IAM1155- CEO Helps People Achieve Their Goals

International financial expert with 56 years experience in a dozen different countries, motivational speaker, author of six books, trainer of more than 13,000 participants, and artist.

His strategies with small businesses have created more than 10,000 jobs. His recent assignment will result in more than 7,000 direct and indirect jobs.

He has been involved as an owner, manager, or investor in more than 70 different businesses in several countries. He is currently the CEO of the largest poultry operation in Ghana, the CEO of a publishing company in Kyrgyzstan, and the President of a consulting firm in the US.

• CEO Hack: Marketing
• CEO Nugget: Communicate and understand other people's issues
• CEO Defined: Taking charge while respecting people

Website: http://www.philipwaltersmith.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philipwaltersmith/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-walter-smith-3b227a4/
Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/groups/1960621037413816
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=PHILIPWALTERSMITH&sp=QgIIAQ%253D%253D

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Transcription

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00:17 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:45 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Phil Smith of philipwaltersmith.com. Phil, it's great to have you on the show.

00:53 – Philip Smith 

Thank you very much.

00:56 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Phil so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. An international financial expert with 56 years of experience in a dozen different countries, motivational speaker, author of 6 books, and trainer of more than 13, 000 participants and artists.

His strategies with small businesses have created more than 10, 000 jobs. His recent assignment will result in more than 7, 000 direct and indirect jobs. He has been involved as an owner, manager, or investor in more than 72 different businesses in several countries. He is currently CEO of the largest poultry operation in Ghana, CEO of a publishing company, and the president of a consulting firm in the United States. Phil, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:39 – Philip Smith

It's just a very good pleasure to be here.

01:43 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. Absolutely. You're doing so many phenomenal things. So what I want to do is just for 01:00 a little bit here a little bit more on how you got started what I call your CEO story.

01:51 – Philip Smith

Well, I started working full-time when I was in high school. I went to school from 8 to 4. I worked from 5 till midnight and got home at 2. Never carried a book home for the last 3 years of high school, simply because I didn't have any time to do anything. Still ended up fourth in my class, only because I was chasing too many women as a teenager. I married one of my high sweethearts that lasted for a while, 33 years, and visited 49 of the 50 states, lived in 10 of them, and it's been quite a journey.

In 1995, I did some volunteer assignments on the other side of the world from Los Angeles in Kyrgyzstan. I liked the idea of it. It was fun. We immediately, I immediately started looking at the possibilities of working there. In 2 years, at the same time, I bought 2 H&R Block offices because I had retired from banking. After 6 months of being totally bored, I bought those businesses because I needed something to do. I grew the businesses very nicely and did more volunteer work than the off-season from the taxes.

Then Block came along and said, thank you very much for growing them. They bought them back at a very lovely profit. Thank you. I then moved from California to Kyrgyzstan to work as an international consultant with the Central Bank. From there I worked at Central Banks in 7 different countries including Afghanistan and Iraq during those fun times. One of the things that you notice is that I've got a lazy red eye, but that was because we were in a sniper attack in Iraq.

And they pushed me to the floor so that I would not, because I was the only guy without a rifle and they sat on top of me but when my head hit the floor my red had detached and I didn't know it for several months then I lost it because it was too late to fix it. I also had an experience in Kyrgyzstan the second year I was there where my appendix burst and I didn't know it. After 3 days of whatever happens inside your body, I realized I couldn't stand up and I could not move had to have an emergency operation It took them many hours, and lost me a couple of times on the operating table Later that week.

I saw the angel who invited me to come up. I said no, I'm not ready. I got too many things to do. But that changed my life. That's where I really started taking control of my life, more than anything else. Since then, it's been just a fun ride And I've totally enjoyed pretty much everything that I've done. I love traveling. I've been to 57 countries. My goal now is 100. I just like, I enjoy myself. I don't take myself too seriously because that's too old. Nobody likes that. I have a great sense of humor. I have very, very little stress. I could show you if you'd like to hear about it in less than 5 minutes how to get rid of 99% of your stress.

And it's very easy. I also started helping other people. That's where we were able to create all those jobs that we've created so far, including 1 or 2 at a time, who then grow to 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 or 15 and that's how we got up to the 10000 number. We do consulting, we do business plans, we do write books, we sell books. One was just been released last week and was put on Amazon.

One of the things that we do is 20% of the total gross income, not net income, but the gross income goes to charity. Wherever we do it, whichever country I'm in, whether it's Ghana or Kyrgyzstan or the United States, 20% goes into the pot, into the foundation. Then we make a distribution out of those funds to whatever charities we think we should put it into.

06:18 – Gresham Harkless

It sounds like you touched a little bit. I don't know if this is, you know, what is in the book that you talked about, you are the most important. Can you tell us a little bit more about what we can find there in your latest

06:30 – Philip Smith

book is my recollections of me becoming a better person. The first thing that I talk about, I give a little bit of background about me in the first chapter and that's it. But then I go, the second chapter starts talking about you. Do you really want to do you want to be somebody? What do you want to be? How do you want to do it? Do you love yourself? Because you have to. If you don't love yourself, no one else is going to love you. I get up every morning, my feet hit the floor. I thank God my feet are hitting the floor.

And when I look in the mirror in the bathroom, I say, God, I love you. That's how I start my day. I have to believe in myself. I have to trust myself. Once I've done that, I'm ready to go. That's what I try to show people. Once you believe that you can do anything and trust yourself that you're doing the right thing, then you can really make something from it. The next issue is what do you really want to make. How can you change? How can you take control? I took control of my body after that operation. I lost 95 pounds.

I feel much better. I look a lot better, obviously. I was pretty much a balloon before. It was disgusting. I feel great. I've had a couple of heart attacks. Nothing stops me. I get up the next day and I go to work. It's just that simple. I have had a lot of experiences where people have come back to me after being, like 20 years ago. I was in Moscow last year.

I lived in Moscow for 20 years and worked at the Central Bank. I was there and I visited some friends, one of which was my office manager. She said, you know, you're still the best boss I've ever had because you respected us. That's the most important thing. You've got to respect other people. You've got to love what you're doing.

Now, maybe it's not the best thing for you, but if you love it and people see that you love it, you're gonna get their cooperation a lot easier than if you're an old grub. That's just not much fun. So the book then goes on to discuss what you can do to take control of your brain. I'll give you an example. This is not anything new.

If you take an 11 and cut it in half, close your eyes first, take a lemon, cut it in half, look at the juice, cut half of it in another half, and then squeeze it, there's more juice and then put it in your mouth. Are your saliva glands working yet? Of course, they are because that's how easy it is to influence your brain and that's not necessarily a bad thing but if you can get good thoughts in there the negative thoughts go away.

09:28 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider like kind of that optimistic nature that you have? Do you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kind that such your partner makes you unique?

09:37 – Philip Smith

I just love doing things and I used to play golf and it was sort of boring because I just wasn't getting better. I got down to a sixth handicap. It's like, I haven't got time for this. You know, you got to do that 2, 3 times a week to keep it down that long. But they were a client, one of my clients, and one of my accounting businesses, and I didn't have to pay. It was, I always got a free cart and everything else, but it just, didn't mean anything. I liked doing stuff for other people because it's, my philosophy you plant the seed, you water it, you grow it, and someday you're going to get a return from that. That has happened many, many times.

10:21 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit. I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:31 – Philip Smith

Marketing. My marketing, as I told you, I did this with H&R Block. I'm putting a marketing plan together now. I am telling the people, we have the best poultry in the country and it is the most expensive. It's fresh. It was, you had the date, it's within one week old. It's been flash frozen, put it into the freezer, take it out, put it in the truck, and deliver it. We do that very quickly as opposed to imported chicken, which may have been defrosted a few times, God only knows what happened to it before you bought it in the store, but we guarantee the freshness, but we're also telling them it's expensive. It's almost twice the cost, but it's worth it.

11:21 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call a ‘CEO nugget'? It's more of a word of wisdom that I often say. It might be a piece of advice for a client, or if you were a machine, you might call it a So.

11:33 – Philip Smith

I think it is because I can communicate. I can understand what you have. I have a knack for being able to understand exactly what your issue is. Then it's up to me to formulate the words to put them into play. But I can do that. I've been writing a long time. I've been teaching for 40 years. I don't remember any of my students ever going to sleep, but they may have in the back room, or in the back of the room. I've also had 14 years of university work where I actually took courses, including working on a doctorate when I was in Russia. But I had the ability to grasp it.

Once I've got it, I've got it. It's then just become part of the package. Some of the people here have been very excited. They are building, they're building now a national cathedral here in Donau. It's gonna cost $200 million. Half of that 20% that we're doing for charity is going to the national cathedral. It's a cathedral for all faiths. It's gonna cover everybody.

But the man who is the executive director of that, I helped put the plan together of what they were gonna do and they did it. That's the plan that they're using. It's fun. I now have a great-grandson. When he's old enough to travel, I would love to bring him back here and show him this operation and say, look, look what happened. This is what I did when you were one year old. It would be great fun.

13:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You get to build and show that legacy and the progression of something too and the journey that we sometimes forget about getting to that finish line. So you might've already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you now what I call my favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Phil, what does being a CEO mean to you? You gotta take charge, but you've got to respect the people.

You've got to understand, that in every CEO position I've had, I always trained somebody to take my spot because I never knew what was going to happen tomorrow. I could get killed in an automobile accident going home. There was always somebody ready to take my place. Truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. Of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about your book and all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:18 – Philip Smith

Well, the company name is Philip Walter Smith LLC. The websites are philipwaltersmith.com, Facebook, Philip Walter Smith, Facebook group, same, YouTube, same, All of it is, we were lucky enough to catch all the names exactly the way we wanted them. I invite everybody to look at all the groups and all the sites. I encourage them to buy the book. In the second chapter, I say, if you're not ready, stop right now, and hand the book to somebody else. Because when you get to the point at the other end of this, you'll change.

Jack Canfield, who a few people know who he is, has sold about 600 million books. He said he thought that anybody who read the book, and he read it, and I represent it essentially, anybody who reads that book is going to change. Period. No exceptions. He loved it. I hope it's as successful as he thinks it will be. We'll see. I am going to be marketing it. It's already been marketed in Russia, in Central Asia.

The English version, as I said, is on Amazon now. The electronic version will be, I think, next week will be on, So I encourage people to buy it because, and remember 20% of the price of what I get from Amazon goes right to the charities. I'm not looking to make a fortune, but if you sell enough books, I will have one. Thank you very much.

15:52 – Gresham Harkless

There you go. Now, I truly appreciate that, Phil. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can find out about your company, your book, and all the awesome things that you do. I love that spirit and reminder for all of us of pain and for it as well too, and how we can do that in so many different ways in our life and in our business. I, of course, appreciate you for taking charge and doing that in your book and so many different aspects of your life and your businesses as well. Truly appreciate you my friend and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:17 – Outro