WEBVTT - Lewis Howes 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:05.160 Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where 0:00:05.200 --> 0:00:08.320 we talked to super successful and self made people to 0:00:08.440 --> 0:00:11.720 find out exactly how they did how they went from 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:15.360 nothing to something. I'm Ryan, Sirhands, and today I'm joined 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.480 by New York Times best selling author and host of 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:23.000 the School of Greatness podcast, Lewis Hose. We discussed the 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:27.080 importance of having coaches and mentors throughout life, how to 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.280 look within to find the confidence you need to be 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:32.800 your best self, and what it takes to go from 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:37.159 being unemployed sleeping on your sister's couch to becoming one 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.720 of the most influential podcasters on the planet. Let's get 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:54.480 into it. Welcome to another episode. Today is a super 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:59.080 super special day one. It is snowing in the city again. 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.040 I don't remember the last him it snowed so much 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.000 in New York City. But that means I don't have 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.000 to go show properties. It means I can sit here 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:07.160 and I can talk to one of my favorite people, 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:11.040 a former professional football player, keynote speaker, now media entrepreneur, 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:15.760 high performance business coach everyone Lewis house Um. We first 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:18.720 met when my first book Felt Like Sir Hnt came 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:21.559 out and he was gracious enough to help me launch 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.319 the book in Los Angeles back when people used to 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:26.400 talk to people in person and we used to have 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:28.600 a book events. That was really really cool. You guys 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.080 know him from everything. One of the biggest podcasts in 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.080 the world, the School of Greatness, which we'll get into, 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:36.440 recognized by the White House and President Obama is one 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.480 of the top entrepreneurs in the country under thirty. He's 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:42.600 met Tom Brady. Okay, that's really really important to me, 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.080 amongst many many other things. Without further ado, Lewis House, 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:47.760 thank you so much for being here, man, my man, 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.280 appreciate you and congrats on the new book. Excited to 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.080 have you on my show soon to talk about it. Yeah, 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:55.840 let's do it before we start though. You know, I've 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.560 been on other people's podcasts for a long time, right, 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.680 millionar listening started and years ago, man, you were like, 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:06.040 what two when that happened. Yeah, it was twenty and 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.440 now the time goes by real fast, and kind of 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:10.040 right around that time. A couple of years later, right, 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:14.000 you just celebrated your your eight year anniversary School of Greatness. Yeah. Yeah, 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.960 this year we just celebrated eight years over a thousand episodes, 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:20.480 thousand episodes. Man, it's crazy and it goes by fast. 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:22.640 Like you said, I remember the first episode. You probably 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.640 remember your first episode. And you were probably terrible on 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.600 TV and I was terrible on podcasting, and you know, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:31.119 look at us now. So can we go back though 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:33.440 to the beginning before I get into all the questions 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.040 I have about your kind of career right in your 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:38.520 professional life and and what a lot of things mean 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:41.400 to you. But you graduate college, you go into arena football, 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.760 you get hurt. Whole life leads up to that one moment. 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:47.080 What do you do for me in the moment. It 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.919 was an identity crisis because my whole identity was tied 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:53.000 to being an athlete and being known and being valued 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.480 for my athletic abilities. And so when I was when 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:58.360 I'm not able to do that anymore, and that's the 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:02.560 only identity I have. I had to learn the hard way. 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:04.880 It took a couple of years to figure out, Okay, 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:08.440 my identity does not define me, uh, and I can 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.520 always reinvent my identity. So imagine if you lost all 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:14.600 the ability to sell real estate or talk about real estate, 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:16.480 or by real estate or invest in it, just for 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.119 whatever reason you lost that ability and that's been ten 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.079 years of your life for a lot of people, and 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:26.640 transitioning sports into real world. Afterwards, they get depressed, they 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:29.440 get unsure of themselves, and they don't have that same 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.760 confidence when they had that identity into the next stage. 0:03:32.960 --> 0:03:35.360 And I lacked the confidence. For a couple of years. 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:37.840 I was on my sister's couch. I didn't have any money. 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:39.280 I was trying to figure out how to get a job. 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:41.560 This was two thousand seven or two thousand nine when 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:45.560 the UH economy was crashing. Yeah, everything, So for me, 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:47.640 I didn't have a college degree yet. I eventually went 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:51.560 back and finished, but I really didn't know what to do. 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.119 And so I again, I just use what I learned 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:57.520 from sports and said, what got me to being uh, 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:00.160 you know, professional athlete, What allowed me to accomplish all 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.560 American status and a couple of sports and then break 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:06.600 records and all these things, was having incredible coaches. And 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.400 why would I do life or career or business alone 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:12.960 without a coach, Because this is what I know, and 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.560 in order to get to the top, I've needed coaches 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:18.120 in order to stay at the top. The greatest athletes 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.320 in the world invest in better coaches, you know, Kobe 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.920 Jordan's Lebron. They don't say I'm the best, I don't 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.200 need a coach. They say, no, I'm going on the 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.240 team that has the best coach because I want to 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.760 win multiple championships. I don't want to just get to 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.359 the top and that's it. And so I started to 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.479 leave look for mentors. And originally it was people that 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.640 I've already met from you know, professors at school or whatever. 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:43.279 But then I started reaching out on LinkedIn to finding 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.760 kind of local entrepreneurs in Columbus, Ohio, which is where 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:49.240 I was basically the time, where I'm from, and started 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.040 reaching out to them and essentially begging them to mentor 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:53.880 me because I had nothing to offer them. I had 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.880 no skills, I had no career, I had no value 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:02.200 except for a curious heart and a listening ear. That 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:04.600 that I learned how to ask the right questions so 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.080 that people would reply to my emails on LinkedIn, so 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.680 that people would go to coffee with me or actually 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:11.360 take me to lunch and pay for my lunch because 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.919 I can't afford it. And I would find these really 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.880 successful kind of local leaders spending their time with me 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.839 as a twenty four year old punk with no job, 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.560 no nothing, And it was all around positioning, and I 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.640 positioned my LinkedIn profile in the right way to get 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.480 people to reply to me. I positioned my email messaging 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.120 the right way so people would respond to me, and 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.520 that position in created proximity where then I had access 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.000 to people, people that had skills, people that had money, 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.960 people that had job opportunities, people that had experience. So 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.479 I could learn from that proximity and from the people 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.320 that had that knowledge. And that was the thing that 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.160 out of necessity because I didn't have money. I was 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.080 living off my sister's couch, eating her food, not paying 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:55.760 rent for a year and a half. But she gave 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:57.919 me a gift after a year and a half of 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.200 not paying for anything or contribute, she said, it's time 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:02.799 for you to leave. You don't need to pay rent 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:04.599 or you need to leave. And it was the greatest 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:07.080 gift she gave me because it created urgency and it 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:09.920 created opportunities to break through because I probably would have 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:11.919 been on that couch from the year, two year, three years. 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.599 I was a grown man at at the time, and 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:18.800 you know, I didn't want to live off my sister, 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:21.800 but it was also like, I don't have to work hard, 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.000 So she created the sense of like, okay, there's hey, 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.400 they have to go live in the streets. What I 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:29.280 did is I begged my brother to let me stand 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:35.560 in his place, and he there exactly and he gave 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.160 me a gift. He said, listen, you gotta pay two 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.760 hundree f bucks a month for your room. I was like, okay, 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:42.919 I gotta do something. I gotta figure out how do 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.920 I make three bucks right so that I can pay 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.080 here and also buy some food. And it just got 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:49.919 me working a little bit more. Okay, what do I 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:51.520 need to do? Do I go get a job, do 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:53.920 I go try to make money? How do I make money? 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.599 And it went down that path of just next steps. 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:01.239 That's insane, but that is a really, really, really cool story. 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.240 What was your relationship to money at that time? Because 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:09.320 you didn't have a whole lot of afraid, uneducated, ignorant, 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.920 uh needy. I desired it, but I was also scared 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:15.480 of it. I didn't know how to make money. I 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.280 never made money before, really, I mean I was a 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:22.240 truck driver for a number of months, making two or 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:26.960 fifty dollars a week driving driver. I drove NAPA Auto 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.560 car parts from ConA from Columbus, Ohio, to Cincinnati and 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:32.920 back every day. I dropped them off, take two and 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:35.560 a half hours to get there, doing about a thirty 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:37.840 to forty five minute pick up of new parts and 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:40.520 bring them back to the Columbus warehouse. And so I 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:44.840 was driving the largest truck before. It was kind of 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.960 like the massive U haul before you needed a trucking license. 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:51.560 And it was miserable. It was a miserable experience. But 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:53.679 I also was like, how do I make the most 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:57.880 of this six hour commute daily driving car parts? And 0:07:57.920 --> 0:07:59.920 so what I did is I said, I'm able to 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.880 play crazy games in my mind. The truck only went 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:04.840 fifty five miles an hour when I put the pedal 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:07.480 to the metal, and so everyone's passing me and in 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:09.240 the middle Ohio. I don't know if you've been to Ohio, 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.080 but there's just corn fields for hours, so you're not 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:14.760 really there's nothing really to look at. And it's where 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.160 I learned how to salsa dance. I learned salsa dancing 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:20.920 as a truck driver. What in my mind, so I 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.800 would that's some inception stuff. I wanted to learn how 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:26.960 to salsa dance because I was terrified of it. And 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:29.320 I went to this like jazz club one night that 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:33.119 had salsa dancing, and I was just blown away by 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.080 all the Latin people who were there dancing salsa. And 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:38.280 I was like, this is the most intimidating thing I've 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:40.400 ever seen, but it's also probably the coolest thing I've 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.040 ever seen. And I kept going back to this place 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:45.280 once a week they would do salsa dancing. I'd go 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.040 back once a week and I would just watch. I 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:49.320 literally the creeper. I wasn't trying to be a creeper, 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:51.600 but I would sit in the corner and just be like, 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:55.320 this is amazing, this is mesmerizing. And I love the music. 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.000 I love the culture, the people that language, everything. And 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:00.319 when I started truck driving, I said, Okay, I'm going 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:02.839 to teach myself salsa dancing. It's burn a CD of 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.080 the greatest hits of salsa songs and I listened to 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:08.840 this for six hours a day and I would practice 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.280 on YouTube. Back then, YouTube had this channel called Addicted 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:16.400 to Salsa, which taught you salsa tutorials before it's time, 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:19.040 and I would watch these at night. I would practice 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:22.800 in the mirror. I would then rehearse these moves in 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:24.839 my mind for six hours a day while listening to 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:26.400 the music. So I was trying to figure out, how 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.040 can I learn a skill making money doing something I 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:33.080 don't like, and and that was that was the process. 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:34.480 But I didn't know how to make money. I was 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.040 a truck driver. I was a bouncer on the weekends, 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:39.200 making out of maybe a hundred fifty bucks a weekend 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:43.120 at a nightclub. And I never was entrepreneurial. I didn't 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:45.720 have the lemonade stand. I didn't do the baseball card thing. 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.800 I didn't garage none of that stuff. I relied on 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:50.720 my dad to kind of be like, okay, you know, 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:52.640 here's twenty bucks or a hundred bucks when you needed 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.439 or whatever. Um. He never gave me a lot of money, 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:57.480 but it was always provided, like I had a house 0:09:57.520 --> 0:09:59.280 and food. I didn't need anything else. But when I 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:01.079 was twenty one year only five, and you're sleeping in 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.199 your sister's couch and you're not as cool anymore, and 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:07.600 that's when I said, I've got to learn financial literacy. 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:10.480 I've got to learn and understand what it means to 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:12.720 make money, how to make money on your own, what 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.400 it looks like to get a job, how to manage 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:17.840 my personal finance. It's just all the basics that no 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:28.000 one teaches in school. So what was your first job? 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:30.320 Then now you're crashing, you're paying your brother. You had 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:32.320 to figure out how to make money? Right? I did? 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.320 And the podcast came years later, didn't it? Yeah? Years later? 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.080 That was actually the dream. Back then, when I was 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:39.520 on my sister and brother's couch, I was like, what 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:41.800 do I want to be doing? I had this idea 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:44.160 of back in two thousands, seven, eight and nine. I 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:47.200 was like, I just want to interview the most fascinating 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.200 people in the world and ask them how they got there, 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:51.920 because I wanted to be cool if you just get 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.520 paid to just ask questions of smart people. And but 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:57.000 I was like, no one will listen to me at 0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.720 this moment. No one would. I don't have any credibility, 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:01.640 you know, why would they show up to my show? 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:03.880 Why would these people even talk to me? So I 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:07.160 knew there was something I wanted, and I spent about 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:11.560 five years building a business online marketing business to where 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:13.960 things started to take off pretty quickly. It took about 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:17.560 two years of being broke and on my sister's couch 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.320 and then my brother's place until I made really my 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:25.520 first dollars online. And I remember I did a for 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.920 those two year period, I was obsessing over LinkedIn. I 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:32.240 was obsessing over because I was connecting with these thought 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.520 leaders in my local community. Um And eventually people started 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:37.880 reaching out to me and saying, hey, Louis, can you 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:41.720 show me how to use LinkedIn for you know, connecting 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:44.679 to people or generating leads and traffic. And since I 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:46.720 was just doing it all day long, I started writing 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.320 articles about it. I eventually wrote a book about LinkedIn 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:50.480 that was one of the first people to write a 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:53.960 book about it. In two thousand nine, and I started 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.800 hosting LinkedIn networking events. And so I hosted a LinkedIn 0:11:56.840 --> 0:12:02.720 networking event using my connections messaging two thousand nine, messaging 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.120 people one at a time. I think I started my 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:06.840 first one late two thousand and eight, and not only 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:09.959 just message everyone, I knew one at a time custom 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.920 email message on LinkedIn and said hey, and they had 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:15.560 an events feature, so I said, Hey, we're hosting a 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.720 LinkedIn networking event. Here it is please bring three friends, 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.719 It's free. Uh, you know all this stuff, And I 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.200 sold four sponsorships at two hundred fifty bucks for like 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:31.960 a table, like a little booth, and I exactly, And 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.360 I called up the local a few local restaurants, and 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:36.960 I said, what's the worst night of the week for 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:38.840 you when no one comes in? They were like Tuesday 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:40.800 night or Wednesday night or something. And I said, can 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.520 I have it for free if I can bring people, 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:45.640 you know, a hundred people to this and they were 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:47.920 like sure, and they had food and drinks and bar 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.079 and all that stuff, and I said, you can keep 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:51.920 all the money that I just want to have this space. 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:54.480 And the first event we did, we had three d 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:56.720 three and fifty people show up. I made a thousand 0:12:56.720 --> 0:13:00.480 bucks on the sponsorships, but the coolest thing was the 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.080 connections and everyone thanked me afterwards, saying wow, like I 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:05.959 met so and so, and now we're going to talk 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.160 about doing this. I met so and so who I'm 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:11.400 gonna hire whatever it is. I became essentially the champion 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.520 of everyone's problems into solutions. And I was like, wow, 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.040 I wonder if I did this again. And I charged 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:19.840 for people to come. So I charged five dollars at 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:20.880 the door, and I was like, I don't know if 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.000 anyone's gonna come. And we had more people show up, 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:25.120 and I was like, oh wow, okay, So I sold 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.040 sponsorships the second time and I charged five bucks. I 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:30.320 won if I can charge ten bucks, and I just 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.480 started going to the next level. Okay, we meant ten 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:35.319 ten dollars at the door sponsorships. Then I started to 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:37.560 build a relationship with these restaurants and I said, hey, 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.200 will you give me ten or fifteen percent commission on 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:43.000 the food and bar and they were like, yeah, it's 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:44.760 the worst out of the week. No one's coming in, 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.640 of course. And so I was getting three levels of 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.959 revenue from one event. Then I was doing one on 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:54.520 one consulting for people that said hey, can you show 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:56.520 me how to do this on LinkedIn? So I was 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.199 charging hundred dollars and two hundreds and three hundred dollars 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:02.360 a session for doing one on one. Then I was like, okay, 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:03.960 let me write a book around this so I can 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:05.960 have something to sell at these events. So now I 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:09.400 had five levels of revenue, and I just kept thinking, Okay, 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:11.240 what else can I do? Then I started making money 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.800 off of connecting people and getting commissions on deals, and 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:17.160 I just kept thinking how can I make more money 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:20.120 with one event? What can I do? Then the thing 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.600 that really transformed everything is when I was branding myself 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:27.640 and positioning myself in the social media world as the 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.280 LinkedIn guy. I was like, everyone's talking about being a 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:35.760 social media expert. I know social media platforms pretty well, 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:37.920 but not as well as LinkedIn. And everyone was like, 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:40.520 I'm a social media expert online there bio, and I 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:42.680 was just like, no, I'm the LinkedIn king, Like I 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.240 don't care about anything else but LinkedIn. And because I 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.400 positioned myself as that, that wasn't That wasn't what I 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:50.320 wanted long term. I wanted to do a show, but 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:52.520 at the moment I knew I needed to position myself 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:54.680 as an expert at one thing, as opposed to an 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.880 expert at all things. And by doing that, opportunities started 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:00.400 to come to me. Every social media conference said we 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.880 need a LinkedIn you know room, who's the guy who 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.240 can come speak? Well, I know Lewis, and Lewis is 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:08.440 writing articles about this, and Lewis has wrote a book 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.240 about this, and Lewis has hosting events on LinkedIn. Let's 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.400 bring Louis in. So I was doing that and then 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.800 Eventually I met a guy at a conference and he 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:18.800 asked me to come on one of his webinars. And 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.840 I didn't know what a webinar was in two thousand nine. Um, 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:23.280 but I said, let's do it. He was a pretty 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:25.120 big name in kind of the space at the time, 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:27.520 and um, he said, I need you to do a 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.120 presentation about LinkedIn. It's gonna be a free event. You're 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.960 gonna present and at the end, I want you to 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:34.600 sell something. I want you to sell a course or 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:36.720 a program. And this is back in two thousand nine, 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:40.040 when there was no course platforms. There was no It 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.120 was really hard to build a website back in two 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:44.600 thousand nine and put stuff together. I had no Cluto's doing. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:47.600 And I said, Okay, I don't have the time to 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:49.960 put together a course or training. But what I'll do 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.400 is I'll put together a PayPal link and I'll give 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.440 a free presentation. And then at the end, I'll say, hey, 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.640 for anyone who wants more advanced training on LinkedIn, like 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.720 pay me here. I charged a hundred fifty bucks pay 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.200 me here, And what I'll do is three weeks of 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.160 more online training, like on a live webinar. I'll just 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.800 give you access to a private link and I'll teach 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:14.360 you this, this, and this every week. And at the 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:16.760 end and I was horrible. It's my first time giving 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:18.560 a presentation and no clue what I was doing. The 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.200 slides where Yankee, and you know, I was stuttering the 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:25.080 whole time. But at the end I closed down the 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:27.680 webinar presentation, I opened up my Gmail and it was 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.080 probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life, 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.160 more than any girl I've ever seen. It was my 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:38.120 entire email on my my screen that said You've received payment. 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:40.520 Every line said you received payment. You see payment. I 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.200 was like, I was literally screaming. I was at my 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:45.760 brother's place at this time, living two bucks a month 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:50.000 and there's sixty in my paper account in minutes. And 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.240 I was like, I am the richest man in the world. 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.120 I could do this every day for the rest of 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:56.760 my life. If I get to teach about LinkedIn and 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:01.000 make I'll do this all day long and for the 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.480 next six years. That's pretty much all I did. I said, Okay, 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:06.359 how do I become a better teacher, How do I 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.480 master LinkedIn more? How do I understand webinars? How do 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:12.760 I learn about online marketing, copyrighting, How do I create 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:15.359 relationships and affiliate partnerships to drive traffic? How do I 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:17.360 buy traffic? How do I how do I do more 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.920 of this thing? And I just obsessed over becoming better 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:22.920 at that. And after about four or five years, I 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:25.159 got like tired of just talking about LinkedIn. I was like, 0:17:25.200 --> 0:17:26.760 this is not what I want to do, Like my 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:29.880 dream that has been to do this interview thing, and 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:31.800 I don't know the best platform, Like I'd like a 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.160 TV show, but no one's I'm still not really known. 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.399 I'm known as a LinkedIn guy, but not known in 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.320 anything else. And so I took about a year off 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:42.439 where I sold the company to my business partner. At 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.120 that time, had saved pretty much everything. I pretty much 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:47.440 lived like I was on my sister's couch, still saved, 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.320 didn't have a car, didn't have a TV, just like 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.320 walked everywhere, saved money. And then I had a couple 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:55.960 of years of runway where I was like I could 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:57.560 do whatever, and I was like, I really want to 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.520 do this interview show. And podcasting back in two thousand 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:04.639 twelve wasn't a thing. It was like Joe Rogan was 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.399 on there some weird like basement tech shows were on 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:09.760 there or something, but no one knew even how to 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.560 go download a podcast. But I had two friends that 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.639 had just launched one in the middle of two thousand twelve, 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:17.359 and I just moved to Eli at the time for 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.840 a girl didn't work out quickly, and I said, but 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:23.119 let me stay here. And I was driving in l 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:26.000 A traffic and was miserable, and I was like, man, 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.080 I just kind of feel stuck in my life right now. 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:30.720 I feel stuck that I moved here for this girl, 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.920 that it's not working out, like it's kind of resenting myself. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.639 And I was really frustrated because I was supposed to 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.960 go meet someone a mile away and it took like 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:40.520 two hours to get there in a car, and I 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:43.600 was like, this is exhausting, and I go, how are 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.160 people doing this every day? Stuck in their car, stuck 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.879 in their life? Like there's gotta be a way to 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.240 serve people who feel this type of stuck nous, whether 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:54.520 it be literally in a car or just in their life. 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:57.600 And I said, I want to just create a free show, 0:18:57.800 --> 0:18:59.479 like a podcast. I heard a couple of friends are 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.040