196: Discover The Power Of Building A Givers Community With E.A. Csolokovits

We have EA Csolkovits with us. He is from giversuniversity.com.

He has an incredible background as an entrepreneur and in the

business world. But in recent times, he's really focused on personal

self-development and helping other people do that too, particularly

with the tension and the dichotomy he sees between people

who are givers and takers. So we're going to get into that here today.

So EA Csolkovits Welcome to Beyond Adversity.

Dr. Brad Miller, thank you so much for having me on your great show,

and looking forward to be able to share some great golden nuggets

with your listeners. Thank you for having me.

I know that you will, I know that you have a great story to tell.

And you've had some great success in your life. It's a great highs, but

also some lows and some challenges, and some things to offer to people.

But we always like to hear a little bit of an origin story, about maybe

some challenge or adversity or some situation that happened in your

life that particularly became kind of a pivot point for what you're doing

now. Do you have a story that you could tell us about this?

For sure, for sure. My background actually, a son of a milkman.

I lived in the Chicagoland area and my father had a one horse

operation, if you will. Just after that horses. They actually had

trucks then but you know, and it was a milkman so we delivered

milk and I was five years old. I used to help them on the route.

And then at the ripe old age of 16, I set out to become prosperous,

and I became a janitor. And you think you know, what's that

got to do with being prosperous, but I had two extraordinary

events that happened to me while I was janitor. The one was,

I was able to be bondable at 16 years old, which means insured.

And because of being insured, I was able to be in a really expensive

house. And that house I cleaned every Wednesday was of a lady and

when I say the name won't mean anything to your listeners until I make

the movie reference. There was a movie out a couple of years ago.

It was called The Founder. Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, and it's

about McDonald's basically. Right? And it's certainly all Hollywood

spin. I mean, I lived the whole phenomenon. I lived my whole lifetime.

I lived in Oak Brook where the McDonald's World Headquarters was so

I can tell you the movie is Hollywood spin. And it says in the beginning

based on a true story. Yes, it is based on true story, but it's not the true story.

So in any event, there's a lady in the movie that Michael Keaton, who plays

rickrack is talking to outside the office all time, and her name is Jun Martino.

Jun Martino had the third most controlling stock in McDonald's. First woman to

ever trade publicly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And I cleaned

her house every Wednesday, the same lady that you see in the movie that Michael

Keaton is talking outside of her office every day. That's Jun Martino right. And she

told me one day, we had a whole day about the importance of having a mentor.

And that Ray had this huge impact and influence on her life. And I remember

thinking, if I could just get a mentor, if I could get - I don't know. You know, I don't

even know what I don't know. Son of a milkman, janitor. And so anyway, I wasn't

a couple of months later, we got a phone call janitorial service. I met this

gentleman later on, who then subsequently after offered me a job. And he

probably has one of the most amazing adversity story. So if I can share

with you his story, and mine dovetails right into it, if that's okay for your

listeners, because his is extraordinary. He was born during the age, he was

raised during the Depression era. And he told me all about it. This is the

man that became my mentor. His name is Sam Robbins. He passed

away a few decades by now. But he told me about coming up in the

Depression era, the Great Depression. And he said for some of his meals,

because people were jumping off buildings committing suicide. They had

people in multi-mile long soup kitchen lines. He said for some of his meals,

they actually ate cardboard. So you want to talk about adversity. And every

day as he walked by a store, just you know, I mean, and he saw that this one

store and there was only the same man was in the store all the time. So one

day, he just stopped it. And talking with the guy, it turns out, he was the

owner. And he says, Man never see anyone. And he goes, Yeah, no one's

got money. They're trying to put food on their table. They don't have

money for sewing machines. There was a sewing machine star guy.

And he says he's obviously just in your collecting dust. Then my

business mentor said, That's really something they need. And he said,

I don't even have any employees. I can't afford employees. It's just me.

So my business mentor had this flash in his mind. And he said, What if

I could help you sell some of the sewing machines? Would you be open

to that? And the guy says, Yeah, you better believe it. They're all just

they're paid for and you're collecting dust, you know, whatever.

Might as well. I'd like to suggest that I sell them and I make them

available to people on payments instead of paying them whole

thing will split the payments. And he said, and I'll back the machine

in case someone walks with it to make sure you're covered and you're

never at risk. And the guy says Go for it, they're just collecting dust right

now. So then my mentor made a flyer and posted it everywhere in the

neighborhood for women to work from home.

He said he was so inundated, he couldn't respond to all of the calls.

kitchen mines, he earned over $1 million.

And how partner to today's world where we have great

adversity in the world. And people are able to take the,

for instance, the challenges of COVID. And some folks are

crushed by it. But other people are really taking adversity

and using it to their advantage. So

He took this instance where people are jumping off of

buildings. And by the way, that was a million dollars

during the Depression. 10 million plus today usually in

one year's time. And this man, this is the man that became

my mentors, extraordinary gentleman, and he began to

teach me and then I learned and learned and of course

made many mistakes. I have three huge, I call it my three

biggest temporary defeats. Each one caused me to write

a book so that my butt wasn't in that position again. And

one of them actually caused me to look back to the things

he trained on me to help me get through that adversity.

I had bet years ago, Brad I'm sure you remember they

have. They used to have these things on the on your

desk is called a voice answering machine.

You and I from era when people actually use those things, right. So

Yeah, and they hit and I went and it was to tape scenario

one, the left side was the outgoing message. That was maybe

15 seconds. And on the right side, was this like a 60 minute

these are cassette tapes. Right? Right.

Right, right.

Yes, way back way, way back when. So I had a 60 minute

tape and my incoming messages and it was voice actuated.

And I was being mentored by my mentor and separately,

totally separate had started a training company with another

gentleman doing very well in the Chicagoland area training

companies and great ways to grow their business, etc.

And what he did is he put together a plan for women to make clothing

and he would sell them a sewing machine on payments.

He would provide them with the patterns, all the material, and

he guaranteed he would buy the clothing from them, actually

guaranteeing their income. Then he turned around and from the

clothing he bought from all of these women, he then sold them

to stores as handmade, high quality discounted clothing that

store then made available to customers at a big discount, but

high quality handmade clothing. So literally, in the time period bread.

When people are jumping off of buildings, multi-mile long soup

We were doing very, very well open multiple offices. And I

left home for about an hour and a half, Brad. I came back.

And my whole 60 minute message was filled up. I thought boy,

well, my machine was voice actuated, that means a lot of someone

talk, they would keep recording, I thought awesome. Kids got to

hold this and they're playing with it, you know, totally didn't happen.

I could hear when I played the message back. My partner, not my

mentor, my partner, and the training company was leaving me a

message to call him back. And back then they had this tone. If

someone was calling you, you could hear this tone in the background

letting you know someone's trying to call you. While they were talking.

It was like beep beep in the background. I can hear that on the recording

that someone else was calling him. He hit the receiver so fast, Brad that

he put my machine on call conferencing with him and someone else when

I wasn't home, and it recorded their whole conversation.

And what was it?

The conversation? Was the detailed plan on how they were going

to take over the company and kick me out of it.

Oh, sweet. Now let's talk about crushing moment. My goodness.

And let me tell you, Brad. It's different dimension when you hear it

in their own words, and it's not third party, you know, when you hear

those, so I thought what are the odds of this? First of all, you know, what

are the odds of him calling when I was gone? He could have called me

when I was home. I just pick up and we talk right? What are the odds of

that guy calling at the exact same time? And then what were the odds

of him having that conversation it could talk about golf or anything else.

But no, it was the plan the plan

For your demise. Wow.

For my demise. Oh my god, you want to talk about being blindsided?

You're talking about being betrayed. You want to talk about going

you know, just I mean, and I thought oh my god, I just I was it was so

unexpected in every possible way. You know, and I thought

what am I gonna do?

What was next? What do you do about it then? How did you

react to that at the moment? And then what steps did you

take to break out of that to what's next?

Well, I have to say that, you know, my first thought was,

you know, certainly emotionalized

Sure, I can imagine.

Yeah I mean, I'm getting being blindsided here and I thought

back to my training. My mentor had given me an over and

over again and said, and a few things he had said to me

was one of the following things. One of the few things or

one of many I should say, he said, in the medical community,

if you're getting a treatment, and it's working well with you,

they say you're responding. If you're getting a treatment, the

medical community and it's not working well on you, they

call that you're reacting to it, it's you're getting a reaction.

He said, in life, you want to be responsive, not reaction. And

he said, here's the way to do it. Always have your intellect

control your emotions, and you'll be react, responding. When

your emotions control your intellect, you'll be reacting, and very

good, very few good things ever come out of that. He said, so

have your intellect control your emotion. So, Brad, I had this

sleepless night. And I'm thinking, Man, I gotta like, how am I

going to do this? And I'm deep. And believe me, I'm reaching

down deep inside, you know, trying to find out, you know, what

am I going to do here? So I came to a conclusion by the next

morning, and I said, Okay, Jim, that was the guy on the training

copy with, I said, you have to buy me out. And of course, first of

all, that ruined all of his plans. I knew what the plans were. Yeah.

I'm sure that you were savvy enough to not let him in that you

knew, you know, all the details there.

Do you know I never, ever told him the tape that the recording

took place. He never knew. I never ever told him.

Well, you don't need to.

Nothing was going to come out of that. So I said, Jim, you got

seven days to buy me out. I'm gonna do something my mentor,

which I did, and did was planning on doing anyway. So we

reached an agreement, I gotta tell you that Brad, and I got

down payment, and I got some payments within each payment,

I figured was a gift because I already knew what kind of person

he was. And here's what's interesting. One year later, I saw him

at an amusement park. And I knew it was him. I mean, he was

my business partner, but I was at an angle so I could see him clearly.

And he hadn't seen me because of the angle I was looking at him at.

And in that one year, Brad, he had gotten file for personal bankruptcy,

filed for business bankruptcy, gotten divorced, and look like he had

aged 20 years. And in that same year, I earned more money and was

more prosperous than at any rear up to that point in my life. Because

I listened to my mentor and someone who knew what to do in that kind

of thing. I listened to my training. So first of all,

So that's the key there, I want us to just pause there

just sure I can't hear EA,

Sure

You had this moment, this pivotal moment where at on its face value,

you could have been crushed and gone into a spiral. And you could

have been the one who had reacted emotionally and badly. And

ended up in a ditch yourself of you know, or whatever. But you

didn't, you chose to listen to your mentor, and to take some

actions that led to a different result for you. And his selfish

attitude led to different results for him. So let's go a little

deeper some of the actions that you took that have led

you down this pathway to what you're doing doing now, for instance.

Okay, thank you very much. And one of the things that

would have to take us back in history for a moment, this

same gentleman that my business mentor when I was

19 years old, I asked him, I said, Sam, will you teach me

everything? I want to learn everything? I mean, all of it. And

he said, Okay, I will teach you but I want one thing from you.

And I said, Okay, what's that? And he said, when the time is

right and you will know that time, I want you to teach as many

people as possible. Everything I taught you. So at 19 years old,

Brad, I made a vow, I made an oath, that today has manifest

into what we call Givers University. And it's the fulfillment

of that oath. And I keep doing it on a daily basis and loving

it more than ever. What we teach, which is so vital for I think

your listeners, especially overcoming adversity, is you know,

we live in a world today, Brad, and we and your listeners know

this two products are coming and going faster than ever before.

They're being antiquated overnight by brand new products.

We have businesses opening and closing. Where before they

were multigenerational. Now, five - six years, they open and close,

right? I mean, faster than ever before. So what do we really have left?

When we look at all of that? The answer is our relationships.

The answer is our relationships. And no one's teaching us how to

does discern his relationships. I've done close to 150 interviews

since last April and different podcasts, not one instance have I

seen or heard from anyone else where someone is actually

teaching this following instance, certainly as a course if you will.

Here's how we teach, which is so critical for people overcoming

adversity. First of all, I say to your listeners, we love everybody.

I say it again emphatically, we love everybody. And we teach

people how to separate the person who we love from their

deeds, which we may not love. And we even do this by teaching

a skill set by virtue of using checklists. These are the things you

look for. So when we say giver bread, we're not we don't label

people as gifts. So

Part of what you're doing here just to help me understand.

You're kind of discerning toxic relationships and things that

are not necessarily helpful for you to fulfill your manifest destiny.

Exactly right. And so when we use the term giver, we're

not labeling a person, we're labeling their deeds givers.

And when we say taker, we're not labeling a person or labeling

their deeds. But no one knows how to do this is like, you know,

a few interviews ago, a guy says, Man, this is great. I've just read

a book, it says, I got to surround myself with five good people. I

said, You're right, you do. Let me ask your question. Which five?

And I'll suddenly stared back. And with this blank, look, I said, you

see my point? No one's teaching which five? You know, everyone

says self improve, improve, improve. That's all great. But Brad, what

about the other guy? What if he's not doing it? Right? What should

we do about that? And how would they make us collateral damage,

if we don't know how to discern who we should bring in who we

shouldn't. So we actually teach and we provide checklists, these

are and one of them I just love is called the 25 dues. These are

the 25 actual deeds, actual deeds that you can observe. And we

teach people a skill set. Observe what they're doing, don't listen

to what they're saying.

So you're doing just it take example, let's take a couple of those

deeds. Give me an example of a couple of for instance, where you

try to observe a deed, or just make up one, you know, how someone

walks their dog yelling, or screaming the dog or treating the dog

nice or whatever, whatever you try to observe and give it kind of

a upside and a downside to it? Or great or how do you do this,

your 25 deeds?

Excellent, we actually have a free checklist that we

give people, we want them to download it.

Okay, great.

And it's literally is 25 dues that are also, basically we call

them 25 dues, they're basically the deeds, and I'll give you

a couple of them as an example. And these are things that

are observable things. And when you observe these things,

that they do these 25 different things, then you can begin

to discern and say, okay, based on what they're doing,

should I bring them in closer into my life, or based on what

I see them doing, should I begin respectfully, not rude or

insensitive or nasty, but respectfully distance myself from

them. Because if I bring them closer, I'm going to be snapping

out fires, not of my making. They're going to bring with them

adversity that I will be pulled into as collateral damage.

So we teach people discern upfront, look up front, these

are the things you should be watching, don't listen to what

they say, watch what they do. A couple of them, just to share

with couple of your listeners, one of them like do number three

is give first to receive later. In other words, you'll see a giver will

always be the first to step forward. They're always the one who

is willing to say, Okay, I'll put in the effort first and get a benefit

later on. And they're more what we call back end loaded,

they're more they're generous ones, the first ones who

stepped forward, you'll see them volunteer first before

everyone else. By contrast, the taker deed number three

would be first, they need to have it all. You need to pay

them first, before they talk, they tend to be very selfish,

you'll see selfless actions on ongoing basis. And they will

take or say I need to get first, then I will give but first you

gotta give to me. So these things that's just this is one of them.

And we teach people how to observe these things. Look at these

deeds. And here's a list of 25 Put it up, put it in your pocket, start

to discern in your relationships, because the same relationships

will have a huge impact on the adversities that come into our life.

Yeah, they will have a huge impact on how we respond to those

adversities by having the right people around us when you agree that

Oh, yeah. Well, I think the issue we're talking about here is good

discernment, you know, for wisdom, and I like to teach from a biblical

perspective of wisdom, you know, claiming wisdom that will be the

greatest gift that you can have. And the piece of that is discerning

healthy relationships and I call unhealthy relationships or they can

lead us to what I call the malaise of mediocrity where we just get

stuck and or some people could take us to their place of misery

with them if we allow it to. We choose then to break out of that

we choose to be in a better place, and generally, generosity and

have an attitude of gratitude. Whatever you To say, as one that

is a more of affirming place to be, and leads us to better places

at least that's my take on things and, and you talk about this here,

EA, not only in these actions, you know, the giver and the taker,

but you talk about building community, which to me goes to

relationship, a giver, community and a taker community. And

I'd like you to go there a little bit with us for just a moment.

What do you mean by you know, kind of adding that on

there, you know, the giver, community taker community

go with that for a few minutes.

For sure. Thank you. It's interesting, because the word

community, Brad has changed definition over the last few

years for my observations. And then I use the example of the

word diet, you know, years ago, if you went to a meeting, it was

called a diet. You went to a diet, and then later on spelled the

same way, the word then meant a stipend. If you got a stipend

that was a diet, you got an allowance, then later on the word

meant in my lifetime eating habits, then later on the word now

means weight loss, if you say diet means weight loss, spelled

the same way the whole time.

Right?

Four totally different meanings. Community has done the same

thing. And I'll ask your listeners think about this, have you been

cajoled, asked, invited into a community only to have them within

hours or a few days, start selling you things? Right. That's not a

community. That's a customer. That's a customer hitlist. Right.

And why do the bait and switch I mean, call it a community, a

taker community is designed to take from you or make money

off of you, that's a taker community, right,

It's generally often leads to resentment and animosity and bad stuff, so

Even bait and switched just that simple. It's not a community.

Call it what it is, it's a customer list, right? And then give me the

chance, a choice of do I want to be on your customer list because

I mentioned your products or not, but don't do the bait and switch.

And so many of those exists today. And so we teach people one,

how to form their own community, we actually have a step, seven

in time and that is, there's seven steps. I'm just going to hit the

steps. And what's beautiful about this Brad, I was looking at

your four step action plan of action, connect, discipline. The

T was the think discipline, and then S being served your A C T S

plan and which I love. I think it's awesome.

Yes.

That's all part and parcel of how you build a giver community.

You do all those things. So the first thing we do is we teach

people. I'm just gonna hit this real quick because our interest

seven steps real quick. And they spell out the word discern.

Okay, each one of the seven steps spells out the word discern

the first one, the first letter is decide. You have to decide who

do you want to have in your giver community we call them

later on, called the junto. Later on called the actually Leather Apron

Club was the final name. Interestingly enough with his 12 friends that

he met with every Friday in what he called his junto. Arguably,

the very Declaration of Independence, can be traced back to

those conversations that he had. So certainly a junto, or a

community can have a huge impact. So the first thing we do is

we teach people how do you decide, right? The two to 12 people

I want to have around me, how do I decide which two to 12? So

what we do is we provide them with a free checklist of the 25 dues

and say, look through this, these other ones if they're doing these

25 things, okay, they're exactly where you want them to be. If they're not,

So we got to decide, and we're going to discern so we got to

Invite. Invite is the next one. You got to invite all 12 of them.

We teach people how to do that. The third is seed you want to it,

basically and this is critical. Get an agreement upfront expectations

early of what's involved and what is expected of everyone.

You know, I've seen Napoleon Hill does an excellent masterful

job talking about what's called the mastermind principle,

absolutely go rich. And I've seen so many of those. They

come together and they fall apart a couple months later.

And the reason why is there's not an expectation and

agreement upfront of this is what's expected of all of us

upfront and to have everyone agree on it and make a

commitment on it, which becomes part of the glue. We

teach people how to do it step by step. So that's the s for

seed. C is convened. Got to convene on a regular basis

whether it be weekly, monthly, quarterly, E is establish it,

give it a name. Henry Ford called his junto, The Four

Vagabonds and certainly, Ben Franklin, I use the example

of a Leather Apron Club. Give it a name so that helps with

the continuity of the group. R - rotate, we actually provide

an agenda. Somebody wants the form of givers junto. We

teach them how to do it. And then R is for rotate, have a

different chairperson every week. So these person knows

what to do. And they're guided through that. And then

N is for numbers, seed other juntos. Get other people

involved with having communities of having the right people

around them. So we actually have a set. And then we build

it every week on our YouTube channel. It's Givers University

on YouTube, one word gives University. And they go to where

it says how to build your own givers community. And there's

two minute clips, step by step by step in two minute increments

of everything I just went through in a more elongated version.

Wow, that sounds like a powerful resource. And we want to

get to your resources in just a minute. But we're talking about

relationships here. We're talking about the power of

transformative relationships, especially helped people to

get unstuck and overcome adversity. So tell us a story. A

testimonial, if you will about a person, or perhaps a group,

that the Givers University has been helpful to.

Well, we've been a number of them as a matter of fact,

but off the top of my head, I can certainly share with you

some people who have, you know, we have online courses,

and we did all of this. And even what is taught in the givers

junto is, you know, we teach the givers mindset, the givers

lifestyle, and the givers lifelong learning. Those are three courses.

And with that, there's, there's a book that's actually with all of them.

is we teach people and businesses and we have now right now, many,

many companies, not just one or two. Where one gentleman who's an

HR executive, who now has a whole different feeling about the HR

industry, if you will, and then some of the fear mongering and what's

going on with them. And the eye opening that he's been able to

experience because of what we teach Givers University, and beginning

to realize, you know, what, these people are pushing fear. They're selling

fear, like there's no tomorrow. And and so, he's an HR business. So what

do you do with HR, obviously, you're talking with relationships all day long.

And so what he does is he keeps sort of a separate personal file that he

doesn't share with anyone else of his 25 dues. When he hires people,

when he fires, people things, he looks for things he observes that he

didn't know he could observe before, to help have the right people

in his company. And when it comes to those that he works for.

So your training has enhanced his job performance.

For sure

Therefore enhance the productivity and supposedly the

profitability of his company. And I bet he feels better

about it, too. I would get off

For sure.

Yeah.

For sure. For sure. And just loves it and says

he, you know, he's a college graduate with many

initials. And he says, no course he's ever taken in

college has helped him and impacted him to the

extent of how to discern in relationships.

Where's the discernment 101 Course?

Yeah. Well, I think part of what we're talking

about here, EA is really about having fulfillment in

life personally, and in our relationships. Because

ultimately, if you're a taker, you're in the area of

consuming and causing destructive patterns to happen.

And a giver is and is in the business of being productive

and helpful, and helping others to succeed as well. And

when we that happens, we succeed as well. And you've

got some good stuff here. And I love the whole concept

here of gratitude, you know, of giving, and how we can

do that there's a lot of biblical parallels, which I'm

interested in and some things we're talking about here

and in appreciate your good work. So I got a feeling of

some folks out there who are listeners to Beyond Adversity,

we're gonna want to learn more about you and about to

Givers University and some of the courses and YouTube

videos and you got lots and lots of resources. So tell us, tell

folks how they can get connected to you and Givers University.

Thank you. But first, let's go to our website. It's plural

giversuniversity.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Newsletters, absolutely free. We don't spam people.

So they're going to get an immediate communication

that says, Do you want to talk with his people? They

have to answer that and say yes. And then once a

week, on Thursdays, we send out a newsletter that

we we call it the givers toolbox. And every single

week, Brad, we give them a brand new relationship

tool that helps them in their discernment that they

can add into the relationship toolbox. And it's a

short read, there's usually a little two minute clip

that's in there as well. And then through the course

of that they're going to receive by the way, one of the

things they get right away is the 25 dues. That checklist

I mentioned. We want them to print it off. We want them

to use it in their discern and start using in everyday life.

Because everyone you know, we're being pushed out so

much that we should Accept even all the people doing

everything that's wrong. And I don't agree with that. I

think we should love everyone. And we and Jesus was

the best example of all time. Right? But he didn't like

their deeds, and he called them out on their deeds.

And we've taken that same tack. We agree with that

and parallel our teachings with that, that, you know,

you want to surround yourself with people doing the

right things, but no one's teaching anyone how do you

discern that everything's a gray area? And it's not great?

It's not? Yeah, it is clear. So when they go to our website,

sign up for the newsletter every week, once a week

they get a nice little newsletter from us, they'll learn

about our courses knowledge through all that relationship.

They want to learn more about forming their own givers

junto they can go to the the hamburger in the upper right

hand corner, click on that, and they'll see a tab that says

givers junto. They can request information to form their

own givers junto will help them do it absolutely free. Or

they can be a member of another junto, We'll connect them to one.

Lots of resources there.

For sure. For sure.

So hey, if you if you folks are interested at all and

Dave redesigning your life, you're much more about

being a giver than a taker. Lots of resources here are

and with giversuniversity.com. His name is EA Csolkovits.

He has been our guest today the Creator Givers University.

Lots of great information here and you could find that all

the details at our website as well. drbradmiller.com.

So we thank EA Csolkovits for being our guest today

on the Beyond Adversity podcast.