Episode 076 – Dr. Pelè Raymond

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Automated Transcription

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Richard Matthews 0:02
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Hello, and welcome back to The HERO Show. My name is Richard Matthews and I am live on the line with Dr. Pele. Are you there? Dr. Pele?

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:12
Yes, I am. Awesome.

Richard Matthews 1:14
So glad to have you here. This is actually a return interview, I got the chance to be on your podcast, the Happiness Podcast, which was super cool. Thanks for that experience. And now we get to go the other direction. So for our guests who don’t know you, I’m going to actually read your bio a little bit because it’s super cool. I normally only go through a little bit of the bio, but actually, I read your whole thing. And I thought it was a really cool story. So I’m going to go ahead and read the whole thing for our audience so they can sort of get an idea of where you’re coming from, which is cool. So Dr. Pele is the best selling author, musician, host of the profitable happiness podcast, which I suggest you check out if you’re listening, where he features the stories of highly successful executive experts and entrepreneurs. You were born and raised in war-torn Africa refugee village, named after Pele of Brazil, the greatest soccer player on Earth, whose influence was so great that it stopped a bloody civil war, Dr. Pelé internalized his namesake simply a powerful secret of success. Practice and later transformed it developing unique skills in art, music writing, and inspirational speaking. And you have experienced firsthand the struggle and victory of starting from humble beginnings to eventually live the American dream, which is really a cool story. As a young child watching bombs drop death and destruction is all around his refugee village, Dr. Pele remembers how his mother used soothing power of songs and stories to bring him ‘happy.’ Soften the pain of hunger and chase away the fear. Many years later, halfway around the world, Dr. Pele has repurposed his lifelong passion for music and storytelling toward the world of business where he created Profitable Happiness a signature process for helping people find success, where happy meets purpose. Anyways, I just wanted to get through that story a little bit because we don’t often have people who have had such a dramatic change in their life from living in a refugee city with war to where you are now. So before we actually get into your story and your origin story, what we start the episode off is what you’re known for now? What’s your business like? What do people hire you for? What is it that people come to Dr. Pele for?

Dr. Pele Raymond 3:17
Well, Richard, thanks for that very cool introduction. So today I’m an author and a trainer and a coach. And the people who hire me are chief learning officers or Chief Human Resource Officers in large corporations that are concerned with improving the efficiency and profitability of their business, their teams. I’m writing a book right now. I’m finishing it actually next month, called The 7 Seven Songs of a Successful Team. And it’s a leadership parable that really marries music with teamwork, in the sense that we look to how music creates harmony as we create harmony on teams. So I’m really excited about that. And that’s the work that I do today.

Richard Matthews 4:09
Awesome. So you work mostly with human resources and helping larger companies really, I guess, bring harmony to their teams, which is an important task because we can’t move forward.

Dr. Pele Raymond 4:21
It’s basically, a lot of these companies get so sort of stuck in the – What do we need to build and what do we need to execute in the marketplace? And they sometimes forget who needs to do the building and the executing, which are the people, a lot of companies say, people are our greatest asset, but it’s that rare company that can really double down and develop their teams and their people to the point where they can be a great asset. So that’s what I asked them.

Richard Matthews 4:51
I remember one of my mentors in one of the companies I worked for telling me something that shifted my mindset a bit on that. And I remember thinking, the most business they – you hear customer’s always right. And he changed my mindset on that. And he was like, it’s not that the customer isn’t always right or something like that. That’s a good mindset for dealing with customer service. He’s like, but in your company, your employees are always first. Your customers are never first, it’s always your employees because, without your employees, you don’t have the customers. And so he taught me how they managed and dealt with their employees was all the way down to like they made sure they had six, like if nothing else, they had six months’ worth of payroll in the bank, right? Because if nothing else is going on, they’re going to make sure their employees get paid before anything else happens. And so stuff like that, and it was it’s definitely understanding the importance of your team and making your business run.

Dr. Pele Raymond 5:52
Absolutely.

Richard Matthews 5:54
Cool. So I want to actually get into your story a little bit and talk about it right so we call this the Origin Story. Every hero has their origin story. It’s where you started to realize that you were different that maybe you had superpowers, and maybe you could use them to help other people. Where did you start to develop or discover the value you can bring to this world? How did this entrepreneurial journey start for you?

Dr. Pele Raymond 6:15
Well, I gotta tell you, just yesterday, I turned on CNN. And I saw a story that said, Pelé, the greatest soccer player on earth is depressed and reclusive. His son said that he’s depressed and reclusive, because he’s old and has a lot of pain, and he’s really struggling. He’s about 79 years old, almost 80 years old now. And it was just such a sad thing for me to read. But, reading a few of the paragraphs, I found something I never knew about him. Apparently, the greatest soccer player on earth, Pelé. He was asked what he would- what he really loves to do? What he would have been if he hadn’t been Pele’, the great soccer player and he would have been a musician.

Richard Matthews 7:02
That’s cool.

Dr. Pele Raymond 7:05
He said he would have been a – he plays guitar. And he would have been a singer-songwriter. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I never knew this.” But the reason I tell you that story is that when those bombs were falling in Africa, actually in Biafra. It was a civil war between Nigeria and a breakaway country called Biafra. And for three years, millions of people were dying, and children were starving, and we were hopeless. We’re living in refugee camps. But during that same time, my father, who was a great soccer fan, a great lover of the great Pelé, who had just won two World Cup victories. My father decided that his method of predicting my future for me was to call me Pelé. To name me after this great man. And I have never been able to play soccer. If you put me on a football field, I’m going to score in the wrong direction. I’m just warning you right now. That’s how bad it is. But when you give a child a name like that, Pelé, it’s like calling your son, Michael Jordan. That’s a tough one. So, I’ve lived a lifetime literally, in which I was never going to be that which my name said I was. Which is the greatest at this or that? For some reason, it pushed me into really being very good at whatever else I did. I’m an artist. I am a musician and songwriter. I’ve had billboard charting songs, EMI Records, major record labels. For anyone who’s from the 90s, I produced the guy called Alexander O’Neal, who’s one of the people responsible for the Minneapolis sound next to Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. I’ve done some big things in music. Of course, I’m an educator, I have a Ph.D. in Organizational Management. I’ve done the whole Vice President of Human Resources thing, and Vice President of a training thing. I’ve been lucky to do all of these things. And I always take them to the nth degree, because excellence is the only goal that I understand for whatever reason. And it started from being named after someone that I could never ever be as good as. So, I feel blessed that my father did that because he himself was a Ph.D. And he gave me a really high bar to try to attain in my life so that’s the story…

Richard Matthews 9:46
It worked then. He gave you a bar. Set it really high, and you’ve lived up to it.

Dr. Pele Raymond 9:53
But not as a soccer player.

Richard Matthews 9:56
Just not as a soccer player.

Dr. Pele Raymond 9:57
That’s why I was so happy. Billy’s getting old. But it was just such a mystery to me. A powerful revelation that he is a lifelong musician who wishes he could have been a singer-songwriter musical star or something like that.

Richard Matthews 10:14
That’s really cool. When did you make the transition from doing singing and songwriting and working in big corporations as the HR director to being an entrepreneur where you’re on your own and running your own business?

Dr. Pele Raymond 10:28
This is probably close to a decade ago now. We’re talking 9-10 years ago, but I had already done the music production thing. I had already tried that and then I went and got the Ph.D. thing, and then I was doing the corporate thing. But it got to a point where I realized: this isn’t me. Trying to drive a Range Rover and make millions of dollars. That’s not me. After doing those things is when you realize that’s not you. But before you get some of those things, you’re like, “I’m still fighting.” So, I woke up one day and realized I’m not happy. In fact, I’m miserable at this job. And so I’m going to go find who I really am. And that’s why I went out into the world of online marketing and started writing books. Every book I’ve ever written is really me capturing the problem I’m trying to solve in my life. I go do the research and write the book. I have five books later. Actually, this is my sixth book. I finally found myself. And who I am, not surprisingly, is a musician and a trainer. I’m an educator and musician. I’ve finally written the book and I’m in the phase of my life where I’m using all of my God-given gifts to help other people as opposed to just chasing after money.

Richard Matthews 11:54
It’s really an awesome place to be. A lot of people never get there. Someone who’s been to that point in your life where you’re like, “I’m actually using my gifts, the way that I feel like they’re supposed to be.” What is that like for people who are on that journey and not there yet? Just some hope.

Dr. Pele Raymond 12:16
I hear you, Richard, it’s a really good question. One thing I can say is, let me just build some empathy into this. I have been there in terms of waking up on Monday morning and not wanting to go to work because that cubicle they’ve got you in is killing you. Or maybe working so hard, and maybe getting a new client and just realizing: I don’t even like what I do. All of those things, in my opinion, based on my life-learned lessons. All of those things come from not having found alignment between who you really are: your personality, your strengths, your skills, your interests, who you really are. And the things you do in the world. So many of us are stuck in taking pieces of who we are and being forced to go do these things in the world because somebody is going to give us a salary. I mean, think about it, it takes only an hour, sitting in front of a few people at a very good interview. It takes maybe an hour and a nice little piece of paper that says you’re a great person to possibly go from making zero dollars today to making $150,000 tomorrow. That’s big, I don’t want to call it a scam. But that’s how easy they make it look. But in reality, it’s never that easy. And just as easily as you got that hundred and $150,000 over a one hour interview. You could lose it if your boss fires you. And you go from $150,000 dollars to nothing like that. I’ve been through all of those phases. So, for me, the hope in the world comes when you say, “Okay, who am I really?” And what I did to start that journey was I took a personality test. It’s actually called a Berkman, for anybody who’s into that kind of stuff. And it’s funny this personality test showed that on a scale of all of my interests, the number one interest was music. And so here I am. The data is telling me that I need to be doing something involving music. The next one was literature. So storytelling, writing books. The next one was persuasion. And the only one I was using back then was persuasion. Because I was in marketing or something like that. Basically, the data was telling me that you will never be happy until you do what you love. I want to be careful not to tell people: follow your passion blindly. A lot of people say this follows your passion thing. And I actually don’t believe it quite that way. What you have to do is follow the part of your passion that makes sense in helping other people. So if you’re not helping other people; if you’re just following your passion, you might not get where you want to go. But it’s when you help people with your passion that you get where you want to go. The more people you help, the more success you find. The hope I would share, Richard, back to your question, the hope I would share is do some research into yourself. Who are you really? When you wake up in the morning, what is the best and most powerful vision of yourself that you see? And then just go after that thing with everything you’ve got and then make sure that as you go after that thing, you’re helping people along the way. You don’t get where you’re going by helping only yourself. That’s what I’ve discovered.

Richard Matthews 15:59
That’s a fantastic answer. I love it. And just to further your point on the whole passion discussion, because I think we have a great disservice happening in the entrepreneurial space. Where people are saying: go out and follow your passion. It’s such a contrived thing that people don’t always know what it means. And they don’t know where passion comes from. Passion, it’s not an origin. Passion is something that is developed. And I believe very strongly that mastery is what creates passion. The better you get at something; the more mastery you have over it, the more passionate you become about those things. You can develop passion by developing skills. And to your point when you are providing value to someone that’s generally be coming from a skill set that you’ve developed over the years. I think it’s a valuable discussion to start looking at. What are the things you’re passionate about? And realizing, what are the skill sets that empower that passion? And then how do you use those skill sets to help other people?

Dr. Pele Raymond 17:11
Absolutely. Another thing that I think I would add to what you’ve just said is: tell yourself a different story. Tell yourself a different story than the one that’s being told to you right now by two people: the world and yourself. The world is telling you, “You’re not rich enough. You’re not this or that enough.” The world is putting you down. And then yourself is putting you down even more. Stop all the stories that are being told to you and create a new story. What I did, and I actually wrote a book about it called The Story of You. What I did was I created a brand new story for myself. And I actually learned this by giving speeches at Toastmasters. I was a regional champion of Toastmasters for awhile in Minnesota, many years ago. One of the things they help you do is they teach you to have a stump speech. The speech, you’d give in the elevator or somewhere else. Create a story about yourself. So I did. And the story I created about myself had to do with that war in Biafra, the civil war. It had to do with a very simple and powerful thing that happened to me and here’s what it is. When my mother, or rather when the bombs were falling, we were all running, afraid, skinny and afraid of dying every day. My mother did the most amazing thing. She would sing to me. She would sing songs about food. And magically, I have this vivid recollection, because I know all the songs she used to sing. I still sing them today. I have friends who know those songs cause I’ve always sung those songs. But those songs gave me the food that I needed. It gave me the happiness that I needed. I learned from that experience that in life you don’t become successful first, and then hope to be happy. In life, you become happy first and the success will follow. That was the lesson I learned from my mother singing me those songs. Even though I was in the midst of being told by the world that I gotta go out and make a lot of money and copy everybody else and be something else. I stuck to my little story that said, “There’s something called happiness that can be profitable, as opposed to we all got to go make the money first. And then maybe we become happy.” Let’s start with ‘happy.’ So I started writing songs about that happiness. I wrote a whole album and I’m now turning that album into the book that I’m writing right now. So I’ve been recycling that one little story about myself for my true life, and I’ve been using it to invent my future. What you do is you look at your past, you find that really cool story. Everybody has one. That is your defining moment, that thing that made you who you are. And you take a lesson from that, and you use it to redesign your present and design your future. That works, because I’ve done it.

Richard Matthews 20:27
It’s a powerful thing. One of the things that I talk about all the time is that we as human beings are story-born people. If you want a really good way to think about it and just prove to yourself that we are story-born people and how important the stories you tell yourself are, just look at how you judge relationships. The judge of the depth of a relationship. An acquaintance is someone whose name you know, but whose story you don’t. A friend might be someone whose name you know, and you know a little bit of their story. A close friend, someone you know their name, and you know a lot of their story. But a best friend is someone you know all of their stories, they couldn’t even surprise you anymore. The only way that you can deepen that relationship is to go out and create new stories together. We judge our relationships and the depth of our relationships, based on the stories we tell each other. And so it stands to reason then, that if you want to improve yourself and to make yourself better and to understand yourself better, it’s going to start with your story. The story you tell yourself and the story that you use to tell other people about yourself.

Dr. Pele Raymond 21:40
Richard, I gotta tell you, that’s a book you just wrote. I love that. What you just said is a book. I’m visualizing all these levels of stories that define relationships. I think that was just beautifully said.

Richard Matthews 21:57
Maybe we’ll have to hop on later and you help me outline it. I could write a book about it.

Dr. Pele Raymond 22:02
There you go.

Richard Matthews 22:04
The stories you tell yourself are very powerful. To your point, a story that I remember was a defining moment for me. I remember I was 15 at the time, 14 or 15. Where we lived was what they call a bedroom community, meaning suburban. All the people worked in the big cities and we lived in the suburban area. Right behind us was the wealthy community. And the wealthy community had all the giant mansions in it and stuff. I had gotten a motorcycle to get myself to school and back. After school, I used to go and drive through the wealthy community where the cool big houses and mansions were. In my head, I liked to go look at them because I thought they were cool. And I wanted to, at some point in place, where I can buy one I could afford something like that. I remember coming home one day. Someone had seen me and invited me to come and look at their house. It was super cool. I got to see it all. And I got home and I told my dad all about it. And I was super excited. I was like, “I got to go walk through this big mansion. It’s like a $20 million mansion and sees the whole thing.” My dad’s message to me, he was like, “That’s really cool that you got to do that.” But he said, “Don’t get your hopes up.” I remember it was a defining moment for me because I immediately rejected that thought. I was like, that’s not me. I’m not that person who’s not going to get my hopes up. And I told him that at the time, and I was like, “I’ll be the kind of person that by the time I’m 30 I could afford a house like that.” It took me until I was 34 to be able to get to that point.

Dr. Pele Raymond 23:47
But if you didn’t have that goal, you wouldn’t even be there at all.

Richard Matthews 23:52
It was a story that I told myself. I was like, “I’m not the kind of person who gives up hope.” I will have hope in the face of above other things. It’s a story that I’ve told myself for a long time. You can achieve whatever you want if you have the hope and the drive to do it.

Dr. Pele Raymond 24:10
I have a story, a parable, that I’ve told myself. I basically invented this. And it’s been my story, in addition to the other one that I just told you. Here’s another one. The reason I’m remembering it, is it sounds very similar to what you said. I have this parable that I tell about two people who were very young, and they grew up right next to a hill. At the top of this hill was a beautiful mansion. And it had always been their dream to play music inside that mansion and to live in that mansion. But of course, we all know that it takes a lot of money to buy that house and the mansion. As these two people grew up, they made different decisions. One of them decided: I’m going to take my guitar and I’m going to go sit at the – I’m gonna climb this hill and sit at the foot of that house. And I’m just gonna play my guitar on the street, come what may, we’ll see what happens. The other guy made a different decision, he decided to go down into the valley and become very rich. He was gonna go to Harvard. He was going to meet all the right people and just become very successful financially. His idea was: when I get all that money, I’m going to come back and buy that house. And the other guy’s idea was: I’m just gonna play in front of the house, and maybe somehow get into that house. Thirty years go by, guess what happens. What happens is that the guy who went to the valley to become very rich did not become very rich. Because you know what life happens? We don’t always get what we think we’re going to get. And the guy who went up to play right in front of the house also did not become rich just by playing in front of the house. But when they met again, something interesting happened. The person who lived in that house saw the guy playing outside and said, “I love your music, come on in and play.” That story. Because the other guy didn’t know how to play music anymore. He had spent 30 years trying to make money. But the guy who kept to his dream, at least made it possible to be discovered and the rest is history. I have always played music, never left it. You can see my guitar right there. And 20 years ago, maybe I wanted to be a music star. But nope, I didn’t make that but I kept playing my music. And now here I am integrating music into a new book. It’s a novel idea, this idea of borrowing harmony from music to create better teamwork. That’s not really been done. I’m so passionate and proud of it. And the only reason that could be possible is that I kept the dream alive.

Richard Matthews 26:59
Stick to your dream. I want to talk a little bit about your superpowers. And I love the framing for this. Superpowers are what you do or build or offer this world that helps solve this problem for people. Things that you use to help slay the world’s villains. The way I want to frame it is, you probably have a number of skills. You’ve already mentioned music, teaching, and persuasion, other things. The skill that I’m looking for is the thing that empowers the rest of them. The common thread that you see holds up and supports all of the skills that you have. What would you think that superpower is?

Dr. Pele Raymond 27:37
Interesting. I wonder if it’s my superpower, or the superpower of those who have supported me, or a combination thereof. I know that there have been times in my life where I lost everything. And if it weren’t for my mother, when I was very young, as I’ve talked about. Or my wife, who is my wife now of 17 years still. And some really good friends in the world. I almost wonder if relationships aren’t that one thing that we all have to have as a superpower because if we rely only on ourselves, it’s going to be rough. But if I were to boil it down to something I’ve done, I would say that I’ve been lucky to be able to do what I call HARD. H-A-R-D. Get through life, even though it’s H-A-R-D. A lot of people say that life is hard. I prefer to say that life is H-A-R-D: How Adversity Reveals Destiny. H-A-R-D. Now, what I’ve been able to do is whenever something goes wrong in my life, I seem to have the ability to hold it very tight. Holding onto that adversity and allowing it to reveal my destiny. Why am I writing a book about how music helps people become happy and profitable at work? It goes all the way back to my first adversity. And I’ve done that. Every single stage. I had a boss once. I was a big shot at some company. Lost it. I got fired from $150,000 and $180,000 job. The next day, I’m making $0. My boss said to me, “Pelé, here’s your problem: you are bad at patience, loyalty, and teamwork.” Basically, I’m not good on his team. He gave me a list. And I hugged that adversity so tightly. That became my next book. The Story of You. How you can just use your past story to overcome what everybody says is wrong about you and make a good thing. I think if anyone out there is listening and wants to know how they themselves can be, or have their superpower, as you say it, is look for your adversity. Look for everything that’s ever gone wrong in your life. And I want to bet you and guarantee that if you look hard enough, on the flip side of that adversity is your destiny. You just have to ask those questions.

Richard Matthews 30:25
Absolutely. It’s looking at one of the things that I believe pretty strongly is that your story, the reason it’s valuable, is because not necessarily because of the things you’ve gone through. But because of the perspective, you develop because of those things. Your person in your story is valuable to other people because you get to bring with it your perspective. And that perspective is unique and that perspective is powerful. And that perspective can help other people when you share it, and to your point, your story.

Dr. Pele Raymond 31:02
Absolutely. That’s it.

Richard Matthews 31:06
Awesome. I’m gonna talk a little bit about fatal flaws. Fatal flaws are things that have held you back from growing your business the way that you want to. Just like Superman has his Kryptonite. Or Batman’s not actually a superhero, he’s just really dedicated ninja guy. Something that you struggled with, but more importantly, how have you been dealing with that fatal flaw for people who suffer from something similar in their life or their business and growing it?

Dr. Pele Raymond 31:39
You really ask great questions, Richard. I just want to let you know that. My fatal flaw would have to be: I’m a do it yourself; DIY. I’ve been blessed with a lot of skills. I do everything from website building to software programming, online marketing on LinkedIn, programming bots, all kinds of stuff. And it’s like, I have not been the best builder of teams. Delegating. It takes a lot to start a company and bring other people to do things for you. I always default to just doing it myself because it’s easier, and I can get things done. I know that that’s held me back, but I’m willing to – I’m okay with that because, at the end of the day, I have to write my book. I have to say, “Who am I really?” There are some things you got to do yourself. But if I get to the point where I can begin to delegate, I will do that very well now, because I know that’s been a problem with mine. I think that’s the best way I can say it is that relying too much on myself and my own skills versus building networks of other people who can do things for me. That has not served me well. I’ve been too much an artist and a doer of my own art.

Richard Matthews 33:18
That’s the thing that I suffered with. The same basic problem for 9 years in my business. It was just this last year that I made a major shift and started hiring people. And the change over for me was changing the question that I was asking myself. And you actually said something just a second ago that was basically frames the question that I was asking myself all the time. It’s like: I have a task sitting in front of me. And the question that I would ask myself all the time, was does it make more sense for me to do that task or to hire someone else to do that task? In my head, the way that conversation goes is if I hire someone else, I have to train them. I have to find them. I have to hire them. I have to train them. I have to get them to do the task. We have to go back and forth. There’s going to be problems. Eventually, it will get done. We’ll have to go back and forth with it. And if I just did it myself, I don’t have any of that upfront time, I can just get it done. From a speed of money standpoint, the answer to the question was always to do it myself. The problem I realized was that I was asking myself a poor question. The question I was asking is: should I do this myself, or should I hire someone? That question got me a poor answer, and it kept me poorer. I started shifting the question that I was asking myself. What I did, for me anyway, was I hired someone for part-time. I paid for 20 hours of their time. I did that every week. And he’s actually my first employee, my VA. He’s a great guy. He’ll be listening to this. I could not survive my business without him. But anyway, what that did was it changed the question. In my head, the question became, how can I take this task? What tasks can I take off of my plate and put on his? Because I’ve already paid for his time. That question is a completely different question. And it changes the answers you’re getting. In the next 3 months, I tripled my revenue. Because I started changing the question. Framing it differently for myself.

Dr. Pele Raymond 35:26
You get different results. Actually, I’m on that journey of reinvention, right now, as I’ve mentioned already. I’m already seeing the fruit of asking different questions. For a while, my question was: how much money can I make? And how much success can I acquire for myself? But I switched that. Part of it is because the online marketing world is brutal. You might be an expert at this widget today. Trust me, you can sell it today. But by tomorrow, everybody’s going to know what that thing is. And they’re going to be selling it. And claiming they’ve made million dollars just like you did. It’s fast-moving things. So I started saying to myself, what can I bring to the world that is truly unique? For anyone listening, the most unique thing is you. How can you bring yourself to the world because nobody can copy that? And you don’t have to copy anything to be yourself. I started saying, “I’m going to bring what I truly am.” And that’s why I went back to my story. Back to the music. Back to the training. Combine them. And then, of course, the question is: how can I help people with this unique thing that is truly mine. Nobody can ever take away from me. That’s changed my life.

Richard Matthews 36:59
When you ask yourself better questions, you get better answers. You start driving forward to more important things. I want to talk a little bit about your common enemy. Every hero has the enemy. The things they fight against all the time. In the context of your business, which is you’re helping bigger companies work with teams and HR. If you had a magic wand that you could just sort of wave and remove a mindset or something that is holding your clients back from getting really great results that you run into all the time? You find yourself repeating yourself and talking about this all the time. What would that one thing you constantly fight against with your customer-base be?

Dr. Pele Raymond 37:40
I don’t know if it’s the customer themselves that has this problem, but it’s just the noise in the marketplace. I would say that the number one problem is the noise in the marketplace. Going back to what I actually just said, the technologies that we have today, the social platforms, they are so powerful that you can do – everybody now has the tools to get their message out at the same time. My biggest analogy for this is that, in my lifetime alone, I’ve experienced music make that shift of technologies. There was a time when you couldn’t do a demonstration record, it’s called a demo. You couldn’t make a song without going into a huge multi-track studio where the board is as big as the whole room. And you pay hundreds of dollars per hour, just to get this little tape done. Then you send that to record labels and of course, they’ll say no. Then you start over. That was the music industry back then. But just a few years have gone by and the technology is such, that on my iPhone here I have GarageBand, that is more powerful than $100,000 studio, just a few years ago. On my little iPhone here.

Richard Matthews 39:07
It’s insane.

Dr. Pele Raymond 39:09
If you think about it, everybody has tools. So, everybody’s making noise. You go on YouTube and type guitar player, oh my gosh, the talent that you’re going to see is off the chain. I mean, back in the day, if you were looking for a guitar player, it’d be hard to find one. It’s like, where can I go to find somebody who’s talented at something. Go to YouTube and anything you want. There’s someone who can do that thing so well, it’s ridiculous. That’s the new landscape of competition that we’re in. In this competitive scenario, trying to talk to a customer is like trying to shout above the crowd. It’s almost impossible to do that. Especially when what you’re selling is something that everybody else is selling. So, the challenge for all of us and for me has been, how do I create something so unique that the minute you hear about it, you’re going to be hooked. And you’re going to want to hear more at the expense of all the noise on the market. And that’s where I came up with this. A friend of mine said, “You should just call yourself Dr. Pelé.” I never thought about it. He said, “Your brand is Dr. Pelé.” This friend is passed away. He’s a very dear friend. He said, “You’re Dr. Pelé.” So, I said, “Okay, fine. I’m Dr. Pelé.” It has really worked. Because people say, “Why don’t you just call yourself Pelé? Why are you putting the three letters in front of your name?” I’m like, “Dude after you spent $100,000 on your degree, you come to tell me that you’re not going to use it every chance you get.” I’ve totally come up with this persona. I wear a hat. Always wear a cool fedora hat. I got my T-shirt or my thing. And I’ve built this whole thing around this guy called Dr. Pelé. Who’s a storyteller and musician and a teacher. That’s it. And it’s working for me because I stand out in that noisy marketplace.

Richard Matthews 41:25
Absolutely. It goes back to your story. When you have a powerful story – look, my cat’s come to join us. We just adopted a new cat. That’s the new cat we adopted. But anyways, your story is what allows you to stand out in the marketplace. Because you have a unique story. And that unique story allows you to stand above the crowd.

Dr. Pele Raymond 41:49
Yes. And for anybody who’s listening, you have to create that story. You have to construct it. It’s there in your life somewhere. But you got to put that together in a cinematic way. It’s got to be performed. You and I can tell the same sequence and sequence of events. But if I put cinema and movie-telling, or storytelling, I like to say, into it; it’ll sound better. That’s what you got to do. You got to act out that story. The world almost died, and then I arose and became myself. Whatever. But that’s the kind of stuff that brings magic to your story. But I tell you, every one of us has a story.

Richard Matthews 42:35
I tell people all the time that you should practice your stories. When you’re out networking. When you’re meeting new people. The goal of networking is to share stories with each other. The more stories you share with someone and the more of their stories you hear the better you know each other. It’s a powerful thing. Pick a few of your stories that you tell all the time and work on them. Change them. Make them better. See how people react to things when you tell different details and stuff like that. And you’ll start to really hone in your storytelling skills. As you become a better storyteller, you become a better business person.

Dr. Pele Raymond 43:12
Absolutely. That whole noise as an enemy thing was why I wrote my current book, which is called Big-Ticket Clients. The subtitle is: You Can’t Catch A Whale With A Worm. The point I was trying to make with that is –

Richard Matthews 43:32
So you catch them with plankton.

Dr. Pele Raymond 43:34
Well, plankton, but it’s got to be lots of plankton. Lots and lots, you have one little plankton, it’s not gonna work. You have people who are going after big-ticket companies as I do, big-ticket clients, that’s why I called the book Big-Ticket Clients. Using the same kind of spammy emails, those little emails where they send out and say, “You should sign up to my product. Click here, and I’ll give you this I’ll give you that.” Those little emails, those are worms. What you need to get big-ticket clients is relationships with them. Relationships. That’s why podcasting is powerful. Being able to talk to people one on one, all of those things. The point is, you can’t catch a whale with a worm was my creative, cinematic way of bringing some life into what I was my story. What I was actually living in real life.

Richard Matthews 44:31
It makes a lot of sense. I want to flip that whole conversation. If your common enemy is something you fight against; your driving force is the thing that you fight for. So 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. What is it that you, Dr. Pelé, fight for in your business?

Dr. Pele Raymond 44:53
I fight for helping people get back to happy. That’s it. We’ve all lost ‘happy.’ We started our lives, most of us, with ‘happy.’ And then somewhere along the way, someone told us, “Don’t get your hopes up.” That’s what happened. Your dad told you that. Let me tell what my dad did. I had lots of musical instruments, I was collecting them. And he got mad at me one day and said I wasn’t studying. He broke my guitar, smashed my keyboard. I mean, he threw my instruments all over the place. Out of the house. And told me to go study. If you come to my house, Richard, I have a grand piano, about 5 keyboards, about 10 guitars, huge multi-track recording studio. It’s ridiculous. And it’s because he told me I couldn’t do it. I’ve lived a lifetime trying to prove that wrong. I want people to find ‘happy’ first before they find success. If playing your guitar makes you happy. Keep doing that until you find a way to use it to help other people. Happiness is really where profit begins. It’s not the other way around.

Richard Matthews 46:23
I have a baby. She is 11 months old right now. She’s my fourth one. I’ve done this a number of times. And one of the things that really strikes me about babies, especially at her age, because she’s up and she’s moving. She’s walking around, she’s learned to say a couple of words. She is unstoppably happy. She’s got a cold, right now. She’s got snot running out of her nose. She can’t breathe. She’s having a hard time breastfeeding and all that stuff because she can’t breathe. Her whole upper respiratory system is all messed up from this cold. All it takes you just look at her and smile, and her face just lights up. They don’t smile with just their lips. They smile with their whole body. There is a level of happiness that babies and young children have that as a parent my goal in life is how do I keep that through their whole life? I think, to your point, that is what’s going to help any of my children be successful in keeping that little spark of joy. That unbridled joy. You can’t bounce it. It doesn’t matter what’s happened to her. She falls over hits her face on the ground, she gets up, she’s smiling. How many of us fall over in business and don’t stand up and smile and keep going.

Dr. Pele Raymond 47:48
There you go. People say things like, “I am happy, or I am not happy.” That’s absolutely the worst thing you can tell yourself. You’re programming yourself the wrong way and I’ll explain. I wrote a song called I Got Happy. Because happiness is something you do. It’s a skill that you actually implement into the world. It’s not something that you just are. So if you say I am happy or I am not happy. It’s almost like you’re accepting that this is just a feeling that comes over you sometimes or magically appears when you’re rich. But happiness is an active thing that you do every single day. It’s a choice that you make, and it’s a thing you do. Back to your question, that would be my mission is to help people. I even have a five-step plan for how to be happy every single day by implementing this, this, this, this, this and that.

Richard Matthews 48:54
I’m almost curious to know what your plan is.

Dr. Pele Raymond 48:56
I could tell you real quick, 5 steps. Step number 1 is H. Focus on your heart and your head and be heedful at all times. That’s called basically mindfulness. So if you’re into meditation, and things like that, things that allow your mind to really be introspective. It’s a good thing to practice every single day. 10 minutes, H. A is appreciation. Another 10 minutes of just savoring, and expressing gratitude for the things you have. Stop worrying about the things you don’t have for 10 minutes, and just relive and just breathe in all the beauty that you have. Appreciation that’s A. P is practice. Practice the HARD formula. H-A-R-D which is How Adversity Reveals Destiny. Look for opportunities in your life where something went wrong, and try to find out what the flip side of that beauty could be. Practice that every day. Then the second P is people, you probably know what this is spelling. H-A-P-P-Y. The second P is people; make community with others. Show generosity to others. Build relationships. Because that is a real superpower is quality relationships with people. And then the Y is say yes to yourself. Always say: yes, I can. And yes, I will. And if you say it long enough, it will become true.

Richard Matthews 50:31
That’s really good. Mark, if you’re listening to us, make note of that. Make sure that gets into our show notes. The formula for happiness. I love it. One of the things that I practice is something I call contented ambition. There seem to be these two camps, that in order to be happy, you either, you need to be content and not have ambition. Or you need to have something you’re fighting for; you need to have ambition. It’s never the twain shall meet. I’ve always been of the opinion that if you want to actually be happy, you need to understand. You need to be content with what you have now. What your life looks like now. Where you’re at, even if you’re in the middle of adversity, because of the perspective and the stories and the stuff that is going to come out of that. They’re going to make you into the person you’re going to be. Learning how to be content here. And also learning how to look forward and have a destination. Have a journey you’re taking. If you’re on a journey to go somewhere. To be better. To ripen on the vine, as they say. Your life will be far more filled with joy, than if you either don’t have a place you’re going. You’re not going anywhere. Or if you’re not content with your area. I always practice and preach contented ambition.

Dr. Pele Raymond 51:56
I love that. That’s powerful.

Richard Matthews 51:58
I hope so. It’s helped me at least. I love the HAPPY formula. I’m gonna write that down and stick it up somewhere. Teach my kids.

Dr. Pele Raymond 52:06
Just go ahead and share it. It’s gonna be in a book coming up soon. Tell him Dr. Pelé sent you.

Richard Matthews 52:16
I want to get in and talk a little bit about some practical things for growing your business. We call this your Hero’s tool belt. Maybe you got a big magical hammer like Thor. Or bulletproof vest, like your neighborhood police officer. Or maybe you got a belt with all sorts of cool things like Batman. Or maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you organize your thoughts. What are some of the practical tools you use every day in your business that you couldn’t manage either your client relationships, your marketing or the stuff that you do on a daily basis, you just couldn’t live without today? You have one or two of those tools that you just think pop into mind immediately. You’re like: I couldn’t live without this.

Dr. Pele Raymond 52:51
I have 5. It has an acronym too. You’ll notice that I do a lot of that.

Richard Matthews 52:58
Lots of acronyms.

Dr. Pele Raymond 52:59
In my last book, Big-Ticket Clients, I use this particular process. Every time I open my computer every single day, as you said, my folders are arranged in this S-T-O-R-Y. The S-T-O-R-Y. For example, I’m looking at my folders right now, inside of the S is where I put all the information that relates to strangers. This is how I run my business. S-T-O-R-Y. Inside my strangers’ folder I have, emails and all the stuff that I sent to them. My Facebook marketing, my LinkedIn marketing, all the automation I’m using, my websites. The things that strangers connect with, they don’t know me, I don’t know them. Those things that I do, they have to have certain psychology behind them. People who don’t know you need to learn about you from something. Like email or maybe an event or a Facebook ad. That’s where those go. The second folder on my computer here is Trust. People need to go from being strangers to trusting you. There again, you need tools and technologies that allow people to build trust. You want to know what’s in my trust folder? My podcast. Because when people show up, and they first hear about me through a book or something, or whatever the stranger’s phase was when they get into the trust phase, they watch you talk and they see you. That grows the trust even though you don’t see them in person. Instead of calling it content marketing, I call it building trust, using podcasts. My podcasts are my go-to methodology for content marketing and building trust. Then my third folder is called the Offer folder. That’s S-T-O. My Offer folder. I have all my presentations. I have a webinar that I’ve built. It’s a 40- minute Webinar like everybody else’s. But I talked about my story, my stuff, and what I’m selling. I have sales letters, I have YouTube videos where I’m pitching. That’s all in my offer phase. Then the next folder. The fourth one is the results. Now we’re talking about you’ve now got people who trust you, who have listened to your offer and have said yes to become a customer. And now all my methodology is for making my customers successful is in my results folder. So I’ve got clients folder, I’ve got a partner’s folder, projects folder in there. And then the Y. The very last one. S-T-O-R-Y is my referrals. It’s all about how do I get people to tell the story of me; you. They’re telling a story of you in the marketplace. I have testimonials. I have my referral partners. All the videos I’ve done. All the websites that I’ve built that are about telling my story to new customers. That’s my cycle, strangers who trust me, to whom I show an offer, who some of them say yes, I’ll be a client so I give them a result. And then I get those people to go back out and tell my story, The Story of You.

Richard Matthews 56:25
I feel like that needs to be a book too. Do you have a book for that one?

Dr. Pele Raymond 56:28
That book is called Big-Ticket Clients: You Can’t Catch A Whale With A Worm. It’s already out. It’s on Amazon. In fact, it was the number one Amazon bestseller. I’m very proud of that book. I can’t live without it. The way I do that is I actually force it. It’s right here on my phone. It’s in my folder. It’s not just something I teach. I organize my life in those 5 buckets. That’s what I do every day. Look for strangers to become the trusted people to my offer and to my results. And so on and so forth.

Richard Matthews 57:02
That is brilliant. It’s really cool because those are the five things that we all need to be doing. To your point, you just told a story about how those fit in. It really gives something to hang those things. The stories give you a framework to understand the principles that you hear in other places. That’s a very good practical lesson on how to actually take your marketing things and understand where they fit in your story.

Dr. Pele Raymond 57:33
The book is called Big-Ticket Clients. You can go to https://bigticketclients.com/ but I also have a website called https://bigticketstory.com/auth/login where you can implement your story your S-T-O-R-Y.

Richard Matthews 57:48
Want to check all those out. We’ll make sure all those links get in the show notes too. That’s good stuff. Talk a little bit about your own personal heroes for a few minutes. I know you’ve mentioned your mom a couple of times already, but just like Frodo had Gandalf. Or Luke had Obi-Wan. Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real-life mentors? Were they speakers, authors, peers who were a couple of years ahead of you? And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your life?

Dr. Pele Raymond 58:14
My number one hero, if you will, is Pelé of Brazil. Because not only was he the greatest soccer player, and not only was I named after him, but he was asked once in an interview, “What is it that makes you so great?” And he said one word, he said, “Practice.” That’s it, practice. There’s nothing anyone has ever told me that’s more powerful than that. Because anything we put our minds to, and we practice, we can actually achieve, within reason. He would definitely be a hero. I mean, he stopped the civil war for 48 hours. The Nigerian government and the Biafran government. It’s in Time magazine online, if you search this. In 1967, he said he was going to come to Africa and play an exhibition match. And they stopped killing each other for 48 hours, 2 days. That’s how powerful his name was in the world. And when they asked him, “How is it that you’re so great,” he said, “Practice.” So I would put him as number one. Of course, my mother and my father. Because my father, he’s passed on, but he’s the Ph.D. guy, and I’ve modeled my whole life after him without knowing it. Because I’m a teacher, too. He was a teacher. As far as people that are not that close to me, I would say, Les Brown, is huge for me. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Les Brown. He’s a motivational speaker. I met him. He hired me to be his marketing consultant guy. I have to say I worked under greatness. Another guy is the late Dennis Green of the Minnesota Vikings. He came into my life and bought me my first recording studio in the 90s. Myself and a partner, he literally spent $50,000. Built us a studio and he really liked it. He loved music and invested in us. Those are the people I would come to really make a big deal in my life or been a big deal in my life.

Richard Matthews 1:00:25
Absolutely. It’s interesting how every time we have someone on and do these interviews, the answer is always so different. There are certain relationships, you don’t realize how much they’re going to impact your life. But to your point earlier, relationships are such a key aspect of success. And I know that for those of us who are in this entrepreneur business, especially with all the internet stuff, we tend to get into little solopreneur bubbles and don’t get ourselves out in those places and realize how important it is to make time for creating and building and working on relationships because you never know which ones of those are really going to have a huge impact on your growth and your success.

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:01:12
Everything I’ve ever lost that I felt I could have done that. It was because of a relationship that failed. Everything that I’ve ever gained, that is powerful for me is because of relationships that went right. No man is an island. No woman is an island. It’s relationships.

Richard Matthews 1:01:33
Awesome. I want to bring it home for our listeners a little bit and talk about guiding principles. Top one or two principles or actions that you put into place every day that you really think contributes to the success and the influence of your brand. Maybe something you wish you had known when you started out on this journey, 10-15 years ago.

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:01:53
Number one is my family. I love my wife to the ends of the earth. I always celebrate my wife. I make sure that my kids also know how much I love them. That’s absolutely my daily practice is I love you, honey. Tired of hearing that after 17 years, but that’s number one because that’s my ground zero. That’s my bedrock. That’s my foundation. The number two thing with respect to my business is, I would have to say, I’m finally doing what I was called to do, which is I’m using music and teaching to help others. That’s it. It’s taken me a long time to make it that simple, but it’s really just that simple. And I’m really proud to be here now.

Richard Matthews 1:02:54
Curious question, how many kids do you have now?

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:02:58
We have three kids. We have an 18-year-old, a 14-year-old, recently now. She’s just turned 14. And then a 10-year-old who’s going to be 11. One of my kids is grown she’s in university now.

Richard Matthews 1:03:14
Mine are younger. My oldest is 10. I’ve got 10 and 6 and 3 and my baby. We got a ways to go before we hit the wonderful teenage years. I gotta tell you the thing that’s super exciting to me right now is my oldest one just hit 10 years old. We’ve gone over a hump in life where, before that age, you do a lot more, I don’t know how to say this properly but you do more parenting. You do things with them and it’s for them. Now, he can do stuff with me that doesn’t require as much parenting it can be more, I don’t know what the term is. We can go kayaking or hiking together. And it’s not me helping him go up all the rocks or doing all the things. We can actually enjoy some of those activities together, which is super cool. I’m looking forward to more of that as they grow older.

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:04:11
Absolutely. It’s a good story. Good fun.

Richard Matthews 1:04:17
The last thing we do on this show all the time is called the HERO Challenge. A simple challenge we do on every show. It’s basically this: 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 and share their story with our audience on the show?

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:04:35
I know guy called Matt who I think you know, as well, if you want me to stick with only first names, I will but I think Matt’s just doing something really important in the world. It’s really cool. He’s creating a new brand. He’s starting it the way I would start anything. Which is first write the book. And the reason is that if you want to really influence people, you have to start by entering influencing their minds and their hearts. And if you can write a book and lead the way, it’s almost like, the Bible. First is the book that touches you first before you could do other things. Matt’s doing that. And he also is a podcast host. I just think he’s doing very well.

Richard Matthews 1:05:20
For guests listening, Matt Johnson and his book Micro Famous. Good stuff. He’s a really cool guy. I do need to have him on the show. I hadn’t even thought about that. We should definitely invite him on.

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:05:34
Matt was on my show. We had a really good conversation. Other people. I would say anyone who has finally found the formula that lets them make money doing something they love. It is important. I’m not encouraging people to just quit everything and go do what you love. It’s got to help someone else because that’s where the money is going to come from. If you’re not helping people, then it’s just passion without profit. The purpose has to connect passion and profit.

Richard Matthews 1:06:13
Absolutely. I was just thinking about it. I was trying to remember because I know I’ve done a number of interviews with Matt, over the years. I think we did actually do an interview with him on the show. If you’re listening, and you want to find Matt, we did an episode with Matt Johnson on episode 39. I can’t remember exactly what we talked about, because it was a year ago. He’s definitely doing some really cool stuff. Last thing, Dr. Pelé, where can people find you? If they’re looking to hire you or looking to work with you? Where can they find you? And I guess more importantly, who are the right types of people to reach out if they’re looking for help?

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:06:49
First of all, if you are in a company and you are in a role, such as the Chief Learning Officer or Chief Human Resources Officer. Or you’re Business Unit Leader. And it’s your responsibility to make sure that your teams are effective. And people actually implement what they learned from all this team training stuff that everybody goes to. Leadership training. Then you would be the right candidate, if you will, for a conversation with me about how we can use what I call music-based training, which is scientifically validated. Neuroscience is really powerful stuff that can really help people learn how to be better team players and successful profitable team players. The best way to reach me is my website, https://drpele.com/ And that’s simply https://drpele.com/ And LinkedIn is the next best thing, which is basically go to LinkedIn, type in Dr. Pele or https://www.linkedin.com/in/drpele/

Richard Matthews 1:08:05
If you’re one of those people. If you have a team or you’re responsible for a team in your organization, definitely take a chance to reach out to Dr. Pelé, this is a second time I’ve gotten a chance to talk to him. And he’s blown me away every time I’ve gotten the chance to speak with him.

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:08:18
Same here.

Richard Matthews 1:08:20
I definitely encourage you to reach out if you’re in that position and learn from him. I think you could absolutely make an impact on your business. And I know how important to him that the ripple effect is of him bringing value and seeing your business bring value to your customers. Last thing here, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Do you have any final words of wisdom for our audience before we hit that little stop record button?

Dr. Pele Raymond 1:08:46
I would say, if you can listen to Richard, he’s a good man. That’s the last word for me as I always enjoy talking with you, Richard. Thank you so much for having me on.

Richard Matthews 1:08:57
You’re welcome. Thank you very much.