the world's leaders, authors, CEOs, entrepreneurs, doctors, and thought leaders. 

And before we hop into the podcast, a quick word from [00:01:00] our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. We have William, a graduate of Deep Both Mastery, and he says, I didn't have the time for Deep Both Mastery, but I made the time and I'm glad I did.

What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've ever experienced. Or how about Bruce? Bruce says, before Deep Wealth Mastery, the challenge I had with most business programs, coaches, or blogs was that they were one dimensional. Through Deep Wealth Mastery, I'm part of a richer community of other successful business owners.

The idea shared forever changed the trajectory of the business and best of all, the experience was fun. And we'll round things out with Stacey. 

Stacey said, I wish I had access to the Deep Wealth Mastery before my liquidity event, as it would have been extremely helpful. Deep Wealth Mastery exceeded my expectations in terms of content and quality.

And you know what, my Deep Wealth Nation, why they're saying this is because Deep Wealth Mastery, it's the only system based on a nine figure deal. That was my deal. And as you know, I said no to a seven figure offer, and I created a system [00:02:00] that we now call Deep Wealth Mastery that helped myself and my business partners, welcome from a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure exit.

So if you're interested in growing your profits, preparing for a future liquidity event, if that's two years away or 20 years away, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you. Please email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success, S U C C E S S, at deepwealth. com. We'll send you all the information about Deep Wealth Mastery, otherwise known as Scale for Ultimate Sale. That's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders just like you who are looking to create market disruptions.

And they want to lock in their financial freedom and have success and fulfillment. 

That's the 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. It has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Send an email to success at deepwealth. com.

Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, you heard all these amazing things in the official introduction from being broke to a hundred million dollars in online [00:03:00] sales, but we have the person in the Deep Wealth house, an incredible individual, actually an awesome name that he has.

But on this episode, you're going to be hearing all about what you can do of where you are to take yourself to the next level. Have things not been working out? Do you find yourself more in scarcity mode instead of abundance? Is your life not being fulfilled the way that you would like? All kinds of incredible strategies.

But Jeff, I'm going to put a plug in it right there. Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. And there is always a story behind the story. So Jeff, what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today? Thank you

Jeff Lerner: I love that question. we're just gonna jump right in the deep end here. I guess it's the Deep Wealth Podcast, we might as well. I think it, actually, you want to know? I'll give you the real answer.

Jeffrey Feldberg: okay.

Jeff Lerner: We do this, I was telling you before we hit record, that we just hosted a workshop in our house, which has been a long time.

Wish to be able to host our events here in our home. And one of the things we do at our, at this particular workshop is we really dig into people's core beliefs. We [00:04:00] actually have a process we call the Inner Sentence Process where you're essentially able, every child's psyche develops a basic viewpoint on the world and a basic strategy for survival in that world, in the context of that viewpoint, by 10 years old.

This is true for every human. And when you can, and there's a process by which you can become aware of your, what we call your inner sentence your essentially your core viewpoint of the world and how to navigate it. For survival purposes, and when it's pulled out of the shadows and you're able to see, oh my gosh, I've been operating my entire adolescent and adult life through this one strategy you now kind of have the decoder ring for your entire life and it just gives you, you know, Awareness and the ability to make different conscious choices and choose to go deeper on the drives that keep that inner sentence fixed and in place and you can start to massage it and nuance it and evolve it if you want and at least understand it's [00:05:00] assets and liabilities.

I say all that because I'm going to answer your question by telling you my inner sentence. And then I'll give you a little bit of historical fact behind it and that'll basically tell the story of, why Jeff is who he is. My inner sentence, actually maybe let me give you a little bit of the context first, so, So, my mother was a very successful attorney. First of all, I'm an only child, so there's a certain, pressure model there. the only child of two first My mother was a very accomplished attorney. She was, I want to say, the second female partner in the fourth biggest law firm in the country. She, I mean, this is just some fun little factoids.

I mean, she still holds the record for the highest score on the bar exam in the state of Texas. Almost 50 years later. And so, I mean, that's her. My dad was a money manager. He was an institutional stockbroker, money manager, private wealth manager, managed money for, billionaires, funds, endowments, extremely high performer, very successful.

and I'm the only child of this, right? No pressure. And I also had a [00:06:00] genetic condition growing up, so I felt very alien, very foreign. I actually used to have dreams as a small child. Some of my earliest memories are actually dreams. That as a kid of aliens coming down to check on me because they had abandoned me here.

Because I felt so detached from, literally, from the human species because I was bullied and felt different because of this genetic condition which has some facial implications. We're on a podcast, which is great. I have a face for podcasting. But I just felt kind of ugly and weird growing up.

so that's the context. And so my inner sentence that I formed at a very young age was, I'll be lovable if I'm smart and accomplished enough. And so you, take that as a core driver for a life, but you put it in a context of someone who Feels extremely alienated and really ostracized from the basic social fabric.

So how do you become smart and accomplished enough to feel lovable in a [00:07:00] world where you don't feel like you fit in? For most people, accomplishment is achieved through a social context, but I didn't feel like that was really available to me. So it's basically been life story of going my own way.

Trying to achieve on the basis of independent action and variables that I could control which, again, once you have this perspective, you can decode your whole life. I dropped out of high school because I felt no purchase there. Like, This isn't going to get me where I want to go because I'm, getting on the conveyor belt of, going to school, getting a degree, borrowing money, getting a job, working, climbing the ladder in a corporate career that doesn't work for people like me.

Again, these are childhood beliefs, right? So what in fact happened was I dropped out of high school to become a professional jazz musician because what I, again, looking back, what I noticed is I had a certain musical aptitude, but where I got the most kind of accolades, like I was very accolade driven, very external locus of control.

Driven, as they'd say then, would like to think I've evolved now, but what I got the most [00:08:00] accolades were, was when I improvised or when I composed, when I made up some music on the spot. So not surprisingly, I decided to become a jazz musician where I could improvise all the time. And I could sort of apply my parlor tricks of being able to play songs by ear, having lots of songs memorized.

I was very good at music theory. I was very good at math. As long as I knew the underlying structure of a song, I could basically play anything. So, it's funny looking back, I was an artist driven by just trying to impress people with my tricks and also because I felt so foreign, music is this universal language of connection, you could drop an alien on earth and, the government would send out the military to point their guns at, it, but if suddenly it started playing a piano really well.

I'll bet everyone would soften, right? There's a natural connection that happens when somebody produces pleasing sound. And so it was a way for me to get social connection, which was a skill I didn't feel came natively. And so there's all this stuff. Anyway, I did that, but then I got tired of being poor, the whole smart and accomplished [00:09:00] enough.

I kind of hit a ceiling. So then I went into entrepreneurship. I was inspired by a lot of the clients. A lot of the best gigs I had were playing in the homes of successful business owners. And I'm like, oh, well, well, they have kind of what I have, which is like freedom and autonomy, but they also seem to have a lot of money.

So maybe I should do that. And since I was my mid twenties, I started trying to start businesses, and now I'm 45, I've been doing that for 20 years, about, at about 29, I got out of music altogether, and I've been a professional entrepreneur now since then, and in 2009, I discovered the world of digital entrepreneurship, I went online, and suddenly realized that for somebody who's Undercapitalized, it's a lot easier to build businesses on the internet than on Main Street, so to speak.

So I've been primarily a digital entrepreneur since 2009, and all that brings us to 2018, where, you know, as you can probably tell, I've done a lot of therapy, I've done a lot of, work on cognition and behavioral psychology and developed a real passion there. I have worked on myself to not be quite such a puppet of my inner [00:10:00] sentence.

And in 2018, I had this strong sense that human beings are guided by this, innate drive to purpose. Viktor Frankl kind of man search for meaning sort of vibes. And in seeking mine, my wife and I. She was on a similar journey, and we ultimately created a platform called Ontra, which now brings me current, where we run a, what we call the world's foremost life design platform that teaches people how to kind of combine entrepreneurship and the most modern relevant professional skills to create time and financial freedom.

With a lot of psychology and development based philosophy seek purpose and meaning and ultimately be able to converge that into the historic meaning of the word profession, which was a lot more than just trading time for money. The word profession, meant like that which I profess to the world, that which I stand for.

And to essentially create a more meaningful work life. As the foundation for a meaningful life altogether toward purpose, and that's what we do now [00:11:00] in ANTRA, and believe it or not, that was the short version, so, I'll stop there.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, firstly, thank you so much for being open and vulnerable, and I suspect you'd agree with me. I'd be safe to say that you came from two hard charging, type A, very driven parents and certainly put an imprint on you. I'm wondering though, because your journey, you really have been all over the map from not having to having.

Was there a pivotal moment, Jeff? Looking back, that had you begin this journey to bring you to where you are, it was a combination of different events or insights.

Jeff Lerner: Yeah, so, I'll use reference a lot of ANTRA. I'm very blessed to get to have an embodiment of what I describe, which is a professional life that truly is an extension of who you are as a person. the Japanese concept of ikigai, this Find the one thing that are sort of put on this earth to do and, and figure out how to make money with it, and you [00:12:00] can, essentially be yourself for a living, right?

Well, I have that, and so a lot of times I'll say, well, at ENTRE, we believe, and basically what I'm saying is I'm using that as a proxy for my own personal, philosophy and worldview and, and my wife and I are very aligned. We're like the co-leaders of the company. so yeah, I'll say that we have a basic taxonomy of how we organize a human life into the three, call them, the three practical categories, which are the physical, the personal, and the professional. And then we have the, what we call the four. Those are all obviously the three Ps. They all start with p. And then we have what we call our fourth P, which is Purpose, which I referenced, which is sort of the context for those practical components of life. And that really you can distill one of my, love this concept called essentialism by a friend of mine, Greg McKeown, who wrote a best selling book called Essentialism.

And sort of our essentialist approach to life is to break it down, figure out the umbrella of purpose and underneath that build a foundation on the physical, personal and professional, and you can live a great life and escape what befalls most people, which is [00:13:00] deathbed regret for having lived life based on other people's expectations instead of their own intrinsic calling.

That's not an opinion, by the way, that's based on studies of palliative care physicians who tell us what people say on their deathbeds. And the primary experience of deathbed is regret for having lived a life according to other people's agendas. And so our methodology is really oriented towards avoiding that inescapable tragedy, because at the time that it happens, there's no time to change it.

And so, you ask about these pivotal moments. So I tend to look at that question through those lenses, the physical, the personal, and the professional. And I would say that physically my pivotal moment was You know, I'd been on a health and fitness rollercoaster my entire adult life that came from a lot of issues around childhood bullying, not just for being funny looking, but also for being a chubby kid.

And so physically, my inflection moment when I stopped yo yoing in response to what I thought the world thought of me and all the internal conflict around that, And I started simply living a [00:14:00] consistent disciplined life based on self love and self care was in 2015 when my mother in law, wife's mother passed away from pancreatic cancer and she lived in our home for the last year of her life and we just really got a very close knit family.

Gut wrenching, literally, as it turned out, exposure to, a human body breaking down and decaying into itself, and it just, we were forever changed, and I have not, unless I was having an unmanageable day of travel where I was like in airports and Ubers all day, I have literally not missed a day at the gym now in almost ten years since that happened.

Ditto for my wife. We go together most days. So I would say physically, that was it. Personally, it was also in regard to my wife, who was not my first marriage, and there was just kind of a breaking point of toxicity. And self destruction where, it wasn't just us but she was a widow with kids when I met her.

And so there was this sort of existential moment of who am I? Am I [00:15:00] some, piece of man who can't figure out how to be a good husband and a good dad? And who's going to, drag kids through the mud? Or am I going to really get it together? And I committed myself to personal transformation.

That was around 2012. I'd say I met her in 2011. So after about a year that was the personal inflection point. And then the professional inflection point I would say there were two. There was 2008, 2009, when I was exposed to digital entrepreneurship and I realized just all the efficiencies.

And sort of modern relevance of embracing digital platforms versus analog for entrepreneurship. And essentially, that was the moment I figured out, okay, I can actually make a living without having to go get a job because I knew that was never in the cards for me. And then I would say that the second inflection moment professionally was in 2018 when I realized that if I didn't Combine my profession with whatever I, experience my purpose to be in this life that I was, just gonna have a little more money, but be no less depressed or unfulfilled than I would be otherwise on the day of my death.

And [00:16:00] so that's it. Physical, personal, professional inflection points. And I guess that last one also brought in the fourth P of purpose.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Wow. So much there. And I know in going through your book, and by the way, Deep Wealth Nation, click on the show notes. There are links for everything. It doesn't get any easier. It's all going to be a point. It's going to be a click and pick up Jeff's book, go to his podcast, check out some of his programs.

But Jeff, I wanted to ask you. Because talking about the three P's, the physical, the personal, the professional, I'm thinking as you're talking about that, I was reflecting on conversations that I've been involved in or speaking with close friends who hobnob in the quote unquote success circles. People with lots of zeros in the bank account, lots of success.

Some of them are really well known of what's out there and hearing them talk, Jeffrey, they're saying, I was speaking with so and I got to tell you, you couldn't pay me enough. To walk in that person's shoes. Now there's some judgment that's going on there. I've seen some of the same things [00:17:00] myself, though.

It's more of an observation than a judgment in terms of what's going on. And to me, it just emphasizes that sure, money in the bank, all the zeros, that's perhaps one benchmark, but it's not the only benchmark and arguably maybe not even the most important benchmark. So where is an entrepreneurial community, Jeff?

You've worked with hundreds of thousands. You've changed lives with your programs. You've been out there coaching, speaking, mentoring, helping. As a community of entrepreneurs, where are we missing the boat? Where are we getting it wrong that you're coming in with your programs and your insights to help us get it right?

Jeff Lerner: I used a term earlier, the external locus of control, which is a psychology based term. Essentially, it's what are our, what's our drive, our core drivers? And at Ontra we organize the self into what we call the three selves the survival self, the social self, and the spiritual self.

You can tell we like we like alliteration because it makes things easier to remember. But you kind of have these three. Core egoic structures, [00:18:00] right? You have the survival self, which is ancient wiring, just don't die, breathe, eat, and procreate, essentially. And, seek shelter along the way.

Then you have the social self, which is far more powerful in human terms than I think a lot of people realize. And it's because it's a relatively new development. Human beings have been evolving for, Over 100, 000 years, you've had the evolutionary curve of the Homo sapien, but one interesting factoid to kind of illustrate this is that in the last 20, 000 years, our brains have actually gotten about 10 percent smaller.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. Scary.

Jeff Lerner: And the reason is because about 20, 000 years ago, due to agricultural developments, we started forming larger communities, and we were able to start to outsource and crowdsource problem solving.

So we're actually getting less adept at individual problem solving, but that's okay because we're accessing a larger communal, social based intelligence.

I do think it's a slippery slope and it's something to be aware of, for the future of humanity, but that's a probably a separate [00:19:00] podcast. And so that's, the social self is extremely oriented towards belonging. And alignment and the demonstration of shared values and stuff that keeps us from getting booted out of the tribe and dying alone in the jungle.

And then we have the spiritual self which is, creativity, self expression. I wouldn't say that it's emotions and feelings, but I would say that it's the needs that underlie emotions and feelings, the higher order needs. And, love and spirituality and all that, all the more esoteric stuff, right?

And these three selves are constantly jockeying for primacy in our life. And, everybody's familiar with Maslow's hierarchy, but this is a meandering way of getting to a very specific answer to your question of what are we missing. And first of all, we're missing the alignment of those selves.

Most of us are approaching entrepreneurship or call it like the generalized success success pursuit On the basis of, typically, it's the survival self first, I want to make a lot of money so that I can put [00:20:00] more distance between me and death, which is all success is. All the material trappings of success are just distance between us and death, why do I want a bigger house with more square footage and a security system on a private street with a gate and a security guard? It's just because that way it's harder for someone to come kill me, and I can attract, theoretically a, a more suitable mate to have healthier kids that'll live longer based on, facial beauty as a proxy for genetic fit and suitability.

Like it's all just how to keep my genes alive. Is the survival self, right? And that's how we approach entrepreneurship, just distance death. And then the social self says yeah, yeah, yeah but, in order to you know, effectively distance death, you also can't court it by pissing too many people off.

So make sure you do it in a way that, that fits in or that stands out. And it's ironic, fits in and stands out, but you know, there's values. That we believe that we were, we've adopted or we've essentially surrendered into based on the, aggregation of what we see around us from other people that are, formula for how to simultaneously fit in and stand [00:21:00] out, right?

And you see this because you have like a, like a Howard Hughes character who's like wildly successful. He's a standout, but he's not a fit in anymore. And then he's, he dies alone in his mansion, right? But then the spiritual self, like, how many of us approach entrepreneurship or the success model terms of saying, I gotta make sure my spiritual self is tended to, as well.

Virtually none. We usually make a space time error. And we say, okay, well, I'll defer that need, or that set of needs. I'll tend to that later once I have the basics cared for. And Maslow wrote about this, actually. He said, they've completely hijacked my hierarchy of needs, and they've made it linear and sequential, as if you've got to take care of one before the next one matters.

And Maslow, he was social psychologist. He wrote, this is not true. You can't neglect the higher order needs. For any length of time as a human being, neglecting your essential humanity at the same time. And so what we're missing is, I think two facets of what I'm describing, which is from the standpoint of meaning and purpose, if we [00:22:00] think that we're going to be successful going out and entrepreneuring in a way that isn't intrinsically us doesn't, you know, isn't uniquely us, then A, we're not going to be fulfilled.

And align with whatever our created purpose is, but also, especially in a post AI world where, technology is essentially normalizing and standardizing most of the features of anything that we would create. We're probably just not even gonna get traction in the market. The market's only looking for , what makes a business different, not what makes it the same.

And so this external locus of control concept that has millions of people out there. Saying, okay, what franchise should I buy or what MLM should I join or what business opportunity should I identify where I can find other models of success and just copy them

Is completely anathema to what success actually looks like and what fulfillment actually [00:23:00] consists of, which, is the complete inverse, which is to say, what is it that's unique about me?

What are my strengths? What are my gifts? What are my interests, what are my idiosyncrasies, and how do I fashion those into something that creates value and solves problems in the world and could never ever be knocked off because it is definitionally a category of one and stop looking for other people to copy.

To fall in love with yourself and figure out how to bring yourself to the market in a meaningful way. And that's how you get off the hamster wheel. Stop trying to copy people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so much there, Deep Wealth Nation. Again, go to the show notes, click on the link, get the book, Unlock Your Potential, The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Dream Life in the Modern World. And so, Jeff, as you're going through that, oh my goodness, I have so many questions, not going to be able to even, it's the tip of the iceberg, not going to be able to get through a fraction of them.

Tangentially speaking, though, you are really describing success in a very detailed way. If we were in an elevator, though. And it's a good old [00:24:00] elevator pitch, you don't have a lot of time. And I said, Hey Jeff, yeah, I know about UFC and you've read the book, been through your programs. I'm curious, how would you define success?

In that elevator moment, what would you say success would be for you personally, professionally, if there's a difference? And has that changed for you over time?

Jeff Lerner: How many floors are we going up in the elevator?

Jeffrey Feldberg: We'll make it a quick one, a quick elevator ride.

Jeff Lerner: Okay, well, how about the one floor answer?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

Jeff Lerner: Okay, success is the ability, success? That's European. Your level of success is the degree to which you're able to be fully and completely yourself across the broadest possible range of human experiences without having to minimize who you are or what you experience.

That's the one floor answer. Give me eight more floors and I'll expound and say, there is an intrinsic and inimitable you, a you that cannot be replicated, duplicated. It's as unique as your fingerprint. It's as unique as your DNA. It's as unique as your gut biome. There's all these ways that we see how unique we are.

life where we are taught to put on all [00:25:00] these different masks and create all these different characters. The survival, social, and spiritual self each have different subsets of how we operate in certain environments. And that disintegrated life is extremely taxing and extremely unrewarding.

Success is the extent to which you can integrate who you truly are into all your different environments and all the different things that you do and people you're around without having to minimize the things you do and the people you're around. So have broadest possible range of human experience while always being extremely certain and clear and, I don't want to say proud, but at least enrolled in who you are and not having to change it.

That's success.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so let's build off that for just a moment, Jeff. And again, Deep Wealth Nation, it's all in the books and the podcasts and the programs. Jeff, so as you're going through that, I hear you loud and clear on what success is, and I got to share with you, I don't think I'll be much of a stretch for Deep Wealth Nation in sharing how I feel at times.

People look at me and say, wow, Jeffrey, look what you've done. You must walk on water, all these other things. Really, I don't have, I had a [00:26:00] dollar for every mistake I made. I would not have needed my exit and I could have done very nicely just off the mistakes. But that said, there are times I'll walk in a room or I'm in a particular situation, despite what I've been able to be very fortunate to achieve on my own journey, I have self doubt and imposter syndrome and a lot of the things that go along with that.

And. In that kind of situation, I may even go from an abundance mindset to a scarcity mindset. And this doesn't happen every now and again. It happens frequently. I have those human moments and sometimes I catch myself, sometimes I don't. I know in the Deep Wealth community when I'm speaking to our community members, I hear similar kinds of things.

What would you say to me? What would you say to the Deep Wealth community? How do we handle that kind of situation from self doubt Back to our superpowers that you were talking about earlier, and from that scarcity mindset back to an abundance mindset.

Jeff Lerner: I mean, I would argue, I don't like that word. I would present some [00:27:00] questions likely around what definition of success you're operating from. If it, the more you give your power away, the less empowered you feel, right? So if you're feeling like an imposter, it's because you've created a metric for the moment over which you have no control and likely you've given that control to everybody else.

Even the term imposter syndrome is a fixation with what other people think. That's why I choose my definition of success is I'm just, if I can be fully me across the broadest possible range of experiences and not have to minimize those experiences, That's to coin a term that's an un imposable scenario. Now if my definition of success is to enter into a room of billionaires and feel like I belong because of the size of my bank account, but secretly I know that I only have a, you know, a, medium, nine figure net worth, like dead on arrival. You know, It's just what you get, what you're aiming towards.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot there. So tell me this, you've [00:28:00] begun to really go behind the curtain. What's worked for you? You've taken that, you've now brought it to countless others. I'm an entrepreneur hearing what's going on, and I say, yeah, Jeff, that sounds really good. I want to go through your system.

I want to master it. I want to go through one of your programs. Maybe even work with you directly. What does that look like for you? How long does it typically take? And I know, Jeff, you'd say, well, it really depends on where you're coming from, what you're doing, what that looks like. But back of the envelope, generally speaking, what's your process in terms of, okay, give me this amount of time, here's what you can expect, here's the changes that you're going to see.

And you may even say, well, Jeffrey, that's a whole other episode, maybe a series of episodes. And you'd be right with that, but 50, 000 foot in the air overview, what's going on?

Jeff Lerner: So. Our process, I basically, it's like, what is my actual job in this world, right? My job is to sit around and think about solve for things that level up, the state of human affairs for people who, under [00:29:00] the pressures of life, Rightly or wrongly, do not believe or grant themselves the time and energy to think about and solve for those things for themselves.

That's what I consider my lot to be, is like, how do I, and what I'm really trying to solve for is human fulfillment. It's not wealth. Wealth is a means to an end, and frankly, if we figured out that humans are more fulfilled without wealth, I would actually, I'd stand for poverty, but as it turns out, that's not the case.

Poverty is an extremely diminishing and self orienting force that turns, at its most extreme turns people, I would say, I don't wanna say it turns them into animals, but it draws out our most base, animalistic natures. Like, Poverty is, not good. And, as it turns out, wealth, is infinitely correlated to life satisfaction.

There's people that like to cite the study that says, oh, the correlation between money and happiness peaks at at 100, 000 a year or whatever it is in inflation adjusted terms. Now it was 70, 000 in 2002 when that study was done, so it's probably 110, 000, [00:30:00] 120, 000 now.

But that's not true. Money doesn't correlate to happiness in that sense. Money only correlates to mood disruptions in that sense. In other words, You're less likely to wake up depressed tomorrow, specifically because of a lack of money, than you would otherwise be at that level, and beyond that level, that does, that aspect doesn't change, but when you actually match it to what's called life satisfaction, or I'll call it human fulfillment, It expands infinitely as money expands.

That's why wealth is a part of our methodology. And so, essentially what we've spent a lot of time thinking about is, how can we operationalize a process that any human can integrate into their life and actually execute within, And the stressors and challenges that they also have to manage with the tools that they currently have.

Because you can't have a chicken and egg problem where it's like, Oh, well, once you master the tools, your life will get easier, but you can never master the tools because your life is too stressful [00:31:00] to devote the time. So we have this process we call a 90 day growth circuit.

If somebody goes to our website at designyourlife. com, you can go down at the bottom of the homepage where it says a step by step process, and it basically takes you through. These kind of four basic phases of the growth circuit model and, you know, it doesn't have to be done in 90 days. that's our interval of time that we choose because, again, integrating the professional and the personal life, it's nice to align your personal cycles with business cycles and most You know, operating on a quarterly cycle is a convenient way to align those two things, right?

So, four basic phases are what we call your personal foundations, which is where you essentially either create, or if you're doing it maybe not for the first time, you review and revise what we call your personally defined values, your self agreements, and your core statements.

And this is, you know, if success is getting to truly be who you are across time and space, it's important to know who you are. So that's where we start. Then we have [00:32:00] you do what's called installing the life operating system. And the life operating system operates in two levels, a short game and a long game.

The short game is basically just your three piece, physical, personal, professional. Creating a schedule a habit what we call, making those deposits every day. You gotta do something meaningfully to increase the balance in those three accounts of your life every day. And there's a nightly assessment ritual.

We call it a NAP, Nightly Assessment and Planning Ritual, that you do every night to just kind of check those boxes. I did it for the day. And you just live the compoundable day every day and watch the results happen. And then the long game is actually an orientation toward wealth. We call them the three phases of legacy.

So it's really important to have positional awareness in where you are in your wealth journey because the strategy changes over time. One of the big issues I have with the internet is that you have a lot of. Middle class, well, to the extent that's even still a thing, people taking financial advice from billionaires.

We are at very different stages you're in the income phase, and the billionaires in the wealth phase and it's not the same strategy. So, I don't know that the advice maps. So, we actually have a [00:33:00] structure within the life operating system for understanding where you are in the wealth game. So that's the second piece. First piece was personal Foundations, then you had your Life Operating System installation, and then you actually engage the growth circuit, which is goal setting, and we have a structure called the Wheel of Growth, where you map your knowledge, environment resources, and habits, and you essentially view your goals through the lens of those four areas of life and say, okay, what do I need to make true in terms of knowledge or in terms of changes to my environment or in terms of my habits?

Or in terms of my resources, and we break, those down, there's different types of resources, different types of knowledge, and so forth. But it's like, what do I need to set to true so that I can actually achieve my goals within this circuit? And as part of the life operating system, we actually applied KPI logic, which is a business term, key performance indicators, to the physical, personal, and professional arenas of life.

So you've kind of got all levers and buttons defined in your life, and then you set the goals, and then you, you know, Optimize the knowledge, environment, resources, and habits. And then at the fourth level is where we bring [00:34:00] purpose back into it or purpose into it. And we really have a process for discovering and integrating purpose into all of that.

And that whole process takes about 90 days and it's an iterative process. So when you're done with 90 days, you do it again and you do it again, just like a business operates on a, quarterly cycle. So it is a life. And so you asked about timeline. It takes 90 days to do all that and I can tell you that people's lives are radically transformed, like deeply and radically transformed.

if you want to have results that are gonna stick, do it for a year. We have data that shows that people that kind of fully subscribe to our process 63, last round of surveys we did, which were last year, said that 63, this is, of all the stats, like I could say, you know, 96 percent of people have better physical habits, think 88 percent of people actually lose weight, the one stat that's probably actually the most mind blowing, because you and I both know how hard it is to make more money, is that 63 [00:35:00] percent of people who fully submit to this process report a higher level of personal income after 12 months.

Jeffrey Feldberg: To me, it's not surprising, I know for some that may sound surprising because as you're going through the system, the genius, the method to your madness, Jeff, there really isn't differentiation between personal and business and I've always felt the same way. Hey, if I'm feeling crappy on the inside, ultimately that's going to manifest externally in everything that I'm doing and so what you're really saying makes a lot of sense.

I want to ask a question about AI. Before I, I get there, I wanted to ask another question. And hopefully we'll still have some time for this. And the question for you, Jeff, is really when you're going through the book, love the book, Reading it, going through it, but there's one chapter that, really stood out for me and we don't have time to go into all the chapter.

It's actually in part six, it's chapter 23. And in the chapter title, you're saying get rich or you're screwed. And so from that perspective, we're Deep Wealth Nation. [00:36:00] In regards to chapter 23, hey, get rich or you're screwed. From your perspective, from the world of Jeff and all that you've done, what would you want us to know?

Jeff Lerner: I deeply believe that there are only two issues that are relevant, physically keep us safe and also, give us a system in which we can prosper. That's it. All this identity stuff, I promise, when the supply chain gets disrupted and nobody can get food, they're not going to be arguing about pronouns. And the government's job is to keep us safe. By the way, that wasn't a statement about pronouns, that was just a statement about the relative importance of pronouns in the grand scheme, in the context of what a government's supposed to do.

Us safe, idiots! And they didn't. They didn't. A hundred years ago, they guaranteed that they wouldn't, and they couldn't, and they won't, unless they change up everything they installed a hundred years ago. And here's what I mean. Between 1900 and 2000, World War I, they installed an income tax that was supposed to only apply to the very wealthy, and I [00:37:00] think the original income tax was 1%.

So we see how that's going. They installed a federal reserve so they could dease and devalue the currency at will. Then they took us off the gold standard. We've completely uncoupled from any physical reality in terms of the value of our money, which paradoxically makes money less valuable over time, and we see that.

Have you bought a steak at the grocery store lately? Compare that to two years ago, they income tax they created an entitlement system where we're, we're basically praying for the government to save us. They institutionalized the concept of retirement, which didn't exist until about 160 years ago.

I don't know about you, but I feel like food and energy are pretty, foundational staples of what we actually spend our money on and what we rely on. And so, you have to wonder, why did they take that out of inflation, right? And so, you know, real inflation is, you know, anywhere between kind of four and ten percent.

Right now, it's probably closer to 10, and So, if you're getting a 2. 5 3 percent a year raise, you're actually getting, what, 3 7 percent poorer every year. Now, the S& P averages between 7 8%, so [00:38:00] at least if you have enough money to correlate, have enough assets to peg to an index of economic growth, at least then you're not getting as behind, which is why you have to at least be upper middle class where more of your personal economy is in investments than in cash cycling for, income and bill payments, because then at least you have something you can attach to growth that isn't, at least isn't lagging inflation, not that it's necessarily getting ahead.

But then you have, really you have to have pretty massive wealth, essentially you have to be at least, at a bare minimum, accredited to get into the tier of investments. Where you're earning 15 20 percent and actually getting ahead. And so because they installed all this a hundred years ago, it was only ever a matter of time that we would end up where we are.

Which is poor getting poorer, middle class still getting poorer, but not feeling it as fast, like it's more subtle because they at least have some investments that are pegged to growth, but still over time they're getting obliterated too. It's just decaying slower. And then you have [00:39:00] rich getting richer because we have the money to attach to the things where the real opportunity is.

it was all baked into a system a hundred years ago. And that's why I'm not solving for human wealth, I'm solving for human fulfillment, because at the end of the day, wealth happens to be a part of fulfillment, but what really matters is the How do we live well?

And control what we can control and internalize the locus of control because otherwise we're always going to be dependent on other people to tell us we're okay.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So Jeff, my goodness, we'll leave that answer out there for the Deep Wealth Nation to think and ponder, but you're right, get rich or you're screwed. There's a lot to be said with that certainly the system has changed and is not in our favor. I want to put a pause on that though, and before we go into wrap up mode, I want to talk about artificial intelligence.

My goodness, every day there's a new headline, it's changing life as we know it, business as we know it, what's going on with AI that you want us as an entrepreneurial community, the Deep Wealth Nation, to really know and take away from our time together?

Jeff Lerner: So, I'm so glad you asked. As it happens, I'm literally doing a [00:40:00] presentation tonight that by the time this episode airs, and it's cool, because by the time this episode airs, I will have already done it, so I can actually tell your audience what I'm gonna say, because I won't be giving it away, as long as you don't publish this in the next eight hours. And the presentation tonight is called What AI Means For your Career In The Next Five To Ten Years and What to Actually Do About It. 

I'm actually looking at a slide on my other monitor here from the presentation I'm doing tonight. And essentially there's a, an episode on my podcast, which I would not normally refer people to an episode of my podcast on someone else's podcast. I'm only saying it because on this episode with a guy named Michael Watkins, he shared something that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

And it's basically these seven levels of human capabilities that is a framework he developed that essentially organizes into almost, you can think of them as dominoes. That are going to fall in terms of AI replacing humans. And there's these seven levels of human capability that AI is going to, take us [00:41:00] out of.

And like level one is like basic information processing and task execution. This is data entry, it's administrative support, customer, basic customer service. I mean, even at ENTRE right now, We're training service bot to essentially give customer service to every member as if they were talking directly to me.

recently, over the last 18 months, we shrunk our company from 185 people down to about 30 people.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

Jeff Lerner: And the goal is to use AI to regrow our functional capacity beyond what it used to be without actually having to hire any more people. imagine if Steve Jobs, well, or maybe Tim Cook now.

If you could literally call and talk to him about the latest iPhone. That's what, we're trying to make it so that everybody can get the answers directly from the person that knows the most about whatever question is being asked. That's already happening, that's level one.

Level two is, basic decision making and problem solving. And it goes all the way up to level seven, which is like consciousness and agency. This would be like, high level executives, public [00:42:00] policy makers, artists, philosophers and in the next ten to fifteen years, the bottom five levels are going to get taken out by AI.

And there's all this, I swear the data's, it's so manipulative, right? There's, oh we're going to lose all these jobs, but AIs can also create all these jobs. Well, yeah, in the short term, but once it's installed and it becomes self nurturing,

there's a self nurturing threshold at each of the levels.

Then you're not going to have all these jobs of people whose jobs are basically to support the technology. The technology is going to support itself, and you're going to, be right back where maybe you bought yourself a few years, right? So in the next 10 to 15 years, from the math that I'm doing you're going to have between 107 and 134 million of the 155 million non farm jobs in the United States get taken out. That's a really big deal.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That's huge. Wow.

Jeff Lerner: And so, and essentially, all you're going to have left are Level 6 and 7. Now, they are saying Level 6, which is goal setting and [00:43:00] higher order planning, is actually possibly going to be taken out in the next 15 to 20 years. But I think it gets opaque enough at that point that, let's just Solve for the others for now.

And then level seven, which is the CEO of Chase Bank, we probably at least as long as we can, resist a world where a machine does his job. consequences are just too big. kind of like there's a too big to fail concept.

I think there's a too big to trust AI concept with certain jobs. But that's, only a handful. That's less than 10 percent of all the jobs so what does the world look like in 10, 20 years? I mean, that's what I would say is, if the individual listener, depending on your age, I mean, look, if you're over 60.

call yourself lucky. Your runway might end before you have to face this problem. Or maybe stop taking such good care of yourself to ensure that. I mean, these are the real issues. But for most of us, staring down the barrel, and it's a long enough barrel, 10, 20 year barrel that put it out of sight, out of mind.

There's a real mess coming. And so what are [00:44:00] the individual choices and trends that I'm going to identify and I'm going to orient my life to, to make sure that whatever happens is going to happen world, Me and my legacy are going to be okay. And I will cover those, trends tonight, I'm happy to go ahead and say that they are, first of all, for the last couple of hundred years, we've glorified specialization.

That your value is becoming a more nuanced expert in a narrower and narrower category. Oh, I'm, and we talk about this in entrepreneurship theories, like you want to be the guy who That knows how to do, information technology for dentists who specializes in suburban areas where, you know, incidence of cavity is less than 2 percent or something.

They're always like, oh, get rich in the niche, figure out your, narrowest specialization that you can use to define yourself. All that's going away. What's going to come back is the rise of the generalist, the industrialist, the titan, the person who's good at organizing the capabilities of humans and machines, not trying to get paid for [00:45:00] being one of those specialties.

So that's the first trend and that's where entrepreneurship, which is this very broad, hard, and soft skill set, is becoming the valuable skill set moving forward in the future. People that are pursuing advanced degrees in more and more, specialized technical arenas are just like, they are setting themselves up for this massive fall.

The second trend is actually the rise of the human. Maya Angelou said, they'll forget what you said, they'll forget what you did, they'll never forget how you made them feel. I think in a, eventual post AI world, What you said and what you did won't even have happened. All there will be is how you made people feel. So the rise of the human, good are you at empathy? How good at you are holding space? How good at you are you at creating healing through communication and connection? That's the stuff we're gonna value in each other. The third trend is the rise of the marketer that, AI is gonna drive product quality to a singularity over time because everybody's going to be able to afford to optimize [00:46:00] infinitely. And in a world where product quality distinctions are no longer relevant, it's going to be who has the best copy and who's able to create the most creative, inventive way of getting attention. It's going to be the rise of the marketer. So rise of the generalist, rise of the human, rise of the marketer.

That's AI world.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, it is so much there, such a game changer and we could just have, forget episodes, that's a series after a series talking about that. We're going to have to put a hold on that. Appreciate everything that you've been sharing with us, Jeff. Let's go into wrap up mode, which is a ritual here in the Deep Wealth Podcast.

It's a privilege and honor for me to ask every guest the same question. It's a fun question. I will set this up for you so, when you think of the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time, which, ironically enough, Jeff, we actually referenced a little earlier in our conversation, serendipity or what, but that said, you look outside tomorrow morning, this is the fun part, not only do you see the DeLorean car curbside, the door is open, it's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do, you're now going to go to any point in your life.

Jeff, as a young child, a teenager, [00:47:00] whatever point in time it would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or hey Jeff, do this but don't do that, what would it sound like?

Jeff Lerner: Man, there's a few. I would probably go back to my childhood, early childhood, some of the, a lot of the bullying stuff, a lot of the critical moments where I decided that human beings were mean and dangerous and scary. And how much of my life was governed by slowly and painfully renegotiating my relationship to other people to essentially get to what I believe is a more valid perspective that actually we're all connected and there's a level of consciousness that is in a, essentially a non, even language fails to try to describe it.

So I'm not going to try to go there so much, but there's love and hate and All the sort of antagonistic hate energy gets embedded into us through life experience where needs don't get met. And I would just try to go back to those [00:48:00] moments and love that kid. So that he could get to the work that he's doing now, which is still imperfect and evolving, but at least I think I'm in a lane that matters, where for so long I wasn't. And I think if I could heal that kid and keep him space, I would have gotten into this lane a lot earlier in my life, and I'd probably feel better for it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I appreciate you being so vulnerable there. If you would encapsulate that to your younger self in a sentence or two, what would that be?

Jeff Lerner: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Jeffrey Feldberg: There's a lot there. There's a lot there. Jeff, before we officially wrap this up, a listener, they have a question, they want to speak with you, they want to go through one of your programs. Where would be the best place online for them to reach you?

Jeff Lerner: I used to say my YouTube channel, and it's, it's still something I'm pretty, excited about and proud of. I think there's a thousand videos there, but now I mean, so there, I've said it. And I also used to say in my book, and I guess I've now said that too but if you go to designyourlife. com, there's a link on the [00:49:00] homepage for a free masterclass.

It's completely free. You're not, it's not one of those put in your credit card and then remember to cancel 15 days later. No, it's just free. You just click it. All you have to do is create a free account in our platform so you can actually access the masterclass. And it's in our masterclass that goes deeper into a lot of the concepts we've talked about here.

And I, deeply wish that every human on earth would go through it because whether I'm good at what I do or not, whether I'm effective at what I do or not, I at least know I'm sincere about what I do. And. I am a human on this earth to try to solve for the fulfillment of every other person out there.

And the masterclass I think is a good first step for anyone to live a more fulfilled life. And I just, wish deeply, I'm not even going to say, Oh, it's out there if you want it. I'm actually going to beg you, please go watch it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation, you heard it from the master himself. All in the show notes, point and click, get the book, Unlock Your Potential, the ultimate guide for creating your dream life in the modern world. Go to the website, unlock your potential, go to the free masterclass course, take all of that. Well, Jeff, it's official.

Congratulations. This is a [00:50:00] wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Jeff Lerner: Thanks. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life [00:51:00] right now, whatever you want that to look like.

And every time you subscribe and a fellow entrepreneur subscribe, it's a testament to how together, Yes, we are. We are changing the social fabric of society. One business owner at a time, one liquidity event at a time. So don't let the momentum stop here. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast channel.

You'll never miss an episode. You'll be the first to hear from the top industry leaders, the innovators, the disruptors that are really changing and shaping the business world, and maybe you're commuting, maybe you're at the gym, maybe you're taking a well deserved break that we spoke all about on this episode.

The Deep Wealth Podcast, it's your reliable source for the next big idea that could literally revolutionize your business. So once again, please hit that subscribe button, stay connected, inspired, and ahead of the curve. And again, your next big breakthrough moment, it might just be one episode away. Maybe it was even this episode.

So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn't just about the money in the bank. It's about the depth of your journey and the impact that you're creating. [00:52:00] So let's continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. 

Thank you so much. 

God bless.