Giving People Clues that Turn Dreams into Reality

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Robert Riopel  0:00  

One thing I’m known for the first book I wrote is called Success Left a Clue. Because on stage, I’m known for giving clues to people traveling around the world, I’ve been able to notice and share the stage with and train some of the top thought leaders around the world. And so I noticed what makes the difference between somebody successful and someone who’s not. And I start putting those into clues in my life. And that’s what I’m kind of been known for. And I’m currently writing my second book, which is called The Authority Key. Because Richard, have you ever noticed how someone can have the same knowledge or experience as you or even less, but yet they make more money? And so why is that? Well, they’re seen as an authority, and you’re not. And so I teach people now through the second book I’m writing, how to not only be seen as an authority, the practical skills, being a podcast host, writing book, all the practical skills, which is great. But I also do a deep dive into, who are you as the person, and we put it into the hero’s journey here, think about, what is it that is your kryptonite that takes you out that sabotages you, things can be going great, you’re saving the world, you’re doing well, but also now you get crippled. Why is that? So I do a deep dive into the person themselves. The mental emotional, there’s so they really understand what it takes to be able to uphold that hero and be able to truly be their service for other people. Part of which is taking care of yourself as well. So that’s kind of what I’m being known for now.

 

Richard Matthews  1:28  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

  

 

Richard Matthews  2:23  

Hello and welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I’ve got live on the line. Robert Raymond Riopel. Are you there, Robert?

 

Robert Riopel  2:30  

I am here, Richard, great to be having fun, and getting ready to have a great connection.

 

Richard Matthews  2:37  

Awesome. So glad to have you here. I noticed you are also in an RV and traveling. Where are you at right now?

 

Robert Riopel  2:43  

Yeah, right now I’m actually in on what’s called crown land. It’s a government owned land, where you’re able to just come in and camp and have some fun, we’re with family. Because one of the things about being an entrepreneur is finding that balance of time and you know, why be successful if you can’t take time to enjoy life?

 

Richard Matthews  2:59  

Absolutely. It’s one of the things we talked about on the show all the time is giving yourself permission to play. I’m sure we’ll get more into that. What I want to do is talk real quick and go through your introduction, so people would know who you are, and then we can get into your story. So you are an international best-selling author, an App Designer, entrepreneur, trainer, you spent the last 18 years traveling around the world sharing your passion. Before we got on the call, you actually said, think of yourself like a Tony Robbins only shorter, which cracked me up a bit. So what I want to find out just to start off with is, what is it that you’re known for? What do you teach? And who are the people that you do that for?

 

Robert Riopel  3:38  

One of the things I’m known for the first book I wrote is called Success Left a Clue. Because on stage, I’m known for giving clues to people. Traveling around the world, I’ve been able to notice and share the stage with and train some of the top thought leaders around the world. And so I noticed what makes the difference between someone who’s successful and someone who’s not. And I started putting those into clues in my life. And that’s what I’m kind of been known for. And I’m currently writing my second book, which is called The Authority Key. Because Richard, have you ever noticed how someone can have the same knowledge or experience as you or even less, but yet they make more money? And so why is that? Well, they’re seen as an authority, and you’re not. And so I teach people now through the second book I’m writing, how to not only be seen as an authority? The practical skills, being a podcast host, writing a book, all the practical skills, which is great. But I also do a deep dive into, who are you as the person? And we put it into the hero’s journey here. Think about, what is it that is your kryptonite that takes you out that sabotages you? Things can be going great, you’re saving the world you’re doing well, but also now you get crippled. Why is that? So I do a deep dive into the person themselves. The mental, the emotional, there’s so they really understand what it takes to be able to uphold that hero and be able to tr]e their service for other people. Part of which is taking care of yourself as well. So that’s kind of what I’m being known for now.

 

Robert Riopel  5:08  

Oh, and you’re still on mute.

 

Richard Matthews  5:09  

And I muted myself, which is a good practice when you’re in an RV and traveling with the podcasts. So you get you to do the speaking you do the author stuff, do you also do like one on one coaching or training, I know, you mentioned, you spoke on stage a lot before the pandemic, you’ve gone through some transformations with your business?

 

Robert Riopel  5:27  

Yeah, one of my passions, because I’ve been blessed to train thousands of trainers in accelerated learning, experiential learning. And I have mentoring students that I bring on every year. And so now, I will be working a lot with them one on one, where instead of me traveling around the world to them, they’ll travel to my home, where I have a new train facility that we’ve just finishing the construction on, and I’ll be able to put them on stage in front of a camera and have them trained and then say, Stop, turn this way, lift your head, put a pause in there, and I’ll be able to work on them as a person to make more authentic, and more present, get them out of their head, Richard, and get them into their heart. So they’re connected with their audience, whether it’s one on one on one on many virtual or live events, they’ll be able to be in their true power, so that they can really move people.

 

Richard Matthews  6:17  

That’s a really interesting way to teach someone, cuz like I know how to do that, but I don’t know how to teach someone else how to do that, like how to be present, how to speak and how to sort of be yourself in front of an audience. And I went to school for preaching, actually, I have a degree in preaching. And my preaching professor in college, he used to tell me that he’s still upset to this day that I didn’t go into preaching, he’s like, in the 50 years, I’ve been teaching, I haven’t had a lot of people who had the natural skills that you have. So like, I understand that, but I don’t really understand how to teach it to other people. So it’s interesting that, that’s your skillset is teaching other people how to get up and be themselves and speak in front of an audience. I was just laughing with my wife the other day that, when I’m off daydreaming, in my head, I’m generally putting myself on a stage and writing speeches and how I would give them and how to talk through them. And the pauses and the stories and how you tell the story and all that stuff, that to me makes me happy. But I know most people getting in front of an audience is like their worst fear. It’s like listed up there with the fear of death. So you help people overcome that and then sort of being themselves in front of their audience, wherever that is, if it’s on a stage or on a podcast, or speaking to their customers one on one kind of thing. That’s what you help people do.

 

Robert Riopel  7:36  

Yeah. And that’s exactly it. And a lot of it comes from what you have just described. See your personal journey. You don’t give yourself credit right now, cuz you think you don’t know how to teach people to do that. But you just described a person perfectly when you’re daydreaming, what is it that you’re doing? And that’s exactly what you show other people to do. And you don’t make it any more difficult than that.

 

Richard Matthews  7:58  

So just like working on putting yourself in your head in that space?

 

Robert Riopel  8:04  

Yeah, and think about what it takes to become a superhero. They’re constantly living in there, it’s what you don’t see when they’re saving the world. That’s what everybody sees. But what you don’t see is what’s happening behind the scenes, the practicing the preparation, being true to themself, why am I doing this? Is that behind the scenes work that is the hard work that makes what everybody sees that the hero seemed to be easy. And they go, oh, look at how amazing they are. And then not realizing, I’d love to be like them. Well, okay, if you want to be like them, are you willing to do what they do behind the scenes to be ready to show up full on. And that’s a big difference right there.

 

Richard Matthews  8:48  

And to just bring that right into the superhero movies, every superhero movie has that hero montage. Where they have to do the training. My kids were just watching the old Hercules movie from Disney the other day, and they got the 20-minute scene where he’s being trained by the little goat. And he has to work really hard to get to the point where he can go fight the monster. And when he fights the monster, everyone knows who he is. And he’s famous and they’re like, oh, you killed the monster everything. But the crowd didn’t see the years of effort he put in to become Hercules.

 

Robert Riopel  9:21  

Exactly. And let’s go even further back to the original Conan the Barbarian. 

 

Richard Matthews  9:27  

Yeah.

 

Robert Riopel  9:28  

The years of pushing that wheel where, as a slave, he’s pushing it and he starts off young, and then as he gets older less and less people are pushing with them and he’s becoming bigger and bulkier and stronger until he’s doing it all on its own. That was his building up to be who he was that then become the hero he was.

 

Richard Matthews  9:45  

Yeah, one of the things that is a pet peeve of mine is in the entrepreneur space. When you see someone become successful. You’ll see all the people around them be like, oh, they’ve been an overnight success. I’m like, they’re not an overnight success. It takes a lifetime to have that overnight success moment.

 

Robert Riopel  10:00  

That’s it. 20-year overnight success. And do you know who Psy is, the singer Psy?

 

Richard Matthews  10:09  

Yeah, she sang at the last Apple event, right?

 

Robert Riopel  10:15  

Oh, no what’s her name? The Psy is the one that did Gangnam Style.

 

Richard Matthews  10:20  

Okay, so Psy. That’s Sia. Well, they are based from us.

 

Robert Riopel  10:24  

That’s right. Her name Sia, and she can’t see you. But Psy, when people look at the song Gangnam Style, and they go, Oh, one hit wonder overnight success. But one of the things I love to do, and I encourage all my audience is I love biographies. I want to know the journey. I want to know where they got, from where they were to, who they are. And you take a look at Psy as an example, that song, a lot of people don’t realize that what the journey was it took him to get where he is. And that song actually changed the internet. Did you know that?

 

Richard Matthews  11:00  

Yeah, it’s the first song to become internationally viral.

 

Robert Riopel  11:09  

Yeah, first time ever, our first video ever on YouTube to hit a billion views. No other song or video has ever done that before. And his original video did it. And because of hitting a billion views, he actually made, get this, he made Youtube have to recode their servers because they were using an algorithm that was 1 billion 200 some odd million that all big companies were using this string, no one thought anybody would ever get to that number. And also, as he’s building and getting more and more views, they realize if his song hits video, hit 1 billion 200 whatever million to string, he would crash all of YouTube. So because of one song, he had to redo everything. And so everybody’s like, wow, that was lucky, yada, yada. But if you look back at his journey, he was sent to school, from Korea to the US to learn to be a doctor or lawyer something his parents want him to be. He had the courage and a hero needs courage, we know that. He had the courage to say this is not what I want to do. I want to follow my own dream. And he dropped out of school. And because he did, his parents got upset, they made him come back home because they weren’t going to pay for him to be in the US. And he wanted to be an entertainer. And for 12 years, he put the work it, in Korea started getting to be known a little bit, got married, had twin daughters, and kept putting the work into all sudden one day came up with this idea for the song. And even the horsey move what’s known for where he’s doing that little dance on the screen in the video. That’s called the horsey move, he wanted to model a move after an animal. He went through 50 animals of what would they look like moving until they came up with the horsey move. And so all that work is what then allowed him to go viral. But yet, what do people look at? They go, oh, you had an easy or you were just lucky or, you’re in the right place. No, he put the work in. That’s how was able to become a hero.

 

Richard Matthews  13:06  

Awesome. So what I want to talk about then is your origin story. Every hero has an origin story it’s the thing that made them into the hero they are today. And we want to hear that story. Were you born a hero? Were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into teaching and speaking and authorship? Or did you start a job and eventually move over into becoming an entrepreneur? Basically, where did you come from?

 

Robert Riopel  13:28  

Yeah, I had the kind of dichotomy of my parents were always saying, as I grew up, Robert, you can do anything you want to put your mind to. And you can call the same thing you want. But on the other side was watching them model is that my parents, one of their big beliefs is you do whatever you need to do to support your family, even if you don’t like the job. So even though that you’re saying I could do whatever I wanted, I watched them. And our family moved from town to town, city to city, never staying in one workplace. Because to keep working and supporting family, they’re taking on different jobs, because the economy was not good. And so I had this struggle inside of me this dichotomy. And so when I started working, though, I did what I was taught, I started working hard. And if the company was any kind of good pay, and it looked like it’d be a secure job. Even if I hated it, I did that to take care of my family. And by the time I’m 21, though, I’ve worked for three different big companies that I got laid off and downsized from in my mind’s going, something’s wrong here. I’m working hard. I’m staying loyal to them. But I’m glad I learned the lesson back then, Richard, that if I wanted any kind of success in my life, I had to be at the steering wheel of that success. I had to take control and not a necessity. Because we’re in an economy that was not good. I couldn’t find a real job. I started delivering pizzas for a little company called Domino’s Pizza. You may have heard of them. And because of my work ethic, I became a manager. My wife became my assistant manager. When we started doing our condition. We started working hard and we started working open to close seven nights a week, seven days a week, and a year and a half in, we got the news from our franchisee, that he was selling his stores. He had two stores, he was selling them getting out of Domino’s Pizza. We started to get worried because it was like, here we go again. We knew the first people laid off when a new order came in, they laid off the managers and brought in their own management team. And so in my mind, it was like now I’m about to get laid off again, we have to go find a new job, because both of us are working here. My wife’s like, well, why would we do that? And I’m like, What do you mean? She goes, why don’t we just buy the store, we’re qualified to be franchisees. And I’m like, because we don’t have any money. That’s what we hoped. And I’ll tell you, one part of my origin story that has made me who I am today is that I have an amazing wife. We met when we were 13. We started dating when we were 16. We got married when we were 19. And we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary. And Richard don’t do the math and figure out how old I am, okay?

 

Richard Matthews  16:04  

That’s awesome.

 

Robert Riopel  16:05  

And because of her tenacity of not thinking inside the box, I was taught you stay inside the box, don’t think outside of it. But she’s like, no, let’s find out how we can do this. And so we started learning and making a lot of mistakes, a lot of stumbles. But we learned something from each time and start to learn what to say what not to until we now had the confidence that we were actually able to go to our bank. We knew what to say what not to. And because of having a great relationship with our bank manager, she introduced us to the business manager. And we ended up getting not the funding for the store that we were working in that we wanted to buy. We actually got 100% financing for both the stores my franchisee had for sale, and we became franchisees, and now it was almost like that, oh, we’re franchisees, we’re successful. We knew how to run a store. But we didn’t know how to run a business. And there’s a big difference. And in the first couple of years, we went through a lot of struggles, but we learned. My whole mindset was if there’s money in the bank, we must be doing okay. And that was kind of the success factor. But when we finally got things caught up and figured out no, we weren’t doing very well, because we thought we could do the accounting on our own, we thought we had to do everything ourselves. But as we learned and we stumbled through, we started to get some success, we got to figure it out, we started running the businesses. And as we got more success, our spending habits got more excessive as well. And by the time we were franchisees for eight years, we were over $150,000 in debt and going down quickly. And that was kind of like the Achilles heel because I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced financial stress. But to me, that’s one of the biggest threats anybody can go through. And because we’re in the space, we have been introduced to personal development. I remember my brother in law came up and again, not to date myself. But he said, Look what I just got in the mail, these cassette tapes from this guy called Tony Robbins, you got to listen to these. And I’m like, I don’t need to listen to those because I wasn’t open to it. But as we financially got more and more stressed, we’re open to going into a three-day personal development training. And we walked in, and we learned, first of all, why we’re in debt. It was our spending habits. Where did the programming come from? We learned all about that. More importantly, we learned to take responsibility, quit putting the blame on others. It was us that was causing the debt. And then third, we learned how to get out of it if we wanted. And when we left that three-day weekend, we went, we’re putting this into action. Heroes are called action heroes for a reason. Because they take action. People that don’t have success, don’t take action. A lot of people left that weekend went, Oh, that was a nice weekend. It just changed my life. How? What are you doing with it? Well, it changes my life. But we decided to put it into action. And because we did, we were able to actually go from over $150,000 in debt to actually retire completely financially free nine months later at the age of 32. And our minds went, wow, that worked. If this much information gives that result, what would more do. And so for the next two and a half years, we dove in and became students from every master we could. Because I’m a big believer too Richard, don’t just learn one way, don’t just learn from one person. Learn from as many people as you can. And while we’re doing that, I found that my passion, my true power. The reason I’m here on this planet is to help educate other people. Here’s how my dream started, and if your audience gets nothing else, I want them to really understand this, change can start with one person. See, it wasn’t, I want to travel around the world and I want to empower hundreds and thousands of lives. If I can help one person, do what my wife and I did. go from being deep in debt to being retired financially free, would make it all worthwhile. And from that journey over 18 and a half years ago, also, and I’ve now been blessed to travel around the world several times, personally training over half a million people around the world. Which impacts me even more, and just doing and living my passion. So that’s kind of what’s been the journey that I’ve gone through.

 

Richard Matthews  20:25  

That’s an incredible story, everything from meeting your wife at 13, to going through corporate, running a store and buying the store and going into debt and learning how to actually take that business and turn it into financial freedom. That’s a pretty incredible story and that’s like you get to financial freedom by my age now. A couple of years earlier than I am, and then you’ve spent the last 18 years building an entirely new career in the training space, which is incredible. So you’ve done the success journey more than once. So just out of curiosity, do you see the same struggle arc the second time around that you did the first time?

 

Robert Riopel  21:09  

Oh, always, part of the things I teach is something called the Four Phases of Life. Which is, and I love that you said an arc, because when I talk about the four phases, and I’m drawing for people to listen, it has the up has the down, and they have the backup because that’s how everything in the universe sits its energy. So it’s traveling and frequencies and vibrations. And what people don’t realize is, no matter where you are at or at in your life, you’re going through these four phases continuously, and most people resist them and that’s why they struggle. But if they actually learn to understand them, and embrace them, that’s when they can have more ease. Even when times of going through what’s called chaos, they can actually embrace the chaos, knowing it’s meant to help them evolve to being a greater person. And if they embrace it, instead of resisting it, you’ll get through it easier, and they’ll be able to then grow even more. So absolutely, always going through those parts.

 

Richard Matthews  22:05  

One of the things that I always think about is, we talk a lot about the climb up, and not a lot of people talk about the other side, which is going down. And I always think, you have to learn to climb up, but you also have to learn how to fly on the way down. 

 

Robert Riopel  22:20  

Absolutely.

 

Richard Matthews  22:20  

And because there’s always going to be struggles, there’s always going to be things that are hard. I have a travel channel because we travel full time. And one of the things that I have in our intro video is talking about the texture and contrast of life. And it’s the high highs that you get to have when you’re traveling as we do with our kids and family, where we’ve done everything from jumping off of waterfalls in Yosemite to standing on the side of the road in the desert with our coach dead and wondering how we’re going to get to the next spot cuz there’s no cell service and no people and crying on the side of the road. We’ve been to both of those places. And it’s part of what makes life interesting and fun is that texture and contrast. Again for people who are driving it, they try to keep themselves in the median. And life’s just no fun there, it’s when you have the big swings all the way across, whether it’s the financial struggles, or the financial successes or your business or your travels or your kids, any of that stuff. It’s everything in between that makes life fun and worth living. And I guess to sort of tie it together. It’s that whole trying to resist the bad parts or resist the things that you don’t think are worthwhile, I guess is you’re missing out on some of the best parts of life.

 

Robert Riopel  23:59  

Yeah, because if you think about it, some of our greatest lessons come from what did not work in our life. And so as an example is, I’ve been blessed to share the stage with the Dalai Lama, Richard Branson, multimillionaires, billionaires, some of the greatest thought leaders in the world. But because I was overliving my passion at one point, I also ended up going through two back surgeries and being laid up in bed not being able to move because I didn’t take care of myself. I just gave gave gave without regenerating, rejuvenating, and saying, are you standing properly on stage? I herniated a disc, so I had to go through two back surgeries because I was spending up to 12 hours or more on stage a day, being at home only on average two days a month when I first started training and mixed with all the flying and not standing properly, that disc herniated. And so all of sudden the world came crashing to a halt. And I was gonna take a year off because I was also burnt out from over living my passion did end up being three and a half a few years after I took off, because I was burnt out, and I had to go through a health rejuvenation. And so some people go, oh my god, that’s terrible. And I look back and go, but some of the greatest lessons of who I am today came from that time. It’s made me who I am today. And so I look back, and I go, would I want to go through it again? No, but thank you for the lessons. And now I know to have more balanced and I want to be clear Richard of what I’m talking about. So I’m not talking to everything perfect, like, Oh, look, it’s everything’s always changing to me the balance of the adjustments you make, the adjustments. So I went from doing 40 to 50 trainings a year not having breaks, to then not being able to do my passion at all for three and a half years, which was not as bad as well, because now I started going into old negative thoughts or negative habits. And so when I came out of retirement, it was, okay, I’ll do 20 trainings a year maximum, wherever in the world I am. So I still get six months a year to be at home, six months, and how many people would go, I wish I had six months off a year. So I created that reality because I learned what did not work. And for the last eight and plus years that I was out of retirement before COVID is I was doing 19, 20, or 21 consistently every year, that’s how many trainings, I do in a year with 19, 20, or 21, right in there, because I set boundaries, and I hold to that boundary. And that’s allowed me to go, yeah, this is gonna allow me to have the healthy life I want to have in all areas, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial. Because we’re not just one person, we got to cover all those areas.

 

Richard Matthews  26:41  

There are so many good things in that. But I want to pull out one of the things talking about work life balance. I always hated the law scale metaphor that people use for that with the scales that go back and forth. And people think they’re trying to get their life into this some sort of fanciful perfect balance, that’s never gonna happen, because it’s an incorrect metaphor for work life balance. And the metaphor I use for people that I think is really helpful, or at least helpful for me is that work life balance is more like a rubber band, a rubber band can be stretched and can be stretched really far actually if you stretch it too far, it snaps, you experienced that. You know exactly what that’s like when you snapped the rubber band. But if you look at the way a rubber band works, if you want to rock it forward, you have to stretch it, you have to put in the work and the effort and you stretch the rubber band, and then you have to also let it go in order to move forward. And when you let it go, it moves back to a resting state. But if you keep stretching it, it’ll snap, then it won’t go anywhere, and it’s broken. And so your work life balance is a lot of times it’s more of moving back and forth between the stretched state where you’re working and putting a lot of effort and making something happen and pushing the rock up the hill, so to speak, to moving back to the rested state, and making sure that you take time to do that. I call it giving yourself permission to play. Because it’s something that you have to do in order to be successful. A lot of entrepreneurs think to themselves, that recreation and rest is something that I will reward myself with when I do good work. They don’t realize that that’s not the way that it works. You have to have recreation and rest in order to do good work.

 

Robert Riopel  28:31  

And that’s totally true. And think about when it comes to money. What’s wealth rule number one, pay yourself first. So why won’t you do that with rest and relaxation? See, most people that get into financial stress because they go, I’ll take and pay myself whatever’s left at the end of the month. And there’s usually more months than money, so they never get success. And but the moment they start paying themselves first for their financial freedom, their life changes. So same concept with who you are. If you’re Work, work, work, go go go, I’ll rest and play when I have time. You’re never gonna have time. But if you make it a priority, and so as an example on a calendar, now I live by this. I live by the calendar on my phone. And so what happens is the first thing we’ll put on our calendar is we will put in what we call balance pieces. Time for family, time to ourselves, the things that rejuvenate us, some exercise. Those go on first, so now we’ve paid ourselves first. And so we’re out camping with family right now. And my wife’s already got on the calendar for next month, our next camping trip with family. And so this one here, I put in a little bit of work into it, but the next one I’ll keep it totally clear, because then the other part that comes in is people go Oh, Robert, I’m so busy. I don’t have time for all this stuff. And what I’ve learned in a lot of my research, Richard is people get really good at being busy, but they’re not necessarily productive. And there’s a total difference there. And so when you start looking at it and say you scheduled balance pieces first, then I schedule in what I call focus time. In focus time, writing my new book is an example. I could say, okay, I’m gonna go to my office, I’m gonna write my book. Eight hours later, I’ll come back home, man, was I busy but it doesn’t seem like I got a lot done. What was I doing in those eight hours? Oh, I was on social media at 10, I was checking my emails, I’m doing text, I was, oh I, and I wrote a little bit of the book. But see if I go from 10 to 11, because research shows that a person can only actually stay focused for about an hour at a time before they start getting distracted. So I’ll say, okay, 10 to 11 focused time, writing on my book, this is what goes on my calendar next is focus times. And now when I go to my office for that hour, because I’m productive, I can accomplish more in about an hour than six hours of being busy. And so when people learn to be productive, they find they free up so much more time to be able to have a balance in their life. And the other side benefit of doing that is also that as you’re doing the focus time, you can be more present. Especially in success, and this is one of the reasons why success gets such a bad name. Entrepreneurs, I love that you call them hero preneurs. Because one of the reasons they get the bad name is they’re like, well, your family pays the price for your success. Everything else pays a price for your success. But let me ask you this question. Have you ever been in a conversation with Richard with someone where you’re there and you’re talking to him and physically you’re together, but you know their mind is somewhere else?

 

Richard Matthews  31:40  

Yeah. 

 

Robert Riopel  31:41  

See, that’s not being present. And so people equate that a good quality family life is how much time I spend with my family. But most of the time, when you are there, you’re not. Because you’re so stressed out about business and everything else, you’re not truly present. And what I’ve discovered is that family and relationships take quality time, over quantity time, every day. So that if you’re actually when you’re with them, you’re with them. And they know you’re present, that will anchor in more than being there five times longer, but not really there with them. And so that’s the other distinction. And so when you put in your balance pieces first, then you have a focus time that allows you to now have that presence so that when you’re with someone, you’re with them.

 

Richard Matthews  32:29  

Yeah. And what’s really powerful about that is when you learn how to do that because I didn’t, I was terrible at that for a long time. And I let my business take over my life because I didn’t have boundaries. And I didn’t know how to build that focus time in. And I learned probably four or five years ago. One of the principles of life is that creativity thrives with restrictions. You mentioned boundaries a minute ago when you have boundaries for your business and for your life. And so I remember early in my entrepreneur career, the only way that I could get more successful was to put in more time, that’s what I thought, I had to just work harder and work longer, and I would get more results. Which led to the whole working 12, 15, 16, 18 hour days, all the time, seven days a week, trying to get where I wanted to go. And I read a study in a book about something they were doing with children. And what they were doing was they were taking them to an outside playground area. And it had two sections, the door opens up onto a concrete pad. And then outside the concrete pad is a grassy area. And then outside of the grassy area is like the sidewalk and the roads that surround it. And they would strip everything out. So there’s no fences, no nothing, and let all the kids out to play. And the kids, when there’s no fences or anything, they would just play on the concrete pad. Because that was the natural boundary that they saw. And that’s where they would play. And so they would do the same experiment. And they repeated it a lot with different groups of kids, they put the fence up around the big grassy area. Soon as the fence was up the kids would play in the whole area. And the boiled down lesson is that creativity thrives with boundaries. They go through a whole thing on how that happens. But when you look at anything that people do in Creative Arts, I’m a photographer, for instance, and the whole world of photography is learning how to take what you see and fit it into a little box. You have restrictions that box is your restriction. What are you going to show in that box? And what I learned with my business is that I had to do the same thing with my time. So I started experimenting early on with what happens if instead of having unlimited time during the day if I only have eight hours, I’ve got to get everything I need to do in eight hours. And my productivity went through the roof. I got more done. And so I was like, well, if it works well like that. What happens if I cut it and instead of eight hours, six hours, and what if it’s instead of seven days a week, it’s five days a week and then what if it’s instead of five days a week, it’s four days a week. And then what if instead of it’s eight hours, it’s four hours a day. And now, where I’m at now, I run two big businesses from the back of my RV while traveling the world in less than four hours a day, four days a week, and get more done in 16 hours than most people get done in 80, 90 hours a week with two different organizations. And a lot of that comes with learning how to do exactly what you were just talking about, which is manage your calendar and have productive focused time.

 

Robert Riopel  35:34  

Yep. And that’s it. And you just summed it all up perfectly, because that’s exactly what it is right there. And I wish they would teach that in school. 

 

Richard Matthews  35:44  

I wish they would teach those things in school. That’s the reason our kids are homeschooled. Because they get to learn a lot of those things firsthand, I didn’t learn those things. But my kids are getting to learn those things, which means I’m pretty sure my son’s going to be more successful than I am, like half the age that I was, which is, I think, a cool thing. But I do want to bring up the next subject, which is about your superpowers. And every iconic hero has a superpower, whether it’s a fancy flying suit made by genius intellect, or the ability to call down Thunder or super strength. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with, or you developed over time that really helps you help the people in your life overcome their villains. And the way that I like to frame it for people is if you look at all the skills that you’ve developed, you probably have a common thread that sort of ties all those skills together. And that common thread is where your superpower is. So that sort of framing, what do you think your superpower is?

 

Robert Riopel  36:50  

I would say it is I’m able to see in people what they’re not seeing in themselves, their gift, and then pulling it out of them. And helping them really see it for the first time, a lot of time. And then how to own it with confidence, not arrogance. And when I’m talking to someone, and all of a sudden something will hit me and I’ll tell them about their life. They’re like, how did you know that? How did you figure that out? And so I can do a deep dive into people.

 

Richard Matthews  37:16  

That’s really cool. So I want to pull out, one of the things you said there was confidence, not arrogance. And I’ve always loved that subject because people mistake confidence for arrogance frequently. And they mistake arrogance for confidence. They don’t understand the difference. And the difference, I think, and I’m curious to see what your thoughts are on this. But arrogance is generally masking insecurity of some sort, whether or not it’s fear of or not really believing in themselves, or actually not having the skill that they’re being arrogant about. They don’t actually have the skill to back it up. 

 

Robert Riopel  37:56  

That’s exactly it.

 

Richard Matthews  37:56  

Whereas confidence is the opposite, you’ve earned the right to stand on the top of the hill, you’ve climbed the hill, you’ve done it, you’ve been there, you’ve done that you’ve gotten the results. And knowing that and being able to present that to someone else and be like, hey, this is the thing I can help you with because I’ve been there. And that’s really the difference.

 

Robert Riopel  38:17  

That’s exactly it. And it is a subtle line between the two. And sometimes you do have to cross over. And I’ll give an example. Because I’ve been blessed to develop thousands of trainers around the world. And at one point, I was doing a five day training, I remember and, and we were talking about this before you hit record, it’s the work behind the scenes that you don’t see that make a person a hero and make what they do in front, being the hero looks easy. And then doing this training. And at the beginning of training, the first day and a half, it’s going through the basics, the ugly behind the scenes stuff that looks, if you want to be good, you’ve got to do this work. And there’s this one guy, he just gets up out of the audience. And he just shouts out, he says, I’m out of here. I’ve got 300 students in the audience, I said, what’s going on? And he goes, this is too basic, I’m already doing a million dollars a year, I don’t need this stuff. And in that moment, I went into a little bit of arrogance. And I said to him, then sit your ass down, because I’m doing 15 to $20 million a year. So obviously, there’s something you don’t know, that I can teach you. And all sudden he stopped and he looked at me and he sat back down. And at the end of the training, he comes up to me he’s like, wow, I needed that kick in the ass. He said, Now I see what’s been holding me back because I just think I have all the answers already. And I’m not willing to learn from someone who’s maybe got a little more experience and a little more success than I do. And he was just so grateful for it. And that’s not me to normally go into that kind of a zone but at that moment, it’s what was needed and whether you say my superpower, I readied him on that he needed that kick. At that moment I snapped over to then because usually I won’t sit down and go, hey, I do 15 to $20 million a year. But at that moment I owned it and it got him to sit back down. And that is the difference, the confidence, I can be on stage and I honed my craft. And so I don’t have to think about it anymore. I don’t sit there and have to think, okay, how do I get the lasers to shoot out of my eyes? Just sit there, and I could turn it on. Because I’ve got that confidence in it. And that’s confidence. But I love what you said, cuz you hit so well. Arrogance usually comes from lack of self esteem. So they’re trying to overcompensate or they’re not really good, as good as what they’re trying to say they are they’re trying to fake it while they make it. That’s where the arrogance really kicks in, in a lot of people.

 

Richard Matthews  40:55  

Yeah, and what’s interesting is whether people know it or not, they can read that in someone. They can see that. Again, most people couldn’t name it, or put their finger on it and say, this is why that person makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to work with them. But a lot of times, it’s that line where someone is in the arrogant spot and not in the confident spot. Because it’s one of those subconscious trust signals that people give off. And hard to nail but when you understand that, you can probably see that in people because of your superpower and where they need to help and what they can do to move from one side to the other.

 

Robert Riopel  41:33  

And it’s learning the lessons too like when I’m teaching someone to sell from the stage or market from the stage, one of my number one rules is never ever, ever sell something you don’t believe in 100% yourself. Because if you do, then people are going to smell it, they’re going to see, something in their subconscious can be going, there’s some off here. And it could be that you could be the greatest slickest sales person in the world. But if you’re just trying to sell something, because you want to make the sale, they’re gonna sense it. And that’s my rule is don’t sell something unless you believe in it 100%. Because then if you do, they’re going to get that as well. They’re going to get Wow, they actually believe in this part of themselves. That’s awesome. And it’s all the little subconscious triggers that are going off in people’s minds. 

 

Richard Matthews  42:23  

It’s actually one of the things I’m working on with my son right now because he keeps wanting to start a business. And he’s got all these product ideas that he’s coming to me with like little craft and he wants to make other stuff. And I keep coming back to him like okay, so it’s a cool idea. But if you sold that to someone, what’s the value they’re gonna get out of it? And do you believe in that value? So anyway, we’ve got whole stuff we’re working on in that area. But it’s an important lesson. 

 

Robert Riopel  42:48  

Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Richard Matthews  42:51  

So my next question then is the flip side of your superpower, which is the fatal flaw. And just like every Superman has their kryptonite, or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have something that’s held you back in your business, something that you struggled with. For me, it was a lot of things, I mentioned already, I struggled with the lack of self care, which is not having set boundaries, and letting my clients walk over me, and letting my time walk all over me. Or one of the other ones I struggled with for a long time was perfectionism. I was like, I could just tweak it to make it a little bit better, and then you never bring anything to market, which means it’s not perfect because it’s not existing. So it’s a very low standard to hold yourself to is perfection. And so anyway, I struggled with both of those things for a long time. But I think more than the struggle is how you have worked to overcome it, so that people in our audience could learn a little from you.

 

Robert Riopel  43:38  

I would say self-doubt, it’s been what’s held me back. And the way I’ve combated it is by surrounding myself with amazing people. And it is a gift now I give to my students, especially that is beginning as a trainer, I’ll say, let me be your greatest supporter, your greatest cheerleader until you have the confidence in yourself to own it. Because I’ve gone through the struggles, and like even when I took the three and a half years off, I was getting ready to do my first training out of retirement. And my wife knows something’s wrong. And she’s like, what’s going on? And I’m like, nothing. She’s like, Bull, what’s going on? I said, Well, what if I don’t have it anymore? And she’s like, pardon me? So what if I don’t know how to train anymore? It’s been three and a half years since I’ve been on stage. And she looks at me, she goes, you’re done with that crap. I’m like, what do you mean am I done? She goes, are you done with that story? I’m like, but what if I don’t, she goes, trust me, the moment you step on stage, it’s gonna be like you hadn’t left. And I’m like, but I haven’t, She goes, just let it go. And she was right. The moment I stepped back on stage. It was like I hadn’t been gone for three and a half years, like riding the bike. But that’s what I go through self-doubt.

 

Richard Matthews  44:56  

It’s that imposter syndrome.

 

Robert Riopel  44:58  

Yeah. And so, I used to be a big believer and surround yourself with like minded people. But then a mentor of mine last year gave me a paradigm shift on that. Because basically what he said is, if you’re surrounded with like minded people, well, those people are complainers, you’re going to be a complainer because you’re all like minded. He says, you want to surround yourself with growth minded people. And the difference is, as a growth minded person will be the one that will be there to pick you up when you fall. They’ll be there to cheer you on when you’re doing well. But they’re also going to be the ones that are willing to have the tough conversations with you. Why are you playing smaller? Why are you sabotaging, they’re the ones that are going to be willing to have those conversations and kick you in the butt sometimes. And so now, I make sure I surround myself with as many growth minded people as I can because I am not perfect. And if I try to do everything, even perfectionism, I look the same. I’d rather have sloppy success, then perfect mediocrity. That’s how many people don’t get started cuz it’s never right enough to get started. And so I’m going to get started. And then I’m going to make adjustments from what’s not working. Three questions that I use all the time, Richard, what’s working? Make a list, no emotion, just, here’s what worked in that scenario. What didn’t work, make a list, no emotion, then what can we do differently? And that’s where the adjustments in the enhancements come in. Okay, well, I designed out, version one was nowhere near what I wanted to be. But version two that we’re working on right now, is going to be so much more dynamic because we learned what wasn’t working in version one. And we at least got it out and got it testing. So now we know what differences we want to make.

 

Richard Matthews  46:42  

That’s fascinating. I have an app that I want to get developed that will help support one of the services we run in our business. So that’s the thing that’s on my learn to do list. But yeah, one of the phrases that goes in my head on that same path is from a book I read a number of years ago called Launching a Leadership Revolution. And they talked about the plan, to check and adjust the cycle. So you plan something and you do it, then you check what didn’t work, and then you adjust, and you repeat. So plan, do check, adjust.

 

Robert Riopel  47:14  

Exactly, look, the space shuttle or rocket going to the moon is only ever on course 3% of the time, the other 97% of the time is adjusting. And that’s life, that’s a perfect example of life right there.

 

Richard Matthews  47:29  

Yeah, absolutely. And if you don’t do the adjusting a little bit off, you’ll end up on a different planet. 

 

Robert Riopel  47:37  

Like, this doesn’t look like the moon. 

 

Richard Matthews  47:41  

So I want to flip and talk about something different than which is your common enemy. So every superhero has a common enemy, it’s the thing that they fight against in their world. And in the world of business, it takes on a lot of different forms. But I like to put it in the context of your clients, the ones that hire you to come in and help them, whether that’s on stage or picking up your books or coming actually to your new facility and working with you one on one. It’s a mindset or it’s a flaw that they struggle with, that you’re constantly having to help them fight to overcome that if you had your magic wand and as soon as they sign on the dotted line, you could just bop them on the head and that would be solved. What is that common enemy that you have to fight against in your business?

 

Robert Riopel  48:22  

Procrastination. Think of any business owner, especially when you’re self employed, you’re not actually an entrepreneur, you’re a solopreneur. And it’s so easy knowing you’re managing your own time. And this is coming from and I will tell you since the Olympics is going on while we’re recording this, I am a gold medal procrastinator, I am. So I’m coming from the experience of this. I’ve been on that podium so many times getting that gold medal and procrastination. And what I realized is instead of fighting it, because what you resist will persist instead of beating myself up for being a procrastinator, because like, you know what? Okay, I know I am. So how can I work with it? And so a quote I came up with a few months ago is I designed my day in such a way that procrastination cannot play. And what that simply means is, I will make sure because anytime I make a commitment to someone else, I will keep it. So I will make my phone calls, meetings and interviews early in the morning trainings early in the morning, so I have to get up. Because if I don’t, I’m also a snooze button ninja. I have got to snooze as you talk about being stealthy. It’s like that snooze button goes off. It doesn’t even know where it came from that I’ve got it turned off. I’m so quick. If something’s not scheduled, then I’ll sleep in. And I’ll hit the button and hit it again. And have you ever noticed I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this Richard, but the nine minutes so on my alarm I’ve got nine minutes, if I hit snooze, the nine minutes between the alarm going off tend to be some of the best sleep you get of the whole night. You know, right? So it’s like, I can sit there and it’d be like, nine minutes like, and I’ve got it down. So now I am on my schedule. And so this morning, my first training was at 7:30 am. And so to be ready, I’m up at 6:45 to make sure I’m ready to go, that everything’s in place. Because I know that I’ve made the commitment, I’m going to be up and now my day is going, and I’ll be good for the rest of the day. Because I’ve designed my day that way.

 

Richard Matthews  50:35  

So you need one of those beds that when the alarm goes off, it just dumps you out of it.

 

Robert Riopel  50:40  

Right. Exactly. Now, remember, I’ve been through two back surgeries, that may not be a good idea.

 

Richard Matthews  50:46  

You can have that padding when you’re dumped out of bed. But one of my weird skills, I don’t need an alarm clock. I have a really good internal alarm clock, like if I want to get up at 4:30 in the morning, or 5:30 or 6:47 and 30 seconds. And that’s what I want to get up. I will wake up at that time, every time, It’s weird. My wife thinks it’s crazy. I don’t know how I do it, It’s just a thing. So I don’t ever use an alarm clock. I’ve never had to. But I totally understand the sentiment. Because I am definitely on the procrastination thing, I get that. The thing that really sticks out to me is like what I call what you’re doing is setting up psychological barriers or encouragements to success. So as an example, one of the things that I do is I have a Water Flosser that I use to floss my teeth. And if I put that by my sink, I never use it. Because I don’t go to my sink on a regular basis. It’s not a part of my day. But if I take it and I move it three feet to the right, and I stick it in my shower. I use it every day. Because I shower every day. And so it’s a psychological encouragement to success. You’re setting your life up that way. And one of my businesses is called Push Button Podcasts. It’s a podcasting agency. And one of the things I’m actually doing a training on right now is how to set up your studio like this, have a little studio setup. And the reason I teach that to business owners who want to do podcasting is that if you have a simple, easy studio that makes you look good and sound good, that’s a psychological encouragement to success, you’re going to sit down and record more often, it’s easy to do if you know how to set it up, and it’s in the place. As opposed to, I don’t know how I’m going to record. I’m not sure how I’m going to sound like I don’t know what it’s gonna look like. All those are psychological barriers to action. So you want to set your life up and whatever it is. Whether it’s a studio or putting your Water Flosser in the right place, or making sure your appointments are at the beginning of the day, that you have those psychological encouragements to good action and those psychological barriers to bad action.

 

Robert Riopel  53:00  

That’s exactly it. And I think you and I will have a conversation off camera over the next little bit because I’m about to set up my new office as my studio with multiple cameras to proper lighting to getting my Shure mic all set up, because it’s also my command center for my training room, which we’re all have a stage and I’ll be able to have this speak and everything, but all my main recordings will be done in my office.

 

Richard Matthews  53:25  

So you can help me test the market because one of the things I want to do is come up with something like, What’s a one on one consultation, actually worth to someone who wants to set up their studio? Because I’ve done it for several friends and they love their studios now. And it’s amazing what you can do over Zoom with a camera and everything to get it all set up right. But that’s one of my skill sets as a photographer and a videographer. I know how to make it look and sound good. I’m in the back bedroom of an RV with only 36 inches of space. And my stuff looks like this. So I’ve got that skill set. So anyway, I’d be happy to help you get that setup and look good.

 

Robert Riopel  53:59  

The other thing is, what makes the Avengers The Avengers is they all have different superpowers that when combined, make an even better collaboration. And when you talk about growth mindset, that’s what it is, who can be your Avengers? What’s your superpower? Because where you have a superpower you also have weaknesses. So what other superhero has a superpower that complements your weakness so that together you can accomplish more and help more people? That’s really to me what a hero is and that’s what a really a hero preneur Is it? Because think about, again, money, people think being an entrepreneur is all about money. No, it’s about the lifestyle you can have, in all those rooms mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial. It’s about how you can have that life you truly want. So when you surround yourself with the other superheroes and you benefit because you will be paid in direct proportion to the value you give. If you find a way to give more value to people, money becomes a beautiful side effect. The result is not the reason. And then that’s what you talk about a fulfilling life, you talk about the superhero, being able to have long term, why does someone like a superman last for decades versus a superhero that burns out very quickly. It’s all in powers their behind the scenes life set up so they can have that balance.

 

Richard Matthews  55:28  

Absolutely. And one of the lessons I work on with my son all the time, we do little encouragements we’re out living the whole you get paid in direct proportion to the value you provide, is I will point people out when wherever we’re at, and have him tell me, what’s the value he’s providing to society. I signed for there on the side of the road, the waitress at the store, when we moved to New Jersey, and they pump the gas for you. And I have him walk through the value that person is providing to society. And then what the scale is? And then we start backing it out. We’re like, okay, so if it’s the waitress at the restaurant, what’s the value they’re providing? Okay, and then what’s the manager and the value that they’re providing? And then what about the restaurant owner? What are they providing? What if they have more than one restaurant? And how much value are they providing there, and we back that out to so that he can see the scale of value that happens. And then how that impacts the value that they’re going to get back in return for that. And it’s one of those things like it took me forever to see that myself. So I work a lot with my kids on helping them see that because it’s an invisible thing. So you have to show it to someone in order for them to be able to see that principle.

 

Robert Riopel  56:48  

Yep, totally. I love that. That’s a great thing to be teaching children. Actually, that’s a great thing to be teaching anybody. Because if they see that value, then they can understand well, okay, I guess I’m making this much because of this. And if I want to make more than how else can I adjust the value? And people think, well, that means I have to work harder, no, work smarter because I love to help people find what their passion is. And then show them how to make money doing what they love. Because like all things in life, Richard, you know, it’s not always easy, you’re gonna hit roadblocks. And so if you’re doing something that you hate, but it’s making good money, well, the moment you hit a roadblock, you’re going to stop, you’re going to quit, you’re going to get upset. But if you’re doing what you’re passionate about, and the money’s a beautiful side effect, if you hit a roadblock, or a bump it’s gonna be like, Okay, keep going, this is just temporary, and you’re going to see that you’re living that life waking up in the morning going, I can’t wait for today, instead of waking up going, oh, here goes another day doing what I hate. Big difference in life. How many people know what you’re doing with your family traveling across in your RV. If more people experiment with doing that, they would learn that there’s so much more to life than how many people never leave the town they were born in. And that’s their whole world, right? Until I became a trainer, I’d never traveled outside of North America, or accelerate. I went to the Bahamas on a cruise. So I was getting to see some good stuff. But now, I’ve learned more tolerance by traveling around the world, meeting all these different amazing people in different cultures. And also going, they’re the same as me, even though there are differences. And it’s not one that is better than the other. We are all the same. It’s just different scenarios. And I look for the beauty now, everywhere I go, instead of looking for what’s wrong, or why they are not as good as me, I look for what’s amazing about that. The first time in India, it was after a major flood that would have shut any city in North America down for months and months and months. Within weeks Mumbai was back up and running, even after six foot floods in their streets. And they’re up and running. And I’m like, Oh, my first thought, oh, it’s dirty. But then I took a breath because I’m walking and I went, wow, good notice, why are you focusing on dirty and I changed the filters in my lamps. And I said let’s look for what’s beautiful. And the moment when I did that I started noticing that there were more people that were smiling and happy with way less than what I have, but they were happier. And I like look at how happy these people are. And as soon as I started looking for the beauty I saw the beauty all around and that’s a different lens. It’s time to take off, maybe you got your flying goggles now it’s time to put on your X-ray vision.

 

Richard Matthews  59:43  

I got my color change lenses and these are getting dark when you go outside. That’s always nice. 

 

Robert Riopel  59:47  

The transition. That’s right. Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  59:49  

Yeah, those are kind of like superpowers because when I put on my contacts, then I have to have sunglasses. 

 

Robert Riopel  59:57  

I think you and I could have fun talking about this for hours. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:00:00  

So my next question for you is the flip side of your common enemy. So your common enemy is that procrastination that people struggle with. Your driving force is what you fight for. Just like Spider Man fights to save New York or, Batman fights to save Gotham or, Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information, sometimes much to our detriment. But either way, what is the thing that you fight for in your business, your mission, so to speak?

 

Robert Riopel  1:00:25  

You know, for me, it’s authenticity. I believe the greatest gift anybody can give this planet is to be themselves, whatever that looks like, and when you’re you, people are either gonna like you, or they don’t. And if they like you for who you are, that’s awesome. If they don’t, that’s awesome. Because there are 8 billion people on this planet. And  I come from the world of being a people pleaser. I look back at how much time and energy I put into trying to make people like me, instead of just attracting the people that liked me for who I am not who they want me to be. And so now, for me, I love being authentic. And I love teaching people how to be authentic. I fight for that because no matter what it looks like, you’re authentic you is the greatest gift you can give the world.

 

Richard Matthews  1:01:22  

And there’s so much to that, everything from knowing who your customers are. One of the things that I see businesses struggle with a lot is when a customer isn’t a good fit. And they try to force them to fit and try to change their products and services or fix things or whatever. And I’m like, that person if they don’t like your price, or they don’t like your style, or they don’t like what you’re doing. They’re not your customers. And that’s okay, they’re allowed to not be your customer. There’s plenty of people who are, who are going to like who you are, how you do what you do, why you do what you do. And maybe if you’re in a situation where every single person you ever talked to doesn’t like your stuff, you have to change something. But if it’s just one every once in a while, that’s fine if they don’t like who you are.

 

Robert Riopel  1:01:25  

You and I met on PodMatch. And I’ve been loving it because I’ve been meeting some amazing people. And I get one personal response back and it’s like, why would I want to interview you? You do this? And you do this? So why would I even think of interviewing you? And I just said, Thank you for responding to me, have a great day. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:02:25  

Yeah, let’s move on.

 

Robert Riopel  1:02:28  

Next, but I did take it personally for a while. Because again, that side of me was coming up like, what did I do wrong? And then it was like, wait, no, no, no, I’ve got 50 some odd five-star ratings. And I’m the number one guest. So why is this one person that doesn’t like me for who I am? Why am I taking that personally? So I’m always on that journey myself. And that’s why I fight for it in other people as well because it comes from that.

 

Richard Matthews  1:02:53  

I think one of the important things too, is just understanding how important your perspective is to the value you bring to the world. So one of the things that I teach in one of my training courses is something that I call the crocodile infested river. And the crocodile infested river is the level of awareness of any particular problem that someone has, that you’re helping them solve in your business. So whatever that is, they’re going to start off on the left side of that river. And on the other side of the river is the promised land is like life after their problem is solved. Life after the back surgery, and your back’s recovered, and you’re back to your normal self, again, is life in the promised land, right in the crocodile infested river is having to go through and actually change your life to fix the problem is the actual struggles and everything that goes along with it. And what I tell people is in your business, you are the person who comes along with a boat. And that boat is your product or service, whatever that is that you help people with and your boats got cool shit on it. It’s got crocodile disintegrating lasers. And it’s got stuff to navigate the whirlpools and all that other fun stuff. But the most important part of the boat is that it comes with you as the captain. Because you’ve been there, you’ve been across this crocodile infested river, you know where they are, you know where the pitfalls and downpours on you can help someone through that because you have the life experience and the story that goes along with whatever it is that you’re doing. And I think people miss that in their businesses is how important their perspective and their value is to what they’re doing.

 

Robert Riopel  1:04:24  

Well, and that’s a second, like in my book, Success Left A Clue, I outline six steps to create the life of your dreams. And the second step is to find a mentor, find someone to model because the captain of that boat is the person who has the experience. And so if someone’s new trying to do on that business and try to get people across the river, as an example, they can have the greatest technology but if they don’t have the knowledge of how to actually navigate it, and use all the equipment, you’re not going to do well and it’s a big gift that most people forget to do. They’re like I got to figure it out on my own and got chemicals back to that school thing. But the moment they go, if I can find a mentor, a model that’s accomplished. Unless you’re Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, chances are whatever you want to accomplish someone’s done it before you. So find out how they did it. Find, but Robert, that mentor, they’re no longer alive because I love Napoleon Hill, I can’t be mentored by Napoleon Hill, sure you can read his book and study his courses, look at all the things that he did. And so it’s about creativity. Because if you want to get good at something, find someone who’s done it, learn from what worked for him. But again, more importantly, what didn’t work. So you avoid those mistakes. And by having that mentorship, you’re going to get across those crocodile infested waters a lot easier. So I love that analogy.

 

Richard Matthews  1:05:44  

It’s my favorite one, I stole it from someone else. And I’ve modified it a lot. But anyways, crocodile infested river is one of my favorite metaphors for understanding the progress to solve problems, essentially. So I want to talk a little bit about your hero’s tool belt. And this is the practical portion of our show. And it’s just like every superhero has their web slingers, or batarangs or laser eyes, whatever it is, or maybe it’s a big magical hammer that you can spin and fly around with. I want to talk about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without, could be your marketing tools, could be product delivery, could be your notepad, your calendar, anything that you think is absolutely essential to getting your job done on a daily basis?

 

Robert Riopel  1:06:22  

Well, yeah, a new one that just came into that tool belt. I finally, after years, got a virtual assistant. And oh, my goodness, I’m going. Why did it take me so long? Because she has just totally taken over all of my social media and does it, and she loves doing it. And she’s a master with it. And I struggled with it. But I tried to do it. So a virtual assistant is one, and oh, my goodness. The second is, one of the clues I give out is to write it down. When I walk for my back, I love to walk, it helps lose my back. I get very present when I’m present, that’s when the genius comes in. Because you’re now directly connected to God to the greatest power universe, whatever you want to call it. And often the inspiration comes through. But have you ever noticed, you can also see something cool, why don’t you just see that was amazing. And you’re like, I don’t know, I can’t remember. So I’m methodical, I have my notepad on my phone, or voice message. As soon as something comes up, I don’t even think about Oh, I’ll write it down later, I just instantly put it in my notes. Because I know me, I know, I won’t remember 10 seconds later what the heck it was. And so another thing in my tool belt is writing it down. And then the third thing I would say would be loyalty. And loyalty my number one loyalty is loyalty to my own dreams. And where I want to go and what I want to accomplish, because I’ve witnessed too many people give up on their dreams. And two years ago, like three feet from gold or three feet from gold, they stopped just before they’re about to accomplish what would change your life. So those would be three things that are in my tool belt.

 

Richard Matthews  1:08:14  

So I think all three of those things are pretty genius. I hired my first virtual assistant a couple of years ago now. And I remember sitting down with a mentor of mine, to bring some of this stuff back full circle, I have a mentor. And we were at a mastermind together. And we all bring something to the mastermind, to hear stuff that we’re working on that would be valuable to the group. And after I did my talk and my give for the week, he pulled me aside and he was like, you’re doing some really cool shit. And he was, but you are your own worst nightmare because you are your own biggest bottleneck. And he’s like, you need to fix that in your business. If you really want to scale the value you’re bringing, he was like, what I want you to do when you leave here is I want you to go and hire this person, hire them full time, and then figure out what to do with them later. And I was like, I can’t do that. And he was like, you can and you will and I was like, you’re crazy. But he’s a mentor for a reason. And I vacillated on that for months. I don’t know how I can afford to pay someone full time to do these things that they should do because it just didn’t make sense in my head. And it didn’t make sense because I didn’t have the perspective that he had. That’s why you bring your mentor in. And so I couldn’t make it make sense in my head. But finally, I just bit the bullet and did what he told me to do. He’s like, you’re not going to understand it until you do it. And so I hired them. And it was almost immediate, realizing because what it did was it changed the question that I was asking in my head. And the question I was asking in my head to myself was, is this worth hiring someone for or should I do it myself? And that’s a poor person’s question. Because the answer was always I should do it myself because I can do it faster and cheaper or so I thought. And as soon as I had someone else on my team that was a full-time staff member, the question was, what can I take off my plate and put on theirs? And when you ask better questions, you get better answers. And it changed my business, it changed everything about what I was doing. So hiring a VA, huge win in my business.

 

Robert Riopel  1:10:24  

And that’s something a mentor told me is, in your business, you’re only allowed to do what only you can do. And everything else someone else does. And you and I are obviously so much on the same wavelength. As an example, one of the original titles in my book was going to be Three, Two, One Rich, and because it was a formula, and to have three coaches in your life. Three, it could be a health coach, a business coach, it could be a mindset coach, whatever it is. But three coaches have two mentors in your life. Now the difference between a coach and a mentor, a coach is someone who’s going to ask you what you want to draw out of you, and walk you through it. A mentor is someone who’s accomplished what you want. And they’re going to say, do this, do this, do this. And it’s going to tell you, they’re not there to coddle you and be nice. They’re there to say, if you want what I have, do this, do this, do this, and then be part of at least one mastermind. Because again, that power, and I love that you mentioned a mastermind. And so if you have three coaches, two mentors, and one mastermind, you will be rich in all areas of your life.

 

Richard Matthews  1:11:31  

I can tell you, I don’t know if I could name three coaches, I probably have to probably get another one. But I’ve got a health coach. And I’ve got a business coach in my life. And I’ve got a couple of mentors. And I’ve got something I call running partners, people who are in the same place that you are running their own stuff on the same journey. And those are people that are in your mastermind. 

 

Robert Riopel  1:11:53  

That’s right. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:11:55  

Yeah. And those things in my life are probably the things that make me the most successful. So, yeah, there are so many cool things that we could talk about. 

 

Robert Riopel  1:12:08  

It’s a good thing, it’s a 45-minute interview. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:12:10  

I know 45 minutes got a little bit longer. That’s all right. Some of the best interviews are longer than 45 minutes. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:12:14  

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Richard Matthews  1:13:45  

So I want to talk a little bit about your own personal heroes. We were just talking about it a second ago. Every hero has their mentors, Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi Wan, Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, even Spider Man had his Uncle Ben. Who were some of your heroes, were they real life mentors, speakers, or authors? Maybe peers who were a couple of years ahead of you, and how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Robert Riopel  1:14:08  

Oh, so many to mention. I’ve still got my greatest training mentor. Gentlemen, and it’s funny, you mentioned Robert Kiyosaki. It’s one of his rich dad advisors, a gentleman by the name of Blair Singer, who originally taught me to be a trainer. And then I got to work with him for a lot of years, training other trainers and, and we actually do a weekly clubhouse together with a few other friends that I’ve trained. So he’s been amazing. He’s one of my heroes. Another hero, probably the number one hero is the person sitting about 10 feet away from me and another room here in the RV. Because I will fully admit and have no problem doing it. I would not be who I am today, doing what I do today, Richard if it wasn’t for my wife, because if it was left to my own devices, I’d be miserable in a job. But I’d be comfortable. But I’d be miserable doing a job, that she’s not willing to let me play smaller than I am. It’s a gift that she gives me. And it’s a gift that we now give each other because when I look at my own advice I would play small. And so she’s absolutely another one in my life, and also Les Brown, he wrote the foreword to my book, he started off as a mentor, then I had him as a guest at a training session, we became friends. And so now he’s a mentor, he’s a friend. And I also started becoming a mentor in some ways to him. And so it became a good beneficial relationship, win-win so I’d say those are three people off right off the top of my head.

 

Richard Matthews  1:15:46  

Yeah, my wife’s definitely up there on my list for different reasons. because really what she is for me because I’m definitely not the place for a small person. I’m the person that’s like, I’m going to jump off the cliff and learn to fly on the way down. Like, that’s my whole life. But so what she helps me with is she helps to ground me. And she enables a lot of the things that I do because the reason I have the confidence to jump off the cliff and learn to fly on the way down is I know that she’s got everything else in our life handled. She’s got the kids taken care of, she’s got the house taken care of. She’s got her life handled. So I can take bigger risks and push harder than I would be able to otherwise. 

 

Robert Riopel  1:16:30  

Yup absolutely.

 

Richard Matthews  1:16:33  

Awesome. So I got one last thing I want to talk about, and it’s your guiding principles. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever puts them in Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you live your life by?

 

Robert Riopel  1:16:53  

Well, one we’ve already said, loyalty, actually, both have already said, and authenticity. Those are the two because to me, I’ve experienced way too many. And you see this in all industries. But in the training industry, when I see someone on the stage, who’s one way, but then the moment they step off stage, they totally change. And it’s like, wow. One of my mentors actually said, Robert, never be afraid to meet your students anywhere in the world and have to figure out who to be, always be you and be authentic, and I’ve met my I’ve met students in so many different places, airports, malls everywhere around the world. And they’re like, wow, you are who you say you are. And it comes back to actually I hated the word when I first started training, the word guru. I hated that word, because it’s us that puts other people on pedestals and stuff like that. And the student would call me their guru. And I was doing training where I was teaching a full on five day training, at the same time as training six trainers how to train that training. And one of my really good friends who does a powerful piece of training, he was actually working with my six trainers. And he was going through some stuff with them. And he asked a question, one of the students said that while Robert is my guru, well, my friend is reading body language, reading facial expressions, all that. And out of the corner of the design, he saw me kind of cringe and flinch. And he stopped and he said, Robert, what just happened? I’m like, Aaron, no, just keep going. He goes, No, you just had a reaction when he called you, the guru. Why? I’m like, Aaron, it’s about them. Just keep going. He goes, no, guys, we’re not going any further until Robert starts talking. They’re like, yep, okay, Robert, right. You put me on the spot. I’ll get you back. But I said I hate that word guru. And he goes, why? I said because I’m not better than other people. I’m not this all knowing person, I’m just me. And he had me do something that changed my life. And I’m gonna have you do it for me, Richard, I want you to spell the word guru.

 

Richard Matthews  1:19:02  

GURU.

 

Robert Riopel  1:19:04  

So I spelled it. And he looked at me. He goes, yeah, you are you. And in that instant, there was a whole shift. And it’s now become one of the greatest compliments I could ever receive. I’m just me. So that would probably be it right there. So authenticity and loyalty.

 

Richard Matthews  1:19:25  

That’s an incredible way to think about authenticity. And just being who you are. And I know it’s a thing that I strive for is to just always be who I am. But also at the same time knowing how to turn up the dial on your personality. Because when you are performing, like we’re doing now or when you’re on stage, something like that, you have to have that ability to turn on. So there’s a difference between being someone different on stage versus not, and knowing how to turn yourself on and put yourself in the zone. And I think that’s an important skill to know and know that it’s different. It’s different than pretending to be someone you’re not.

 

Robert Riopel  1:20:13  

Oh, yeah. When I’m on stage, I’m Robert Raymond Riopel, this comes to my four currencies, one of the currencies of fame. When I’m on stage, or when I’m doing an interview, I’m doing what I do as my brand, and Robert Raymond Riopel, I meet in that brand. But when I’m at home, I’m just Robert the raw. And so like when I’m sitting around the campfire with family, I’m not sitting there going, Hey, guys, remember this is what I do. Here’s who I am someone go get me a beer. If I was doing that, it’d be like, I’m gonna walk your ass, and then you go get funckin your beer. So, it’s me being me. But I loved how you said it dialing it up, turning it on because when I’m on stage, I’ve got a hold of space for 1000 2000 5000 students. And so if I just sit there and say, hi, you know, I can be me, but I’ve got to be in that presence, that energy. And that’s the present moment. That’s why being present is so important.

 

Richard Matthews  1:21:09  

And the second piece there, you mentioned, which is loyalty. And I love what you’ve said earlier, and just wanted to bring it back up, cuz I don’t think we touched it with loyalty to your dreams. And I know that that is such an important thing. And I have told people a lot, that growing up and stuff is that you can’t compete with me. And the reason I know you can’t compete with me is because I will work you under a table, like, long after you’ve given up, I will continue pushing that rock up the hill. That’s the difference between someone who’s going to accomplish what they want to accomplish and not. And it comes from something an early mentor of mine said to me, and he said that we vastly overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, and vastly underestimate what we can accomplish in 10. And so he was like, give yourself the time to achieve what you want to achieve to achieve your dreams, essentially, And I know like, if I go back 10 years ago, and look at who I was then, I was a struggling, fairly young entrepreneur. And where I’m at now, I’m world class in every area that I work, which is amazing. But it took a lot of effort to get there. But most people give up before they get to world class. 

 

Robert Riopel  1:22:29  

Wait, are you seeing you’re like a 10-year overnight success? 

 

Richard Matthews  1:22:35  

Oh, man, it took a lot longer than that. I started my first business at 13. So it’s more like 23 or four years. But yeah, it’s been a long time. But it’s continually pushing and continually struggling and continually putting off the things that you want to do. So you can do what you need to do now. But anyway, it’s that loyalty to where you want to get to and you know, it doesn’t matter how long it takes if it’s four years, or five years, or 10 years, or 15 years or 20 years. I know, like some of the goals that I wrote down when I was 13. I only just recently accomplished some 23, four years later. 

 

Robert Riopel  1:23:12  

Exactly. And that’s it. That’s such a key there. There’s Oh, man, there are so many things in that and when people learn to be loyal to themselves, but Robert, that’s selfish. Sometimes you have to be selfish, because if you can’t be selfish, for what you need, how do you think you can be able to deliver to other people with their needs when it’s down for you to be on? That’s an example.

 

Richard Matthews  1:23:35  

And it’s crazy too because if you look at my life, that if you call it selfish to continue to push my own dreams, and you look at where we’re at now, like the number of clients that we serve, or the number of employees that we have, whose families that our business provides for, is one of the things that’s on my mind all the time is, we got to make sure we’re making payroll because we got families and kids that if we don’t make payroll, they don’t get to eat. It’s sort of like the opposite of selfish, when you think about what entrepreneurs actually do is they’re providing value to the world. And huge key so anyways, I love the idea of loyalty to your dreams, I might put that up somewhere, cuz I’ve never heard it said that way. And I really like that. So thank you for that. And that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge that I call the hero’s challenge. And it’s basically a selfish thing, we just talked about being selfish. It’s a selfish thing I do to find access or find stories that I might not otherwise find on my own because not everyone is out on PodMatch looking to be on a podcast. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine, and why do you think they should come to share their story with our audience here on the hero show?

 

Robert Riopel  1:24:52  

Oh, no. It’s someone I just mentioned who taught me about the guru. Eric. He has one of the top facilities of all North America for helping at risk teams. And his goal is to keep them from having to come to a facility. So he can help them and their families help before they ever get to the stage of attempting suicide or having drug addictions and all that. And this gentleman, he’s a Viking, true at heart. He teaches swordplay to the kids when they’re at his facility. He ax throwing all of that and he works on the archetypes of people, the four archetypes and he’s just a brilliant brilliant man. In all arenas in the work, he does to help families, not just the kids, but the families of at risk youth. He’s just a powerhouse and I will connect to both of them because he would just be a mind blowing guest for your audience to learn. You’re talking about a superhero, he looks like a superhero. He’s aerodynamic like me. You’ve got the big Viking, bearded and goatee. Yeah, he’s quite the guy.

 

Richard Matthews  1:25:54  

That’s awesome. So we’ll reach out afterward and see if we can connect and get him on the show. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they don’t. But either way, sometimes we get some of the best stories out of those hero challenges. So in comic books, there is always the crowd of people at the end, who are cheering and clapping for their acts of heroism, so are analogous to that on this show is where can people find you? Where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, Robert, I’d love to get your help to help become my more authentic self. Where can they come to find you? And I think, more importantly, is who are the right types of people to reach out to?

 

Robert Riopel  1:26:27  

Yeah, well, first of all, I’m being honored to have you asked me to be a guest. I would love to honor that because I feel privileged. And to honor your listeners that have taken the time because their time is so valuable, as I would love to they can find me out just RobertRiopel.com my name.com. So RobertRiopel.com. And what I’d love to do as a gift from us is they can actually get my book Success Left a Clue the digital copy as a gift, they’ll be able to download it by going to the website. And the reason I would encourage them to do that, though it does come with a caveat. See, I didn’t write the book for someone to read and put on the shelf and make it shelf help. And that’s not why I wrote it. I wrote it as a workbook because the third step is to take action. So I have action steps all the way through the book. And what I’ll do is actually at the chapter beginning, it’ll say, did you do the last action, if not, stop reading right now, go back and do the action. And so I would love for people to take the book and put the actions in place because if they do, it will impact their life guarantee that they can also follow me on Facebook, I have a fan page Robert Riopel, put my name in and you’ll find my fan page. And that way as I journeyed around and do the trainings I do they’re able to private message me, I actually respond to it. I don’t even have a virtual assistant do that. I’d love to interact with the audience because if I can help someone bring their greatness to the world, even one more step. I just love that.

 

Richard Matthews  1:28:02  

Awesome. So we will make sure that the link to the book on your website is in the show notes below. So if you’re listening to this, you’ll be able to find that link on our website. And Robert, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your hero’s journey and your hero’s story with us today. Really appreciate that. You have any final words of wisdom for our audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Robert Riopel  1:28:23  

Yeah, I just leave it with how I sign every autograph and everybody. Always live with passion.

 

Richard Matthews  1:28:30  

Absolutely. Thank you very much for coming on today, Robert.