HAMILTON
What I Learned From The Musical
EPISODE 63 of a Daily Dose of Greatness Quest with Trevor Crane
DAILY QUOTES
“I am the one thing in life. I can control. I am inimitable. I am an original” – Aaron Burr
“I am not throwing away my shot.” – Alexander Hamilton
DAILY QUESTION
What do you need to let go of, and STOP FIGHTING?
Who is it that you need to FORGIVE, so you can MOVE-ON with your life?
DAILY CHALLENGE
Think about something or somebody, maybe even yourself, that you should FORGIVE. Stop fighting and let-go of the BS… Take an action, TODAY, to forgive them. So you can LET GO and move on.
SUMMARY
On today’s show, I talk about the things I learned from the musical, Hamilton. So much to learn from Alexander Hamilton’s story. I knew he was someone who changed our nation. But I didn’t realize HOW MUCH. I particularly liked how he OWNED his mistakes.
But then, I think it’s important that we LEARN from his mistakes… of which, he made many.
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TRANSCRIPT
Today’s podcast is all about Alexander Hamilton and what I learned from the musical. We went to the Broadway show last night. I thought it was phenomenal. If you haven’t done that, you got to make sure you make it happen today. I’m in New York City, and I know you’re gonna love today’s show.
(INTRO – AUDIO)
Alright, so we started, the reason we came to see Hamilton, and I’m not really a Broadway show type guy, but my daughter has been obsessed with the soundtrack. So she’s 11 years old. For her 11th birthday, I wanted to do something really special for her. Wasn’t sure what we were going to do. We decided to bring her from Tampa, Florida, then back to New York to see her friends because we used to live here last year, one of her really good friend she misses a lot.
And then she’s still obsessed with this Alexander Hamilton soundtrack that we also figured while we’re here, we might as well go do some cool stuff. And so yeah, my daughter’s totally spoiled and I love the fact that this is something that we can give her. So I’m not, like I said I’m not really a Broadway show type guy but the show blew me away. Now my daughter has been torturing me with the soundtrack now for a while it’s happening, I was familiar with some of the songs.
But what I want to talk to you about today is what I learned from the video, not the video, the story and there’s so many things that Alexander Hamilton did with his life that I think are things that we want to emulate and some things that make absolutely be not want to emulate.
So first of all, the guy, the whole story is about someone who was an immigrant and came from basically nothing. I love just the storyline of that because so many people have excuses for they didn’t have their mom, didn’t have their dad that there’s where they’re from, and a variety of different challenges. And this guy came from virtually nothing.
And then what he basically did was, he had a passion and a drive. And he just spoke his freaking mind like, no, I’m not telling you. I’m not giving you an hour of Alexander Hamilton rundown. This is not a narrative that I did a lot of homework on Alexander Hamilton. This is just strictly what I got from the show. But I just, these are the lessons that I just got that I thought were powerful for our life to help us, you know, get more out of life.
That’s what my show greatness quest actually began all about is that my grandfather passed away at age 92. And when he was on his deathbed, the bed that he never got out of, he wrote me a letter. And in that last letter he wrote me, I found what I thought were like the secrets to living a great quality of life. That’s what I call greatness quest. And it’s about becoming your best.
And Alexander Hamilton represented that. Like the entire musical was about how the dude was just a workhorse. And he was a passionate young man who really had no backing whatsoever. And he showed up in New York to go ahead and make history. And decided that he was just going to, he was passionate about what he wanted and he spoke avidly about it. You know, he meets Aaron Burr early in the show, early in his young life I believe and he is immediately like portrayed as someone who just speaks his mind.
And I love that because in today’s marketplace, in today’s world, we’re only going to pay attention to those people who have the courage and authentic communication pattern where they communicate with passion and with their mind. He wasn’t scared of what other people thought of him. Now, he was always potentially being judged. There are a lot of people who didn’t like Alexander Hamilton. Aaron Burr said “Dude, you need to shut up, you know. You need to stop talking so much. It’d be nicer.”
And so I, what I love about this, the least demonstration or the way that they characterize him is he never sacrifices values, from what I understand. He always was speaking his mind. And I think that that’s a good lesson for all of us.
So Alexander Hamilton came from nothing. He had this massive will and desire and passion and courage to speak his mind, even if what he’s talking about isn’t popular, obviously. He helped lead a revolution. Then he became somebody who created a phenomenal amount of content. Like he wrote a series of essays that were supposed to defend the constitution. And he did like 55 of the 85 articles or whatever that were written for this. Like he was a mover, he was somebody who was leading and he liked to finish what he started.
So I just found that all very, very powerful. But what I also thought was transformational for me. And when I decided to start, like to talk about this and to do a review or several reviews. Like what I’ve learned from him is what, I actually been studying this a lot of my own personal business and brand and like the desires of human beings.
Because what they also share is how the guy was human. He was, he actually got caught cheating on his wife. And what I liked about the way that they portrayed this is they didn’t pull any punches. Like the dude was definitely wrong. Like he was human. He shouldn’t have not been doing that. Obviously, my daughter was very emotional during that because she didn’t like that the guy had done something wrong.
But what I thought was interesting about this is how I’ve been studying like, I think you guys know I’m working with Garrett J. White , who’s the founder of Wake Up Warrior . And we’ve been doing a lot of talking. This is typically an environment for just men. I think he has a new one that he’s doing with his wife, for women. But this is talking about how men and business owners are specifically men-based. Business owners have a desire to do two things.
And for those of you women that are listening, I apologize about this, but anthropology says this is just the way it is. That we seek power. Men, the masculine energy is trying to seek to be in control and to have power like as a warrior. That’s the identity of the brain. But that’s to do two things; one is to get paid and one is to get laid. Now sounds kind of, you know, catchy to say that. I know that’s why Garrett uses it. But it’s true. I like to see the rewards of what I want. So that’s the getting paid.
And in the story, Alexander Hamilton went from very broke to very rich. He became very well known. That was the power so that he could, maybe the getting paid part was the desire and the results to see that what he was creating was creating results. Not necessarily just money. Who gives a crap about money in and of itself, nobody needs that. But we need it for as a measure of who we are, as what we contribute.
But then the other part of this is the sexual energy of wanting to get laid. And what I was imagining going on in this guy’s life, when he was married to his woman, he did not pay any attention to her. I am sure that when he was focused on his career, which was great, and focused on his passion, which was great, he ignored his woman. And what happened is, I’m assuming that the passion died. And then when she was out of town, he got connected with a new woman. And he needed both. He needed to feel good as a man. And he wanted to go ahead and communicate both sexually to be able to feel phenomenal as a man.
And Garrett J. White talks about how as, as men, we need to have these amazing relationships. And that’s why it’s not just relationships with ourselves and with our passion, but with our significant other and with our family. And that if you start to deny any one of those, what’s going to happen is your castle is going to crumble, what you’re building is going to fail.
And in this case, that’s what Alexander Hamilton did. Now, he felt great as at least, you know, sexually. I’m assuming when he was taking he was, I think it was a long, it wasn’t just he just cheated once. He did it over and over and over again. But see, he had the need, he had the desire and it needs to be satiated.
Like I didn’t even know what it was to diet for a long time because I never dieted. Until one time, I started taking it on. I started taking out sugar and I started taking out carbs, and I started to crave it. As soon as I couldn’t have something, I started to crave it. And it started to create this really weird psychology for me that sabotage some of my success. It was really crazy. But you can’t do that as a man, you can’t do that as a woman. I’m sure this is completely parallel with women. And I’m not just talking to the men here.
But what I thought was great also about the story and this was a key. This is when it shifted for me. And I was I was hoping that the dude would own up to it. Because Alexander Hamilton avoided telling people. He paid a bribe. He was lying. And man, that will shut you down. And he ended up sabotaging much of his success that he could have in his career and his politics and certainly in his relationship by being such a jackass and a loser of having made this mistake of being a liar. And it messed him up.
And what did he do when he was about to get caught? When the professionals around him, saw what was going down and couldn’t take it any longer, he acknowledged and admitted it. He owned it. He wrote an article or however he actually exposed it. But he told, he basically told everybody everything. He completely looked in the mirror and said, “I made a mistake. This is exactly what I did.”
And man, I fell in love with him, then. I mean, obviously, he’s done a lot of amazing things. But for me, to see somebody who would just tell the truth. And it did not get better. He was not praised by his wife. She left him. His family didn’t like what he had done. That he was ostracized personally and professionally.
So just by telling the truth, and I know that it was a weight off the shoulders because I have done this. Not like that, I haven’t cheated on my wife or anything. But when I have acknowledged that I have failed and made mistakes, to be human, it’s serious shit. And sometimes it does not get better right away. But the feeling, knowing that you’ve done what is right is what makes things, is what gives me power.
And in the story, he actually fell back in love with his wife. And they got back together and all kinds of other kinds of things. So I just thought that was amazing. And there’s so many other things that I learned from this story. I want to give you one of the warnings though. Because one of them warnings that happen and this, I remember this from my childhood of growing up and learning about Alexander Hamilton.
I didn’t even remember it until it showed up in the in the musical but that his son died in a duel. And died in a duel about basically two men peacocking about what was right what was wrong. And he died in a duel. And his father told them to not even try to kill the other guy in this duel. But to be the honorable man and fire your pistol up into the air. Because that’s what honorable men do is that you’re just taking the high road. And instead the dude shot him.
And then at the end of this movie, and I’m not giving anything away. And it wasn’t a movie, it was a musical. There he does the same way. Aaron Burr freakin shoots him. And he did, you know, in another peacocking like I’m-right-you’re-wrong type of the thing, these two guys fire off at each other.
Now here’s the crazy thing about this. I just think that that’s obviously a warning, guys. Like that’s one of the stupidest things I can think of, to go ahead and have that be the way that you die that’s your legacy. He did so many amazing things but then again he was completely fallible. And this was okay, it’s time again to shoot people in a duel. Can you believe that was the case? But like Aaron Burr now running for freaking president, not happy with Hamilton the way that he didn’t give him support and actually shot him down. So then they did decided as a duel and Alexander Hamilton dies and apparently fires up into the air.
So first of all, you’re going to pull the freaking gun on somebody, you pull it with the intent to kill. Like that’s the only reason you’ll pull it out. Because someone’s going to be pulling, pointing gun at you for the same thing. Like I would just think that, you know, if you were going to go to war. And I don’t want to try to hurt anybody. But if you have somebody who’s going to take something from me or my family, then you gotta fight. You gotta fight to win, to survive. But that said, how is he fighting in the first place? That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.
Now here’s the thing. I think that women are sometimes much more smarter than men. Because I was prepared to go to war and fight somebody for something recently. I had somebody do a roofing job on my house. I thought he had done a poor job and I was ready to sue him. I already paid him. I was ready to fight him. I was ready to start this whole process of hiring another company to come in.
And it wasn’t just the thing. He didn’t just do a bad job on my roof. He actually then said something nasty to me. He was a jerk about it. And he told me to fuck off, okay, so basically that’s what he did. And he used the F-word a few different times with me. And I was pissed off because I didn’t feel like he was being, you know, like just honoring his commitment. And so I decided to fight him. And I was all prepared to hire another company.
And this is going to end up costing me more money with the other company. It was gonna then cost me a potential legal battle because the guy was going to fight for he was very angry, the roofer that I was arguing with. And the challenge was, I just didn’t want to give him a chance to fix it because he’d been a dick to me. And I talked to men about this. I went to a little community lunch around my community and I talked to some men about this. They’re like, “Yeah, man, if somebody does that, like you. That’s indicative of how they’re going to do other things. Fuck you. I would never let him work on my house again. Like you gotta screw that guys out.”
And I’ve heard about this. I’ve had people sue me before for things. And I’ve seen broken relationships. I have sued somebody before when they wronged me. And then, I was talking to my wife and I was talking to my assistant Karen. And Karen and my wife were like, “Well, why don’t you just give them one like what if you just, if you weren’t taking this personally, what would you do? You know, can you just go ahead?”
You can be right or you can be rich. You can be right or you can be loved. You can be right or you can be, you know, in this case Alexander Hamilton wanted to be right in this freaking blood field. He got killed because he wasn’t willing to just eat a little good crow.
And so in this case, I call up the roofer. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to do it, but I went ahead and did it anyway. And I said to him, “I’m sorry.” I apologized and then I let him finish the job on my roof and invited him to do it. And it took him a little bit to get around making it happen and doing it right. But he’s 100% owned it, did a phenomenal job. It cost me less money. It’s significantly less money, time and aggravation to go ahead and just eat a little crow. And let the guy, you know, whatever. To just, to forgive instead of to go ahead and pull up guns and pistols and then fire them off each other.
That’s what we do today. We sue one another. And we fight about it and argue about it. And take all that time and energy and put it towards something else. So I think the musical, Alexander Hamilton was amazing. I think that his story line, I’m going to do a lot of research on his biography because I want to actually know more about it than just this doggone musical. But I think that there are some challenges in there for us.
Now, what is my call to action for you today? I would like you to go ahead and think about someone or something that you are fighting that it is time for you to forgive. Because that is what I think was a pivotal moment for him that he missed. He did not forgive. Now his wife did. His wife did forgive him for being a cheating bastard. And she accepted him back. She ended up living another 50 years and having a very rich life because she wasn’t all caught up in a masculine bullshit of needing to go to war over a little shit.
And so at any rate, I would challenge you to go ahead and consider what it, who it is and what it is. Maybe it’s yourself even that you need to forgive. Because this whole concept of forgiveness, I think, is one of the keys to us living a phenomenal life. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t fight for what you believe in because I absolutely, absolutely believe that you should. But that’s not the challenge for you today. To guide and consider that. What is it that you need to go ahead and maybe stop fighting or let go of? And then move, do something towards that.
When I was in a lawsuit with this one guy, he was, he filed a lawsuit against me said that I owed him some money. I didn’t think that I did. And he paid, he hired his attorney who sent me a letter. I hired my attorney, I gave $5,000, I’m going back and forth. And I was threatened about this. And I was about to pay my attorney even more money to go back and do something again. And we were just going to fight, fight, fight. I thought I was right.
And instead I’m sitting in my car and I had this conversation with myself to try to figure out what it is that I ultimately wanted. And I did not, I wanted this to go away. I didn’t want to focus my time, energy or attention on this thing. I wanted it gone. Who cares whether I was right or wrong? I just wanted it gone. And it was costing me money. So it’s not like I was going to get out of this. He said I owed him money. I said I didn’t but it was costing me money, anyway.
And I might add to pay him money when it comes to the judge anyway. Because he’s the judge like your dad. Because when he hears both sides of the case and one person, you know, both of us are going to give our best perspective of the thing. And we’re going to go ahead and kind of meet somewhere in the middle which meant us probably have to pay something anyways. So instead, I thought I want to make this go away as fast as possible. I know it’s going to cost me some money because I got to pay my attorney anyway. I’m like, what’s the best, what’s the fastest way for me to make that happen?
And sitting in the car, to me about 10, 15 minutes to sit down and just close my eyes and think about what it is that I wanted in the fastest way to make it go away. I picked up the phone. I called the guy up and in less than three minutes, we had a deal. And I started paying him and we closed the entire thing. In less than three minutes, I solved my problem and I started sending a little bit of money over time. It took me a year or two and a little bit of money every month that when paid off for, he was happy.
And everything was done in three minutes instead of me fighting. And a lot of people would say fight, win. He did you wrong, he is wrong. But you know what? Cost me three minutes and a little bit of money which probably would have given to the attorneys anyway. And it was a little bit more than I wanted to give him but it really didn’t matter because I got my life back.
So my challenge for you just to think about what it is, who it is that you can go ahead and forgive. And take an action to try to make the thing go away because it’s not worth the energy and effort. And example, the roofing guy, I now have a roof on my house for $2,000, $3,000 less and a significant amount of time saved as well.
So this has been a little bit longer than I wanted to go today. But I think that there’s a lot of things that you can learn when you’re doing, when you’re out there in life. And this is something I learned from Alexander Hamilton. And I think I’m going to do a little bit more of a review on this a little later with my daughter as well so I might do another podcast on this.
But make today magnificent and I can’t wait to talk to you soon.
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