Episode 244： Visionary or Phony？ How to Tell Them Apart
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
195.83609
Summary
How do you tell the difference between a real visionary and a phony when it comes to a dream? How do you know who's a real one and who's just a phony? What do you do with someone who doesn't have a vision of what the future might look like?
Transcript
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30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put em up, reach
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the sky, turn the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for the
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I'm Patrick Bedeb, your host of IOTA, and today, you know, it's an interesting topic
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I want to get into today, and that is, how do you tell apart somebody who really is a
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visionary, where they get up and say, one day we're going to be doing XYZ, versus somebody
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What do you think about when you hear the word visionary, right?
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When I tell the word visionary to Mario, my buddy here, who works here on a daily basis, he thinks
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about Walter Mercado, you know, because he likes to watch Walter Mercado from, is it Univision?
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On the other hand, my buddy here, Paul, Paul is a fan of Miss Cleo.
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He's a big fan of Miss Cleo, tarot cards, that to him is visionary, right?
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And then we have visionaries, Amor, Moral, and Tikran.
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These guys sit around and have an Armenian coffee together, and they put their thumb in
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there with Armenian coffee, turn it around for like five minutes, and then they say, someone
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is going to come visit you from a very far distance today, and they're bringing money
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When I'm talking about visionary, I'm talking about real-time visionary.
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Because if you think about great countries, great civilizations, great churches, great businesses,
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great families, great anything, it becomes that because there was a visionary that casted
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a vision for that business, that family, that country, whoever it is.
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And people bought into it, and there was a lot of pressure on that visionary to make that
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But a visionary is only an event away from being a phony, and a phony is only an event
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When you think about a visionary, you know, initially, a visionary has a vision that they
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see that the future, you know, such and such is going to happen, okay?
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And many times, visionaries are probably some of the most misunderstood people in the world
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because when a visionary gets up and says, we are one day going to go to America, the
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And this is a family, they're living in Iran, they're living in China, they're in Russia,
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they're immigrants, they're in South America, and they want to one day come to America.
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Everybody in their family says, you know, like a brother would say, you're crazy, no one's
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We're never going to get, you know, citizenship to go from here.
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Somebody will say, we are one day going to build a multi-billion dollar opportunity that's
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A lot of people will say, what an arrogant, conceited person to say that it'll ever happen.
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We are one day going to build the greatest nation in the world.
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What an arrogant group of people that live in this la-la land.
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You escaped Britain to come over here and you think you're going to build the greatest
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country of all time when there's been civilizations that have been around for thousands of years.
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You're going to come out there and do something big?
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You guys are never going to go to America and be free.
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And at the end of the day, one of those two groups is going to be right.
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Because if a visionary doesn't fulfill any promise of his vision, then you have a phony.
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You know, you ever met people that talk a very big game?
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Eventually, nobody believes any word that's coming out of their mouth.
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Let's talk about the three different levels of what a visionary is.
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You know, the highest level of visionary is somebody that's a world changer.
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You know, that's the one that we read about in the books.
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Like, you know, MLK, Martin Luther King, is a visionary where the world knows about.
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And he did something that's just out of this world.
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Graham Bell, who said, you know, people are going to talk amongst each other through a
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phone, a machine, a mechanism, no wires, no nothing.
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When you think about Edison, how a light is turned on, that's a visionary.
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I'm going to light up the world, and people don't need a candle anymore.
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And he completely, he's a world-changing visionary.
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The second level of visionary is a, you know, celebrity visionary.
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You can call this kind of visionary a famous visionary.
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So it could be an Ali who would say, I'm going to knock out such and such in seventh round.
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He said he's going to do it, and it happened, right?
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And Billy Bean, who is from the movie Moneyball, that said, the best way to put a team together
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is you don't need to go get the home run hitters.
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It's about on-base percentage, because if you go on on-base percentage on how often this
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guy makes it on base, those are the teams that are going to make it.
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So the philosophy of Oakland, and then went to Boston Red Sox, and that's a visionary.
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George Lucas made a movie, Star Wars, that they said, this is never going to happen.
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What are you talking about to make a movie like this?
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That's a visionary, but that's a famous visionary, right?
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That's not a world-changing visionary, but that's still a visionary.
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But the kind of visionary that doesn't get a lot of credit is sometimes the everyday
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And let me explain to you what I mean by the everyday visionary.
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Listen, a family who sits down and a father says, boys, you know, this is a special family.
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And one day, all three of you are going to get a college degree, and you guys are going
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to have your own good families that you're going to raise.
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That's a pressure on the father because the father has to work to provide to put the kids
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through school, and there's a pressure on the kids to deliver on the vision.
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We grew up in, you know, Chicago, the bad side of Chicago.
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We grew up in—no one's going to get a degree.
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But that's an everyday visionary that we don't see, that that person doesn't necessarily
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get a recognition that's on a history books, but that person's going to get recognition
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When a family, a father or mother says, we're going to—kids, we're going to go to America
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one day, and the kids have some level of hope in them to believe, hey, you're watching
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Hey, husband says to his wife, honey, you told me you're Italian, but you've never been to
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Italy before, I'm going to one day take you to Italy.
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He said, honey, I'm going to take you to Italy.
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And when he takes his wife to Italy, he went from a phony to a visionary because the dream
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That's a certain level of visionary that we're talking about.
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Now, again, I said it earlier, the difference between a visionary and a phony is one event.
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A phony keeps saying what he's going to do and doesn't happen.
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So, how does one go about, you know, becoming a visionary when you think about, well, I want
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You know, there's a lot of pressures of being a visionary.
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This is why a lot of people don't want to be a visionary.
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For instance, what's the pressure of being a visionary?
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There's a very high likelihood of you being wrong.
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There's a very, very high likelihood of you being wrong when you claim to be a visionary.
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You know, there's a very high likelihood of it.
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You know, you could put that pressure on yourself.
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This is why when somebody claims that something's going to happen, they don't get a lot of sleep
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at them because all they're thinking about is, I got to make sure this thing becomes a
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So, the pressures of being a visionary, whether it's on the everyday level or the famous level
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or the world-changing level, it doesn't matter.
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It's a lot of pressure of being a visionary because the first step of a visionary is what?
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They have a moment where they say, I think this is going to happen.
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And then you must share that vision and declare that vision and intention with other people.
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Honey, our family is one day going to come together.
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We're all going to be under one roof one day celebrating someone's birthday.
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It may take 10, 20 years, but this is going to happen.
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And we will have a family reunion even though we're all scattered all over the world, honey.
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And then that person has the pressure of spending the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years of making sure
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that event takes place because it's important to them to become a visionary.
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It is important to them to become a visionary, right?
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So, how do you constantly improve and become a visionary?
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You've got to declare an intention and keep it.
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And the more intentions you declare and the more of your intentions you keep, the more
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The more you say it and nothing happens, the less everybody believes in your word and the
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less you believe in your word, you are losing your credibility of a visionary, right?
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So, it starts off with a small vision and it becomes a reality.
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Honey, I think in the next 90 days, I'm going to take you to a nice three-day weekend.
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Your wife may think it's not real and then it happens.
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Boys, girls, if we do this, we're going to go to Disneyland before the end of the year.
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Kids, if you do good in your grades, I see ourselves going to Hawaii next year.
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So, now the family slowly but surely is starting to trust into what?
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And you, on a certain smaller level, are becoming the visionary of your family.
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You could say it in your business and say, listen, we're going to grow and we're going
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to be in five states within the next 24 months.
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You say, hey, we're going to go out there and bring on board the best talent and we're
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The trust that you have, people that have trust in your word, goes higher.
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So, then a visionary starts having a reputation.
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The moment you have the reputation of what you say becomes a reality, now you've got to
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Now you've got to go out there and put your name on the line for more challenging things
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to do in life rather than the everyday ones because you've already done that and your family
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already believes your word on what's going to be taking place, on the realities that's
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going to take place when you cast any kind of a vision and you declare your intention.
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So, the higher and higher and the more commitments you make, next thing you know, you're going
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from, you know, being the everyday visionary in your family to next thing you know, you're
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You know, you're doing stuff that people are reading about.
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But I believe, in my opinion, I believe everybody can strengthen their muscle of being a visionary.
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And it starts off with you declaring an intention to your family, declaring an intention to the
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people you work with, declaring an intention to those you're in business with, and going
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out there and taking that pressure that you have while everybody calls you crazy, everybody
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calls you a liar, a phony, all these rumors that are going to be created about you, whether
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this person has no clue what they're talking about, you know, la la la and all that stuff.
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And then when the vision becomes a reality, when the vision becomes a reality, the faith
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in your word goes to a whole different level, not from you to you, but from a lot of other people
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to you, where the next time they're just hoping you don't declare any more intentions.
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Because if you declare more intentions, they know something crazy may happen because you
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fight so hard to keep your intentions, because it's important to you to keep the reputation
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So we started off with my buddy here, Walter Mercado, and Miss Cleo.
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And we ended up coming back to you on what would happen if you wanted to be a visionary.
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And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
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And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
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