Show Notes

• Qualities of high achieving entrepreneurs
• Life in the Canadian Army
• Orienting life around values
• Meaningful connections
• Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
• Keys to staying driven at age 85
• Overcoming significant adversity

Connect With Peter Thomas

✩ Website: https://www.thomaspride.com/
✩ Website: https://www.thedreamfactory.org/
✩ Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/peterhthomas_
✩ Twitter/X – https://twitter.com/peterhthomas_
✩ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peterthomas.bgo
✩ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterhthomas1/

Additional Resources

✩ Book: The Dream Factory: A Proven Formula to Turn Your Dreams Into Reality!

Summary

Peter Thomas is an internationally renowned mega-entrepreneur and motivational speaker. He is Chairman Emeritus of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), and the author of five groundbreaking books. Peter discusses why it’s so important to orient our life around our values, and the seeds of genius that exist in all of us.

Full Transcript

Brian   
Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success.

Peter Thomas is an internationally renowned mega entrepreneur and motivational speaker who has influenced audiences and mentored business people around the world. As founder and chairman of Century 21 Real Estate Canada, Peter developed the largest real estate network in Canada. He sold that company after growing it to $9 billion in annual sales through 450 franchises with more than 8000 sales representatives. Peter would go on to develop billions of dollars in real estate, including the development of the spectacular Four Seasons Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. Today he devotes much of his time to numerous philanthropic endeavors. Peter founded the Todd Thomas Foundation, which focuses on the area of mental health and also started Life Pilot, a British Columbia based organization that empowers people to live in alignment with their values. Peter also remains active with the Entrepreneurs Organization, commonly known as EO, where he is a founding member and is now chairman emeritus and with the Collegian Entrepreneurs Organization, which encourages college students to be entrepreneurial. Peter is the author of five groundbreaking books, including his recently published anthology, “The Dream Factory:    A Proven Formula to Turn Your Dreams into Reality.” With a career spanning decades, Peter’s journey is a testament to unwavering determination, innovation, and the desire to not only create success in his own life, but to empower others, to reach for the stars and beyond. Welcome, Peter, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Peter   
It’s great to be here, Brian, thank you. My mom would have loved that introduction, she would have loved it. But if you asked me to tell you who I was, I’m an old guy who’s had one heck of a lot of fun. I’ve been blessed for a long time.

Brian   
You certainly have been blessed, Peter, you’ve had a phenomenally successful career and life and you’ve been privileged to also be able to observe and be around many others who have done the same. What do high achieving entrepreneurs do that others don’t do in order to create such a high level of success in their lives?

Peter   
I think, in a nutshell, they develop habits that help them with the discipline needed to reach their goals.

Brian   
And what are some of those habits?

Peter   
Well, we can get right into the habits that…kind of like my day…I took this book out, it turns out here’s a habit, I prepare this book every single year. It’s my guide to what I’m going to do. But I’ve got the very beginnings…tiny habits, like I wake every morning, I wake at five, I go to bed at nine. That’s kind of what we do. I always have in my mind that minutes matter, I have an urgency about time. But I do the normal thing; I shower, I look at my emails, look at my stuff. Six o’clock, I’m in the gym with my trainer working out for an hour. Then seven, I come back up and Rita’s got me a nice, really healthy, little breakfast and I start dealing with the priorities. I surround myself with people who are just amazing and they kind of think like I do. I don’t change them from what they were to what I want them to be, they kind of are like I need them to be when when I bring them in. The same sort of mindset, you might say.    I eat pretty well. I think that the choice you make about what you put in your mouth is very important so I watch all the time what I eat. Most of the time I eat pretty good stuff. But as you get to know me, I love my cappuccinos, I love my ice cream. When I work hard at the gym, that’s kind of my reward; if I’m particularly straining I see a big ice cream cone. I can ramble on but I think you get habits. I’m always on time, I’m serious about it; you and I have an appointment at nine o’clock, I’m there at nine. If I’m not there [say] a little prayer – gosh, Peter must have died because he’s not here – so I’m kind of like that. Usually everybody…when you are strongly feeling about different things, everyone in your world kind of thinks the same way. Very seldom I’m late or stood up for appointments and it works.

Brian   
So success really is an accumulation of our daily habits, isn’t it?

Peter   
That’s what I say, yes, it’s developing really good habits. Like we have dinner, we have lunch, we have breakfast…lunch at 12 and dinner at six. Now I’m going to have lunch earlier – my little salad or something – but everything is set out in priorities that way. It’s easy, it’s not hard to do because, like anything else, you’re trained to do it.

Brian   
Peter, I shared some of the highlights of your career but let’s take a step back. I’d like the audience to get to know you a little bit as a person. Tell us about your background. What was it like for you growing up and how did you forge such an impressive career in the real estate industry?

Peter   
Going back, my dad died very soon after I was [born] on the earth. Mom raised me, I was raised in England but I had the most amazing mom in the world. I was the king of her life. I felt that way anyway. I felt like we had a phenomenal relationship. We came from England, I remember standing on the back of the Queen Mary with my mom, looking at the horizon and the water churning up behind the Queen Mary. I held her hand and mum was way bigger than me, I was about seven, and just feeling so excited about the future and so strong with the bond that was between us. That gave me a real heads up. Then we arrived in Canada, and I worked at a little place north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, a little town called Perryville. I was raised there, worked on a gravel pit until I was 15. I couldn’t take it anymore. The Canadian Army had a special enrollment plan where you could join as an apprentice soldier, you had to be 16 to get in and they would give you two years of school. There was an advertisement in the Star Weekly, I took that ad to my mom and said I’m going to join, I’m in. Mom said, no, you’re not going to do that. I said, mom, you either sign for me, sign me up or I’m gone. You will know where I am, this way you’ll know I’m in the army. I convinced her, I remember that conversation. I spent seven years in the Canadian Army, did the Middle East; in fact where all craziness is going on right now, that’s right where I was. So it’s quite interesting. I spent seven full years in the Canadian army. One of the things I wanted to say to you is that in the army I learned discipline; the other thing that you’ve got to have [along with] those habits and stuff is discipline. In the army when the sergeant says, get down, you don’t stand there and look at him and say, why am I going to get down, tell me what’s going on, I don’t have to get down, I’m a special person – you learn to get down, duck – so that is critical. I learned that early in my career. Discipline was given to me when I was between 16 and 22. I can close my eyes and see me running around the parade ground with my rifle over my head for doing something wrong, like a hundred times. You run around and, your arms, they want to fall off and when they’re ready to fall off the sergeant says, now get down and give me a hundred push-ups. You didn’t do anything wrong but you do your push ups and you’re mad at him. You do your push ups, you look him in the face and he says now give me another [laughter]. We were all treated the same. When you’re put into the barracks you’re in there with every member of society you can think of; from kids who were put in the Army because they couldn’t be disciplined, to kids who were raised with very wealthy families and their mum and dad thought they should get the training. So they throw you in this pot, which was incredible, because you get to know and learn with each other…the stories I could tell you, I could go on and on for this whole podcast. But you learn humility, humbleness, you get punched in the face if you insult the wrong person. You learn about life. So if that program was available, I think I would recommend every 15 year old boy should take it.

Brian   
How did you go from there into real estate?

Peter   
I’ve been blessed like I told you, I just feel like the luckiest guy on the planet. I got out of the army and I answered an ad about becoming an assistant manager for a mutual fund company, stock brokerage company. So I went to work in the stock brokers room and learned how to sell mutual funds. I started selling door to door. Then I moved up from sales within – the sales manager – to general sales manager. Five years of my career was working for a company called First Investors Corporation, where I did all that. I recognized that I was pretty darn good, top sales and all this kind of stuff so I went to see my boss, who was on the board and a partial owner of the company, and said, you know, Mr. Marlin, I really feel I’d like to own some of this company. I’d like to be able to participate in some shares. So he said, well, let me talk to Don, the president. I didn’t hear anything but I kept bothering him, finally he said, well, I talked to Don and he said, do you think that Peter should have some shares in the company? And Mr. Marlin said, yes, I highly recommend him. He’s a very good man and we should do that. Don said, I appreciate that, then sell him some of your shares. [Laughter]. I couldn’t believe it, I just couldn’t believe it. I said to Mr. Marlin, he’s got to come around so I stayed another year thinking they’d come around. That was the fourth year I proposed it, so I said I’d be leaving on July – whatever the date was – a year later. That’s my notice, unless you give me some shares. He never talked about it again so I left. I took the top salesman with me and I formed my own mutual fund company, a title company worth $300,000. Got my office, opened up, moved in, waiting for Bill to come and join me at the desk I had for him. I got a phone call at nine o’clock in the morning and Bill said, I’ve decided to stay at First Investors. They’ve given me your old job. [Laughter] Kind of interesting gut moment, but from that point on, I started selling mutual funds. I was selling my mutual funds and working away out of my office and there was a real estate guy next door. So the real estate guy, Ron, he comes over and says you should buy this house. I said I got no money, I can’t afford a house. He said no, no, this is a great deal, blah, blah, blah, you can rent it, and I’ll look after it and it’s good. So how much? $10,000. I said, okay, I haven’t got $10,000. He said, I can get you $9,000 at the bank. Okay, I said, good, well, then, where do I get the thousand? You get them to carry you; I can do it, that’s okay. So we bought this house and it was just a dump. I mean, ten grand, just a dump but it was rented. Ron comes back about three months later and he says sign here, I’m trading your house off on this small apartment and this is the equity. The equity was $18,000, the value of the house, on this little apartment. I think was an eight unit, it’s in one of my books. So I get the apartment and I go there to look at it, that’s it. About three months later, he said sign this, you sold the apartment, I think that was where I made $30,000. That was what I made annually, $30,000. And I said, $30,000? I couldn’t get into the business fast enough. I left the brokerage business, investments and focused on real estate, formed my first real estate company. I tied down a building, I remember in Edmonton, it was about $300,000 of which I must have had at least a thousand of that 300 I needed. I found a brochure of some other buildings and got it put together. It’s so funny, the people that I picked up along the way all became amazing people; the guy that I got to help me – the lawyer – he became the attorney general. So I got a guy there; I got to know all the politics. Everybody around me have gone on…I got so many people who became so successful, who just seemed to join with me at that time. I was in the right area, I guess, a lot of luck, Brian, a lot of luck.

Brian   
What a great story. Peter, I have four of your books – all of which I highly recommend by the way and the books will be in the show notes for those listening and viewing – but there are several recurring themes and the one that stands out for me more than any other is the orientation of your life around values. Share with our audience why you believe that’s so vitally important to orient your life around your values.

Peter   
I belong to an organization called Young Presidents Organization, YPO, and in the very beginning of that I went to a workshop seminar in Hawaii. In that was a man called Red Scott who was giving a talk. They used to have all kinds of resources to teach us and you’d pick the resource you wanted to go to at two or three at different times so you could choose. In his bio, this person showed that he had 17 companies that all qualified for YPO. I thought, oh, my gosh, I must see this guy. Because to me, business was everything. I’ve got to talk to him. So I go to his room, which was booked for about 50 people, and about 15 people showed up. Mr. Scott came in and he looked at us with a smile and said, let’s go outside, on the beach. So we took notepads, walked outside to the beach and sat around on a couple of rocks there. Red Scott started to talk to us. He said, I want you to write down everything that you can think of that you’ve done in the past 30 days. I wrote it all down. Now, he said, I want you to put down what you feel your values are. I had 13 of them. They were normal:    health, freedom, happiness, integrity, hard work, relationships, career, all these things I wrote down. Then he said, what I want you to do now is draw a line between what you did and which of your values that it related to. And probably 90% of mine was career. I said but I love my wife and my family and relationships and health…it made me realize, oh my gosh, I’m doing all this and I’m leaving everything else behind, that career was much too important. Now I recognize that there’s much more in life than just being successful in business and making money and so you’ve got to work your way up. My values were 13 and they’re now down to four:    health, freedom, happiness and integrity. Recently I’ve added legacy. There are your learning years, your earning years and your returning years. Many people just get started, they go right into their learning and earning at the same time. Many of them start all three of them, unknowingly. They join a church board, they serve on a community foundation, they do different political things, and contribute not just with money, but with their talent. Now for example, in my returning years, I’m not focused on making money, I’m focused on funding and helping other people by giving money, helping to support their dreams that align with my values. When I get up in the morning, I’ve already had my phenomenally successful, great good breakfast and my smoothie, I’ve worked out in the gym for an hour, and I’ve done all that kind of stuff so my health is all looked after. Then my freedom. Well, in order for me to be free, I need to have access to money and access to the things that I want to do in life. To be free, that takes work so I get my work done. Then happiness. Happiness for me, a lot of my happiness comes from my relationships and they start with my wife, they go down to family, and they go down to friends and that type of thing so then I work on that. I may just give somebody a call, like a buddy that I haven’t called for a long time. I’m going to try and do this in about a minute if I can, but probably the most incredible piece of information I’ve received just recently…I’ve had a buddy for 35, 40 years and we literally talked to each other almost every day. He was nearly my age; I’m 85, he was 82. He passed away on October 6th. I’ve never had a bigger hole in my heart than losing Michael. I talk about it because the way to get over grief and what happened is to talk about it, share it. I’ve learned that because I had another tragedy earlier; I lost my son at age 35. But this bit of wisdom was absolutely amazing, the fellow I talked to, he said, Peter, when you’re born, you’ve won the lottery – just getting born. I think there’s like one chance in a billion of getting born, it’s really difficult to get born. You won that, we all won that. Well, then if you get to live till you’re 50, you’ve had 50 years of winning with lottery money and enjoying the lottery money. Well, Michael, he won the lottery for 82 years. He was very successful, an amazing guy. I celebrate his life now, and every time I get sad – and I do, I just feel it right now in my heart – I think Michael, you old devil you, we’ve had some amazing years and some amazing times, and we all have got to go. It helps me get over that; we all have won the lottery.

Brian   
Absolutely. You mentioned relationships, establishing meaningful connections is such an important ingredient, not only in our personal lives, but obviously for professional growth as well. In fact, you know that you and I met because a mutual friend, John Anderson, thought it was worth it for us to meet. Can you expand on that as a concept, the importance of connections in business and share more about the value of connection, whether it’s through an introduction, through mentoring – which I know you do a lot of – or being mentored or through other types of collaboration? Because it really is everything both personally and professionally, isn’t it?

Peter   
Sure, well, you know how sometimes you meet people and you just click. You just click. You’re meant to click, you probably clicked for several reasons. You might have similar goals, I might have respect for somebody else – boy, I just love his life and what can I learn from him – or you have like minded people. With like minded people it is kind of easy. Employees, the same way, if they understand your goals and your direction, your company and your heart, where you’re going…I have got to say I probably run my life a lot with my heart more than my head. My heart is usually right; you kind of know, so I treasure my relationships. I do mentor literally hundreds of people. One of the reasons I write these books is like…I know Martin Luther King, by the way. Well, how do you know Martin Luther King? I never met him but I know how he feels. Years ago they said I should get some mentors, when I was about 28, but I didn’t know anybody who was good enough to be working with as a mentor. I didn’t know anybody. I was getting kicked out of the army. So I came home one night and my wife had bought me a book that was on the table. It was pictures by Yousuf Karsh, he was a famous Canadian artist/photographer. You remember the picture of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston like this? (Brian:    Yes.) That was by Yousuf Karsh. You remember the Churchill picture where Churchill is scowling, a big scowl on his face. That was Yousuf Karsh. He was an incredible photographer. Well, I picked up the book and I’m thumbing through it. As I was thumbing through it, for some reason, Ernest Hemingway resonated with me, John F. Kennedy resonated and Martin Luther King resonated. And I thought to myself, why can’t these people mentor me? Why can’t I take my mentorship from them? You know, all I have to do is learn about them. So I read everything you could possibly read at that time about those people, that I could actually feel them when I had decisions to make. I could say, Kennedy was kind of like my business guy, a business mentor, and I thought what would Kennedy do? But he probably assigned it to somebody else to do it, well, then I should do that, delegate it, I really took the advice that I felt he gave me. Martin Luther King was my fairness, my spiritual guide. If I needed help in that area, I would talk to Martin Luther King. Hemingway was how I got writing. He was a bit of a rogue, kind of a crazy guy, and I kind of like that. I took a lot of my joy in life and my lack of fear to do things from him. So these were my early mentors that I chose in my life and I put their pictures on my wall in my office and I would look to them for guidance. I really do believe…I don’t believe that the spirit that you create ever leaves the earth. It’s recordings and books, movies, films, memories, and all these different things. Sure they die out after a while, but they don’t die out immediately so you can still pick up all the vibes from these types of people if you study them. And they’re just like Michael, my dear friend who I told you I lost, I still talk to him, you know what I mean? I still, shoot, look at him, I still laugh and think about climbing the mountains together, swimming, rivers, diving out of airplanes, the gravity plane – floating around and hitting each other – all that stuff. It’s all with me. Michael lives in my mind and gives me happiness. I hope that helps.

Brian   
Oh, that’s really a great takeaway. I hadn’t even thought about books and being able to learn and connect with historical figures that way. But you’re absolutely right, their books are so powerful. There’s so much that we can learn from them. Napoleon Hill talked about that stir mind concept in “Think and Grow Rich”. It was that same thing where he’s bringing together people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison and others and imagining how they would handle a particular situation. There’s huge value in that. Let’s talk about networking in the conventional sense and people here on earth. I know that for you, Peter, you mentioned YPO and the Entrepreneurs Organization, they really provide a great forum for human connection, for networking, for mentoring, for relationship building. What advice do you have though, for most people who aren’t part of the formal structure like EO?

Peter   
Very quick, I’m going to go back to books for a second. The two books that I read were Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” and Napoleon Hill. My entire business life is fashioned from those two books. Everything else emanated after that, but they gave me the path to run on, there’s that. Now, networking, well, first of all, I recommend that anybody who can, join a network, that’s my first advice; if you don’t [belong], do. There’s nothing more powerful than connection with another human being, in my opinion. When they say that you become like the people you surround yourself with…so if you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room. It is that simple. I learned…I’ve got people around me who I could pick up the phone…for example – I don’t want to throw out names – but a minute ago, I was talking with my social media lady and she said, I’m going to talk about Mark Victor Hansen. Mark, he was the chicken soup soul guy. I remember hearing Mark when he was about 25 and he came to Canada. He was going to pump up my sales force, give them sales meetings. We used to get up every    morning at six o’clock and run. Then he would go give the sales meeting. I never used to bother sitting in the back with these guys but for him, I just sat there. Well, I got more inspired than the sales people did, listening to Mark. He went right across Canada, hit all my cities where I had Century 21 offices. Mark did that for me, so we’ve had that relationship…it was 1974…how long ago that was…almost 50 years ago. I still admire, watch him and Crystal…so that relationship and his strength is in me, and I hope that some of my strength is in him. Usually what you retain as you meet people who you click with is a mutual symbiotic relationship; you both grow because of it. And another thing you said about how do I make these relationships? You know the old “what’s in it for me?” Joe Polish yet he heads up a network called Genius Network, he says that but he says it differently:    what’s in it for you? So when I think about you, Brian, I think of what can I bring to your party? What can I bring to your table to make you successful? What can I give you? Because you know what you can give me, you know all that but you don’t know what I can give you. How can I help you? What do you need? You want more podcasts? Need more guests? You and I had a five minute talk…oh my god, he actually wants to help me. You’ll do anything for me if I do that – and I will do that. So if you bring that attitude…like, I have this little trick with myself, I call it the word of the day, and my word of the day today is happiness, just be happy. I have the word relationships, on that day I work on relationships. On Fridays, I use the word execution because I want to close deals, get everything done. I use my word of the day to set my course for the day so all day long I feel that way. And about happiness, for example…one of the best words is be kind, the best words, because it just reminds you…like in the airplane yesterday, there a little old lady at the airport, she was sitting there looking kind of dejected, she was nicely dressed and that. I said, hey, hi, how are you? She looks at me like scared and I had big smile, all of the sudden she started to smile. I said, are you okay? She said, yes. I said, good, have a great day. But it changed her life. Now and then you see the little ladies, little old men, they look great, they’re walking along, got nothing going on…so a smile and that attitude, always, like an attitude of gratitude. Be grateful for what you have and who you are.

Brian   
Well, I think gratitude is at the foundation of that. But you’re right, this thing is as simple as being kind. Imagine a world where everyone was a little more kind than they are now, the collective impact that that would have in the world. You mentioned adding value to people and that’s a shift in mindset because a lot of people are thinking about okay, I’m meeting Peter Thomas today, what can I get from Peter Thomas? What information can I get? What requests can I make of him to get something in return? If you shift that to how can I add value to a person. I know Joe Polish a little bit, you know him well, but there are stories that have been written about his relationship with Richard Branson and investing time with Richard on Necker Island, and Joe’s whole approach with Branson is not what can I get from him, I’ll go and think of ways that he can benefit me, instead it’s Joe thinking, how can I help Richard, what value can I add to him? How can I help with his some of his philanthropic endeavors? It’s a different mindset. Zig Ziglar said that you can get everything in life that you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. So it is a mindset shift. Peter, how do you stay as driven – you mentioned that you’re 85 years old – how do you stay as driven, engaged and relevant as an 85 year old as when you were, say 35 or 45? I mean, you have a new book that’s out, you’ve written several books, you’re engaged in business. We haven’t even talked about deals that you’re involved in today, but I know you’re doing all kinds of things, and also living life and traveling and personally enjoying the benefits of of the fruits of your labor, so to speak, but how do you stay so vibrant and young and healthy and driven at 85?

Peter   
Last week, I was in Panama City for four days at a conference, met the ex-president and the president’s ambassadors in Panama, then went over to Miami, looking at a boat. And then I’m here today, and I’ll be in Puerto Vallarta in three days. Well, first of all, the most important – I’m sorry to people who, if you have a bad relationship with your spouse, or if you’re single, or whatever – I’ve got to tell you what drives me:    I have got the most amazing wife on the planet. She’s not perfect, she’s above perfect, there’s nothing I could say more. Rita is the love of my life and she’s the most important thing in my life. I don’t go anywhere without her. There’s only one word that comes out of my mouth when she says anything and that word is yes. I’m trained, I’m well trained. Rita happens to have a total focus on health, her passion is health. So I’m this guinea pig who tries all of these new supplements and all these new smoothies and everything like that. That’s one of the reasons we go to bed at nine and we get up at five. All those things I told you that I do I could not do without her. You know what, she just came in here so I’m just going to quickly say hello.

Rita   
Hello.

Brian   
Nice to see you again.

Peter   
Say hi to Brian.

Rita   
Hi Brian.

Peter   
But we’ve only been together like this is very, very on trial for 37 years. [Laughter]

Brian   
Who’s on trial? You or her? [Laughter]

Peter   
Brian just asked me that. He said, what keeps you going? What do you think?

Rita   
I just think we get up every day and we’re happy. We’re both happy people. We just kind of get in there and have some fun. Today we did a little video of Peter having a smoothie and it should be kind of a boring thing but it’s fun. Everything with Peter is fun. [Laughter] So we’ve got to keep it alive.

Peter   
That’s what drives me.

Brian   
The fun factor. That’s awesome, I love that. We get some marriage advice too, that the word that always comes out of your mouth is yes, especially for the husbands out there. (Peter: Don’t question it.) That’s definitely good advice. Peter, you’ve been so successful in real estate and franchising, we haven’t talked about that, and in other business endeavors and investments in a world that’s changing faster than ever before. Where are the areas of opportunity that you see for entrepreneurs today?

Peter   
I think they’re where they always have been. I’ve always stayed with things that people need every day, like real estate, a house over their head. The model of business that I enjoy is franchising, because franchising, it’s a business in a box, and usually a good franchise has made most of the mistakes and they’ve learned, and they’ve got sets of rules; they define how you act when you open your stores, when you close your stores. I’ve got an investment in a company called Dogtopia. When I got involved, it had 20 stores, the lady wanted to retire. So I bought it from her, brought in an unbelievable CEO – that’s something else, we’re talking about timing – and Neil has taken that and now we’ve got over 250 stores; it is growing like crazy. But when you set a course for yourself, it’s kind of like looking at a forest from two miles away. It looks impregnable, it looks like you cannot go through it but the closer you get, you see the trunks of the trees and the ground space, you can walk right into a forest, there’s lots of room. I find business is like that, when you first look at it, oh my god, I couldn’t do that if I tried but the closer and closer you get, shoot high, because you’ll be amazed at the abilities in you to become…one of the biggest things I know, in this new book, in “The Dream Factory” the biggest thing I talk about is genius. Brian, I believe that genius is within every single one of us, we are all geniuses. Now the challenge is some of us recognize our genius more than others do. Unfortunately, their thoughts are oh, I could never do that. I can’t do that. I don’t have the money. But then I get creative. How do I get the money? Well, I learned in business, there’s a formula called OPM, that’s Other People’s Money, right? That means that if I want to do something, if it’s good, I should be able to sell the idea to you. And maybe if you say no, you’re not going to do it I should look at it too; I go into my big deals like that. I have these franchises – Dogtopia franchises, Century 21, same thing – don’t forget, if I sat down with somebody who had the money, had the time, and I’m talking about coming into this business, he’s got to tell me why he shouldn’t come because I can only think that he should. Now you might say, well, Peter, I’m old or I don’t have any resources or whatever. You might have real valid reasons but usually we don’t have valid reasons. There’s another saying in business called FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt – that usually takes place. I’m going through it right now, with a new boat I’m looking at. It’s a little bit bigger than I should have, it’s a little bit nicer than I should have, and it costs a bit more than I should spend but I’m trying to rationalize it. I’m trying to. I’ll make it happen. I’m going to do it, but I’m full of FUD right now. My word of today is uncertainty. It’s the uncertainty in the political process in America, it’s the Ukrainian war, it’s the Israeli conflict and all that is going on which creates the chaos. But in chaos is opportunity. So the next huge piece of advice to write down is to live in day tight compartments; worry about today. That was    Dale Carnegie, by the way. We do become paralyzed by fear in our brain. The other thing I was going to say to you is that when you asked about how do I do these deals, these big deals that we can talk about in depth if you want me to, but I usually say, let me tell you what I’d like to have in my perfect world. I’d like to pay you ten million for this property, but you want, let’s say, 15 or 12. In my perfect world, after looking at your property, it looks to me like it’s worth about    ten million dollars, the cash flow shows that – I’ve got to fix it up, the age of it, all that – because I want to be fair, I’m not grinding yet, that comes later. I’m now trying to establish what fair is and so, unless I’m looking at it wrong, you be the judge, let’s talk about it. So we get to what we both think is fair, it might not be my perfect world, but it’s an acceptable world, and you might not get what you want but it’s real value and then we go from there. But throw out…I don’t care if somebody wants 100 million for it, I say my perfect world is 5 million, or he wants 100 million and I say my perfect world is 99. What is really my value to what I’m buying.

Brian   
That makes sense. Peter, you’ve enjoyed what most people would deem to be an extraordinary life and yet, I want to talk about the adversity in your life because you’ve also had a tremendous amount of adversity. I think at one point in your career your business partner went bankrupt, causing your net – and these are big numbers – causing your net worth to plummet from 150 million to being 70 million in the red and correct me if I’m…(Peter: You’re correct.) And as catastrophic as that probably seemed, at the time though, the business setback would really pale in comparison to something that you mentioned earlier, which is the the unimaginable personal tragedy of losing your son to suicide. Now, most people listening and watching the show will never experience that level of adversity either on the business side or personally – and I certainly hope they don’t – but we all have in common facing setbacks, bumping into obstacles and failures of various kinds. With your experiences of having fallen both personally and professionally from arguably the highest highs to the lowest lows – again, personally and in your business – what lessons can you share about navigating through hardship and in overcoming adversity? I think that’s something that people really wrestle with at a much lower level than some of the things that you’ve bumped into.

Peter   
One thing as you are talking, tomorrow’s a new day. No matter how bad today is, tomorrow’s a new day full of new hope, new opportunity and new ideas, new thoughts. I’ll try and go back to those times, like losing Todd, my son, to suicide was the worst day of my life. When I lost Todd, I went into a…it’s like flying in a cloud. I didn’t care what went on, you could have talked about anything, I just lost my desire, my will to…I couldn’t think of anything else…like walking around with your head in a cloud of milk. You just can’t see anything. You don’t care about anything. You hear it all and feel it, but you can’t see it. We had to have Todd’s funeral. I had to give a talk about Todd and I realized that I had to be strong for the family – I was the only one, there was a mess -    and for his friends. I had to be on that podium. I had to give the eulogy and I had to give it strong. I chose to celebrate Todd’s life. I walked through his life and how important it was everybody, because everybody, they were so shocked that we lost Todd, that he would do that. The people who knew him couldn’t believe it. Everyone felt it was their fault; how could I have missed this in Todd and not be there to help him? I said, no, it was nobody’s fault. You added to Todd’s life, imagine, each one of you – and I know most of them – I said, don’t feel sad, Todd’s on a journey, he chose that way to go and he lived a fantastic 35 year life. I had to be that strong guy and being that strong guy, recognizing that was my position in my mind as the head of the house and Todd’s father, gave me the strength. And so how I feel about…we’re talking about Todd, I want to talk about Michael too. Todd is still…it’d be the same if Todd went to Australia and he said, Dad, I’m going to Australia, you’re not going to see me again, I’m going to stay there, live in a village somewhere up in the farthest parts away. Well, I won’t see him again but I can still visualize memories and all that kind of stuff. We all are going to pass away at some point in time, it’s going to happen, so celebrate the lives. That’s what you’ve got to celebrate; what you had. There’s grief and there’s grieving. Grief is a bad place. Grief is bad, it’s sad. All you do is look at that I’ve lost that person. Grieving, to me, is different because you look and think about the times we had together, the celebration, and you start laughing at some of the dumb things that you did together and the fun that you had and how you miss them. That’s grieving…Todd…as you can hear, I have no problem talking about my son. None whatsoever, and none of the family does. So that’s, I think, being open-hearted. Get to grieving as quickly as you can and it’s okay, that is all okay. Now, losing Michael was another that was a whole different thing. I have a big hole in my heart. That’s the other thing about love, a heart is huge and you can love 20 people. I remember when I lost my dog who used to sit at the road waiting for me to walk home from school and wait for me, come running to meet me with his tail wagging. Skipper, one day he didn’t come, I looked for him and he was dead beside the road where a car had run him over. The last one. I was done with dogs. I can remember like it was yesterday. I was the saddest guy in the world. I have a hole today in my heart for Skipper. We got a dog later on called Hastings, my dad made me get another dog. I said, I don’t want a dog ever again. I don’t want a dog. I don’t want a dog. Dad said, you’re getting a dog. I wouldn’t accept it. He said, well, then it’s your sister’s dog and you’re looking after it. He got the dog, then I looked after it and I started to love that dog but I didn’t love Skipper less. That was when I was 10, 11. Skipper is still in my heart as big as he ever was and I see him running around and picking blueberries, doing all the things a kid does out of doors. Excuse me, I’m talking, I’m thinking about Skipper and Todd is the same way; he’s got his place in my heart. Rita has all my heart; hearts are huge, they’re just huge.

Brian   
Yes. You’ve addressed the personal side, I really appreciate you sharing those very personal stories. I like the distinction between what I see as the process of grieving versus remaining in a stuck state. Some people remain in a stuck state even over the loss of a dog, over the loss of a friend, or certainly a family member. Let’s jump to the…

Peter   
Brian, or even a celebrity.

Brian   
You’re absolutely right. And we know what’s…

Peter   
And what’s going on in the world today. The Ukrainian war, the Israeli war, it pains me, it’s grievous, we all have this stress with us, that’s why you live in day tight compartments, you can only deal with stuff you can deal with. You look after your share, just your compartment, have the best day you can have. Doesn’t matter if you’re going over Niagara Falls in a barrel…[laughter] have a nice day anyway, while you’re going.

Brian   
Let’s jump into the professional side whether it’s a career or business, let’s say we try an idea and it doesn’t work. We start a business and the business fails. We hire somebody and hope they work out and they don’t work out. We all have setbacks and adversity and obstacles. Share a little bit about that because you have had, again, a significant event, significant experience in that. But you also, I imagine in your 60 or 65 years in business, have faced other setbacks and obstacles that you’ve bumped into.

Peter   
When you embark upon on a voyage, it’s like you’re going to go on a boat somewhere. You’ve got to check it out; have you got the food, is there a leak, are you set for that journey? You’ve to got to examine, do you have captain skills not just take the boat, it’s a new business. You say you’re going to go start a little business, a business needs certain things. I’m not going to say these in any order, but it needs financial data, you need due diligence to look into a business. You need accounting help, you need legal help, you need sales help, you need organizational help – you need all that stuff to get a successful business – if you don’t have that, you will probably fail or you won’t grow fast enough. To have a good team…for example, Peter Thomas, if you said, Peter, I’d like you to come and help me with my business, what do you bring to the table? Well, I’ll be the visionary. I’m very good at being a visionary, looking to where we should go from where we are now. I’m not good at all at operations. I’m the visions guy, I’m the chair, I’m a good chairman, lousy president. Like with Dogtopia, that’s how we did that. I was a chairman, I could see the opportunity, I could buy the opportunity but I’ve got to find people to run it. So before you start your business, really have a hard talk with yourself and talk to a few friends. What does Brian bring to this business? What’s your skill set? If you feel that you are the best organized guy in the world, that’s great, then be the organized guy, don’t be the visionary. Nowadays, they’ve got things like fractional people; fractional CEOs, fractional CFOs, fractional CMOs, fractional social media, so go to people who know what they’re doing. Say, who do I need, what do I need, before I launch the boat. Another huge thing is money – and not necessarily your own money – but have you organized the money that you need? Because you probably need more money than you think you do. Just take the money you think you need and double it. Where are you going to get it from? I see so many people starting businesses but running out of money before the business is strong enough to invest in, known as blue sky. It’s easier to get people to come into the blue sky part than to come into the part when you’ve been around for a year and a half and you don’t have your sales. If you don’t have sales it doesn’t work. At the very beginning, like when I started Dogtopia, I raised ten million, of which I put in one million, I was the GP that went to family and friends and raised the ten million. Well, every one of those guys that put into the ten million, that first offer got bought out with substantial profit and if they waited a little longer they’d get more profit, wait a bit longer make more profit by staying in. But I didn’t risk my wealth in what I thought was an amazing project. I did the same thing with another project. I had a project in Westover Hills where many years ago there was a big bankruptcy thing called Resolution Trust and when all the businesses – mostly real estate businesses – failed, they put them into a government run trust. They went to people who bid to buy the assets from the trust. There was a piece of land – 1276 acres in San Antonio, Texas, SeaWorld is on the site, if anybody knows San Antonio – I made a bid to buy that. If you include the interest, and everything else, there was 60-80 million spent on the site by the developer. I went down to San Antonio and I made the offer of nine million for it. I bought it for nine million and immediately went in and the developer who had gone broke, a guy called Marty Wenders – who’s just a treasure on this planet – I said Marty, you’re the guy that knows everything about this, do you want to come back and run this with me? I’ll give you a monthly salary and I’ll give you a piece of the deal. Marty came in and he ran the deal – we took out 150 million. But that was me going to Marty, being kind, being generous, and he was just unbelievable. He still is unbelievable. But examining what you need and reach for the moon.

Brian   
So one thing I heard you say is – and these are my words but – identifying your highest value activity. You mentioned you’re a visionary; do what you’re good at and then hire other people to support that. You did say hire the experts, so if social media isn’t your strong suit then find a social media person, if marketing isn’t your strong suit then find a marketing person, if you’re not good with numbers then you probably shouldn’t be trying to put together financial statements.

Peter   
Brian, there’s a formula that I use. Before I knew the formula…I have a coach, I have a full time business coach, a fabulous guy, his name is Tony Jeary. Now Tony has a formula that he taught me called clarity, focus and execution. So everything I look at, I look through that lens. Get clarity. Like if you see an opportunity, whether it’s buying a house or whatever, once you get the clarity and understand what this is, what is this opportunity…even going on a vacation. Brian, let’s you and I, do you want to go somewhere next year? You say, I’m already going, I’m going to the Philippines. I say, how long are you going? A couple of weeks. Could we come with you? Do you want to partner? So okay, now I’ve got that much, clarity; we’re going to the Philippines, look on the map, there’s the Philippines. I like this idea, let’s focus. How much does it cost? When are we going? When’s the weather good? Can I afford it? All that sort of stuff is focusing. You get right down, there are no more questions to ask. Execution is the easiest word. Execute, you can use that in your daily life, or for the biggest business deals in the world. I use it for everything that I do.

Brian   
I love that, Peter. Our show is called LifeExcellence, as you know, and I think it’s fair to say you’ve achieved some level of excellence in your life. I’m curious, what does excellence mean to you?

Peter   
Perfect. It’s giving more than you receive and being thankful, have gratitude. Excellence is…I feel it. I feel like I have an excellent life so far.

Brian   
You definitely have and having you on the show today has been excellent too. Peter, thank you so much. It’s been great getting to know you even more. I know I speak for our listeners and viewers when I say we all appreciate the wealth of valuable information you’ve shared today.

Peter   
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you too.

Brian   
Thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others posting about today’s show with Peter Thomas on social media, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.