The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [39]
I knew Eben was someone I needed to learn from and connect with. When my friend told me he had signed up for a live course with Eben, and that I could come on a bring-a-friend ticket, I leapt at the opportunity. Of course, it’s hard to connect with a teacher personally when he’s on stage in front of two hundred people, most of whom have paid thousands of dollars to be there, and all of whom want his attention, advice, and help.
That weekend blew me away. One comment in specific stuck with me from that weekend. A person in the crowd asked, “How can I connect personally with powerful mentors who will guide me in my life and business?”
Eben said, “Leadership is like a fountain. Imagine the leaders are the water near the top, ready to burst out of the fountain. The water about to burst out is being pushed up by water below it. If you want to succeed, find leaders who are doing amazing things in the world, and push them up. Find powerful people and help them reach their goals. If you’re of service to them, they will be of service back.”
Almost a year later, I was at the Burning Man festival in Nevada with Jena. I heard through the grapevine that Eben was at the festival and that he’d be giving a talk. Jena and I have a friend named Annie Lalla, who is an amazing relationship coach, but who was struggling in her business because she was resisting learning sales and marketing skills. I forced Annie to join me at the lecture, dragging her there kicking and screaming, so that she might learn something about marketing from Eben.
Little did I know that I had just brought to Eben his future fiancée. (Now that’s quite a way to “push the water up”!) Of course, at the time, all it involved was us standing around him after the talk, shaking his hand and asking him questions about his talk. But later it turned into much more than that, for Eben and Annie . . .
When we got back from Burning Man, I saw a post late one night on Eben’s blog, saying he was organizing a small, private gathering in Ojai, California, with relationship teacher David Deida, one of the experts I’d learned most from about how to have a great relationship with Jena. I leapt out of my desk chair, ran to our bedroom, woke Jena up, and yelled, “Eben is hosting a private gathering with David Deida later this month! It costs twenty-five hundred dollars a person to attend and it’s in California. We’re going!” Jena mumbled something semi-coherent about talking about it in the morning, and went back to sleep. I called Annie and told her about the opportunity; she said she fell madly in love with Eben the second he opened his mouth at the talk at Burning Man (he is a rather dashing fellow), but she hadn’t gotten further than hand-shaking after Eben’s talk. She signed up instantly.
Jena questioned me about the wisdom of spending that much for a weekend. But I told her: “One connection with a powerful teacher can change your life forever. Is that worth it?” She surrendered to my enthusiasm and agreed to join me. All three of us traipsed out to Ojai together from New York. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to connect personally with Eben when he was on a stage in front of two hundred people. But at a gathering with only thirty people, in an intensive personal growth weekend workshop where he was going to be one of the fellow participants, I had a shot.
At the workshop, Eben saw how powerful and solid my relationship with Jena was, and he started asking me questions about my relationship with Jena! This was a dream come true. I knew, now, that I had found my way to help Eben and push the water of his leadership up the fountain. Stunned that he was asking me for guidance, I gulped and gave him everything I had. He later invited Jena, Annie, and me to hang out with him twice personally to pick our brains about our relationships.
He is now not only a wonderful friend to Jena and me, but also a great teacher and mentor to us in our careers; I’ve learned more from him about making my way in the world than I learned in sixteen years of formal education.
And the