There is more to habits than meets the eye. Beyond being just a part of our daily routines, guest for this episode and founder of STACK Real Estate Nathan Ricks believes that habits can either be the best of servants or the worst of masters. After all, these are the very things that will build your character and define you in your life. In this episode, Nathan sits down with Dan McCormick to take us deep into the power of habits and how you can create the best ones that will make you into the best version you can be. He talks about learning how to master our minds and control our bodies so we can start to put our best foot forward and reach the best people who can help us reach our goals. Plus, Nathan then lets us in on what he calls “driving lines”, sharing the psychology behind the success he has created around the globe.

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Creating Habits For Success With Nathan Ricks 

I like to call it Wisdom Wednesday. I get to pick the greatest salespeople in the world. This is truly one of my great friends. I enjoy everything that he does in life, everything that he stands for. We’d love it if you’ll like the show, follow the page, leave a review on the show sites. We love your comments as we go. Thank you very much. Nate, I know that you hung up the cleats here months ago so you haven’t been on the field of public speaking a whole lot. I want to, in advance, thank you for making the time because I know that you grinded for 30-plus years and said, “I‘m going to hang up the cleats.” Welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s good to see you. 

It’s good to see you too. It’s strange when you’re out of the game for several months or something close to that. We’re having a great time and we are taking retirement seriously. It’s been great to decompress a little bit. I’ve never felt so connected.  

You and I have worked together for the better part of years. I’ve known you for a long time. A lot of people know your name in the world of direct selling and network marketing. You’ve got massive real estate holdings and businesses that you do. What I love to do before we get started is there will be people that know you, people that worked with you, people that don’t know you. I would simply say that you are one of the most well-balanced people I’ve ever been around in my life. You’re one of the most focused and goal-oriented. I wonder if there are three things you can look to in your life and accomplishments that you find are the things that have driven your life, three things that shape each and every day or every part of your life. 

I would say the most influential thing in my life has been my wife, being able to be lucky enough to have a great partner and someone who has held me accountable. I think you gain a whole bunch when you make a forever commitment. It’s for real. It’s good and bad, thick and thin, sickness or health, whatever it might be. You learn how to sacrifice. You learn how to put somebody else ahead of yourself especially when children arrive into that equation then you are like, “I definitely would give my life for these kids.” You get to the point where you’d sacrifice anything for somebody. That puts people in a different place in their life. It puts you in a place where you can change and grow in the most important ways. That’s number one.  

Number two would be my experience I had early in my life with setting goals, which I’ve recounted many times on many stages around the world. That changed me. It gave me a belief and confidence that I could do anything if I was clear about it, wrote it down, read it every day, program my subconscious, let it go to work on that problem and make that happen. The third area that I would say is through the course of my life, seeing the value and the power of habits. This is a critical component because habits are either the best of servants or the worst of masters. Unfortunately, they can own you in difficult ways. If you’ve got the wrong habits in your life, they can destroy you but if you’ve got great habits and you’re consistent with those habits then they’re the best of servants. They go to work for you and help make your life a lot better. I’d say those are three areas. I could name more.  

You and I, we‘re both married up. We both have four daughters. They’re born within the same years and we both have all these grandkids running around. I love the fact that you mentioned your wife, your family and accountability. Both of our wives did network marketing before we did, if I recall the story. We’ve got an interesting start there. One of the things that you mentioned you have spoken on stages around the world ad nauseam, countless numbers of times when it comes to goals. I wonder when you said when you were at a young age, what got you going in that direction?  

I ran across an audiotape by the Success Motivation Institute in Waco, Texas. There was a guy in there with a good Texas drawl. He was saying, “Don’t stop by saying, ‘I don’t have the money to do that or I don’t know the right people to accomplish that or I don’t know how to go there.’ Don’t be limited. It’s like magic. You can write these goals down and read them every day and you’ll be amazed how they start to happen in your life.” That was fourteen years of age when I first heard that. I didn’t hear from my parents. I didn’t hear it from anybody in my life at the time. This was some tape I got from someplace somewhere. I don’t know why. I found myself listening to it one day, and all of a sudden, it was like, “Maybe I should try this. Maybe I should write it down.“ I’m doing it in a 6×8 inch little binder and it was blank pages of paper. I started writing, going crazy writing. I didn’t let anything stop me. I wrote crazy stuff that I thought, “Whatever, write it down.”  

When we moved to a new home when I was 40 years of age, I found it in a box. I was unpacking these boxes of books. I’m like all of a sudden, “Lo and behold, here’s this little maroon–covered little binder.” I sat down, and I started opening these pages. I’m looking through the stuff I wrote literally many years earlier. Every single one of the crazy things I wrote down had happened except one at that time since that time that happened. That’s where I got started on it. I got much more extensive into the planning of my life and my goals. I went through another book around 30 years of age. That’s when I mapped my life.  

This gentleman was saying, “Go to the end of your life and decide what you want it to look like.“ I wrote down goals when I would be age 90 in the year 2050 and I broke them down. I said, “Here’s what it’s going to be like at 90 in these different areas of my life, spiritual areas, my relationships, my financial areas, my social and friends, my physical fitness areas.“ I made these goals in these areas and then I took it back 20 years, another 20 years, another 10 years, another 5 years, another year, to a year from that time. Those are amazing looking back on those goals as well. My 90-year goals have been eclipsed in certain areas already.  

I love how you share that because of the detail. I’m guessing it was either Nightingale, Paul Meyer, one of those names down there in Waco. It’s amazing to think. When we started working together years ago, you would offer up your condo that you had next to one of your real estate projects on the point of the mountain. You’d let me stay there. I’d come up and stay in Utah. I know that you always had your favorite picture. It was always on the counter, always open. You started your day. You had your breakfast. It was regimented. You did your reading. It was onto the phones, onto the goals. It was a go.  

In the world of Og Mandino, I think he wrote the Scroll number 9 for you and that’s called I Will Act Now because I never saw you say you want to do something when you weren’t going to say, “Let’s do it right now.” You’re the most can-do guy. Out of the other individuals when I first started in network marketing, you’re the most goal-oriented and the biggest thinkers, if you will. Your wife, your goals and then the habits. What do you think got you in the direction of habits? Where do you think that you said, “This is my life?“ As far as I know, I’ve rarely or never heard you use a four-letter word. I’d never see you veer off course in any goal in your life. I’ve never seen you take a vacation that you enjoyed when you were working. Talk about those habits, if you will.  

I’m not even sure where I found this but there was a process that was spelled out simply. It basically starts with your thoughts. I’ve shared many times that I came across a little teeny book. It’s so rusty, Dan. I used to have this stuff right on the top of my head. As a Man Thinketh is a book that everybody should read. It’s a small book. You read that book. He was one of the first self-improvement types of writers. He wrote these great books and he said, “Your mind is like a garden. You’ve got to be careful what you plant in the garden because that’s what you’re going to harvest throughout your life.“  

As I read that book, I thought about this. It’s like, “Your thoughts become your words.“ If you think something enough, you’ll start to verbalize it. If you verbalize it enough, then your words become your actions. You start to do those things that you’re verbalizing. If your actions get repeated over and over again then they form themselves into habits in your life. Those habits will carry you whichever direction you’re tied to with. Whatever those habits are, they’re like autopilot control that takes you in a certain direction in your life, at least that’s been my experience. Those habits create your character over time. It defines who you are as a person or how you’re known to other people because they can see your character in that way and the character fixes your destiny.  

Habits For Success: Your mind is like a garden. You have to be careful what you plant in it because that’s what you’re going to harvest throughout your life.

That’s the legacy that you’re going to leave behind. You’re not going to take anything with you. You’re going to leave everything except who you become. I believe you take that with you into the next life. It’s those experiences and that level of intelligence or those thoughts that you accumulate in this life that you take with you. That’s where we need to be invested is learning how to master our minds and control our bodies and seeing if we can have self-discipline and control to act and do the right things and not react. Many people spend their life reacting to other people or what they do or something that happened. “COVID happened to me.” People can always come up with something.  

Are you seriously going to let COVID change your future? You’re weak if that’s the way you’re thinking about it. You decide. You make a decision about where you’re headed, what you’re going to do. As Leonardo da Vinci said, “He who is fixed to a star is not going to change his course.“ He knows exactly where he’s headed and what he’s going to accomplish, he or she. There is unbelievable power in defining and writing that down. It’s been said many times that all of a sudden, you have all these unseen forces that come to your aid that help you to actually accomplish that goal that you’ve put out there.  

Og talks about it in the The Greatest Salesman in the World and that is, “I will be a slave to my habits.“ They’ll be pleasurable. I think you loved the journey so much. You love the people. I was fortunate to travel with you on a certain means of transportation, different countries around the world and stuff. There were times when you’re flying places to do meetings. It could be different parts of the world where it had no financial benefit to you. It could be a special event for a friend or a family. It could be a wedding. It could be a baptism. It could be all kinds of things. You really love the people that you invest your life in. How do you carry that on that you’ve turned off the spigot to the network marketing world?  

I think that what’s happened is that there’s a piece of your life that changes. There’s a piece that you feel a bit of a void there. You miss people. You miss the interaction. Certainly, I miss the energy of a large event. There had not been many of those in 2020. Those were life–changing experiences for many people because there definitely is energy inside of a venue when you get a lot of people that are focused on the same thing, heading the same direction, wanting to accomplish similar goals. There is a definite energy that starts to shift people in terms of their level of belief and what they think they can do with that particular opportunity.  

It gives people permission to believe they can do similar things to what you’ve done because they can see other people that are there doing the same thing and that faith or that hope, that energy that’s there is real. It’s powerful and it’s life-changing. Those are the fun ones. Those are the easy ones. The hard ones are when it’s you. You’re looking at your phone or you’re looking at who you‘re going to contact. The rubber’s got to meet the road when nobody else is watching. That’s what they say true integrity is. True Integrity is what you look at, what you read, what you listen, what you do, who you speak with and who you interact with when you think no one else is watching. Can you bring it in?  

You’re being candid about that subject with people about what you are doing when no one’s watching. I’ve heard you literally look at an audience of thousands of people and tell, “If you’re looking at pornography, you’ve got to get that out of your life. It will destroy you.“ I heard you being candid with people because the goal is big enough. You have to make that habit so crystallized and aligned with true principles. You did that and I want to congratulate you on that journey. It’s awesome to see you in this setting because you forget a few things. We’re not on a stage. We’re not shaking hands. We’re not taking pictures. It’s just me and you and thousands of people will be watching the day and throughout the time on the show.  

You had a focus that was rare, probably still do. I think you mentioned to me when we were walking the beach, looking at your beautiful new home in San Clemente on Sunday, you said something to the effect of, “Dan, I have a structure to my life. I have things. My wife, she’s more spontaneous but I’ve got a structure.” You had a structure and a rhythm to your life and getting around the globe every year and speaking to people.  

We did. My wife used to say, “You going to have oatmeal again?” I said, “Honey, I’m always going to have oatmeal. You don’t ever have to ask me that question again.“ She was like, “I’ll ask you, do you want some then you can tell me whether you do or are you going to do something else for breakfast?” I’m a little too regimented to a fault where I do have these patterns, habits and time–efficient ways. The older I get, the more nervous I am about wasting any time on anything. I try even to take the mundane things in my life and make sure that I’m being more time–efficient with those things.  

I’ve never known you to waste a moment on anything, Nate. I’ve been with you. I’ll give you a couple of examples and some people will chuckle. You might say, “McCormick, shut up.“ I’ve been on airplanes with you for the first time ever when you were in the back of the plane before you were in the front of the plane. You’d fall asleep in a nanosecond. I’ve been at a Blue Man concert with you. Because we weren’t on the phone or doing a meeting, we were at a Blue Man concert. You fell asleep at the Blue Man concert. I know that there’s a famous story about you doing meetings so hard and fast in Japan. I think you fell asleep in the shower and had to race to your flight if I remember that story correctly.  

That’s what happens when you’re going around the world and you’re not sure what time is on your end. Your body takes the break whenever it can get it.  

Let me take a break. I want to shift in, if we don’t mind. I want to ask you some specific questions about the grind and the build of your network marketing organizations that made you so legendary around the world. I’ll do a commercial on behalf of the Og Mandino company and the ambassador of the Og Mandino company. This episode is brought to you by Cracking the Social Code, which is powered by the Habit Finder.  

Social currency has never been as valuable as it is. Of course, 2.5 billion people are on Facebook like most of us. It’s still the biggest bank. We want more interested people to connect with that you can handle perhaps. It’s time to crack the code and stop waiting for an algorithm, if you will, to grant you access to influence. You deserve to make more sales, build dominant alliances and add value to the world. Are you ready to put your social back in social media, get out of the ponds of Facebook and move into the deep oceans of influence and dominant reach? You are ready for Cracking the Social Code. You can visit the HabitFinder.com/socialvip to start cracking the code now. Nate, social media is not one of your favorites. It hasn’t been one of your top priorities in life but it’s the craziest thing as we talked about on the beach. It’s like I’m on Facebook more than I care to be because that’s where thousands of my friends and your down line and my down line are every day. We at the Og Mandino company have figured out how to teach people how to use it more effectively.  

I’ve got a great question for you. You have a lot of videos on YouTube but you’re famous for something called Driving Lines. There’s a psychology to the success that you created around the globe. I think at one time, maybe you had eighteen of the top lines in the world in your organization that reached the top level in the company. Maybe touch on how that incredible effort honed you in. I love when I‘ll be in an audience of thousands of people and you’d explain the compensation structure. It is for any company in network marketing simply by driving a line. 

That’s something that I stumbled across by accident early on in the business through the process of driving one of my first lines, sifting down and going to the next level down, trying to find somebody who was better than the people above them. Somebody who would create that fire from the bottom and create that upline motivation that would motivate people to move because of the fear of loss. We’ve learned that people work harder, stretch harder, reach harder to keep something that they believe they already have instead of hoping they can get something else in the future. It’s interesting to see what happens when you can find that locker that’s down 3, 4, 5, 6 generations down in a leg someplace. That person has been waiting for this thing literally for their whole life. They’ve been preparing through different things they’ve done. They’re connectors and they’re ready to go. All of a sudden, you put them in the right vehicle and they literally can take off and create a lot of activity in a short period of time, attracting light kind people in the same way.  

My experience with that was a multiplication of effort. If I could invest my time on my fifth generation with a powerful leader that was growing quickly, then I was five times in my effort because I didn’t have to worry too much about the four generations between me and them. They were going to be self-motivated. If they weren’t, then they weren’t alive. Their heart wasn’t beating. They weren’t thinking. They were going to be gone anyway. With our particular compensation plan and in the Nu Skin opportunity, it lent itself well to the concept of driving those lines. Once I figured that out, to me it was a potent confidence booster because some people feel like network marketing is luck, like it’s the luck of the draw.  

I like to slam 1,000 names against the wall and some will stick and something will turn out. Certainly, I’ve seen people who can do that and they’ll surface a leader or two. What if there was a way you could manufacture these power legs? What if there was a formula you could follow and it wasn’t luck? It was execution. It was focus and execution and then you could decide how many you wanted to create. I proved that to myself and everybody else in the world because I was able to go out and almost, at will, pick a leg, start going, start driving, sifting, finding leaders and walking them in.  

I‘m always grateful for you for pinging on my doorstep years ago and bringing that technology to the company that made me say, “I want to be a part of something bigger than me and something that can be a life changer around the world.“ I know that you have not only this incredible work ethic but you figured out the structure and the strategy. You have a great mind about figuring out a duplication model if you will, that made that thing hum for you around the world. I wonder if you would for the benefit of people that aren’t where they would like to be. I wonder if you would share the story, maybe in CliffNotes form, of when you were getting started, you went to that Salt Lake City office and do that fancy presentation. You got the lotions and potions out and it’s dripping through your hands on the table. You can pick it up from there and tell everybody that you’ve got to go through some trials.  

Habits For Success: If your actions get repeated over and over again, then they form themselves into habits in your life. Those habits will carry you whichever direction you’re tied to.

That was a make or break day for me. It almost broke me. Almost would have been gone very close. Sometimes people are going to embarrass you. It’s a tough thing. When I had that experience, I went to a friend of mine that I respected a lot that I’d done a lot of business with. I was overzealous. I was too excited. My mistake was I squirted him. I shouldn’t have squirted him with the hand lotion. That made him recoil a bit and look at me like, “You have lost it. You’re a crazy person.“ As he sent me packing out of that room, I left there pretty rejected, dejected and furious at myself that I didn’t have the words to respond. I didn’t know what to say yet. I was too new in the business. I didn’t know how to describe what I was trying to accomplish. I was madder at myself for not performing well and for the way I handled that approach to that person.  

I sat in my car and I thought, “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe this isn’t what I should be doing.” It was an introspective moment of truth. I remembered I had that little audiotape from a guy named Mark Yarnell who’s since passed on. I plugged that in. I was driving back down the road towards my office and I thought, “Right there. That’s why I’m doing it. Don’t ever forget that.” It helped me to get clear and crystallize why I was doing it. I wasn’t selling hand cream. I was creating leverage in my life. I was trying to be part of this vehicle that could take me someplace different in my life. That was a tough but clarifying moment.  

You carry on. You plug the audio cassette in or you pick up a good book or whoever’s out there that needs that. You got to get your mind back in the positive. How early in the business do you recall you were when that happened?  

That was probably in the first two weeks. It’s true. You need to have somebody you can identify within the company. You’re applying a sideline. Somebody that you can call if something gets out of whack because that person can save you. Maybe it‘s a book. Maybe it’s an audiotape. Maybe it’s something to remind you of the feelings you had and why you did it. What I’ve learned is reality is what you think it is. People create their realities based on how they’re going to think about situations and how they’re going to act inside of that frame. Almost everybody I know thinks network marketing stinks, they don’t like it or they think I‘m crazy to participate in it. I think I’ve lost my marbles or whatever it might be.  

I didn’t care because I understood the concept of leverage. I understood that there were few things in this world that I can create as much leverage with as I could with network marketing and do it in a way that would be responsible and help other people to have the same leverage. Not in a take advantage kind of way of leveraging people but bringing them along with you and giving them the exact same opportunity you had. I wasn’t an owner of the company. I didn’t have stock in the company. I didn’t have any internal plan or anything.  

I was in the same compensation structure as everybody that I was talking to could be part of as well or was already part of and we’re doing the same thing. That gave me a huge confidence over that 30-year period of work at Nu Skin, three decades. I learned how to do it. I learned how to drive lines. I learned how to create huge groups, big volumes and hundreds of millions of revenues for the company. I’ve done it all inside of this same structure and it gave me the confidence to believe that if I could do it, that I figured anybody could do it if they could get focused and get serious about it.  

I’m going to correct you on one thing because you said hundreds of millions. I’m going to say it’s been billions of dollars in revenue you’ve created for the company, yourself, your family, other people. I wouldn’t know how to figure it out. Maybe you do. You’ve created over a billion dollars in incomes for families around the globe just looking at it that way, knowing that’s happened. It’s in the billions. When you get to that stage and you have an organization like that, you had some goals on those sheets early on. You thought you had real estate goals and you had all kinds of things.  

I remember we’re standing in Anaheim. I want to say it was maybe our January kickoff in 2009, 2010. You put some slides up on the screen on having this giant organization and then you talked about, “I can’t believe the stress I put myself through with all that real estate investment. The economy is crashing.” You were this close. Your investments were this close. There are a lot of people that think anything Nathan Ricks touches is going to turn into gold but there are some challenges along the way as an entrepreneur, investor, private equity, whatever you want to call it.  

Everybody’s going to have negative experiences as part of life. That’s going to happen to everybody. You take the good ones and you make them as good as you can make them. You take the bad ones and you try to minimize them. Be smart enough to minimize them as much as you can. That’s the key. They can waste your time and your money but your time at the end is way more valuable than your money. You’ve got to know when to cut bait on things and say no more good money after bad, no more time invested after poor investment is done. You’ve got to change it. You’ve got to decide you’re going to do something different and be more productive and positive.  

You were infamous on a presentation you did in 2020 at a university for your son-in-law, I believe. You’re speaking to a business class. It’s on YouTube somewhere. You do this entire thing about your life. You go through your investments and the ones that work, the ones that didn’t. When the ones that don’t work and the ones that strike you like that, is it a tough swallow for you? I listened to Elon Musk. I think I sent you the presentation not long ago when he said, “I figured I had a 10% chance of making it. The only thing I was going to lose was money. I wonder how that works for you when you might lose money.” 

I don’t know. It’s painful for everybody when you lose money. If it was millions of dollars, it’s painful because you think, “I had these other ones that went well. If I would’ve had it in those other ones then it would have been great.” You miss every shot you don’t take. The key is being careful about what you get involved in, make sure you can finish. Be a finisher, don’t be a quitter. If you’re going to commit to something, be careful what you commit to because you want to make sure that you’re a finisher and you see it through. If it’s going to hit a wall and it is time to end it and cut bait then you’ve got to do that. You’ve got to cut it. Sometimes it’s hard to do that. It’s with people you care about. They’ve invested stuff and everything else but sometimes you get to a point where you’ve done everything you can do and there’s no more to do. There‘s no other way out and you’re chasing bad time. It’s time to change, look at things differently and move in a different direction. 

Habits For Success: Habits create your character over time. It defines who you are as a person and how you’re known to other people because they can see your character in that way.

Great leaders do that. They’re good at pivoting. Most companies that you invest in don’t end up doing the original thing you thought they were going to do, especially startup companies. It seems like they pivot a lot and eventually keep pounding and searching. When we talk about having that goal out there, sometimes you’ve got to be strong enough to blast right through the wall in front of you and go through it and get it. Sometimes there’s detour. You’ve got to go around it, over it and under it, whatever it might be. Ultimately, you’re going to get to that particular destination. What’s the big objective? Living up to your moral code and seeing if you can create a family. That’s the greatest treasure anybody can have. You asked me what I’m filling my time with. Part of it was with 13 grandchildren and number 14 is coming. I’ve told my kids early on I want twenty. There are 4 of you, you’ve got to have five each. That’s one better than your mom and I did. You guys are better than we are. One of them is already there. Another one’s knocking on the door and there are a couple more to go. It’s the greatest thing. The grandkids are the most fun, phenomenal thing that happened in my life next to my wife and kids. We’re blessed. We feel lucky. 

It’s so great to have you. I’m going to go out on a limb here and test my memory, Nate. N2648 X-ray first tail on that first jet of yours. N2648 X-ray ready for takeoff. I remember we were coming back from the East Coast and we’re going through these places in Canada. It’s 3:00 in the morning and you got to fuel up in Winnipeg. You’re unbelievable. When did you know you wanted to be a pilot?  

When I sat in the back of many planes all the time going, “Why am I in the back? I’m not a spectator. I’m a guy that likes to lead. Why am I not flying this thing?“ I don’t know for a long time I wanted to do it. Thankfully, Peter Bannister who’s one of our team leads in our business was a 747 captain. He decided to purchase a property in Utah where we were close to where we were living. He was a big catalyst. He said, “Let’s buy a little plane. You can start learning to fly.“ We bought a Cirrus and then I bought another one. I bought five in a row.  

When I bought the fifth one, the whole factory came out. They’re like, “Who is stupid enough to buy five of these things?” I kept buying the upgrade. I was a sucker for the upgrade. From there to jets because jets we could get around and get a lot of places fast. That was the night when we fueled in Winnipeg when we were going to see Ross Hobbs in Edmonton and we were leaving. I think we flew out to Chicago in a major snowstorm that night. Got up above it all and got over to Winnipeg and over to Edmonton. Those were great days.  

You always said that the money’s in the front of the room. Why don’t you talk about that concept? There are a lot of leaders on this show. There are people that maybe are newer that don’t know you and you used to always say that, “When you go to these events, you want to be at the front of the room.” This language would be you want to be the one dictating those live events on Facebook. You want to be the one doing those Zoom events. You want to be part of that thing. You used to say that a lot. The money is in the front of the room.  

I think the reason that we always push people to present, to be the presenter, to stand up in front of the room before you’re ready or get on Zoom before you’re ready is because when you’re the teacher, that’s when you’ve internalized it and you’ve learned the principle. It’s this concept I read. It’s the Richard Feynman effect. If you can take a complex concept and distill it down so that a twelve-year-old can understand it, you’ve internalized it. You know it, teach it and repeat it. To sit there, listen and think you’ve learned something without repeating that or trying to teach that hence duplication.  

That’s why we want people to follow that path and then end up duplicating our positions or the things that we’re doing is because that’s when they’ve internalized it and that’s when they start to understand it. They start to believe it. They gain hope, confidence, and faith in it and then they’ll take action. Faith is a principle of action. If they believe it, they’ve got faith in it, then they’re going to take action. They’re going to take huge action if they believe it a lot. That’s part of that whole duplication process is people have to turn around and regurgitate it then they got it.  

I remember you talking about how many times you drew the compensation plan out. You knew that you were going to go through numbers and numbers and here we have in a different way with Zoom and with Facebook, 2.5 billion, 3 billion people on social media, whatever the numbers are. It’s a pretty crazy thing. In closing, Nate, there are a lot of things we could go on. There are many people that are thanking you in advance. I like to go back to those three things in closing, generally. You talked about your wife. I think that’s admirable and cool that you can go to a university and speak to your son-in-law’s class if that’s the case or the class that he taught or you can take your daughters to special places. You’re very involved with your wife and family. One time your wife had a goal to go to see the Galapagos Islands, if I remember. Was that her goal?  

She loves wildlife and animals. She should have been a vet. She takes care of everything. That was our 30th-anniversary surprise trip for her. She didn’t know it was happening but I popped it on her and we went to the Galapagos on a private cruise ship. I think it had 20 rooms or something and 5 servants for every guest. It was awesome, a white glove treatment. We ended up having this amazing week on this ship, diving with hammerhead sharks, seals and incredible species everywhere.  

You’ve got everywhere in the world that anybody could ever want to see. When you look at your goals, do you still write down new goals? Do you refine them? Do you try to add? How do you look at life now?  

Joyce and I did our 2021 goals on January 2nd. We sat down on maybe the third Sunday and got the family stuff behind us and then the holiday in the New Year. We sat down and spent a few hours on that. I think that I saw somebody said they’d done that with their family. What a great thing to do with your family. I did this with my children growing up, same five areas that was Vanessa. Vanessa was the one I think has said she did that. My kids set goals. They know how to do it and they grew up doing it. Some of them taught their husbands how to do it. We’re big believers.  

You’ve got to have the next one out in front of you all the time. Life is short and there are many great things that everybody can accomplish. It’s a matter of making those decisions, writing them down, reading them every day and then magic happens. The universe aligns itself to aid you in achieving those objectives and goals, especially when they’re good things. You’ll get heaven’s help helping you to accomplish good things in your life for other people and thinking about others. One correction from what got posted on the habits I noticed. The post was backwards. Habits are either the worst of masters or they’re the best of servants.  

I have one last question that your friend Bill Toth wanted me to ask you. He was on the show with his wife. We had so much fun because they kept making references to animals and nature. In the middle of the show, I welcomed everybody to the animal nature show. He came from the Tony Robbins’ background field and Tony liked to ask people as he did his interviews with lots of success stories around the globe. Do you ever give thought to how you would like to be remembered?  

I want to be my posterity to say he was awesome. He was a cranker and he provided all these great opportunities for us, great experiences, great trips. In the end, that’s what matters. It’s the people in our lives, that’s the people we can affect and touch their life in some way and help them move on. Those are the greatest things.  

You’re Nathan Ricks sitting in the greatest salesman’s chair, the greatest salesman maybe ever in network marketing. There have been a lot of good ones. No one’s done it as well as you or any better than you. It’s great to have you here on our episode. Many people around the globe are going to enjoy your time. They’re so happy for you because as I told Bill when I was on the phone with him, I said, “I can walk with Nate on the beach now. I can keep up with him but years ago, there was a measure to your step. That was never going to be a dull moment. You’ve got to hurry up and get that walk done, that ride done, that workout done so you can get back on the phone and crank.” 

Habits For Success: Reality is what you think it is. People create their own realities based on how they’re going to think about situations and how they’re going to act inside of that frame.

Sometimes I look back and think, “I probably was too hardcore. I probably missed too many things.“ You have a few regrets but there are always tradeoffs. There’s going to be a tradeoff and everything you’re going to try to do in your life. If you’re trying to do something great, you’ve got to make great sacrifices on other areas to accomplish that. There’s no free lunch in any way. I want to compliment you, Dan. You’ve been such an inspiration to me because of your consistency and what you did for everybody in the Nu Skin world, have done, and continue to do. It’s so consistent like clockwork dedicating your time, sacrificing some of your family time on a Saturday morning every week to lift people. Nobody’s done it as consistently as long as you have and as well as you have. I am grateful to be your friend.  

Thank you. It’s great to know each other, know our families, have worked together and be able to still appreciate the different paths, the journeys and the contributions that we both helped to make other people’s lives. Thank you very much. For those that are new to the show, you can go to TheGreatestSalesman.com for all of the episodes. I did have a goal, Nate. I wanted you to kick off the new year because I know many people have looked at their goals and perhaps, they’ve read The Greatest Salesman, perhaps they’ve read As A Man Thinketh or listened to Paul J. Meyer. Maybe it’s time to say, “Can I get 10% better? Can I go all in?“ It was great to have you. Thank you, everybody, for making the time to be here. We look forward to being back with you. 

Thanks, everybody. 

 Important Links:

• Nate Ricks – LinkedIn 
• As a Man Thinketh  
• The Greatest Salesman in the World  
• HabitFinder.com/socialvip  
• Driving Lines – Nathan Rick’s presentation on YouTube 
• Bill Toth – Past episode 

About Nathan Ricks