THE MISFIT NATION
John C. Morley - Serial Entrepreneur, Engineer, Marketer, Talk Show Host, First Responder
Rich: (00:00)
Here we go. All right, let's welcome to the Misfit Nation. John Morley, he's a serial entrepreneur, engineer, marketing specialist, talk show host, and president of his local chamber of commerce. Welcome to the show, John, how are you?
John C. Morley: (00:15)
I am great. Rich. It's a pleasure to be here today.
Rich: (00:18)
You got a lot of things going on, so I'm sure a rest time for you is very quick because you like seems like you have nine different things happening at once.
John C. Morley: (00:29)
Yeah. About five or six at least but I play hard and I rest hard.
Rich: (00:35)
Good.
John C. Morley: (00:36)
That is an important thing.
Rich: (00:38)
That always helps out to get that rest period in there to recharge the mind, recharge the body and then move forward.
John C. Morley: (00:45)
Exactly. It's like you have a whole new set of batteries. You have that what is it? 10 or 15 minutes. And it's like, somebody gave you a billion dollars because you suddenly feel like you're a brand new person.
Rich: (00:59)
And then you just burn through that as quick as possible. And then right back at the next.
John C. Morley: (01:04)
But you try to figure out how not to burn through it so quickly. I think you try to figure out, well, what did I do? What can I do a little more strategically so that I can preserve more of my energy for the evening?
Rich: (01:14)
So John, if you don't mind why you don’t tell some of the Misfit Nation about your story as far back as you want to go to how you started doing all these things and where you are now?
John C. Morley: (01:25)
Okay, well, let's go back to when I was in college and it was probably my junior year. I started a company called JCM and Son, which is a very small company. My dad had started it before me and he was using it to do land surveying. He was not in technology or computer. So he already had started the company. I didn't know that he was going to give it to me and so when I was in school, I started doing computer repair for like $5. I would charge on the phone and it wasn't by hours, one fee. So if you had a problem that took me two hours, I was only you five bucks. There was, there was no taking credit cards for this business. It was well cash when I see you or could you bring it by at lunchtime tomorrow?
John C. Morley: (02:13)
Or can I get it from you after class? There were no checks. It was just cash. And so when I went on-site, it was $10. Prices have gone up a little bit since then a little inflation but again it wasn't per hour. It was the entire project and I remember this one kid who I became good friends with. He had this DOS, Disk Operating System, we were into video games and he called me and said that he was having a problem with a game. And I was like, alright. He was like, "Can you come over? It's a real mess." So I come over and happen to be like, 10 p.m. And I came over and I looked at it and I said, "You know what? I got some ideas. Let me come back tomorrow. This is going to take more than a few minutes."
John C. Morley: (02:54)
So I came back the next day. And it was an issue with his conventional memory. At that time you could only have 640 K conventional memory. And we weren't able to expand to the extended memory because DOS couldn't work with that extended memory in the very beginning. So that was a big problem and so he wanted to play this game. It was some fighter game. I forget the name of it and he felt bad after a few hours, he said, "John, I'll give you the money. You don't have to fix this." I said, "Oh no, no. I'm going to fix this and if I don't fix it, you don't owe me a penny." He was like, "Okay. How much do you charge?"
John C. Morley: (03:36)
I said, "It's $10." He said, "Can I write you a check?" I'm like, "No it's cash." He said, "Can I get you a drink?" I said, "No, no. Just leave me alone." And I said, "What are you trying to do?" He said, "I'm trying to run this game but every time I run it, it crashes." I said, "You have a lot of time on your hands to play all these video games. Do you ever study in front of classes here or in between?" And so, talking with him and playing with the computer and I was playing with some lines and putting it back a few hours later, I fixed his problem. He was like, "Wow, you fixed it." I said, "Yeah, I fixed it. It was an issue of where the program was loading."
John C. Morley: (04:14)
It was getting into memory that other programs were stepping on but it wasn't so easy that you could just quickly figure it out. You had to do a lot of troubleshooting. So I got that going. I even had professors that were calling me, that didn't respect me in the beginning and they're calling me and saying, "Hey John. so you're an IT guy." I said, "Yeah, I'm in your class." Well, but you do computers. I said, "Yes." "Oh, okay." And they don't want to admit that they need help because they have a Ph.D. and I have nothing. I wasn't an engineer yet. And they had this little chipper attitude on their shoulder. Maybe it was me but it just felt like they had an attitude. And then I decided to, I didn't want to pay for phone service.
John C. Morley: (04:55)
So I was very resourceful. And our university started adapting its phone service or own private branch exchange. So I became friends with the director of that, he knew what I was doing and I said, "Oh, what I'd like to do for you. I'd like to beta test your phone services and give you feedback on how well or not how well it works." And he thought that was great. I said, "Well, I'm going to need everything that the university provides. I'm going to need the 9,600 board modem digitally on the phone. I'm going to need voicemail. I'm going to need two phone lines. I need to test that. He is like, "Alright, I think I can get that approved." And then I say, you know what I'd like to do. I'd like to make this an internship. He goes and checks and he says, "So, we can't pay you."
John C. Morley: (05:45)
"Oh, that's fine." I said, "I just want full access to everything on campus, teachers, students, everything." He's like, "John, I don't know if we can do that." And I said, "Well, that's the deal. I want access to all the phones, all the networks on campus. I want access to everything." It was ROME at the time and he was the leader of the company. Later on, he still works there today, he left that company and the university paid him a nice salary to manage this whole phone thing. Well, he was there and he said, okay, we're going to give you access and he was a little bit leery about it. And I remember in school, I had a lot of people that would come to me and say, "Hey John, I need help on something."
John C. Morley: (06:30)
But I was always a nice guy and I want to help people but I didn't take care of myself. So I said, what am I going to do? So I decided one weekend to go into telecom central at the school. And I wrote, we called Morley smoke and mirrors. That was the name they gave it. When you dialed my campus phone number that was supposed to ring in my room but it didn't. I had that number changed to a pilot number. So when you called, you got like an automated attendant. No student had ever done this. So it's like, "Ii, this is John. If I'm not available, just leave your name number at the beep and I'll get back to you." But what you didn't know was, I was screening calls. I moved around campus. I did different things. I had a gate on my phone.
John C. Morley: (07:17)
So I had a really interesting feature. They gave me what they called ultimate forwarding. I could forward your phone or any teacher's phone or any premises phone without being at the phone. You know how dangerous that is. I could make your phone ring at somebody else's place without you even knowing that I did it. And so I had to have that access. So I had like top access and he's like, "If you do anything, you know you're going to be in a lot of trouble and you're going to lose this." I said, "Don't worry. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to have a little fun." And so I created this, Morley smoke and mirror. So when you dialed the number, what you needed to know was a four-digit code when you called me. If you didn't dial that four-digit code, you never got me that four-digit code would route you to a number at my dorm that changed every day.
John C. Morley: (08:13)
I had a new rotating number that you could only dial inside of the campus. So when I call professors, they had a fit. "Well, John at eight, six." "Oh, don't even talk about John, his number is not his." What do you mean? It's not his number? "Well, it's complicated." What do you mean? "Well, when you call him, he has a set. So his number changes every day." What do you mean? "Well, I dial him but it's complicated. You'd have to talk to him. I don't even want to get into it. I don't even understand it." So people couldn't get me but then I realized I wanted to be able to reach some people. So I set this up, so when I would go around campus, I could forward my number to another number on campus, wherever I was hanging out. If you didn't dial my number, you never got me. You always got voicemail. But I said you know what? I'd like to help some people sometime and take all my calls. So I would dial a special code and you didn't need my code. So that was kind of where it started and it was then that I realized that I want to take this company to another level.
John C. Morley: (09:15)
I remember before I graduated wanting this modem that was like the talk of the town. It was called a Prometheus modem. And at that time I think the modem was somewhere around $400. That was a lot of money. So I called the people who make it almost every day because they really wouldn't talk to me because I was nobody, I wasn't a distributor. I wasn't a computer. I was nothing and they gave me distributors that sold it. The distributor said, "We can't help you. You don't have an account." I would call them every day. They say, "Look, I'm going to tell you how much it costs but you still can't get it." I said, "Okay, how much does a $400 motive cost? Let's presume that I have an account with your company." They said, "If you had an account with our company, it would cost you $199"
John C. Morley: (10:01)
A $199, that's it? Plus shipping 850. So you mean that 450? That's what you would and then you would have to get a TID. What's a TID. "Oh yeah. A tax ID number." I was like, "Oh I got to get a tax ID number Oh, wow. I better go get one of those." So I didn't realize that caused a liability. So that didn't happen until after I graduated but long story short, I realized that I wanted to take this company and I wanted to grow it. So one of my friends was top in marketing and he had a friend that work for somebody and his uncle worked for one of the largest companies in Manhattan. I'm not going to say the name of the company that's still in business today.
John C. Morley: (10:44)
Well, they took me to the farm for a long time, over 30 some years. And about 10, 11 years ago, I said, enough is enough because they said, "John, you're never going to be a marketing person. You're an engineer but you're never going to know to advertise. You just need to pay people to do that." And I didn't like that answer. So after I had certified in Neurolinguistic programming and became a heist just for my own knowledge to help me get better goals, set faster. I said, I got to be able to do something and that's what I realized now finally, which is 10, 11 years, I can actually go back and say, I could do this. So I went to Xerox and said, "How do I become a small mom and pop print shop?" I don't know anything about printing other than the technology of printers.
John C. Morley: (11:32)
It was interesting because after I figured that all out, I walked into this firm knocked on a guy's door. Let's call him Robert. That wasn't his name. I say, "Hey Robert." He says, "Hey John, how are you doing? It's so great to see you. Listen, we got donuts. We got coffee. We got bagels. We got fresh muffins. How about those cinnamon rolls? I know you like that." I say, "No, I don't want any of that. I just want to come by and say one word to you. Thank you." He said, "You're welcome. You are so welcome. We got fresh juices too." I say, "Okay. Thank you. And we're done." I didn't smile but he's like, we're done. I said thank you. We had a nice run and we're done. He's scratching. He is like, "I haven't had my coffee yet this morning and this is kind of hitting me a little bit."
John C. Morley: (12:20)
"Let me see if I can get Mark in your sales rep. Hang on a second, Mark. I got Mr. Morley here. Can you come to the office?" "Yeah, sure." He comes here, "Hey John, how you doing buddy? It is nice to see you." Nice to see you too. "Listen, Diana made those special muffins. I think she made the Cinnamon bun this morning. Do you want me to go get you some of those and some milk or some orange juice?" I say, "No, I'm all good." He says, "You know John is not really very happy." "Oh, no problem. Grab your jacket. Let's go to Mark's Diner across the street. Let's get some grub and we'll talk about that now. So I want to show you what Sharon's been working on all night, just for you. She didn't even go to bed. She's been spending all night on this amazing campaign. You want to see it?" I say, no. And he's like, "What's wrong with you? You just need some food. Let's get your jacket. Let's go across the street." I said, "I don't want to go across the street. I want to say, thank you and I want to say, we're done."
John C. Morley: (13:16)
Thank you, we had a nice run and we're done. He looks at me. He says, "What are you trying to tell us here?" I said, "I'm trying to tell you that I fired your boss a few seconds ago. I'm firing you and I'm firing your 15 person team." He goes back in the chair and he's like, "You know bro, that's low blow the bell. I can't believe this. You and I, we've been friends since you were a junior in college." I said, "Yeah and you were taking my money and my father's money that I didn't have and he was paying you to market my company before I was even out of school." He was like, "Yeah. John, it takes time. This is a tough economy out there. You just get to keep putting money in. We'll get there."
John C. Morley: (14:03)
"How long?" "It's going to take some time. You got to put some more money in." And I was like, "You know, it's funny when I give you a 100 dollars, and I'm just using that arbitrarily, you take me out to breakfast at a Diner. When I give you 250, you take me out to Bennigan's with a nice dessert, an ice cream. When I give you a thousand dollars, you take me out to Ruth Chris steakhouse. It's funny. When I said I was sending you a hundred and I sent you a thousand, you canceled my breakfast. You made some excuse that your kids were sick and that your wife had no car because she had an accident and they had a drive to the doctor's office and you were the only one that could do it. And then your boss was coming in magically and you could only see me for dinner."
John C. Morley: (14:53)
I said, "I'm onto you guys." "Well, no John we're just busy. You don't say we're really busy. You know we gave you some, we spent a lot of money on you on dinner." "I understand that and I spent a lot of money on you guys too." And I said, "You didn't know what you were doing. You subbed everything out. You charge me when the deadlines were up." He's like, "So what are you doing?" I said, "Well, we're leaving you." He said, "Oh, where are you going? I hope you're not going across the street. Let me just tell you, Chris, he is terrible. I can tell you things about Chris that I really shouldn't share publicly. You don't want to go over there. He is not good with those big accounts and trusts me, he is going to give you such a bad reputation. Don't go to Chris." I said, "We're not going to Chris." He said, "Where you're going? You're going to Phill?"
John C. Morley: (15:36)
"Who's Phil, the guy all the way down the other block?" They say, "He is 10 times worse than the guy across the street and if you think we're bad, oh my God. He's horrible. He is so horrible. He'll promise you everything and then he won't return your calls until you pay them." I said, "We're not going to Phil either." He said, "What are you doing? You're not going to somebody in Jersey?" I said, "Yeah, I am." "Oh, dude." He's like, "I feel for you. You just don't know what you're doing. You need some help and I want to help you as a friend, I want to help you." And he said, "Who are you going with?" I said, "I'm going with a company in New Jersey there is a little tiny town called Franklin lakes." He said, "You're in that town." I said, "I live there and I have a business there."
John C. Morley: (16:19)
"Well, where's the business?" I said it's across the street from me. "Oh, what's their name?" I said, "Neighborhood publications." He said, "Oh, that's a weird name. They'll probably be in business long. I can tell that that name's not very solid. They'll be out of business in a year. I guarantee you." So then he says to me, "Who's the sales manager there?" I said that Chris, something. He said, "Who's the owner?" John Morley. "Who's the owner?" John Morley. You're saying you own that company. "Oh, now we got to sit down. You need a drink because I think you're just like, you know, you're like on a dreamland and I want to bring you back to earth because I'm feeling for you. After all, you, your family, what's going to happen to you down the road. I want to save you right now before you start burning and wasting time and money because I know what I'm doing."
John C. Morley: (17:10)
I said you do. Yeah. So we went away, 2 years went by we failed and then he calls me back. We were doing well. They said, "John, Sharon, and I want to come by and take you to lunch." I said that's nice. "Yeah, we want to talk to you because you've got some big accounts now and we want to teach you how to handle these accounts because you don't know what you're doing. So what we want to do is take some of these accounts from you, take care of them. You pay us, we'll keep the brand name of neighborhood publications on there, and then we'll do all the work." I said, "Why the heck would I do that? I'm busting my tail to get these clients and the reputation. Why would I let you destroy that in the fraction of a second?"
John C. Morley: (17:54)
Well, because we have advertising experience. We're a fortune advertising company. Who is very good at accounting people? I said I have a concept. Why don't we take some of those people who, you're probably going to lose, haven't paid their bill. Those aren't going to come back. They haven't gotten an ROI ever since they've been with you. Why don't I take some of those? Help them talk with them, get them a new plan. Get them returns on their investment profits. Keep your name on it that's fine to me. And they're going to stay with you because they're getting a return frequently. How's that for a concept?" "Okay. You know John, that's above my pay grade." I said, "Okay. Well listen, I want to thank you so much for coming by. I don't need lunch but I do thank you for coming by. If you ever need a professional advertising, marketing, graphic, digital designing, and video company or you need a great IT company. Why don't you reach out to me? We'll be here. We'll be growing.
John C. Morley: (18:48)
Okay. John, take care. It's nice seeing you. I said, nice seeing you too. I got to go. And so that's what got me into starting a marketing company because it's probably saying why does an IT company start a marketing company? It makes no sense. Nobody knew what they were doing Rich, right? So I would come up with ideas in the morning and I'd have my team, put them together. I'd hit a button and I'm printing them at our center at 2 in the morning. And I still do that sometimes now. So I like the idea of JIT concepts, president of the chamber of Franklin Lakes that I made a 51C3 and I'm very good at. I donate all my graphics, all my media, all my printing.
John C. Morley: (19:35)
So I get the word out well. And I produce over 40 hours of motivational content a week that I just share out. And I'm just very passionate about what I do. So the IT company is one of my first dreams have come true. We have a slogan that most people can't print and that is "Wall Street trusts us with their IT and technology needs, shouldn't you?" So I had one of my competitors says, "I could print that on a card to mail it." I said, "Yeah and you can commit mail fraud." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "We do work for the new year for wall street." "You do?" I said, "Yeah." He's like, "Well I just thought you put that on the cards." I said, "Now we do work and I have a level mind clearance with them." He is like, "Really?" I said, "You can't print stuff and mail it. It is just not going to work. That is illegal, that's mail fraud." He was like, "Really? I never thought about that." And it's hefty per violation. "Huh?"
Rich: (20:40)
You probably said now I'm going to stop.
John C. Morley: (20:43)
Yeah. He's like, I got to watch what we're mailing out. He's like, I didn't know that he said and we're mailing lawyers. I said, you better watch what you're doing because each one of those could be hitting you for 20 or 30. And I don't mean dollars. What do you mean? A big one, 20 or 30,000 to start. He said that's what my marketing company told me. I said, yeah, it sounds like you actually might need us. So I got very passionate about that. And the thing about us with IT, Rich being an engineer, I don't sell people. What is going to make me a lot of money? I get them involved with what they need. So I specialize in companies between 20 and 500 users, to medical, pharmaceutical and so I have conversations with people, look, this is how it's going to work.
John C. Morley: (21:27)
This is what needs to be done and this is what we should be doing. "Oh, we don't want to do that." If you don't want to do that, that's fine. We may not be the firm for you. We may not be the right company and I respect that. Well, our whole budget is only 200 bucks or 300 bucks. We're not the company for you. What you may want to do is look in the yellow pages for some of those people that do like a 200 dollars contract for the year but they are not going to do what we do. They're not going to do custom systems. They're not going to guarantee. Who guarantees a computer for three years that builds it. I don't know too many people. We build a computer. We guarantee it for three years. It has an average lifespan of 15 years. I should say maybe 8 to 10 but our servers expect 15 years.
John C. Morley: (22:08)
So people say to me, "John, your building stuff too good." I said, "Yeah but that's what we do." They said, "You should just skimp on the stuff. Like, don't build it so well." And that got me passionate. I forget how many years ago it was but I got on blog talk radio, which your problem may or may not be familiar with. And we started taking calls. So blog talk is a thing for pastors. It's mostly audio. It's not video. It's just audio and they had their little line where people could call in. And I thought it was the greatest thing in sliced bread. I had an amazing time and I wanted to get a national radio but I'm nobody. So I keep sending little letters out and demo reels through email. And finally, I get a guy that bites in upstate New York and he says, "John, we're going to give you a shot."
John C. Morley: (22:56)
"How would you like Thursday night from nine to 10:00 PM," I said that's prime time. He says, yeah. He says we got 48 states we can syndicate you to. I said that would be amazing. He says, yep. So we got started with them. We're with them for a couple of years. We did well. Again, this is all free. We got to the point where we're just going to start accepting advertisers. I brought our first advertiser to the station, which I thought was amazing because I was going to make a nice percentage. I think it was 60%. The check was three and a half million but here's the bad part. I don't get any of the money. So I called the station. I said, "What happened?" He said, "Oh this is a complicated one. I don't have an answer to this."
John C. Morley: (23:35)
"Let me give you over to the station manager." I said, "Rob, what are we doing?" He was like, "Yeah John, everything you did was exactly correct and you would've normally gotten 60 and 65% easy but this was one of those weird deals. The ball just kind of fell on the other side of the fence this time." What do you mean? "Well, it's just kind of how the deal went. You're going to have to talk to Mike, the station owner because we have him call you and I call "Mike, How are you?" "Hey, John? How are you? Nice to see you. How's everybody. I said, "Everybody's great. Listen, I have a quick question for you. I brought you an advertiser. Supposedly they send a check." He said, "Yeah. Thank you so much. We got a check for them yesterday for three and a half million." I said, "Oh well you're welcome. Where's my money." Yeah. See, we have to talk about that.
John C. Morley: (24:23)
I said, what do you mean? You see, we got the money and the check was all good and it was great. And they're going to be a repeat client. I said, "Why am I getting the short side of this stuff?" Yeah. It's kind of how the ball bounced. I said, "Well, I don't want to hear that. I want to know what happened. I want to know the truth." He said here's what happened? They came to us. They didn't want to advertise on your station. "They didn't?" No, they bought you out. "What do you mean?" They bought your whole show time out. "Mean the network they bought the time out from you." Yeah. He says, and you know the price you're paying and the price they're paying. So three and a half million was a lot more than the couple hundred dollars you were paying.
John C. Morley: (25:06)
I said, "But we have great contact." He said, "Yeah, I know John. It's not personal. It's just business." I said, "But I'm growing. I'm aspiring." I know when you get growing, come back to us. I said, "You know what? I'm never going to come back to you, the way you treated me, I'll never come back to you." He goes, so that's a shame. He says we would miss you. If you grow, come back. We love you. I said, "I wouldn't love to be here the way you treated me." He said, it's just business and we got to pay the bills. You know this isn't a not-for-profit station. I said, "I get it but I put my heart, my blood, my sweat, my tears into your programs". And you were great. You were one of our top people.
John C. Morley: (25:44)
"Oh, I'm glad." And thank you so much for the check we got, we appreciate that. I said, "Who is the guy? What is he doing? I'm just curious." Well, we can't tell you too much but what I can tell you is it's a political candidate and he wanted your slot to motivate people to vote for their side of the election. So I said, what happens after the year? He says, well, they're going to keep it for their whole party. I said, "Oh, okay. So you're going to charge him three and a half million every year." That's a lot of money. He said, well, he is going to pay it.
John C. Morley: (26:22)
And I just went away with my head between my legs. Like, "What am I supposed to do?" And I kind of gave up radio and video and all kinds of stuff and I said, I don't want to do this anymore. About a year or two after that, a friend of mine said, "Hey John, I have this guy. I want you to meet for your show." I said, "I don't do the show anymore. I'm sorry." He said, "Well, you don't do the show." I said, "I don't do it anymore." He said, "Oh, well, listen, I have this guy. I want you to meet. He wants to know if you'd like to be a co-host." That'd be great if I had the show but I don't have the show. He said, "Well, can you at least talk to him?" I was like, "Yeah, I'll talk to him." So I talked to the guy he's out in, I think he was out in Chicago or whatever.
John C. Morley: (27:00)
He said, "Hey John, it's nice to meet you. I just wanted, could we do one show? Just I heard a lot about you. Could we do one show together?" I feel great energy and I said, "Alright, we'll do one show just for old time's sake." He said, "Alright that would be so cool. I would just love to be on the air with you. It'll be fun." So we did one show. We had a blast and he says, "Can we just do one more? I felt this show so much that I just want to do one more." I said, "I'll tell you what, I'll do one more but then I don't want to hear after you that we're going to do another show because you want to do another show." He said, "No, no, I won't do that to you." Okay. The second show happens.
John C. Morley: (27:37)
And I said, "Oh, everyone, it's been great being here and this is our last show. So I want to thank you for all the many years." And he said, "John, not quite exactly." I was like, what do you mean? He said, "Not quite exactly." We agreed. It's our last show. He said, "Well, we agreed. However, what I didn't know about is that you were going to have six guests lined up, coming up for your next shows. You have six guests in the queue." Well, what do we do? He said, "Well, we can't not air anymore because people are waiting to get on the show." I was like, "Are you serious?" Yeah.
John C. Morley: (28:07)
Alright. Well, it looks like, JMOR tech is coming out to the closet and we're getting back on the air again. I guess I'd be ready for it and then after that, I decided, well, if we're going to do that, I might as well go full force and I started with my video production again. I started a video school. I have interns that come in that shoot videos for me and I have my John C. Morley serial entrepreneur channel, which I just literally just before this, I was streaming out on LinkedIn there several other places. And that's my short cast. It's about 20 to 40 minutes tonight. We talked about, "Why and how the attitude of gratitude and how do you feel gratitude? Not just say it." So we talked about that tonight. And then I have two other channels besides that JMOR.
John C. Morley: (28:54)
I have envisioned networks, which is a science network. And it's called, John, the science guy had a network with John and we do all kinds of science experiments. And in the experiment, we teach you something about yourself. So we did one about disappearing ink, and I said, you never should lie to people and I used disappearing ink and I put the thing if you do the truth will come out. And I rubbed that off and I said, you know why you don't want to do that because sooner or later you're going to be invited to a party, a very private party, who else is going to be not invited Mr. And Mrs. Grape juice. And they're going to show up when you least expect it, where your friends and everyone that you regard. And they're going to expose you for the true liar that you are.
Rich: (29:42)
Wow.
John C. Morley: (29:44)
So, that's it guys and I just love motivating people. I mean, my latest thing in the Christmas season, December, I started making IT a series. So I call it 25 gifts of inspiration to change your life around the holidays. So I started unwrapping presents, giving myself gifts, cheap little things. So one thing I had was a trash can, a small one you get the dollar store wrapped it. I unwrap like, I wonder what I got and I unwrap, "Wow, it's a trash can, why would I give myself a trash can?" I got it because maybe we need to eliminate certain things and certain people from our life. Let's talk about how we can do that with some techniques. And so that spread me to the thing of finally bringing my book out of a cupboard, which will be out in a few months, 25 gifts of inspiration to change your life and everyone else in it. It's three chapters.
Rich: (30:42)
Major areas Amazon, Barnes, or anything?
John C. Morley: (30:44)
I don't know if I'm going to do Amazon. The plan is to do a virtual book tour on it. So I'm going to do a virtual book tour and I also want to visit, Barnes and Noble because I've spoken there before. And I used to speak for them when I was just out of college. But they said, "John, we can't take you anymore because you're not an author officially, when you get a book, come back, you can speak all you want." There was a policy. So now I'm going to have a book. I want to do some book signings and I want to get more into coaching. And then we're going to develop workbooks that you can only get if you hire me to do coaching for your company or your group. And that's kind of where I want to go. I want to show people that you can change your life.
John C. Morley: (31:24)
And there's one that I want to share with you and it's a great one. So if you take your hand and you take your either hand and you put it together just like this. And if you hold that together and just kind of pinch and you think about your life, what do you want in your life? If you want more money, imagine going to a car dealership and buying whatever car you want this time, you could have any option, any price tag, any way you want it. And the salesperson is just clicking everything and you don't care what it costs. You're just basking in all the features, all the options. And now imagine yourself driving out of that dealership with that car, smelling it, feeling it, riding down the road. How do you feel? You feel really good, don't you?
John C. Morley: (32:10)
Well heck, you got your new car. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to go to eat? What do you want? Do you want to get on a plane? Do you want to go on a trip? Now, imagine for me, money just coming into your bank account, sleeping awake money just keeps growing in your bank account. The more you think about it, or even if you don't think about it with every breath of your life, money just comes in. And in fact, money's starting to come in so easily that you wonder why this never happened before relationships are becoming easier. More people are regarding you. And it feels good. Imagine going to a department store and people are asking can they help you? When, before they only help the person that seems to be buying 10 or 20 things, you know buying 50 to a hundred things.
John C. Morley: (32:59)
They're spending all their time with you. You're getting all their attention. You go to a play and suddenly you're not sitting in the first row. You're sitting in the VIP section. You go to a ball game or you go to a football game or a softball game or a baseball game. You're sitting in VIP glass boots. Imagine how that feels. But not only are you sitting in there, but it is also your booth. So you can invite any friends you want to have any food you want. Doesn't that feel great? Feels great to know what that's like. You can feel that, right? And as you could feel that let go of your hand and right now you just created an anchor in your body. I take your thumb and index and go back, you can feel a little bit of that feeling in your body. If you do that for seven days, you see your mind and body don't know what's happening outside the world. It thinks the same way. You probably know the story of the famous basketball players that would practice every day of their life. And when they practiced, there was one group that practiced every day and they were great. There's another group that didn't practice. They just didn't practice at all third group that practiced, but in a room, closing their eyes. So the question I have is, which group do you think did better?
Rich: (34:15)
Oh, the ones practiced with their eyes closed.
John C. Morley: (34:17)
Exactly, so the ones that didn't do anything, were worse than the other people because they lost muscle skills, right? And they lost confidence. The people that practiced were good but the people that closed their eyes were just a tiny bit better. Now you might say, how the heck is that possible when they weren't practicing. You see when you close your eyes and you use your mind and body, your neurons are sending messages to fire the same muscles and joints, ligaments, and connections of your body that you would if you were practicing on a court.
Rich: (34:51)
Yeah, got that.
John C. Morley: (34:52)
So when you rehearse, you make it happen. Your body doesn't know the difference.
Rich: (34:57)
That brings like, New York Mets had a player years ago that his dad would throw tennis balls at him with numbers on him. He had to yell the number out before he hit it.
John C. Morley: (35:07)
Oh wow.
Rich: (35:08)
And that's how he learned to hit baseballs. He'd have his eyes so focused on that ball to try to figure out what was on it. He was able to hit the ball and that's how he made it from Peewee up to the majors, just by instilling that focus on his son. He made him get to the pros.
John C. Morley: (35:23)
That is an amazing story. But a lot of people don't realize that most people don't use more than 1% of their brain and they never will, which is unfortunate. You probably know that most people say they have a bad memory. Now that's a perception. Dr. Wayne Ford said that "If you believe you can't, you're right. And if you believe you can, you're also right." So when you say you don't have a good memory, you're going to bring more about that on. So people say to me, "John, well, how do you have a good memory? I just can't remember." I said, "Well, the first thing you have to think to yourself is you got to say you have a good memory." Yeah but what else do I need to do because I got to remember something." I said, "Well, imagine going to a store."
John C. Morley: (36:03)
Okay. Doesn't matter what store you want to go to. Maybe it's BJs. Maybe it's Wal-Mart. Maybe it's a food town. I don't know what stores there are Kroger, depending on what's around wherever you guys are watching. And you might say to me, "John, I don't know what's going on." But one thing is I have to remember all these great things in my life and you're going to the store and let's say you have to get milk. Okay. So imagine, I don't know a big, archaic boat. And imagine that you have to go get a gallon of milk. So I want you to see the whole deck covered with gallons of milk. We can picture that any way you want. Now let's say the addition of the milk. I don't know. You need to get some cheese. You need to get some crackers.
John C. Morley: (36:55)
Okay. Well just above the gallons of milk, there's a mass in the center and it's coated with cheese and if you touched it, you get it all over your fingers, right above that. There's the first flag. And some crackers are just all over the flag, boxes of crackers. Now you got your crackers. What else do you need? I don't know. I need somewhat watermelon. So just above that, there's a little bit of a round dish and you see people taking watermelon and throwing it at the other pirates, trying to attack the boat above that you realize that I would like to get some ice cream. So when a tippy top, you see a gigantic flash score. Let's say a container of ice cream but not just any ice cream, the ice cream is tipping over and it's vanilla and chocolate. And it's pouring over somebody's head if they were walking by it. So now that was kind of fun. But if I asked you, what do you have to go get at the store? The first thing on the boat was what?
Rich: (38:05)
Milk
John C. Morley: (38:06)
Milk. Pretty easy, right? And what do you have to get next? So there's the milk and there's that pole? What do you want to not touch? Or you have to touch it on your hands.
Rich: (38:15)
That cheesy stuff on.
John C. Morley: (38:16)
That cheese and if we go up there. There's that flag, right? And what's basking in that?
Rich: (38:23)
The crackers.
John C. Morley: (38:24)
The crackers. Yes. And if you remember going above the crackers, we have that round thing and these people are throwing this, right?
Rich: (38:35)
Yeah.
John C. Morley: (38:37)
They're throwing watermelon at the pirates and above that, what was pouring down on people's heads, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. So you see, you just remembered that you have a great memory when you make things funny and ridiculous. You'll remember it and this goes to an important point that I want to impress.
John C. Morley: (38:55)
So I'm a ham now, nothing you eat. I'm a volunteer ham. I have my tech who is an emergency manager. It's a radio operator. They are all over the world. And this past Sunday I studied and got my general. Now I made an intention, right before Christmas that I was going to get my general. It was not easy to do. I went to the class. I kept studying before I was studying. I got to the class and I was practicing every night to one o'clock. It was Friday, it was Saturday and it was Sunday. And people in the class weren't taking it seriously. They were naming the questions and I'm like B as in Bravo, C as in Charlie, we got to a point in the class and the instructor's like can anybody accept John answer these questions because you guys are taking a test here. John is not going to be able there to give you the answers. And I'm spitting them off.
John C. Morley: (39:49)
And the test comes and I get the test and I fill it all out and I'm done. I said, "Oh, I went too fast. I'm the second person. I better check." It was one of these SRA tests. We had to have the dots and they take the test away from me when I tell them and they give me another test again. I was like, oh, I guess it didn't pass. That's a surprise and I'm going through the things. I'm like, wow, this time is 50 questions 37. I didn't even look at the name of the test. The test said extra on it. So in the end, I didn't pass that test because I didn't study it.
John C. Morley: (40:22)
I said, what happened? I guess I didn't get it. He said congratulations. I said, well, there is no way I pass. So you got your general. What was this? Well, you had a perfect score. So whenever that happens, we just give you the extra test automatically. I said, holy gee because the same thing happened to my friend next door. And he got another test and I was like, yeah, the probably same thing happened to me. He got another test because he went out with a head between his legs. Like he didn't pass and he is like, what do I do? Yeah, you can go do some research online and nobody took it seriously. So when you have an attempt to do something, it doesn't just magically happen but it gets your RAS, your reticular activating system, and gear to do it.
John C. Morley: (41:11)
If you were to let's say buy a new car, a new model, right. As soon as you get out of the dealership, the first thing you notice is what that car is everywhere on the road. You're not the only person that has it, right. I thought I was the only one buying that model. Like there was no one on the road, now there's like every freaking car is that model. Every other car, why is that? Then my friend goes and he buys another kind of car but he says, his car is every car. Why is he seeing all cars? And I know there is more in my car. Well, there isn't. It's that my reticular activating system is focusing on what I have right or what I'm thinking about. So that's the problem in life. Our RAS is not designed to make us successful.
John C. Morley: (41:53)
It's designed to keep us safe. See that's the biggest thing and when it keeps us safe, it doesn't help us become successful. So you have to kind of play with it and let it Dodge a little bit and kind of go out of that safety goal. You have to push the envelope a little further. And I feel that if people do that little bit by little bit, they'll become more successful but most people just think, "Well, you know, I did this, I meditated. I thought about it. I wanted this. I didn't get it." I said, well, did you get inspired action? "Yeah but I'm just waiting for it to happen," I said, well you have to take inspired action. There was a story. I'm not going to mention the person but it was a religious story and the person said can you help me?
John C. Morley: (42:35)
And so all of a sudden the person comes, somebody comes and says, can I help you get out of the well, he says, no. I'm waiting for X to help me. "Oh, okay." Another person comes along, comes along with some other way to get them out, some other type of device to get them out of the hole. "Oh, no I'm waiting. I'm waiting for some X to help me." Okay. You're good. We're good. The third person comes along and he is like you need help. "No, no. I'm all good." Yeah. I brought a chain to help you grab with, to pull yourself up. "No, I'm all good." So in the end, he is almost drowning in the well and the person comes back.
John C. Morley: (43:24)
He says, "Why didn't you help me?" Well, I did. The last person that came was a fourth person who came and brought a ladder and he said, I gave you this chain, I gave you a ladder. He said I did help you. "Yeah, but I was waiting for you to come". Well, I set my help through other people. So I think sometimes we are expecting something to come in one way but we're not open to the way it comes and that leads to an interesting point to what I was saying about the course. That course wasn't easy but if you can have a foundation, whether we're talking about mind, we're talking about family loyalty, motivation. If you can have a good foundation if you don't have a solid foundation, what happens to your house? It falls apart.
John C. Morley: (44:04)
So if we have a solid foundation and if we're able to start with something, maybe you're looking to be, I don't know, or you're looking to be a chemist but you don't know anything about chemistry but you know that you spent time with your great grandmother and she showed how to mix and bake say, okay, so you bake before, right? I did a few times. So you know how you have to mix the different ingredients and you eat them. Well, chemistry is very similar. You mix other things. You just can't eat them and they're dangerous but you're still mixing. So now that I build upon something, you're like, "oh, I get it. So when you add the acid to the base." Right, what happens if you add it too fast, you burn it. So you kind of make those analogies and that's why most people don't learn. It's like, "I can't figure it out." They got to figure out what they know. That's a commonality and then you can learn anything.
Rich: (44:56)
Make it familiar. So they learn it. That's the best way to do things. Memory in the army, we used to do things, The Kim’s test a lot. We do have a pitch-black room. You go in there, turn the light on for 20 seconds. You have to scan the room, turn the light out, go outside and repeat everything you've seen there. Describe the room and you got to keep doing that until you can. The muscle memory taught you to scan that room as quickly as possible to get as much information, get that done and come out and it helps soldiers a lot even after they stop doing the dark rooms. When we get into a battle in Afghanistan, Iraq, they were able to go in places and identify everything they saw immediately because they were so used to practicing that familiarity of going in there, in shock and all blackout and then lights off lights on and go that they became muscle memory and familiarity of learning to do things on the fly.
John C. Morley: (45:46)
So it became like second nature to them.
John C. Morley: (45:49)
And this is the same thing that we can do with anything in our life. Like I told you about the anchor, I told you about gratitude. One of the things I do every day and I encourage people to do this. I tell people whether it's a ring or it's your watch, your clothes, whatever, when you take something off at night practice, the attitude of gratitude. When you put that back on in the morning, practice it again. So people say to me, John, I don't have anything to be thankful for. I have a job, I'm not happy with it. I'm in a third marriage. My kitchen is a mess. I have two kids, I can hardly feed them.
John C. Morley: (46:30)
Okay. "So, I can't be thankful because I can't live." Well, why don't we step back a minute first? Let's be grateful that you're alive. Okay. Let's be grateful that you have two beautiful children, right? Yeah. I guess. Let's be grateful that not only do you have two beautiful children but you have a job and you're able to put food on the table, right? Are they starving? "No, not starving but I can't give them a flaming yawn." And so I say, but you're able to feed them. "Yeah, I am." Okay. So we got that. You got a roof over your head. "Yeah, I got a roof over my head." Okay. Do you have money in your wallet so that you can put gas in your car? "Yes." You have a car, right? "Yes, I have." You have parents that are alive and that love you.
John C. Morley: (47:16)
"Yes." Grandparents. "Yes." You've got a lot to be thankful for. "Yeah but John, you don't understand." You have carpet. You have clothes. You have heat at home. "Yeah, I have all this but you don't get it." No, what don't I get? "You just don't get that I don't like them." Okay. I understand. Don't like where you are right now. I respect that. Be grateful for where you are now, what you have and more, I promise you will open up in the future. "Well, I don't know how to be grateful because like, I don't know. This is just stuff I'm doing. Like, I'm just going through life. I'm going through emotions." So feel gratitude. "How do I feel gratitude?" Close your eyes and just feel in your core, what it's like to feel something you ever had a relative go away on a trip or a friend or significant other.
John C. Morley: (48:05)
They go on a trip and you don't see them. Now it's not to harm you. They're going on a trip or something. Nothing's wrong. You close your eyes and you miss them, right. So you're grateful that, you know, they're coming back. Can you do that practice being grateful for one minute every day, then to two minutes and three minutes and four and just practice that. And the lady says, "Well, when do I do that?" I said it's really simple. I said you go to work early in the morning. Every time you go outside your apartment, where you live, I want you every time you touch the inside of your doorknob or the outside of your doorknob and in your home, when you leave your apartment, I want you to take that gratitude check. Every time you leave. And every time you come back in, she talked to me a couple of weeks later.
John C. Morley: (48:51)
She's like, "Well, you know, I'm okay. I got a promotion." I said, well, that's good. You can be grateful for that. I said you know what? You've also been grateful. You can see, you can hear, you can walk and you have great health and your children have great health. "Yeah, I guess you're right. You know, I was talking to my friends and they were just telling me how bad I have." So the first rule is, don't listen to your friends because your friends are not always going to help you in all due respect. She is like, "Yeah, I know." I said you have to let them know that they had to be grateful. She says, "Well, they were just doing the same thing and I was repeating what they were telling me." And you feel more miserable. So I would tell them either change where they're going or you need to find some new friends because I think that's your problem. She's like, "Yeah, you're right. There is this one lady Mary and I don't know if I want to hang around with her anymore because she is always complaining. She is divorced too but she's complaining worse than I am." And then I just pick it up. I said, yeah and then you just keep reverberating what she's been saying. She is like, "I know." So it does work.
Rich: (49:55)
Definitely and I think you add that with having a victory every morning. So you wake up, you make your bed. That's a victory, the first victory.
John C. Morley: (50:03)
I love that.
Rich: (50:05)
The first victory is waking up. The second victory is making your bed. You just accomplish two tasks in one day and then your gratitude. I'm grateful. I'm able to wake up and make my bed. So you combine both of them and you're able to get through your day. You're putting up a lot of great things in this chat, you did a lot, most of the talk, and I just sat here and got to absorb a lot of it. It was great. I'm running out of time because I don't have the pro account here so how does someone contact you?
John C. Morley: (50:32)
Sure. How do we get in contact, very easily? So I have a Linktree and I can put that in the chat or tell you guys what it is. It's just Linker. ee/john motley serial entrepreneur. Take a look at some of my content, check it out. I think you'll like it and the last thing I'll leave you with is this, when you stub your toe in the morning, which happens to some people think of it like this, it's a bump in the road. When you hit a bump when you go through the desert, do you talk about that bump seven months later? You hit that bump but it was a problem. No, it was a bump. So don't let your whole day go downhill shower, break a dish, annoy a client. It's a bump. The rest of my day is going to be great. And I know it.
Rich: (51:22)
Awesome. Thanks, John. Thanks again for taking some of your time to join us here on the Misfit Nation.
John C. Morley: (51:28)
It was a pleasure. Rich, thank you so much for having me.