Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
Speaker 1: we talked to super successful and self made people to
Speaker 1: find out exactly how they did how they went from
Speaker 1: nothing to something. I'm Ryan, Sirhands, and today I'm joined
Speaker 1: by New York Times best selling author and host of
Speaker 1: the School of Greatness podcast, Lewis Hose. We discussed the
Speaker 1: importance of having coaches and mentors throughout life, how to
Speaker 1: look within to find the confidence you need to be
Speaker 1: your best self, and what it takes to go from
Speaker 1: being unemployed sleeping on your sister's couch to becoming one
Speaker 1: of the most influential podcasters on the planet. Let's get
Speaker 1: into it. Welcome to another episode. Today is a super
Speaker 1: super special day one. It is snowing in the city again.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the last him it snowed so much
Speaker 1: in New York City. But that means I don't have
Speaker 1: to go show properties. It means I can sit here
Speaker 1: and I can talk to one of my favorite people,
Speaker 1: a former professional football player, keynote speaker, now media entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: high performance business coach everyone Lewis house Um. We first
Speaker 1: met when my first book Felt Like Sir Hnt came
Speaker 1: out and he was gracious enough to help me launch
Speaker 1: the book in Los Angeles back when people used to
Speaker 1: talk to people in person and we used to have
Speaker 1: a book events. That was really really cool. You guys
Speaker 1: know him from everything. One of the biggest podcasts in
Speaker 1: the world, the School of Greatness, which we'll get into,
Speaker 1: recognized by the White House and President Obama is one
Speaker 1: of the top entrepreneurs in the country under thirty. He's
Speaker 1: met Tom Brady. Okay, that's really really important to me,
Speaker 1: amongst many many other things. Without further ado, Lewis House,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here, man, my man,
Speaker 1: appreciate you and congrats on the new book. Excited to
Speaker 1: have you on my show soon to talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it before we start though. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been on other people's podcasts for a long time, right,
Speaker 1: millionar listening started and years ago, man, you were like,
Speaker 1: what two when that happened. Yeah, it was twenty and
Speaker 1: now the time goes by real fast, and kind of
Speaker 1: right around that time. A couple of years later, right,
Speaker 1: you just celebrated your your eight year anniversary School of Greatness. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this year we just celebrated eight years over a thousand episodes,
Speaker 1: thousand episodes. Man, it's crazy and it goes by fast.
Speaker 1: Like you said, I remember the first episode. You probably
Speaker 1: remember your first episode. And you were probably terrible on
Speaker 1: TV and I was terrible on podcasting, and you know,
Speaker 1: look at us now. So can we go back though
Speaker 1: to the beginning before I get into all the questions
Speaker 1: I have about your kind of career right in your
Speaker 1: professional life and and what a lot of things mean
Speaker 1: to you. But you graduate college, you go into arena football,
Speaker 1: you get hurt. Whole life leads up to that one moment.
Speaker 1: What do you do for me in the moment. It
Speaker 1: was an identity crisis because my whole identity was tied
Speaker 1: to being an athlete and being known and being valued
Speaker 1: for my athletic abilities. And so when I was when
Speaker 1: I'm not able to do that anymore, and that's the
Speaker 1: only identity I have. I had to learn the hard way.
Speaker 1: It took a couple of years to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: my identity does not define me, uh, and I can
Speaker 1: always reinvent my identity. So imagine if you lost all
Speaker 1: the ability to sell real estate or talk about real estate,
Speaker 1: or by real estate or invest in it, just for
Speaker 1: whatever reason you lost that ability and that's been ten
Speaker 1: years of your life for a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: transitioning sports into real world. Afterwards, they get depressed, they
Speaker 1: get unsure of themselves, and they don't have that same
Speaker 1: confidence when they had that identity into the next stage.
Speaker 1: And I lacked the confidence. For a couple of years.
Speaker 1: I was on my sister's couch. I didn't have any money.
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out how to get a job.
Speaker 1: This was two thousand seven or two thousand nine when
Speaker 1: the UH economy was crashing. Yeah, everything, So for me,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a college degree yet. I eventually went
Speaker 1: back and finished, but I really didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: And so I again, I just use what I learned
Speaker 1: from sports and said, what got me to being uh,
Speaker 1: you know, professional athlete, What allowed me to accomplish all
Speaker 1: American status and a couple of sports and then break
Speaker 1: records and all these things, was having incredible coaches. And
Speaker 1: why would I do life or career or business alone
Speaker 1: without a coach, Because this is what I know, and
Speaker 1: in order to get to the top, I've needed coaches
Speaker 1: in order to stay at the top. The greatest athletes
Speaker 1: in the world invest in better coaches, you know, Kobe
Speaker 1: Jordan's Lebron. They don't say I'm the best, I don't
Speaker 1: need a coach. They say, no, I'm going on the
Speaker 1: team that has the best coach because I want to
Speaker 1: win multiple championships. I don't want to just get to
Speaker 1: the top and that's it. And so I started to
Speaker 1: leave look for mentors. And originally it was people that
Speaker 1: I've already met from you know, professors at school or whatever.
Speaker 1: But then I started reaching out on LinkedIn to finding
Speaker 1: kind of local entrepreneurs in Columbus, Ohio, which is where
Speaker 1: I was basically the time, where I'm from, and started
Speaker 1: reaching out to them and essentially begging them to mentor
Speaker 1: me because I had nothing to offer them. I had
Speaker 1: no skills, I had no career, I had no value
Speaker 1: except for a curious heart and a listening ear. That
Speaker 1: that I learned how to ask the right questions so
Speaker 1: that people would reply to my emails on LinkedIn, so
Speaker 1: that people would go to coffee with me or actually
Speaker 1: take me to lunch and pay for my lunch because
Speaker 1: I can't afford it. And I would find these really
Speaker 1: successful kind of local leaders spending their time with me
Speaker 1: as a twenty four year old punk with no job,
Speaker 1: no nothing, And it was all around positioning, and I
Speaker 1: positioned my LinkedIn profile in the right way to get
Speaker 1: people to reply to me. I positioned my email messaging
Speaker 1: the right way so people would respond to me, and
Speaker 1: that position in created proximity where then I had access
Speaker 1: to people, people that had skills, people that had money,
Speaker 1: people that had job opportunities, people that had experience. So
Speaker 1: I could learn from that proximity and from the people
Speaker 1: that had that knowledge. And that was the thing that
Speaker 1: out of necessity because I didn't have money. I was
Speaker 1: living off my sister's couch, eating her food, not paying
Speaker 1: rent for a year and a half. But she gave
Speaker 1: me a gift after a year and a half of
Speaker 1: not paying for anything or contribute, she said, it's time
Speaker 1: for you to leave. You don't need to pay rent
Speaker 1: or you need to leave. And it was the greatest
Speaker 1: gift she gave me because it created urgency and it
Speaker 1: created opportunities to break through because I probably would have
Speaker 1: been on that couch from the year, two year, three years.
Speaker 1: I was a grown man at at the time, and
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't want to live off my sister,
Speaker 1: but it was also like, I don't have to work hard,
Speaker 1: So she created the sense of like, okay, there's hey,
Speaker 1: they have to go live in the streets. What I
Speaker 1: did is I begged my brother to let me stand
Speaker 1: in his place, and he there exactly and he gave
Speaker 1: me a gift. He said, listen, you gotta pay two
Speaker 1: hundree f bucks a month for your room. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta do something. I gotta figure out how do
Speaker 1: I make three bucks right so that I can pay
Speaker 1: here and also buy some food. And it just got
Speaker 1: me working a little bit more. Okay, what do I
Speaker 1: need to do? Do I go get a job, do
Speaker 1: I go try to make money? How do I make money?
Speaker 1: And it went down that path of just next steps.
Speaker 1: That's insane, but that is a really, really, really cool story.
Speaker 1: What was your relationship to money at that time? Because
Speaker 1: you didn't have a whole lot of afraid, uneducated, ignorant,
Speaker 1: uh needy. I desired it, but I was also scared
Speaker 1: of it. I didn't know how to make money. I
Speaker 1: never made money before, really, I mean I was a
Speaker 1: truck driver for a number of months, making two or
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a week driving driver. I drove NAPA Auto
Speaker 1: car parts from ConA from Columbus, Ohio, to Cincinnati and
Speaker 1: back every day. I dropped them off, take two and
Speaker 1: a half hours to get there, doing about a thirty
Speaker 1: to forty five minute pick up of new parts and
Speaker 1: bring them back to the Columbus warehouse. And so I
Speaker 1: was driving the largest truck before. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like the massive U haul before you needed a trucking license.
Speaker 1: And it was miserable. It was a miserable experience. But
Speaker 1: I also was like, how do I make the most
Speaker 1: of this six hour commute daily driving car parts? And
Speaker 1: so what I did is I said, I'm able to
Speaker 1: play crazy games in my mind. The truck only went
Speaker 1: fifty five miles an hour when I put the pedal
Speaker 1: to the metal, and so everyone's passing me and in
Speaker 1: the middle Ohio. I don't know if you've been to Ohio,
Speaker 1: but there's just corn fields for hours, so you're not
Speaker 1: really there's nothing really to look at. And it's where
Speaker 1: I learned how to salsa dance. I learned salsa dancing
Speaker 1: as a truck driver. What in my mind, so I
Speaker 1: would that's some inception stuff. I wanted to learn how
Speaker 1: to salsa dance because I was terrified of it. And
Speaker 1: I went to this like jazz club one night that
Speaker 1: had salsa dancing, and I was just blown away by
Speaker 1: all the Latin people who were there dancing salsa. And
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the most intimidating thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen, but it's also probably the coolest thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. And I kept going back to this place
Speaker 1: once a week they would do salsa dancing. I'd go
Speaker 1: back once a week and I would just watch. I
Speaker 1: literally the creeper. I wasn't trying to be a creeper,
Speaker 1: but I would sit in the corner and just be like,
Speaker 1: this is amazing, this is mesmerizing. And I love the music.
Speaker 1: I love the culture, the people that language, everything. And
Speaker 1: when I started truck driving, I said, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 1: to teach myself salsa dancing. It's burn a CD of
Speaker 1: the greatest hits of salsa songs and I listened to
Speaker 1: this for six hours a day and I would practice
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Back then, YouTube had this channel called Addicted
Speaker 1: to Salsa, which taught you salsa tutorials before it's time,
Speaker 1: and I would watch these at night. I would practice
Speaker 1: in the mirror. I would then rehearse these moves in
Speaker 1: my mind for six hours a day while listening to
Speaker 1: the music. So I was trying to figure out, how
Speaker 1: can I learn a skill making money doing something I
Speaker 1: don't like, and and that was that was the process.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know how to make money. I was
Speaker 1: a truck driver. I was a bouncer on the weekends,
Speaker 1: making out of maybe a hundred fifty bucks a weekend
Speaker 1: at a nightclub. And I never was entrepreneurial. I didn't
Speaker 1: have the lemonade stand. I didn't do the baseball card thing.
Speaker 1: I didn't garage none of that stuff. I relied on
Speaker 1: my dad to kind of be like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: here's twenty bucks or a hundred bucks when you needed
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um. He never gave me a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but it was always provided, like I had a house
Speaker 1: and food. I didn't need anything else. But when I
Speaker 1: was twenty one year only five, and you're sleeping in
Speaker 1: your sister's couch and you're not as cool anymore, and
Speaker 1: that's when I said, I've got to learn financial literacy.
Speaker 1: I've got to learn and understand what it means to
Speaker 1: make money, how to make money on your own, what
Speaker 1: it looks like to get a job, how to manage
Speaker 1: my personal finance. It's just all the basics that no
Speaker 1: one teaches in school. So what was your first job?
Speaker 1: Then now you're crashing, you're paying your brother. You had
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make money? Right? I did?
Speaker 1: And the podcast came years later, didn't it? Yeah? Years later?
Speaker 1: That was actually the dream. Back then, when I was
Speaker 1: on my sister and brother's couch, I was like, what
Speaker 1: do I want to be doing? I had this idea
Speaker 1: of back in two thousands, seven, eight and nine. I
Speaker 1: was like, I just want to interview the most fascinating
Speaker 1: people in the world and ask them how they got there,
Speaker 1: because I wanted to be cool if you just get
Speaker 1: paid to just ask questions of smart people. And but
Speaker 1: I was like, no one will listen to me at
Speaker 1: this moment. No one would. I don't have any credibility,
Speaker 1: you know, why would they show up to my show?
Speaker 1: Why would these people even talk to me? So I
Speaker 1: knew there was something I wanted, and I spent about
Speaker 1: five years building a business online marketing business to where
Speaker 1: things started to take off pretty quickly. It took about
Speaker 1: two years of being broke and on my sister's couch
Speaker 1: and then my brother's place until I made really my
Speaker 1: first dollars online. And I remember I did a for
Speaker 1: those two year period, I was obsessing over LinkedIn. I
Speaker 1: was obsessing over because I was connecting with these thought
Speaker 1: leaders in my local community. Um And eventually people started
Speaker 1: reaching out to me and saying, hey, Louis, can you
Speaker 1: show me how to use LinkedIn for you know, connecting
Speaker 1: to people or generating leads and traffic. And since I
Speaker 1: was just doing it all day long, I started writing
Speaker 1: articles about it. I eventually wrote a book about LinkedIn
Speaker 1: that was one of the first people to write a
Speaker 1: book about it. In two thousand nine, and I started
Speaker 1: hosting LinkedIn networking events. And so I hosted a LinkedIn
Speaker 1: networking event using my connections messaging two thousand nine, messaging
Speaker 1: people one at a time. I think I started my
Speaker 1: first one late two thousand and eight, and not only
Speaker 1: just message everyone, I knew one at a time custom
Speaker 1: email message on LinkedIn and said hey, and they had
Speaker 1: an events feature, so I said, Hey, we're hosting a
Speaker 1: LinkedIn networking event. Here it is please bring three friends,
Speaker 1: It's free. Uh, you know all this stuff, And I
Speaker 1: sold four sponsorships at two hundred fifty bucks for like
Speaker 1: a table, like a little booth, and I exactly, And
Speaker 1: I called up the local a few local restaurants, and
Speaker 1: I said, what's the worst night of the week for
Speaker 1: you when no one comes in? They were like Tuesday
Speaker 1: night or Wednesday night or something. And I said, can
Speaker 1: I have it for free if I can bring people,
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred people to this and they were
Speaker 1: like sure, and they had food and drinks and bar
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, and I said, you can keep
Speaker 1: all the money that I just want to have this space.
Speaker 1: And the first event we did, we had three d
Speaker 1: three and fifty people show up. I made a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks on the sponsorships, but the coolest thing was the
Speaker 1: connections and everyone thanked me afterwards, saying wow, like I
Speaker 1: met so and so, and now we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about doing this. I met so and so who I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hire whatever it is. I became essentially the champion
Speaker 1: of everyone's problems into solutions. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I did this again. And I charged
Speaker 1: for people to come. So I charged five dollars at
Speaker 1: the door, and I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: anyone's gonna come. And we had more people show up,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh wow, okay, So I sold
Speaker 1: sponsorships the second time and I charged five bucks. I
Speaker 1: won if I can charge ten bucks, and I just
Speaker 1: started going to the next level. Okay, we meant ten
Speaker 1: ten dollars at the door sponsorships. Then I started to
Speaker 1: build a relationship with these restaurants and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: will you give me ten or fifteen percent commission on
Speaker 1: the food and bar and they were like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the worst out of the week. No one's coming in,
Speaker 1: of course. And so I was getting three levels of
Speaker 1: revenue from one event. Then I was doing one on
Speaker 1: one consulting for people that said hey, can you show
Speaker 1: me how to do this on LinkedIn? So I was
Speaker 1: charging hundred dollars and two hundreds and three hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a session for doing one on one. Then I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me write a book around this so I can
Speaker 1: have something to sell at these events. So now I
Speaker 1: had five levels of revenue, and I just kept thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: what else can I do? Then I started making money
Speaker 1: off of connecting people and getting commissions on deals, and
Speaker 1: I just kept thinking how can I make more money
Speaker 1: with one event? What can I do? Then the thing
Speaker 1: that really transformed everything is when I was branding myself
Speaker 1: and positioning myself in the social media world as the
Speaker 1: LinkedIn guy. I was like, everyone's talking about being a
Speaker 1: social media expert. I know social media platforms pretty well,
Speaker 1: but not as well as LinkedIn. And everyone was like,
Speaker 1: I'm a social media expert online there bio, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, no, I'm the LinkedIn king, Like I
Speaker 1: don't care about anything else but LinkedIn. And because I
Speaker 1: positioned myself as that, that wasn't That wasn't what I
Speaker 1: wanted long term. I wanted to do a show, but
Speaker 1: at the moment I knew I needed to position myself
Speaker 1: as an expert at one thing, as opposed to an
Speaker 1: expert at all things. And by doing that, opportunities started
Speaker 1: to come to me. Every social media conference said we
Speaker 1: need a LinkedIn you know room, who's the guy who
Speaker 1: can come speak? Well, I know Lewis, and Lewis is
Speaker 1: writing articles about this, and Lewis has wrote a book
Speaker 1: about this, and Lewis has hosting events on LinkedIn. Let's
Speaker 1: bring Louis in. So I was doing that and then
Speaker 1: Eventually I met a guy at a conference and he
Speaker 1: asked me to come on one of his webinars. And
Speaker 1: I didn't know what a webinar was in two thousand nine. Um,
Speaker 1: but I said, let's do it. He was a pretty
Speaker 1: big name in kind of the space at the time,
Speaker 1: and um, he said, I need you to do a
Speaker 1: presentation about LinkedIn. It's gonna be a free event. You're
Speaker 1: gonna present and at the end, I want you to
Speaker 1: sell something. I want you to sell a course or
Speaker 1: a program. And this is back in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: when there was no course platforms. There was no It
Speaker 1: was really hard to build a website back in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine and put stuff together. I had no Cluto's doing.
Speaker 1: And I said, Okay, I don't have the time to
Speaker 1: put together a course or training. But what I'll do
Speaker 1: is I'll put together a PayPal link and I'll give
Speaker 1: a free presentation. And then at the end, I'll say, hey,
Speaker 1: for anyone who wants more advanced training on LinkedIn, like
Speaker 1: pay me here. I charged a hundred fifty bucks pay
Speaker 1: me here, And what I'll do is three weeks of
Speaker 1: more online training, like on a live webinar. I'll just
Speaker 1: give you access to a private link and I'll teach
Speaker 1: you this, this, and this every week. And at the
Speaker 1: end and I was horrible. It's my first time giving
Speaker 1: a presentation and no clue what I was doing. The
Speaker 1: slides where Yankee, and you know, I was stuttering the
Speaker 1: whole time. But at the end I closed down the
Speaker 1: webinar presentation, I opened up my Gmail and it was
Speaker 1: probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life,
Speaker 1: more than any girl I've ever seen. It was my
Speaker 1: entire email on my my screen that said You've received payment.
Speaker 1: Every line said you received payment. You see payment. I
Speaker 1: was like, I was literally screaming. I was at my
Speaker 1: brother's place at this time, living two bucks a month
Speaker 1: and there's sixty in my paper account in minutes. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I am the richest man in the world.
Speaker 1: I could do this every day for the rest of
Speaker 1: my life. If I get to teach about LinkedIn and
Speaker 1: make I'll do this all day long and for the
Speaker 1: next six years. That's pretty much all I did. I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I become a better teacher, How do I
Speaker 1: master LinkedIn more? How do I understand webinars? How do
Speaker 1: I learn about online marketing, copyrighting, How do I create
Speaker 1: relationships and affiliate partnerships to drive traffic? How do I
Speaker 1: buy traffic? How do I how do I do more
Speaker 1: of this thing? And I just obsessed over becoming better
Speaker 1: at that. And after about four or five years, I
Speaker 1: got like tired of just talking about LinkedIn. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is not what I want to do, Like my
Speaker 1: dream that has been to do this interview thing, and
Speaker 1: I don't know the best platform, Like I'd like a
Speaker 1: TV show, but no one's I'm still not really known.
Speaker 1: I'm known as a LinkedIn guy, but not known in
Speaker 1: anything else. And so I took about a year off
Speaker 1: where I sold the company to my business partner. At
Speaker 1: that time, had saved pretty much everything. I pretty much
Speaker 1: lived like I was on my sister's couch, still saved,
Speaker 1: didn't have a car, didn't have a TV, just like
Speaker 1: walked everywhere, saved money. And then I had a couple
Speaker 1: of years of runway where I was like I could
Speaker 1: do whatever, and I was like, I really want to
Speaker 1: do this interview show. And podcasting back in two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve wasn't a thing. It was like Joe Rogan was
Speaker 1: on there some weird like basement tech shows were on
Speaker 1: there or something, but no one knew even how to
Speaker 1: go download a podcast. But I had two friends that
Speaker 1: had just launched one in the middle of two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and I just moved to Eli at the time for
Speaker 1: a girl didn't work out quickly, and I said, but
Speaker 1: let me stay here. And I was driving in l
Speaker 1: A traffic and was miserable, and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I just kind of feel stuck in my life right now.
Speaker 1: I feel stuck that I moved here for this girl,
Speaker 1: that it's not working out, like it's kind of resenting myself.
Speaker 1: And I was really frustrated because I was supposed to
Speaker 1: go meet someone a mile away and it took like
Speaker 1: two hours to get there in a car, and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is exhausting, and I go, how are
Speaker 1: people doing this every day? Stuck in their car, stuck
Speaker 1: in their life? Like there's gotta be a way to
Speaker 1: serve people who feel this type of stuck nous, whether
Speaker 1: it be literally in a car or just in their life.
Speaker 1: And I said, I want to just create a free show,
Speaker 1: like a podcast. I heard a couple of friends are
Speaker 1: doing it. Let me call them, So I called them
Speaker 1: in the car ride literally and asked them both like,
Speaker 1: what is this podcasting thing? Is it worth it is?
Speaker 1: It's going to be a waste of time, And both
Speaker 1: of them said it was the most fun they were
Speaker 1: having of anything they're doing in their business. It was
Speaker 1: the most qualified leads they were getting for the things
Speaker 1: that they were selling eventually, and they were just having
Speaker 1: a blast doing it. And I was like, if these
Speaker 1: guys could do it, I could probably figure this out.
Speaker 1: And probably about four or five months later I launched
Speaker 1: the show and um, yeah, end of January, so eight
Speaker 1: years ago, and it's just been figuring it out process
Speaker 1: every day since. Crazy. You know, I could listen to
Speaker 1: you for a year straight. I think I don't even
Speaker 1: have to make noise. Your story is just so interesting.
Speaker 1: You skipped over one thing just really quick. You coaches
Speaker 1: got you to a certain point. Did you end up
Speaker 1: finding that life coach, business coach or or mentor when
Speaker 1: you were gonna stuck in there? It was mostly just
Speaker 1: leaning on friends. I had three mentors at the time.
Speaker 1: One was um it's funny. At the time. Also, when
Speaker 1: I just finished playing football, I had to have a
Speaker 1: surgery on my risk because I broke a bone in
Speaker 1: my wrist, and so I was in a full arm
Speaker 1: cast from my shoulder to my fingers. I kind of
Speaker 1: looked like the kid from Rookie of the Year that
Speaker 1: I had. When it got out, He's like it was
Speaker 1: like a wet noodle. I couldn't I couldn't move my
Speaker 1: arm when he got out. I didn't have power of strength,
Speaker 1: and so I was in this cast for six months.
Speaker 1: It was miserable. Miserable and um. During that time is
Speaker 1: when I was just on LinkedIn because I couldn't really
Speaker 1: work out. I didn't have a job, nothing on my
Speaker 1: sister's couch, and I reached out to a few people.
Speaker 1: One was a former like headmaster of the school I
Speaker 1: went to, like the college I went to that I
Speaker 1: became close with. He was an Olympic qualifying athlete all
Speaker 1: this stuff, so I kind of connected to him over sports.
Speaker 1: He was my kind of spiritual leadership, compass, great family man,
Speaker 1: a success in business. Then I reached out. Um. I
Speaker 1: had into a product during this time that I called
Speaker 1: the cast Comfort because this cast I had I had
Speaker 1: to wear it for so long was smelling. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever broken a bone and had a cast,
Speaker 1: but it's smell smelly after a week dirty, It's like
Speaker 1: screw exactly. And I was like, there's gotta be a
Speaker 1: better solution if someone's wearing a cast so it doesn't
Speaker 1: look and smell dirty. And so I went on Ali
Speaker 1: Baba at the time, and I actually and I had
Speaker 1: no money except for like a hundred bucks or something,
Speaker 1: and I spent I think it was like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, seventy bucks to get a couple of samples.
Speaker 1: I designed a sample of I was like, there needs
Speaker 1: to be something you can put over this, and I
Speaker 1: actually still have them, and I just I was like
Speaker 1: I needed a double thickness sweatband, like an armed wrist band,
Speaker 1: but seven times the length. And so I was just
Speaker 1: kind of designing this thing on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: like uploaded to Ali Baba, found some manufacturers in China
Speaker 1: and I was like can you make this? And ended
Speaker 1: to me in Ohio and six weeks later I got
Speaker 1: like my first prototype and I was like, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I had different colors, I had different lengths, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I need someone who can help me design
Speaker 1: this better package it, sell it, you know, marketed all
Speaker 1: this stuff I have no idea how to do any
Speaker 1: of this, And so I met someone at the time
Speaker 1: who knew an inventor and begged this inventor to meet
Speaker 1: with me and showed him my design and and everything
Speaker 1: I had it there, and he ended up mentoring me
Speaker 1: for the next six months. He was like, come into
Speaker 1: the office like a few days a week, asked me
Speaker 1: questions like and work for me for free essentially, and
Speaker 1: I'll help you launch this thing. I'll help you get
Speaker 1: off the ground. We ended up not getting that off
Speaker 1: the ground, but I ended up learning about product design,
Speaker 1: product development, naming. He's a master of like naming, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, trademarking. We go to design shows together. So
Speaker 1: I would go to trade shows with him and just
Speaker 1: learned about like the business of networking, and I just
Speaker 1: learned about how to take an idea in your minds
Speaker 1: and make it a physical reality and manifested from every
Speaker 1: process from idea to manufacturing to licensing to PR everything.
Speaker 1: So that was an amazing six month experience. He was
Speaker 1: my creative mentor of like how do I take an
Speaker 1: idea and manifested into a physical form. And then I
Speaker 1: at the salsa clubs because I started going salsa dancing
Speaker 1: a lot and teaching myself salsa dancing. I met um.
Speaker 1: I met another guy who was a professional speaker, and
Speaker 1: at the time I was terrified of hope speaking. I
Speaker 1: could not even speak in front of an audience of
Speaker 1: four people without stuttering and being nervous. And I was like, man,
Speaker 1: you go around the country and you get paid to speak.
Speaker 1: That sounds amazing, but I could never do it. And
Speaker 1: he mentored me and and said, you need to join Toastmasters.
Speaker 1: You need to overcome the fear, learn the basics of
Speaker 1: public speaking, and I want you to go every week
Speaker 1: for a year to Postmasters until you feel confident enough
Speaker 1: in presenting without notes, without preparation and for of an audience.
Speaker 1: And I went every single week for a year about
Speaker 1: film It's I would get feedback from him all this
Speaker 1: stuff until I finally overcame the fear. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know that speaking would be a thing in my future
Speaker 1: because I was terrified of it. But that mentor and
Speaker 1: coach really guided me to overcome those fears. So those
Speaker 1: three were really instrumental. But then every year I'm finding
Speaker 1: hiring new coaches. You know, I'm paying for experts at
Speaker 1: different levels to help me in my health and wellness,
Speaker 1: business strategy, relationships, therapy, and her work all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm always looking for great coaches. Where do you
Speaker 1: think your or what do you attribute your your sense
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm to, Like, you have great energy. I think
Speaker 1: one thing that did big body of energy. Man, you
Speaker 1: gotta have that, you know, I think one thing. People
Speaker 1: are attracted to you about it, and it's so fun
Speaker 1: to to listen to you and just to listen to
Speaker 1: your interviews you do on the podcast. I'm sure why
Speaker 1: people take take your courses and everything is that you
Speaker 1: you have this amazingly authentic, a new sense of energy
Speaker 1: almost every day. You Graham to tweet you said, mindset
Speaker 1: is everything. The way you think affects your energy and actions,
Speaker 1: change your thoughts, and your life will start to change,
Speaker 1: which is right. So you're just saying, you're just talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the things you think about now as part
Speaker 1: of your work end up becoming the things that you're
Speaker 1: doing two to three years from now, as long as
Speaker 1: you put in the work. But you mentioned that word energy,
Speaker 1: and then I watch you even now on that amazing
Speaker 1: high resolution camera that you have that my team needs
Speaker 1: to figure out and you've got that incredible energy. Is
Speaker 1: it do you credit your parents or just excitement for life?
Speaker 1: Is it something you developed because you were because you
Speaker 1: knew you needed to have it. I think I always
Speaker 1: had something like there was always something inside of me.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if everyone else feels this. Maybe
Speaker 1: you felt this as a kid, Ryan that I always
Speaker 1: felt like, Okay, I don't know why I'm here. And
Speaker 1: there are many times that I would get in trouble
Speaker 1: as a kid and get something the principle's office and
Speaker 1: I would tell them all the time. I wish I
Speaker 1: were dead at a darker childhood in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was sexually abused as a five year old.
Speaker 1: It took me twenty five years to open up about
Speaker 1: it and start sharing and start healing. So I I
Speaker 1: lived with a lot of resentment and anger in moments
Speaker 1: of my life, but I had this duality of like
Speaker 1: passion and childlike joy and energy as well. But when
Speaker 1: someone triggered me, it was like, don't ever try to
Speaker 1: take an advantage of me or or or abuse me.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I was like, I'm going to destroy you. And
Speaker 1: I didn't understand why, but I was sexually abuse as
Speaker 1: a kid. My brother went to prison when I was
Speaker 1: eight for four and a half years, so every almost
Speaker 1: every weekend, I was in a prison visitor room with
Speaker 1: a room full of inmates and their families, and because
Speaker 1: there was visiting hours for for my brother, and so
Speaker 1: there were, you know, there was just a lot of
Speaker 1: I was in special needs classes until I graduated college
Speaker 1: after seven years of college, all the way from as
Speaker 1: long as I remember, so there was a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, inner suffering that I created myself based on experiences,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to be happy. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be joyful. I was a loving kid, but also when
Speaker 1: I was triggered, there's a lot of anger and resentment.
Speaker 1: And it took me many years to learn how to
Speaker 1: heal and learn how to accept and love myself. And
Speaker 1: I was about eight years ago when I learned that process,
Speaker 1: and I'm stilling that but still in that process. I'm
Speaker 1: not perfect. But I've also had a deep sense of
Speaker 1: gratitude at the same time for my life. So there
Speaker 1: was like a knowing even though I was like angry
Speaker 1: and upset and resentful as an younger kid, the older
Speaker 1: at God, I was just like God, I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: do something for the world. I don't know what it is,
Speaker 1: but I know my life is more meaningful than being
Speaker 1: a dumb kid and just being an athlete. But it's
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but I need to
Speaker 1: figure it out. And that listening to that voice, trusting it,
Speaker 1: or that knowing nous is what's allowed me to wake
Speaker 1: up every day, literally, I kid you not, with just
Speaker 1: so much gratitude that I have another day to express myself,
Speaker 1: to enjoy life, to meet cool people, to share what
Speaker 1: I've learned, to learn new stuff. I mean, I woke
Speaker 1: up this morning seven am. I did a Spanish class
Speaker 1: because I committed to learning Spanish, and it's I've been
Speaker 1: doing it for six months. This one on one Spanish class,
Speaker 1: I have, uh some of that teaches me on zoom.
Speaker 1: And for twenty years, Ryan, I've been telling myself I
Speaker 1: want to learn Spanish twenty years. Every year I say
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy this course, I'm gonna download this learning app,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this thing. And I try it and
Speaker 1: it's so hard on my brain that I get exhausted,
Speaker 1: and I'm like the hardest thing I've ever done. And
Speaker 1: the middle of last year, I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: Every year I tell myself I'm gonna learn the Spanish,
Speaker 1: and every year it's New Year's Eve and I say,
Speaker 1: I haven't done a squat, and I feel like I
Speaker 1: always let my self down. And I said to myself
Speaker 1: this year, I was like, I don't care if this
Speaker 1: takes me ten years to learn, Like I need to
Speaker 1: stop speeding up the process of being fluent in Spanish
Speaker 1: and I needed to enjoy the process of like just
Speaker 1: a small little wind, you're like just figuring out one
Speaker 1: thing every class and being okay with sucking. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, the first six months have been the
Speaker 1: most challenging, humbling thing for me because I feel like
Speaker 1: I've got nowhere. But today, literally this morning was the
Speaker 1: first morning where I was like, I'm understanding some of
Speaker 1: these things. Maybe I'm a slower learner, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: extremely challenging based on how I learned, but man, I'm like,
Speaker 1: it just felt good to be like, Okay, even though
Speaker 1: I'm probably not gonna be fluent for many, many years,
Speaker 1: I understand more than I did six months ago, and
Speaker 1: I can be proud of the progress. And that's been
Speaker 1: that's been fun, dude. I am so excited for the
Speaker 1: future day whenever. That's good. When you put out there
Speaker 1: you're one episode at School of Greatness complete exactly, It's
Speaker 1: gonna be awesome. You like, I don't even understand how
Speaker 1: I'm here right now, but this is happening. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: something you also said you spent so much time on
Speaker 1: kind of one on one with people, whether they're your
Speaker 1: coaches or the people that work with you, or or
Speaker 1: kind of students and stuff. And I remember when you
Speaker 1: and I met a couple of years ago. You know,
Speaker 1: you're on you're on your phone, um, and it's like,
Speaker 1: what do you do when you're like answering d M?
Speaker 1: It's like answering d M S. I just remember the
Speaker 1: look you gave me, and it is probably just, you know,
Speaker 1: random moment, but it's like one of those moments that
Speaker 1: stuck with me. It's like, holy sh it, Like he
Speaker 1: put so much passion and care into the responses to
Speaker 1: total strangers on social media, where I think you even
Speaker 1: said like you were you responded to almost everybody. Still,
Speaker 1: even this morning, I was responding to d M. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: that is that is. I don't know if it's the
Speaker 1: smartest use of my time. But you know you're probably
Speaker 1: smarter by not doing it. But I feel like, um
Speaker 1: the stage of that. With my life, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be as connected to as many people as possible. It's
Speaker 1: I want to have a pulse of what people are
Speaker 1: saying and what their challenges are, what they're you know,
Speaker 1: their feedback, what their feedback is, what's working, what's not working,
Speaker 1: so that I can be like, Okay, I never want
Speaker 1: to lose touch and think I've figured it out and
Speaker 1: think I've made it or I think I've mastered something,
Speaker 1: because the beginner's mind for me is always benefit in
Speaker 1: me at any stage of my life. And when I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm the man, that's when I slip up.
Speaker 1: That's when I make mistakes. That's when my audience can
Speaker 1: feel that, Okay, he's got a big head now and
Speaker 1: he's not you know, caring and compassionate. So if I'm
Speaker 1: not constantly reminding myself, the world will remind me in
Speaker 1: a way that's not as pleasant. I have so many
Speaker 1: questions for you, and I'm never gonna ask them all
Speaker 1: because we're totally burning into time. But what do you
Speaker 1: bullish on in the twenties, like where do you think
Speaker 1: the world goes? Where does the world go? For podcasting?
Speaker 1: Like what's this? What is this business? I'm bullish on team,
Speaker 1: and I've realized that I've only been a I've gotten
Speaker 1: so far with a very small limited team before the
Speaker 1: last year, and a lot of it just being myself
Speaker 1: and saying I'm gonna bet. I was betting on me,
Speaker 1: I was blush on me. But I realized what what
Speaker 1: got me here won't necessarily be the thing that's gonna
Speaker 1: give me to the next level of where my vision
Speaker 1: is my mission. And so I know that I need
Speaker 1: amazing people on our team. And I go back to sports,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, I need all stars. So I need
Speaker 1: people that are invested in a mission, who are hungry,
Speaker 1: excited just like me. And that's what we've been investing in.
Speaker 1: We brought on I think seven or eight people in
Speaker 1: the last six months and I'm looking to bring on
Speaker 1: another seven people in the next three or four months.
Speaker 1: So I've been uh learning the skill of, you know,
Speaker 1: being a better coach to teams as opposed to me
Speaker 1: being coached and being the star player. How do I
Speaker 1: now coach people I've never really done that. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a little bit, but I've never done it
Speaker 1: in my business context. And so learning how to build
Speaker 1: an amazing team because the more I spend time, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're around a lot of wealthy people, successful people who
Speaker 1: scale businesses. They don't they don't get a billion dollar
Speaker 1: exit or a hundred million dollar exit with five people
Speaker 1: on the team. I mean, that's probably extremely rare. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got three employees, we have a thousand employees, we
Speaker 1: have seventy employees. It's just you can't do it all
Speaker 1: in your own And so for me, it's how do
Speaker 1: I build team better? How do I build culture better
Speaker 1: so that they're integrated with each other and feeling connected
Speaker 1: without me um and and how do we how do
Speaker 1: we reach more people uh in the service of what
Speaker 1: we're creating. So that's what I'm excited about building team
Speaker 1: because then I know that's the thing that's going to
Speaker 1: get us from you know, thirteen million downloads a month
Speaker 1: uh to a hundred million downllards a week, and the
Speaker 1: mission is to serve a hundred million people weekly to
Speaker 1: help them improve their life. And we can't I can't
Speaker 1: do that alone. I can't do it as a small team.
Speaker 1: I need the right team who is all in on
Speaker 1: the mission to help us create more meaningful content that
Speaker 1: is scalable, that has better distribution, production value, all that stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's scaling every aspect of the team and the
Speaker 1: different tentacles we have in our business. And also, I
Speaker 1: don't know if people have bought your book yet, but
Speaker 1: it just came out with congrats in the success I've
Speaker 1: been diving through. Man, I read it like everything you're
Speaker 1: sharing in there and uh the you know. So for me,
Speaker 1: if people are having bought the book, they need to
Speaker 1: buy the book Big Money Energy, because it's a it's
Speaker 1: a game changer. And I love how you talk about
Speaker 1: confidence in there, because I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to believe in themselves. That the
Speaker 1: skill of learning how to believe in yourself is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest skills that we can have. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter how much experience you have, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: the credentials and years all this stuff. But and you
Speaker 1: teach that skill well in the book. So I want
Speaker 1: people to to get that and buy a couple of
Speaker 1: companies in their friend as well. So thanks for the
Speaker 1: plug man. Of course, of course, man, and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to have you on our show, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you things that no one's ever asked you,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna get you to share things you've never
Speaker 1: shared before. So people should listen to that too, right, Man,
Speaker 1: Go about your day, keep crushing it, keep being great.
Speaker 1: I will talk to you soon. Man, see you if
Speaker 1: you're ready to take action today. Based on lewis Houses
Speaker 1: entire blueprint for how he got to where he is,
Speaker 1: go to Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast to
Speaker 1: download an action plan that I put together for you,
Speaker 1: as well as the show notes. That's Big Money Energy
Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast. Find more podcasts like Big Money
Speaker 1: Energy on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Big Money Energy is hosted by me
Speaker 1: Ryan Sirhant. It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca
Speaker 1: and executive produced by Lindsay Hoffman.