Just the other day, Ed Mylett stepped into an Uber with his wife and did something unexpected, at least for the driver: He asked the driver to tell his story.
The driver was a refugee from Lebanon with three children at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. And in the three years he’d been driving, no one had ever asked him a question like that.
Mylett listened attentively, a habit he has cultivated over many years. And at the end, he thanked the man for his story.
Mylett, an entrepreneur, best-selling author, performance coach, and speaker, has landed on the Forbes 50 Wealthiest Under 50 List and was recognized as one of the wealthiest self-made people in the world in his 30s, although he would tell you that he’s “team-made.”
He has his hand in a number of ventures, including food, health and fitness, real estate, YouTube videos, and a social media empire. And he has also published two books: #Maxout Your Life and, recently, The Power of One More.
But he still has time to hear a good story. In fact, it’s one of the pillars of his success: taking the time to be present and care about people.
Building a Career by Caring
Mylett can almost always tell you what you need.
“What I am pretty good at doing, and I’m right 95 percent of the time, is I can distill what [your] needs are,” he says. “Is it certainty? Is it love? Or connection? Is it significance and recognition? Is it growth? Or is it contribution?”
He can also tell where your strengths lie and tease them out within five minutes of beginning a conversation.
“It’s your nurturing skills, your intellect. It’s your problem-solving. It’s your resiliency. It’s your toughness. It’s your kinesthetic touch. It’s your humor, right?”
Reading people. It’s a skill he developed at an early age when he learned to read the moods of his alcoholic father.
“And I could read my daddy at five.”
“And I could read my daddy at five.”
He recalls that he could tell by the slightest gesture whether he was dealing with a sober father or a drunk one. “And then my second skill would kick in—my ability to persuade.”
He would take his father by the hand and move him through the house, telling him about his day at school and distracting him.
When Mylett was 15, his father got sober for good. That was a turning point for him. He asked his father if he was going to stay sober. His dad simply said, “I don’t know. I’m just not going to drink for one more day.”
That one more day philosophy stuck with him.
It was his father who got him his first job as a counselor at a youth center for teenage boys, a job that would shape everything Mylett did from then on.
Many bios about Mylett cite his work in the financial sector as the beginning of his career. But Mylett would tell you it actually started at the orphanage.
“What I learned was a lesson I’ve carried through my whole business career,” he says. “Those boys wanted someone to love them, care about them. And here’s the big hook— believe in them, and then just show them how to live better. … And I took those same beliefs with adults in business that everybody that was a client of mine or worked with me wanted someone to love them, care about them, believe in them, and show them how to do better. And so, ironically, my career started at an orphanage.”
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Overcoming the Limits of Identity
Mylett started working part time at World Financial Group (WFG) right out of college while still at the orphanage. He would eventually leave the orphanage to work in finance full time.
Despite a promising start, he struggled financially for the first few years. He recalls a time his car was repossessed, his phone was shut off, and even his water was shut off.
“We had a pool at our apartment complex with a swimming pool and outdoor shower,” Mylett says. “And every morning, I would have to hold a towel up when my new wife showered and brushed her teeth. And then we would switch positions, and she’d hold the towel up while I showered.”
For Mylett, failure to achieve goals comes, in part, from getting trapped in his own identity, as he refers to it.
“I grew up with chaos,” Mylett says. “I grew up with anxiety. I grew up with worry. I was small. I was bullied in school. I just never had any self-confidence. And the only thing I was really good at was baseball. Other than that, I wasn’t a great student. I wasn’t exemplary in anything. And in business, it just seemed to me that every time I’d get it going, I would find a way to blow it. I’d get it going, and then I would blow it. And I realized later that was my identity.”
“I grew up with anxiety. I grew up with worry.
For much of his early career, Mylett describes himself as a personal development addict. With very little self-esteem and chronic impostor syndrome, he turned to self-help and motivational coaches such as Tony Robbins to help him gain confidence.
“I had to learn all the mental techniques and strategies that I teach just to become a baseline functioning person,” he says. “And so every rejection in business killed me. Every no crushed me. Every setback was, ‘Gosh, I knew it.’ Or if I was successful, it was a fluke. They’re going to figure out I’m an impostor.”
“I had to learn all the mental techniques and strategies that I teach just to become a baseline functioning person.”
Everyone, Mylett says, has what he refers to as their own thermostat setting: a place they are comfortable with that they always seem to return to, much like the setting on a thermostat. While they may gain some success in their goals, something always happens to bring them back to that default setting.
“The key thing for me was not just to accumulate the skills. How do I change my identity? How do I change this thermostat to 90, 95, 100, 105?”
The Power of One More
In his latest book, Mylett describes the method he used to break out of that cycle. Essentially, it boils down to one lesson: learning to care enough about yourself to keep your own promises and then exceed those promises.
The power of one more actually has two meanings for Mylett. First, it’s the belief that you are only one step away from changing your life.
“You are one decision, one relationship, one thought, one emotion, one meeting away from a completely different life,” he says. “But unless you believe that and then you program your reticular activating system and your brain to find those things, you will never have them happen to you.”
“You are one decision, one relationship, one thought, one emotion, one meeting away from a completely different life.”
Next is to keep those promises you make yourself every day and then do just one more. The goal is to build a reputation with yourself as a person who can get things done.
“I thought to myself, ‘What would I need to do to be superhuman? One more than what I told myself,’” Mylett says. “So now if I told myself I’m doing 30 minutes on the treadmill, I’m doing 31. I’m going to tell my daughter I love her once a day; I’m going to tell her one more time a day. I’m going to make 10 contacts a day; I’m making one more. And so then I started to build this thing because in life, we don’t get our goals—we get our standards.”
Sharing the Journey
Mylett’s misfortune wouldn’t last long. He was a rising star at WFG, and in just a few short years, he became one of the youngest CEO Marketing Directors in the company’s history. He eventually moved through the ranks to Agency Chairman, a position he still holds today.
Mylett attributes much of his success to everything he’s learned about reading people. He does it not to understand how to take advantage of them but to care enough to understand their needs and help them live up to their potential.
At this point, the man who had inspired Mylett, Tony Robbins, had become a good friend. He saw that through his leadership skills and personal success, Mylett was really onto something. He urged Mylett to share his message with the world via social media.
Until then, Mylett knew very little about social media. In fact, his 13-year-old son had to help him set up his first video.
“I said, ‘What is Instaface? How does it work?’ And he’s like, ‘There’s nothing called Instaface, dumbass. It’s called Instagram, and there’s a Facebook.’”
“I said, ‘What is Instaface? How does it work?’ And he’s like, ‘There’s nothing called Instaface, dumbass. It’s called Instagram, and there’s a Facebook.’”
His son helped him record and post his first video on Instagram. It got four views.
And so he tried again. This time, he sat down to make his video while he ate breakfast because Robbins had told him the best time for a video was breakfast time and that it should include hash browns.
That video didn’t do well, either.
He called Robbins, perplexed. “I even had the hash browns in the video,” he told him. “‘He said, ‘I said hashtags, dumbass. Not hash browns.’”
Eventually, Mylett got the hang of it, and he is now the fastest-growing business person on social media, with more than 3 million followers. And he did that without spending a single dime on advertising.
He attributes his success online to being authentic.
“I did not get wealthy telling you how to do things I haven’t done. I actually built businesses, got wealthy, became successful, and then taught it,” he says.
Leadership Through Caring
Mylett keeps more than 17 companies going by handpicking leaders who exhibit the same qualities he expects of himself: caring about people and caring about the mission.
First, he expects his leaders to care as much about his employees as he does.
“When I interview someone to come to work with me, I always say, ‘Listen—at the end of the day, here’s what I want for you. I’m going to love you. I care about you and believe in you. We’re going to show you how to do better. What the bottom line is, you’re gonna be happy you [came to work for me].’”
“We’re going to show you how to do better.”
Second, he wants a leader who exhibits candor.
“I think it’s OK to go to folks and say, ‘Guys, we’re having a tough time right now. These things need to improve, but let me tell you where we’re going.’”
Next, they should be cause-oriented leaders—evangelists who can get people behind their aspirations. They do that, first of all, by making people believe that they truly believe in the mission.
“The person who’s always trying to get you to believe them, they’re desperate; they’re a beggar. They’re less than you. The person who’s simply trying to get you to feel the energy that they believe what they’re saying, they’re persuasive. And that is the subtle difference.”
And they have to be good at identifying enemies. That is, there must be something the company or product is up against, something through which it must persevere.
“What we are against could be obesity if you’re in the gym business. That could be debt or being broke if you’re in the financial business, or it could even be another organization. But you have to be for and against something, and the more you can create both of those dynamics, the more you can be evangelical about your cause.”
Finally, leaders and successful entrepreneurs have to remember they’re not selling a product. They’re selling happiness.
Mylett points to McDonald’s as a key example.
“They somehow got people to link happiness to fast food. Their mascot is a clown. What does a clown have to do with food? Absolutely nothing. But they learned the linkage. Their No. 1 selling meal? A Happy Meal.”
But what it all boils down to for Mylett is taking the time to really be present for people, whether that’s employees, clients, customers, or even yourself, and to be intentional in your interactions.
“In life, we’re always making people feel something, aren’t we? The question is, are you intentional about what they’re feeling? When they’re around you, do they feel loved, do they feel believed, do they feel cared for? Do they feel certain that you believe them? Do they trust you? Do they like you? Do they feel accepted? Do they feel challenged? Do they feel passionate? There’s a variety of things people can feel. But unless you start to be intentional about what they’re feeling, you’re letting the world dictate the terms of your life rather than you dictating your terms to the world.”
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