343. Empowering Change Through Emotional Mastery and Economic Engines with Dame Doria Cordova

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Dame Doria Cordova:

How can we make the world work for 100 percent of humanity through spontaneous cooperation in the shortest possible time without any ecological offense nor the disadvantage of anyone? So, when you create a product or service that answers that question, the chances of you being wealthy and happy have just exponentially grown.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today is a legend, Dame Doria Cordova, CEO and owner of Excellerated Business Schools and Money & You. It's the organization that has brought the world entrepreneurial, experiential, transformational training programs since 1979 with over 200,000 graduates from 85 countries. The renowned Money & You program has inspired some of today's best known business education wealth experts as it has touched the lives of tens of billions globally. The first Rich Dad book, which was authored by her business partner of nine years, Robert Kiyosaki, many of today's wealth and business leaders have attended the Money & You program and have transformed the way they teach and run their organizations.

Dame Doria is a global business developer for organizations that are in alignment with her purpose to uplift humanity's consciousness through socially responsible businesses. In addition to her Money & You book series, she is one of the contributors to Think and Grow Rich for Women and the author of the comprehensive systems manual, Money-Making Systems. She's a sought after keynote speaker and has been in countless events, podcasts, and films. She's been featured in many book series, written many forwards for books, and these have been written by graduates of her program and notable wealth and transformation leaders. She's also a humanitarian philanthropist who supports numerous nonprofits, foundations, and humanitarian organizations as a mentor and a champion. She is now leading this work through the Doria Cordova Foundation.

Doria, there is a lot we get to talk about today. Welcome to the Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Dame Doria Cordova:

I'm so happy to be here, particularly to talk to your young audience, considering that I started this very young at 29 years old.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

You know, you stole a tiny bit of my thunder there because that's always the first thing I ask. I love to jump in the time machine. I love to go back in time and find out people's superhero origin story. So, Doria, talk to us about what puts you on the path you're on today.

Dame Doria Cordova:

It was actually an enlightenment experience that I had when I was 26 years old. I was in the legal field. I was an official court reporter in the Los Angeles court system and then moved to Hawaii because of some circumstances. It is a book to share, it is an amazing story. They can make a movie around that alone. And I moved to Maui so that I could experience more peace and something called me there. And I had an enlightenment experience which I felt this calling that said I did not put you on Planet Earth for you to be a party girl - this was the '70s. I actually put you there, you have a job to do. I had no idea what that meant.

And I ended up in the first human potential, very famous program called EST at the time, which evolved into landmark education. And there, I had another epiphany, which is that I had no control over anything, nothing in the world, except one thing, which was my consciousness. And it was from there that I then discovered and I was introduced to by Werner Erhard to our network.

There were a thousand of us that met Buckminster Fuller. And Buckminster Fuller now was the amazing human being that had brought to the world the Geodesic Dome, the Dymaxion Map that you actually see behind me, and he also coined the word synergy. But Buckminster Fuller was the one that began to really inspire me because he was talking about sufficiency. That there were enough resources on planet earth since the early '70s, more than enough to feed everyone, people have refrigeration, to have sufficient water, to have sufficient housing. But it was only the systems of government, of economics, and the way that people have been taught to think and to be employees.

And that's why the first Rich Dad Poor Dad book, the first one, actually Kiyosaki was inspired and wrote, learned about this from us when he was my business partner for nine years and led my Money & You program and all that. And it was like what he did for me, we have done for tens of millions around the world who all of a sudden discover that they can do very good things in the world and create wealth. So, that started me back when I was only 27.

And then, when I was 28, I attended the first business school for entrepreneurs of this kind, which evolved into my business school now. Then, it was six weeks long. Now, it's only eight days because of the decades we've been able to refine it.

And pretty much after I attended the first business school, I had another spiritual experience, which that work had been created for me. And the reason I share this is because I feel that many of us when we're very young, you know, the great spirit, whatever you want to call it, the universe, speak to us in a lot of different ways. And if we're not ready, if we don't do the work, if we don't meditate, if we don't prepare for it, we are going to either disregard it, not pay attention to it, or think "Wow. That's too big. Who do I think I am to think that I can change the world?" And to be honest with you, all of that crossed my mind when I was so young.

But I stayed with it because my passion by then had been so inspired by all these people that I was only 28, 29 years old and I was surrounded by the who's who of new entrepreneurship and people that were extremely wealthy that now would be considered billionaires. And I was in awe without understanding that actually my phantom captain - Buckminster Fuller taught us that word - that aspect of us that knows what to do had already kicked in. And I was persistent. I was clear. I knew what my job was and I stayed with it and I started running the company that I have now been doing for 44 years or when I was 29 years old and through a series of beautiful miracles, circumstances, coincidences, whatever you want to call it, the business grew so huge.

And we trained Tony Robbins when he was 23 years old, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul. They did Money & You in 1979, the first year that I was doing this. And then, you have people like Paul Mitchell who passed away, Paul Mitchell products. He did Money & You in 1980, passed away in 1989. But Paul DeJoria continued with the brand that had already been set using two major principles from our Money & You program.

And then, we began to really expand and grow and then we went through a learning experience when my mentor at the time, the male mentor, felt like I wasn't doing that good of a job, so they decided to go ahead and retire me. And within three months, they had destroyed my beautiful job that I had created, this organization, for six years by then. And then, I was given the strength, the spiritual strength, the certainty that I had to come back. Marshall Thurber, the male creator of the work, I said to him, "I'm taking back my Money & You program. Sign the papers." He was an attorney. "Give me all the rights for this work because it was created for me. You know I had the vision at the first business school, so I'm going to run with it. You go continue doing your consulting, the Deming's Consulting, go do your thing and I'm going to grow this business."

So, that's when I had the opportunity to look around. And this young man by the name of Robert Kiyosaki who had been around us for about five years, he was a Marine. And he was what we called - and this is a compliment - A Hungry Dog, somebody that wants to create wealth, wants to do good. And that's how we ended up being business partners. And the story just keeps growing and growing.

But, honestly, all of this, how I got on the path was by following my knowing. I don't speak to all audiences like this. Definitely we created an economic engine because Marshall Thurber was an attorney, I had been a court reporter, so we had a lot of understanding of how the world works around legal matters. And it was through that, it was through that knowledge that we created an economic very, very early, which was licensing, which really allowed for me to live with my own values, with what really mattered to me, with my personal values, and with my values that I had learned from now, by then quite a few masters, and it allowed me to build what I have built now.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

I'm loving this conversation so much and there's so many data points that are really interesting, but I want to dive into one in particular because you knew at 28 what you were going to do, you were passionate about it. I think the concept of a phantom captain - you said that the term coined by Buckminster Fuller - is really interesting. I guess we could talk about it and call that intuition. We could call it, you know, spiritual guidance, subconscious. There's a lot of different ways we can coin that. But here's the thing, in today's society, most people, and when I say most, I mean overwhelmingly the majority of people are miserable at their jobs. They're lacking fulfillment. We have greater numbers of anxiety and depression than we've had forever right now. And many of us don't trust that inner voice, right? We don't listen to it.

So, if somebody's listening to this saying, "You know, Doria, this sounds really cool, but I don't know what I'm going to do if I didn't have my job." Just talk to us based on your decades of doing this at the highest level with so many exceptional people how does one connect to that inner voice so they can let that phantom captain help steer the ship a little bit?

Dame Doria Cordova:

You have to be disciplined. If you intoxicate yourself - you know, I quit drinking when I was 38 years old and that's because I had already started advancing in my spiritual work. You know, if you're not sober, if you're not sober, it is going to affect you. It's very hard to hear the great spirit through alcohol and drug induction highs. I have to be honest with you, I am very honest with people about this because this is a serious matter. Getting high on spirit and getting high on your life purpose, getting high on being able to afford anything is a much better high.

It's like when you really begin to get your life together, and it does take a while - I mean we could spend hours telling you about my background. I had to make very tough choices. I grew up in Los Angeles. I grew up with a gang of friends that by the time between 18 years old to 21 years old, there were 14 of them that died and the first one was my boyfriend. I had miscarriages. I had to make some really tough choices.

And so, if you really want to live the life of your dreams - and I am a mentor now, so I don't mince my words - it's going to require for you to really come home to Jesus. And I don't mean that in a religious term. I mean that you really have to come home and look at yourself and take a look at what are you really wanting to do with your life. And the discipline, the self-mastery aspect is a moment to moment to moment.

People come to my Money & You program for three-and-a-half days. It's very experiential and it's an entrepreneurial program, but it's also called experiential transformational. And by the way, we created that industry back in 1978. And you see many of the programs around that that is the genre that they're in. And, basically, the experiential aspect is that you can live every single day is when you run up against that which is not congruent with your values, because you have to list your values, you have to get really outrageous.

One of my favorite business books is called Good to Great. It came out in the year 2000, 1999, by Jim Collins. It is one of the best business books and it is so good for people that want to go for their purpose and want to be happy because there's three circles in there. And one of them is What are you passionate about? What is it that you're really passionate about? Secondly, What do people rave about you?

You know, we met because one of our instructors of our business school, graduate of our Money & You program, graduate of our business school, JV Crum, introduced us. He raves about my work because that is what happens when you have the best work on the planet.

And the other one is to create an economic engine. So, we're not trained to create economic engines. Our traditional education, which by the way, the second co-creator of this work, Bobbi DePorter, went on very early. She co-created this work. And within two years, three years, she had moved on to train young people through the SuperCamp organization, Quantum Learning. So, she took another parallel work, but with young people. So, you now have this amazing - there's so much to say. Please forgive me, there's so much to share about this. Because you have to be clear on the economic engine that you're going to create so that you can absolutely be able to apply your values and then the spiritual principles, your disciplines, and you can have a much bigger why. That's where the big audacious Harry Gold comes from, from the book Good to Great.

And so, when you create this huge vision for yourself, so I created that I was going to transform educational systems around the world and eradicate hunger and poverty when I was 28 years old, 29 years old, 30 years old, I mean, it was so outrageous. In 1979, 1980, people starving of hunger was totally accepted. It was part of God's plan to handle population so we wouldn't run out of the planet. I have friends right now that still tell me to this day that if we handle hunger on the planet, the planet will be overrun with overpopulation when the opposite has been proven to be the truth since the '80s. So, you have to re-educate yourself completely.

This is why Rich Dad Poor Dad hit a vein because all of a sudden people went, "Wait a minute. I need to be educated on financial literacy. I need to be educated on what truly creates an economic engine, a business that will carry my life purpose. I have to be clear on my life purpose. Why are there people that are so ecstatically happy and why am I so miserable?" Because we're trained to believe that once you acquire financial success, no matter what, including stabbing your best friends on the back or cheating customer, cheating suppliers, cheating the world, period, is going to make you happy.

And this is what we call privilege developed country problems. There's only about a billion people that have that problem. Seven billion people do not have that problem. They're trying to survive. So, since we are in the one billion side, let's go ahead and take a look at our lives to create product and services that will solve world problems and create you being amazingly wealthy, but also have the time to meditate twice a day, to have the time for you to take off for three months or six months to go on a beautiful trek around the world to find your spiritual self. But it's a combination.

It's a holistic package of creating the engine, listening to yourself, connecting and doing the disciplines, being sober, and also really being real about what are really the problems in the world.

Like I have friends, I have young friends that will spend outrageous amount of time and money on things that they think are very important to the world without realizing that there's a whole other point of view. So, you have to become also sober emotionally - emotionally - so that you can really see what are the facts or what are opinions.

So, I'm just giving you my life. You know, I hope, Dr. Richard, that I didn't overwhelm you, but this is something that I've been working on my whole adult life.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Well, your passion obviously shines through. I mean, this is why you were put on this planet. I'm picking up on these just really unique terms you're using and I shifted the wording here slightly, but I want to go a little deeper, you have to be emotionally sober. So, let's talk about emotional sobriety. And if we're not there, how do we get there?

Dame Doria Cordova:

So, basically, the way that our brain is designed, and in the world of business it's called emotional intelligence. We remember when that word came into the planet in the '80s, we go, "Hmm. We've been talking about this for a long time." It's called the human potential movement. So, now they found beautiful words like emotional intelligence. And, basically, as human beings and as women - please don't get mad at me, girls, women out there. This is science, okay? - our brain is designed, there is a part of our brain in the back that is actually bigger, we are more emotional than males. Now, there are certain males that do have that part of their brain as big as women. It's not everyone, but the majority. We also live longer, women. So, we have a tendency to get very emotional until we begin to master those aspects of ourselves. And there's all kinds of different names for it, which I'd really appreciate and work for me, like inner child, inner child work.

I'm a Hoʻoponopono practitioner. I actually learned it from the women that curated the prayer from the Hawaiians with the Christian Overtones, Morrnah Simeona. If people go to fridayswithdoria.com and they look under Resources, they will see Hoʻoponopono, and that talks about aligning the inner family. So, there is psychology that talks about the inner mother, the inner father, the inner child. And some people, kapulu, they go, "Oh. That's woo work, woo-woo work." Where that word has gone out, that is a ship that sailed long ago. Because the challenges and the problems that we're seeing right now with usage of medicines that are prescribed by doctors is all to us a piece, all those aspects of ourselves that are out of control. So, right now, that's what we're experiencing on the planet. That all is handled by inner work. It's called moment to moment self-mastery.

And so, there are many beautiful, beautiful books. Of course, I always recommend the Money & You program, and my program is designed to be an entrepreneurial program, but 65 percent of them is games. And we also have the basic of an economic engine. So, if you go to moneyandyou.com - and I know you're going to have these beautiful links, I hope, for your audience - they can download a free book which is called The Business Success Model. So there, you have a basic model on how not only to create a good business model for your business, but it also takes into consideration emotional mastery.

And that is, we have proven - and I used to talk to Tony Robbins about this when he was very young - that people - and there are so many great books. You can actually see my brain go into a little bit of overgrown because I have so much information on this. But there is a book and I'm trying to remember the name of it. It's a wonderful book, you can probably Google it. I love Google because you can Google anything now. I wish I had Google when I was 29 years old.

And they actually have proven that our brain doesn't make the decisions. There's another aspect of us that actually decides, and then it hits the brain, and then it has to go through all the filters of emotions that we have. So, that's why one of my superpowers - and I want you don't have it - is never ever make major decisions when you are emotional, ever, ever. You have to sober up. You wait. You do not make major decisions whatever it takes. Whether it takes you hours, whether it takes you days, months or years, you don't do that.

What you do is instantly you take three deep breaths. I haven't officially yelled at anybody probably in over a decade. Not that I don't want to. Please, I would never lie to anyone about this. When I get so activated about something or someone, I know myself really well and I go, "Oops. Oops. Oops. Okay. First thing, take three deep breaths." Did you know that the breath resets your brain? Another one. I'm actually settling myself so I don't get so excited about this. And then one more. You see, you now just took the time to just kind of get yourself centered.

Now, the next step may be, you know, I am really excited about what we just said. I'm actually going to take a little walk before we continue with this conversation. And then, by then, hopefully, you have your team trained to that, your spouses, your children, everyone around you that matters to you to say, I really need to take a walk. And this is the part I love about Tony's work, Tony Robbins' work because he's like, "Now, you're changing your state." Actually, he learned it from the neuro-linguistic mentors. And, actually, when you do the Money & You program, you will see how much NLP is in there because immediately it would change our state. We go for that walk. We go. And if we need to, we do what we used to call jumping jacks in the old days - I'm showing my age - or you do some kind of an exercise. You drink water, whatever it is, and you just go, "I am officially activated. What do I need to do about this situation? Right now, I want to get a divorce."

And this is why guns are so dangerous. I got a gun in the house. I got the bullets in there. And do you know how many people are in jail because they crossed that line? Ninety-five percent of people for murder are jealousy. So, now, you have the extreme, but once you start crossing little lines of not handling your emotions, it can get pretty radical. Whether you do a radical action or whether you take a radical action, that will affect the rest of your life. So, this is some serious conversation here, because emotions run so many people.

So, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by beautiful older mentors when I was 29, 30 years old. And they started noticing that I am very powerful, very clear, very intelligent, all these things. But I would get surrounded by a group of men and I would immediately turn very young and I would be coy and I would cry. I would do all these things that I had learned as a child instead of being very clear. And my partners, who love me and wanted me to succeed, said, "You need to go do some inner child work." And it was like, "Really?" And it took me years to acknowledge that there was an aspect of myself that is so young.

And, boys, trust me, I'm really good at this. Don't tell me that you don't have an inner little boy that goes out and buys those cars that are way more expensive. Did you know that men actually go shopping for much larger things than women do? We're happy with a Louis Vuitton bag that is 16,000. Men want to buy a Lamborghini that's worth half-a-million. So, that's for all these things. It is now 2023, and if you've seen this in 2030, it is now 2030 and there are studies, there is education, you can research that emotions can be mastered and it's a moment to moment self-mastery process.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

I have loved every second of this conversation, and moment to moment has brought us here because our time has flown by together, Doria. We're going to have to have you back in the future and keep going because this was a delight. But as you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question, and that is, what is your biggest helping? That one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today.

Dame Doria Cordova:

We live in a world that is deep in scarcity. We think that there's not enough money, not enough time, not enough love, not enough health.

When you get a little older, there's not enough medicines. There's not enough whatever, attention. Oh, my god. Don't get me started with social media. There's not enough attention when we actually live in an abundant world. But, first, we have to experience sufficiency. So, I want to recommend to all of you that have your default setting in your consciousness be about sufficiency. There's enough money. There's enough health. There's enough water. There's enough food. There's enough money. There's enough resources.

And here, I want to send you to Access to Cash book. And I know you're going to have a link for that. And it's a little book, I think it's $10 in Amazon or $20 for the little book. I like my books little. And one of the things in there you're going to learn that there's so much wealth that is connected to access, access to cash, access to expert, you have access to me and access to all these wonderful mentors that Dr. Richard brings to you. Accessibility is the key to sufficiency. When you begin to really understand, make lists of all the things that you have access to, you will begin to experience how truly wealthy we are in the quadrant of one billion people that lives. And I'm talking to the European countries now and other countries that I know they're going to be reached through my network when I share this with them, because they absolutely understand that they already have so much access in their economically developed country. And if you are an American, if you live in the U.S. - oh, my god - the level of access here, there's grants, it's so ridiculously access, access, access.

So, learn that you want it moment to moment. Again, begin to experience sufficiency because you and around you there's more than enough. And most importantly, we have to remember that being of service is truly the key to happiness and joy.

So, one of the questions that Buckminster Fuller left the world with that we follow as much as we can is, How can we make the world work for 100 percent of humanity through spontaneous cooperation in the shortest possible time without any ecological offense nor the disadvantage of anyone? So, when you create a product or service that answers that question, the chances of you being wealthy and happy have just exponentially grown. So, just remember being of service is key to being wealthy and being happy and go out there and get them.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Beautiful. Doria, where can people learn more about everything you're doing on the internet?

Dame Doria Cordova:

Actually, my personal bio is meetdoria.com, but I really like them to go to moneyandyou.com because that is the program that absolutely transforms people's lives. And I just wanted to say that, you know, it's an expensive program to put on. But for those people that really have a drive and they are willing to do installments, my team connects me with them. I don't want anybody to not be at Money & You because of financial resources, because they're going to transform in there, but also you will have a network of the most amazing - I mean, the one coming up in San Diego, November 15th through the 18th is filled with the most access resource people on the planet so it's a good network to be in.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Amazing. But we will have links to everything Doria Cordova in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Doria, this was awesome. Thank you so much for spending your time with us and sharing your wisdom. I loved every second of this conversation.

Dame Doria Cordova:

Aloha.

Dr. Richard Shuster:

We've got Hawaiian flair here, I love that too. I want to say thank you as well to each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this conversation. If you liked it, if you learned something, if you're inspired and excited about what you're going to take from Doria and put it into action, go give us a five star review on your podcast app of choice, because that is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and put it in your feed using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.