We’ll come back to it. Show my fellow extraordinary Americans with today’s guests; we have Boris Blum. Boris has worked with successful entrepreneurs and ultra-high-net-worth families for over 25 years. He’s a sought-after expert with deep insights into these individuals’ unique challenges. He’s not only known as the CEO of Consiglieri but has also been involved in entrepreneurial endeavors. Ensures his life as a serial entrepreneur, turnaround, expert, and investor. 

He has counseled many leaders on the insights and frameworks of an optimal performance coach for CEOs and their leaders. His extensive expertise in how high-performing teams execute has allowed him to create A unique approach called B.O.S.S, which is short for balanced operating systems and solutions. 

Boris is also considered a business and financial expert with extensive experience with personal and business issues related to asset protection. Business succession tax mitigation, investments, insurance, real estate, and business planning. 

He has directly owned and operated businesses related to retail, e-commerce, financial and banking unit services, real estate, and property management. He has overseen the complex operations of numerous family business structures involving trusts and family foundations. 

Boris is what I would call an extraordinary American, and I’m glad to have him on this show. Boris, are you there?

I’m here absolutely, and I appreciate you having me on.

Boris, thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with us. I’m truly honored to have you on the show because I know you’re a successful entrepreneur and high-performance business coach. Can you tell me and the audience more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Yeah. So, I started my career in a financial services space primarily focused on working with business owners and entrepreneurs, and it was focused primarily on their financial challenges, as any other financial advisor might in their career. But early on, I gravitated towards more complex issues that clients were facing, and the higher net worth clients face different challenges, as you can imagine than the average Joe. 

So, it caused me to focus on what those challenges were and how I could address them as a financial professional, and I came to find out that there are a lot of challenges. And trying to do that due to regulatory requirements and things of that nature that kind of, you know, handcuff people around what they can do for clients. 

So, I got a little bit disenfranchised with the financial services business. And I decided that I might want to look at other avenues to help my clients, which led me to what I’m doing nowadays, which is consulting with high-performing CEOs of companies.

So, with regards to your overall vision and goal regarding consulting people regarding high-performance business coaching, how can you tell us a little bit more about how that went through over the years and how you got to the point where you wanted to consult and show people how to do high-performance business coaching?

Well, what happened was that, if you recall, back in 2008, we had a great financial collapse or correction, depending on who you were and how you experienced it. And I decided during that time to move away from traditional financial services. 

And so I started working with companies in significant distress on the verge of bankruptcy and became a turn-around expert. And as I did that work, I understood there are many unique intricacies around how CEOs function, especially in times of crisis when things are chaotic. They’re having difficulty managing their business, which caused me to think about why these individuals were having the struggles they were having there. There must have been some kind of common thread, and I identified several things. 

But one of the clear things amongst them was that they were all striving for peak performance. Everybody wanted to be the best that they could be. They were trying to. Get their teams. To be peak performing at all times. But success wasn’t there for the most part; it was distracting. Their ability to focus on what they needed to do in their business, And I concluded that peak performance is not what you should be striving for. 

If you look at athletics, you have the world’s best basketball or football players. They’re striving for peak performance. That’s because they have a game to play, and they need to win the game, and then when the game is over, they can go home. But when you’re in business for yourself and leading a team of people, expect everyone, including yourself, to be at peak performance 24 hours a day. 

It was kind of a It was an unrealistic challenge, so I started to coin the phrase optimal performance, and optimal performance is different for everyone. It doesn’t mean that the CEO and, maybe, his leadership team are functioning at the same level, which is a longer conversation. But the point was that I felt optimal performance was really what people should be striving for. And I developed a couple of alternative methods of working with individuals. I coached them through this, and it seemed to work out well for

So, Boris, as a continuation of this thing, what is the biggest lesson you learned during your time consulting CEOs and business owners about peak performance and optimal performance?

Mostly, it came down to the fact that the CEOs were generally the biggest problem. They had a team of people who were enthused about solving organizational problems. They had a vision of striving to achieve some goals, but the CEO often created chaos around how that would be implemented. They had their vision and idea, and it didn’t match what their employees or team were looking at. 

And so, I decided that there had to be a better way to communicate and coordinate action within organizations, and that’s what led me to develop this B.O.S.S framework that you mentioned earlier.

Can you tell me if you know the Audience a little bit briefly. What B.O.S.S is about?

Sure, B.O.S.S is a framework for organizing an organization around what matters most, and what, when I say matters most, matters most to the organization, not necessarily to each individual. Every organization should have a compelling vision that everybody is aligned with—it drives how people interact with different departments. Different individuals interact with their customers and other stakeholders. Often, a compelling vision is just a statement on the wall. It is not a part of the culture or how people behave within the organization. 

And so it became evident that there had to be a better way to do that. And B.O.S.S was an outgrowth of that. It was since we could figure out the meaningful things people should be working on. Consistently, to get to that compelling vision that the organization has, it’s all built around the purpose of why the organization exists in the first place, which drives all of the activities. 

So everything that’s being communicated through the B.O.S.S as a framework and everything that people engage in in terms of their activity is focused on the singular task of achieving organizational goals, and it’s a framework that I have not been able to find anywhere else, so I had to create it out of necessity.

No, I mean, it leads to results. So, I know that it’s a very innovative thing, and the way you’re explaining what it’s all about is that CEOs often don’t communicate with their employees. They have a certain idea of what they want. But then the rest of the team has, like, another idea.

Often, that vision does not match, but the most important piece is how you get people to engage in the journey. To get to that vision, there has to be a prescriptive path of activities that need to happen within the organization to allow people to do their day-to-day work and know they’re meaningfully contributing to that vision. And often, that’s the missing piece: you can paint a picture but haven’t explained how that picture will come to fruition.

So, in addition to this right, those CEOs need certain successful character traits, like the ability to think and act in a certain way that will also lead to success. From your perspective, what are the successful character traits that a CEO should have to make their company successful?

Well, for me, it comes down to three different things. I’ve always believed that three factors make a successful CEO. It all comes down to leadership, but you can’t lead people if you can’t lead yourself, right? You have to have a way to focus your energy and activity around the things that truly matter to you and your organization. Every leader I looked at had three distinctive things in common among everyone regarding their execution ability. 

They were all decisive. They had no problem making decisions and often had to be made with little or no information. They could base it on being comfortable making conscientious decisions without all the facts necessarily available to them. 

The second thing is that they were able to take deliberate action. And when I see deliberate action, they have thought through all of the activities that need to occur, and they were able to take action on those activities. 

The most important D I would put in this, what I call 3D focus, is discipline. They have extreme discipline in their day-to-day activities. They’re very focused on what they need to accomplish, and they’re able to help other people focus their energies on the things that they need to make, you know, their objective success. So those are the three things. It’s decisiveness, deliberate action, and discipline.

How are all the people you consulted, and how many people had the 3Ds percentage-wise? Is it a rare thing, or is it more common among successful CEOs? Like, what percentage are you looking at? Do this.

Every high-performing CEO I’ve ever met has succeeded at doing all three things. That’s how I came up with the 3D focus. But what’s important about it is that it’s a learned activity. It’s not necessarily innate. Anybody can have those three components in their life if they choose to; they need to change, which is probably part of their mentality. If they’re not currently embracing those things, they need to. Understand the framework and how to implement it into their lives daily. But assuming they have the right toolset and mindset, they won’t have a problem implementing this. This is not unfortunately, just because it’s easy or simple doesn’t make it easy, right? So.

No, I can’t agree more. Like, yeah, you have to be decisive. You have to have confidence in yourself, and you have to take action, right? And. Yeah, that’s pretty true. But our numbers are a continuation of this, right? What is the one rule block you have seen in business owners? What do you think is preventing them from attaining success?

Well, there’s a lot of roadblocks. One thing is the focus they’re missing; so often, they’re so focused on their activity that they’re working on their business, trying to solve problems. And there’s all these distractions in their lives—they get not just within the organization but at home and elsewhere, and it causes them to feel extreme stress. All these distractions take away their energy and attention from what they should focus on. 

They don’t have a framework for managing what I consider to be focus and energy, which are by far more important than managing time. They’re often very good at, you know, multitasking and managing their time and calendar. But those things are not very impactful if they want to make meaningful changes; they often have to focus their energy, which they struggle with because they don’t have a good framework. 

I came up with some tools that I felt were valuable. I call one the 3D focus management system, and it’s not a time management system. It’s a focus-focused system. It allows you to understand the most meaningful things you need to work on as an individual. And then you take those things and put them into action within the organization and your life, and make sure that other people support you in those activities. 

And then there’s another component I found called a productivity planner, and it’s not a day planner as it might sound. It is a way to track your day-to-day activities to ensure they align with the objectives you’re trying to reach. 

And so, by incorporating 3D focus and as a productivity planner, an individual can raise their game as far as what they’re engaged in because to get back to the discussion and distraction, it’s what you say no to that’s more important than what you say, yes. You know, there are many things you could say yes to what we call a shiny object syndrome. We all suffer from that on a day-to-day basis, right? But we say no to what makes all the difference in our lives because often, only a handful of things will make big exponential results for us. And we need to understand what those things are and just focus on those things and only those things. Right.

It is so important and valuable what you just talked about, especially regarding loss Because we are aware of this often, we ask ourselves, What’s the difference between the 1% and the 99%? It comes down to these thoughts and actions, which are the frame and, more importantly, the framework in which they do things. 

And it’s these things that are done in a certain sequence. It leads to success; if not done, it leads to failure. And yeah, as you mentioned, it’s simple. It’s easier said than done. But when you’re doing actions with the discipline necessary, and I don’t think many people have the discipline, if they can develop that discipline, that leads to massive success.

Yeah. Success as a business owner comes down to two very distinctive components. It’s the ability to lead others. And it’s making the right decisions, right? It’s decision-making at the end of the day that will make or break an organization’s success. 

And suppose you’ve got a framework for making decisions and the ability to lead others and engage them in the activities you need to. In that case, business success becomes pretty easy in that respect. The problem is that most people don’t have that. 

And if you think about it, when you need to decide on something you lack information on, you don’t know all the attributes you would need and all the data points you need to make a good decision. What are you? Human nature says you just make a prudent decision, and what a prudent decision means is that it’s a risk-averse decision. I am going not to take chances because it’s an important decision. I know I have to make it. 

So, I won’t take a chance on making the wrong decision. I will cut back on the scope of what I will do. Whatever that decision might be, it is wrong because thinking about it in an entrepreneurial environment is about taking risks and understanding what they are. Probable success means knowing which risks you can and should take and which you should not. 

This concept of prudent decisions gets in the way because it’s a risk-averse approach. It’s a fixed mentality, and it doesn’t help you make progress. What you are striving to do is make what I call conscientious decisions. You have taken the time and effort to analyze conscientious decisions appropriately. You’ve weighed the pros and cons and know the probability of success, so you have confidence when acting.

No, I like it’s all coming down to thought process, right, and I wanted to ask you this question. I know. You have been around many high-net-worth families, and I want to ask: what is the thought process high-net-worth individuals have versus somebody from a middle-class family or a middle-class background?

There are probably two different things that stand out in my mind. One is this whole idea of long-term versus short-term. I know that families generally think that, in the long term, they have a clearer picture of what that looks like for themselves. And it’s not just as a family unit; it’s also for each other—individuals in the family. 

So, it comes down to what I would call a compelling purpose, which each individual has a passion for and wants to work toward. What I find is middle-class. I don’t know if the middle class is the right way to label it, but average people spend most of their time making a living instead of making a life. 

And high-net-worth people focus on making a life first. The living comes second. Now, somebody might say, well, that’s easier to say if you have a lot of money and can afford to do that. But I think if you look at it from a different lens, you’ll find out that one of the reasons they have money is because they’re able to focus on what’s important. Not what’s urgent at the moment.

What did you say? It was really interesting because you mentioned that they have a vision for their lives. It’s clarification-oriented, where they understand how their life will be. Whereas most people, like you, would say that they don’t have a vision for what their lives will be like and that they’re just thinking in the short term. No, that’s a very interesting take. 

And I’ll and like the other thing that I know is that high-network individuals pay as low taxes as possible, whereas like most other people, they’re like, they have to, they have to end up paying taxes. 

So my question to you, Boris, is: What is one tax mitigation strategy you normally use? that the middle class would be unaware of?

I don’t know if it’s necessarily a strategy. There are many different tax strategies, and they’re very dependent on individual facts and circumstances. But I think what is most important here is understanding how wealthy people are compared to average people. Think about assets, and the impact on their taxes will be significant because of how they think about those two things. So, ordinary people focus on generating an income. 

We have income tax because it’s designed to penalize individuals with more modest needs. After all, they’re focused on income, which drives those tax dollars. Now, wealthy people don’t focus on income; they focus on it—acid accumulation. 

And their tax rates are significantly different. Just to get started, think about capital appreciation relative to income tax. On the surface, you can see a huge difference in how you’re taxed when you work for yourself and have your own company instead of working for somebody on a W2 basis. There’s a huge difference in how you’re going to be taxed. 

So, part of this comes down to mindset. It’s understood that you have limited control when you’re focused on income but significant control when you’re focused on asset accumulation.

No, I mean, it’s true, right? It’s all about having; it’s all about assets accumulation, and that’s how the world thinks. Like a lot of other people, they use strategic debt to accumulate assets. And many people consider debt a bad thing, but it’s bad consumer debt. 

But if you’re using debt to accumulate assets, you can get it relatively fast, right? And so. It’s all about our mindset and how we look at these things, but on a different note, they say America is the land of the free and the place where dreams are made. Do you agree or disagree with that?

Well, absolutely. I’m not aware of any other country in the world where people break down walls in various ways, physically and otherwise, to try to get into this country and build a life for themselves. I think the American dream still exists and is unique and different from any other. In the world, that being said, I think there are a lot of cracks in. 

However you want to put it, the last 20 years—maybe 30 years—have not been so positive for the US regarding its global positioning. I don’t think we’ve been headed down the right path. For a long time, and I don’t see that that has changed. I think we’re still headed down the road—the wrong path. 

That being said, I’m very optimistic that that will change. I think young people today are smart enough that they’re going to figure out that they’ve been lied to over the years. This is not how the real-world works, and when that wakening happens, we’ll see a turn in the direction of where the US heads and its leadership role.

So, Boris, what do you think is the biggest hurdle Americans face when realizing the American dream, whatever it is for them? And how do you think they should go about overcoming it?

It’s an interesting question. I think you know most people… the average Joe is struggling with something that is not their fault. They’ve been brainwashed for generations now to live in the world that’s focused on competition and consumption.

Competition, meaning I need to Keep up with the Joneses. My neighbor just bought a new Mercedes, so I need to buy a new Mercedes. You know, it’s that whole mentality of consumption and competition. 

I don’t think that’s how the world will look in the future, and I don’t think that will make a lot of sense to people in the economy that’s coming in the future. I think the future looks more like collaboration. It’s more focused on What is people’s pleasure in life. It’s the quality of life. Aspects and consumerism are two of those things that I think drive you in the wrong direction. 

So, I think the biggest hurdle for people is their frame of reference about how they live their lives. If they can change, they should live their lives within the means that they can afford to live and focus on meaningful things to create financial security for themselves and their family in the long term. I think the future is very bright. 

But if people keep buying into what they know here on mass media, talking heads on social media, or wherever they’re consuming this information, and they’re not being critical about themselves and their actions on a day-to-day basis, they’re going to struggle. Extremely hard, in my view, at least for the next few generations if people don’t change their mentality.

No, I mean, it’s right what you’re saying. I would like to add that, over the last 40–50 years, Americans have faced a hurdle: they need to get more educated about finances and how the economy works, especially inflation and debt. Like when I’m speaking of debt here, like consume. Death because they had to keep up with the Jones lifestyle, but they didn’t realize it was because of inflation. We became a fiat currency. 

In the 1970s, there was inflation. The wages are not keeping up. To keep up with the Joneses, they must take on a lot of consumer debt, and like, which? It brings me to the next question, but it’s like, who are you, what is your opinion around inflation and debt, and how should people deal with that?

Before I answer that question, let me opine a little about what you just said. 

Suppose you think about successful business owners and entrepreneurs, the most successful people you know of. In that case, everyone I’ve ever met who’s been successful for the most part—hasn’t become successful because of their educational pursuits. I have plenty of educational pursuits. That I’ve undertaken. And so I’m speaking with somebody with advanced degrees, but that is not necessarily the case when you look at highly successful people in their businesses. 

And many of them, you know, went to college. They were very prestigious universities, and they quit. They quit before graduating. They were very successful and turned out to be multi-billionaire success stories. 

So, I think education is one component that may be less valuable than people have placed on it in the past. But when you talk to these successful entrepreneurs, you look at what made them successful. One of the things is that they have very good critical thinking skills and they have common sense. And I think that is the key. It will be extremely difficult for people if they lack critical thinking skills and don’t have common sense to build a future for themselves in the future. 

Let me answer your question about inflation, debt, and those capacities. Inflation for me. It is just a measure. It’s a measuring stick, and it’s not very good. It isn’t good because you can’t measure well like one person’s or the feds. Measuring inflation is vastly different from somebody else’s. 

So inflation in itself is just a measuring stick. And it’s not very useful. 

Debt is an altogether different problem. Debt. You have to think about it in the context of leverage. Is the debt you’re experiencing valuable—is it an investment ultimately into the future, or is it an expense being frivolously wasted? Now? If we look at debt on a governmental basis as a country, I think most people will agree that most of the debt we’ve experienced is frivolous. Wasteful, didn’t lead to anything, and continues to grow. The unfortunate part is that most people are duplicating that in their own lives, and I think you alluded to that earlier. They are accumulating debt. But it’s all consumer debt. It’s debt that doesn’t lead to any valuable outcomes. And then they’re shackled by the burden of dealing with the debt. 

I’m not telling you I’ve got this famous saying up on my wall that I got it from a mentor and friend of mine. He’s a highly successful billionaire. Some people may know him as Rick Rule, and Rick has a saying. When your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall. 

And I think this is the core message people fail to understand. Right. If inflation hits you, what just happened? Your Upkeep is going up. Now, if you don’t have any debt, OK, you don’t care. You don’t care that much, right? I don’t have that issue because I don’t have a ton of debt that I have to worry about. You know, I don’t worry about that. My cost of capital will go up by 50% over the next ten years if we’re in a long-term inflationary cycle, OK? But that isn’t a good place to be if you are in that position. Because statistically speaking, you’re not. Likely to increase income. You know, at that rate. To keep up with that inflation. People need to think about that regarding their outgo—you know, what am I spending? What is reasonable sustainability? Way to live my life where I’m not stressed with this burden of death. 

1. Use that for strategic purposes, as you mentioned earlier, to help you acquire assets and will help you use those assets to generate long-term residual income that is not tied to your day-to-day working hours activity. I think that should be everybody’s goal. If they’re trying to achieve financial security,

Yeah, I’m afraid I have to disagree with that. I couldn’t agree more with you, and I would like to add that we as a nation have become such a consumer-oriented society, right? There are consumers, and there is production, which is what entrepreneurs do. 

So, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of our issues have come from consumer debt and things that are like liabilities. And yeah, if they utilize it to create wealth instead, like, as you say, acrylic acids, then that creates a turn-around. 

But with regards to education, I don’t know like people. I would say that people have to have a mindset change in how they view wealth, and that’s what I meant by education because you have to have a basic understanding. Like even the people. The thing you’re mentioning was highly successful. They had what? Then call them naturals. They were like they already had some sort of like-how and what to think. And a lot of people don’t have that when it comes to entrepreneurship.

That’s probably true, but all those things are learned traits. If you have the mentality that you’re always learning and want to figure out how to do this, the information is out there. When I was growing up, life was quite different than it is today. I had to go to a library. And search out information. I don’t think anybody today would even know how to do that. If you talk to a young person, you just go Google anything. 

Right, so information is not expensive to acquire. It’s free and abundant, and knowledge is, you know, more than having information, and knowledge is required at the next level, which is what you’re talking about. Most individuals can gather knowledge by simply modeling the success rates of other people.

Because of how media works today, and I don’t mean the mainstream media; I mean, you know, the media that we’re all mostly consuming, which is in the form of podcasts, YouTube videos, and all kinds of social platforms. You can gain knowledge pretty quickly. The problem is not knowledge. The problem is wisdom. 

See, wisdom comes from experience. And that’s what’s hard for people to understand. And having information and knowledge is not sufficient to replicate success. It would be best if you had wisdom, and I think that’s what should people be striving for; to determine what outlets I can use to gain that wisdom that will impact my life. That’s what I’m focused on trying to do every day for people today that I work with: figure out how I can provide my wisdom to help them accomplish their goals in life.

I mean, that’s why; that’s why I’m so. I am grateful to have you on the show, Boris. Because we will, we could do with some of your wisdom, you know, and so on. Boris’s question: Is there a project more than having information and knowledge required that you’re doing right now that you want the audience to see and get a glimpse into

Yeah. So I have been working on a project with a neuroscientist friend who looked at this issue of taking action and why people struggle consistently to take action or the right actions. And we also looked at it from the lens of the entrepreneur. Standpoint and saying there’s got to be success principles, right, that most entrepreneurs face, how do we provide a way for people to model that. 

So we’ve figured out that we will put together a six-week challenge. It’s a challenge that allows people to interact with us well, and we will present to them what we believe are the success principles for entrepreneurs. And we’re doing this purely to deliver value. There is no cost to this event. It’s not like we’re trying to make any money on it. If we want to give back, it will be a unique experience. We’re starting it on November 17th, so I don’t know when people will hear this message, but if they hear it right around that time or slightly before, they can go to my website. 

www.borisblum.com

And they can register there for the challenge event. It’s free of charge. They can participate, hopefully, that will set them up for success. The goal here is based on the timing of what we’re doing. This means that everybody who’s participating is going to have the best 2024 that they can envision. And that’s what we’re committed to doing. 

So, hopefully, that’s valuable to people. And if they want to participate, we go out. To have them.

I mean, Boris, that is awesome, and I would recommend my audience take a look into that because we all want to know what it takes to be. Successful, and so bars, how can? Our audience connects with you and learns more about you, this challenge, and more. The work that you’re doing

Yeah, I don’t have many outlets I support regarding connection. I am busy with various professional objects, but I suggest LinkedIn. I Have a profile on LinkedIn; somebody wants to send me a message. They could certainly reach me. That way, they can also visit the website borisbloom.com. They can sign up for a newsletter that I published called Perspectives. It is a private newsletter, and it is primarily focused on an understanding of the global macro environment, finance, and what is going on in the world as I see it. That’s going to be impactful for the entrepreneur. 

And that, again, is free of charge. They can sign up for that on my website, and obviously, they can connect with me there as well.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Boris, for taking the time to do this podcast with us. Like I am. I am grateful that you shared your knowledge. And your wisdom and experience. I would want you to come on what it takes to be successful and about peak performance on this show at a later time.

Anytime. I’d love to have the opportunity to do that.

And so I want to conclude this show by letting my fellow Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an Australian within each one of us; it’s our duty to awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.