What's up everyone. Anton Anderson here, co-founder of Elite Resource Team. In today's video, I wanted to tell you a story on how my wife and I ended up at the presidential suite at the Intercontinental San Diego. You can see it in the background there. It's a $2,000 a night hotel room. Pretty incredible. Here's what happened. We just wrapped up our elite tax planning academy. We do this event about twice a year and we get 100, 110 people out. One of the best compliments I hear is when people come up afterwards and say, "This was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I learned something I've never learned before. I heard something, I've never heard you. You pushed my expectations of my career, my business. You pushed my understanding of what CPAs and advisors can do together." The reason why any of those ideas are so exciting to me is because it means that we created a unique experience, something new pushing their past experiences.

 

It ties into, the fact that my wife and I had an opportunity to stay in this room last night. Here's the story. We wrap up the event, I'm just about taken off, heading home, I only live about two blocks from here and I get an email from the hotel that lets me know one of the members who was attending went ahead and canceled their room, they decided to fly home early. She said, it's already in the room block, so if you'd like to stay, you'd be more than welcome to. I wrote my wife and then she said, yeah, that sounds fun, we'll do a little staycation so we got a babysitter for the 14 month old. I left the hotel, the owner she says, you know what, thank you so much for your business. We're going to go ahead and upgrade you to the presidential suite. It's available, it's typically $2,000 a night. I thought it'd be fun just in case you haven't stayed in a hotel room that's $2,000 a night, I had never before and I probably won't again anytime soon, but I wanted to give you a little tour of what that experience is like.

 

You can see that a little bit behind me, but that's the living room. That's where I'll wrap up the tour here. This is what they refer to as the office or the desk that looks out south, Florida ceiling windows here. This is south looking into San Diego. You can see Coronado bridge in the background going over to Coronado Island where the famous Hotel Del is there. Then that's kind of looking south east towards downtown San Diego. This is walking into what's the master bedroom area, with the master bathroom. You can see just beautifully done. It was finished about eight months ago, so it's still pretty new hotel. They've got these... I always get a kick out of. You can see there, it's a TV built into the mirror because I don't know, you need to catch up on the TV in the five minutes it takes you to shave in the morning or brush your teeth. This is the bath here, jacuzzi tub with a walk in shower, two shower faucets. Again, this is the view that the bathroom looks out onto.

 

Then we walk here into the bedroom, obviously a large bed with a walk in closet and then this was the view we woke up to this morning. I'm looking again south into the San Diego Marina and back towards the bathroom. You can see the Midway aircraft carrier action through there. I'll finish the tour showing you that. This is the hallway here. There's actually three individual entrances into this hotel room. Again, three entrances into one hotel room. Here is the kitchen, that leads us now back into our little kitchen area with a dining table and then we have the living room and the main entrance into the hotel room, which is double doors. My wife's area kind of set up, just catching up on some emails and I wanted to show you the north view. You can see this is looking now north into San Diego. You've got the San Diego airport there in the background. The cruise ship just pulled in this morning about probably two hours ago. We saw it pull on this morning, right around 10 o'clock. It's just a beautiful area here. Now this is looking pretty much straight west. That is Point Loma there, on the other side of the marina. Then we have, again, the Midway aircraft carrier and that's Coronado Island back behind that. This is the view looking into kind of that kitchen/office area in downtown San Diego.

 

I can see why people would enjoy the presidential suite. It's obviously a beautiful hotel room. They did a great job, incredible attention to detail. It's interesting, as I said, it's a new experience for us and it made me think, my wife and I as we were talking this morning, a little bit about just some of the comments and the experiences of over the last two days. Made me think about about new experiences and this idea that we were talking about yesterday. A CPA said, I feel so overwhelmed because I feel like I need to become an expert in all of these new things that I never knew about. All of these potential planning strategies or ways to serve as clients or different specialists to team up with. Then at the very end of the conference, she said, "Now it's dawning on me that I don't actually have to become an expert. I just need to team up with individuals who are experts."

 

That's obviously the point of everything we talk about, is teamwork. When we think about information, I like to break it down... I didn't come up with this idea by any means. I think the first I heard about this was through Landmark, but they talk about how there's kind of three different areas of information that we know. A lot of times people only think about two of them. That would be what you know and what you don't know. Those are the two obvious. But in the second category of what you don't know, we can actually break that down further into what you know you don't know, what you don't know, you don't know. Those are very different. Let me give you an example of each of them.

 

For the first one, what I know. I was born and raised in San Diego. I've been surfing since I was five years old. I know, I know how to surf. My wife, her family is French. I've never taken a day of French in my life. I know I do not know how to speak French, right? I know how to surf, I know I don't speak French. An example of the third category. What I don't know, I don't know. By the very definition of that, there is no way for me to possibly give you an example of what I don't know, I don't know because then I would know that I don't know it. But if I rewind 24 hours, then I can use this hotel room as an example of what I don't know, I don't know.

 

Prior to this experience, I didn't know that even a presidential suite existed where you have a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, two bathrooms and a bedroom like that, in a hotel. I didn't know what a $2,000 a night hotel room experience was like. Comes with access to the lounge where you have wine on tap from Napa and Sonoma. You have beer on tap from a lot of the micro breweries like Stone and Ballast Point. Food from 6:30 AM to 10:30 PM for free. It's beautiful. It's a different experience. There's what you know there's what you don't know and then there's what you don't know, you don't know. Another example of the what you don't know, you don't know that I gave yesterday, some of the attendees came in from all around the country, even Canada. Now did they need to know how to fly a plane in order to get from, we'll say Florida to San Diego? Of course not. They just needed to know that a plane existed and then know how to find somebody else that can fly that plane for them.

 

Another example. The goal of new experiences doesn't always need to become moving information from the what you don't know, you don't know into the what you know. Oftentimes what it can be is just moving information from what you don't know, you don't know to what you know you don't know. Then you can find other people who have the experience and have the expertise to actually help you with the what you don't know, you don't know. All right.

 

The last thought I wanted to conclude this with, I intentionally finished sitting here in front of the San Diego Marina, so you can tell it's a pretty morning. It's a very calm there right now. You see the cruise ship terminal was already in. You see a couple of sailboats in the background there and although it's beautiful and calm in the Marina, that's really not where individuals become incredible at sailing, right? That's safe. That's calm, that's the comfort zone. In order to become incredible at sailing, you need to get out of the comfort zone. They need to get out of the marina and go out into the open ocean and test their skills. I would encourage you to just think about what new experiences am I having every day that are pushing my comfort zone, that are making me get better, that are exposing me to new ideas, expanding my mindset. Am I hanging out in the Marina or am I going out into the open ocean? That's it for this video. Hope you found it valuable.