Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Shawn Thomas: Invest in Knowledge and Succeed! - 087

Episode Date: February 23, 2019

According to Shawn Thomas; business mentor and Instagram coach, knowledge is power. There is no better way to gain knowledge than from a seasoned veteran. Many entrepreneurs want to be successful, but they don't want to pay the price of admission. Watch or listen now to discover the in’s and out’s of finding the right mentor for you, so you can begin to grow your own empire!     “I want all the guidance I can have” - Bedros Keuilian   Here’s what you’ll discover: 1:30 - How Shawn took a scam and turned it into a productive business; and why you need to do whatever it takes to course correct the situation 11:50 -  How to leverage your business and become the industry standard 16:30 - Why you should utilize the knowledge and experience of a mentor or coach, and what it can do for your business 30:00 - How important it is to be comfortable to talk face to face; and what skills you need to have to perfect it 46:05 - How Shawn focuses on teaching and learning, and how it led him to his next greatest idea   “You learn so much as a student, but you really don't learn until you become a teacher.” – Shawn Thomas   Follow us on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian / @akashawnthomas Buy Man Up and get Bedros’s High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/   Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow     “Most people aren't willing to pay or work for it” -Shawn Thomas “It’s pay to play”

You know, they always say, you learn so much as a student, but you really don't truly learn until you become a teacher. Yes. Because you recognize your blind spots, you recognize your inadequacies, and you become a better leader. Hey, friends, and welcome to another episode of The Empire Show. This is Pedro's Kulian, and we are filming with my man, Sean Thomas, an inside look. And Sean Thomas is the founder of Ask a Millionaire, over a million followers on Instagram, and today he's our guest. He's built and sold a company, and I'm fascinated by that. And I bet you, you're... You are too if you're building an empire. So Sean, welcome to the studio.

Good to be here, man. Likewise. Likewise. Thanks for coming. Hey, so tell us about the company that you built and sold and kind of how it all started. So in 1999 I was selling insurance and I was at this cigar shop and in walks this guy, now to set the tone of the guy. The point was I always want to make a lot of money.

We'll get to that. But I meet this guy in a cigar shop in Memphis, Tennessee where I was living and I was selling insurance. And imagine a pit boss from the 70s. In your mind, the used car salesman cliche. So the short stocky, East Coast, slick back hair, mustache, cheap suit, five foot seven, yes, and fast talker. And he says, hey, Sean, you know, what do you do for a living? And I said, well, I sell insurance.

He says, do you like it? And I said, it's all right. And he says, how would you like to make $245,820 a year? And I said, 245,820. And he says, yeah. And I said, who wouldn't? So this was back in the dial-up stages. So I'll lead to how we got into the business.

But it's important to tell the background because that's what we want to learn is how do we actually start businesses? Where do we get the idea, right? So he takes us to lunch, and he tells us about this. Who's the us? Me and the cigar shop owner. Got it. And we go to lunch and he says, this is back in the dial-up days, 1999. But this is before high-speed Internet and all of our,

iPhones and laptops and things. This was dial-up days. He says, I have an idea that I'm going to put web TV units, kind of like an Apple TV unit. Back in the day, Microsoft had bought this company called WebTV, and it was a little box that you could hook up to your TV and a telephone line, and it would let you surf the web through the TV. Pretty novel idea. Right. So anyways, he says, we're going to put these in hotels all throughout the world. And he says, I have a relationship with Microsoft to buy the boxes from Philip Magnobox. And he starts throwing out what we're call the power of association to get people to buy into the dream right here's the power of association I'm all in I'm here all I heard was the 245,820 dollars I am curious Sean how did he

get so specific on that number well he had a system and he actually showed us exactly how he got to the 245,820 he had a system and so he says to me he says you know Sean he says he says here's what I need and this is where I should have used my common sense but I was young, naive, and experienced, which I learned was a great asset, and I still use that mindset today. He said, I need somebody who's Lily White because I don't have the greatest past in the world. And it should have been the biggest red flag to stay away from this guy right then. But I was like, I'm Lily White.

Right. Look at me. I got what you need, right? So he says, I'm going to sell these to hotels. And the interesting thing where fate would have was one of the guys that was one of my biggest insurance clients was Indian, Asian Indian. And little did I know at the time that Asian Indians in America own over 50% of the hotels in America. So I call this guy and I say, hey, Vinnie, I said, let me tell you about this idea of this business that this guy wants to put this device into hotels.

And he says, oh, my family owns all kinds of hotels. Let's do it. I can just make phone calls and they'll buy the product. So long story short, we get involved in this business. And I was the CFO because I was an insurance agent. That would make me a CFO, right? Sure, why not? Of course, you know.

And Mike, the guy, Mike, have you ever seen the movie Boiler Room? I have. Okay. Remember Ben Affleck and Boilerm? Yes. Okay, those meetings, you just come in. It's not an interview. You're just come in there and it's really, you're coming to an interview,

but then you realize it's a business opportunity. Yeah, you're being recruited. We did that for about 12 weeks. We advertised where he said he needed the Lily Wipe. I was the credit card and I would put ads on career builder and headhunter.net back in the day. And we would tell people to come to Memphis for a job interview for a potential income of $200,000 a year, XYZ. They would come in, we'd sit them in this really nice boardroom and Mike would go to town and show them how to make the 245,820. And then he would say, is anybody interested?

All the hands would go up after he mentioned Microsoft and Phillips and in the hotels Hilton and Marriott. Everybody's like, oh my God, this is going to. And this was back in 1999 when all these ideas. guys were making big bucks, big bucks in technology. Within 12 weeks, we recruited over 120 people as salespeople and 20 people is what we called regional directors and we sold them territories and brought in over a million dollars of cash to fund this business. Now all the while I'm saying well when are we going to start selling some product and actually putting it hotels? We're selling the dream but where's the you know where's the concrete purchase orders? Well we're getting

people to buy into the business opportunity. Got it. And they're not, oh, shit. And Mike is selling them on, this works. We have relationship with hotels. We have relationship with the manufacturers. All the while, me and my naivities going, cool, it's all there. Did no research, did no nothing.

Come to find out all of it was basically bullshit. He didn't have a relationship with Philip Magnebos, no relationship with hotels, no relationship with anybody and had no idea how to truly install these boxes in hotels. So being a problem solver myself, which I know that you believe in being resourceful, I'm a resourceful person. I call one of my friends and I say, we got to figure out how to install these things into hotels because we just sold some to some hotels. We got to figure out how to install them.

So I started learning about, similar to how you became an expert in the fitness industry, I started becoming an expert in hotels, infrastructure. And what I learned first is not every hotel, they might have a phone in the room, but that doesn't mean that if all 120 people at that Hampton Inn picked up the phone at the same time to make a phone call, that they would get a dial tone. Wow. The hotel would only have actually about 12 telephone lines for all the guests, and they call them Potts lines, plain old telephone lines. Oh, wow. Okay.

And so that's where I started learning about technology, the infrastructure of hotels. So real quickly, we learned that that business wasn't going to go anywhere because the guy just didn't have the infrastructure. We didn't know about hotel budgets. We didn't know what their buying process was, didn't know anything about the franchise organizations, and it was just a complete cluster. But what I did is I learned about the hotel technology. I learned about the buying process. I developed the relationships and kind of got known as this computer guy. So how did I get into my business?

We shut down that company in 2001 when high-speed Internet hit the... Now, let me ask you a question. This fellow Mike. Yes. where, again, in hindsight, you realize the red flag should have gone off when he goes, I need someone Lily White. Absolutely.

And he even fessed up and he said, listen, I've got kind of a sketchy past. Yeah. I'm just curious, just as a guy, did you ask him? Like, hey, what kind of past do you have? Oh, yeah, he said gone to jail. He said, yeah, he's, all kinds of stuff, man.

So, like, was he just a straight-up con artist? Straight-up con artist. I was so, and I'm telling you, a lot of your audience probably feels this way because they get involved in a lot of these scams online and things these days. I was just so fomo of success that anything that came my way, I was that guy that just said, I'm just going to try everything. And 99% of the time, it failed.

And I kept wondering why. You know, I kept wondering why. Why am I failing at all this stuff? I'm buying everything when they say that I can make a lot of money doing this. So all I heard was that $245,800. It's all I heard. So I didn't listen to. And you know, at that time, Bedros, where we're privileged today to have guys like you and I talk to the social media audience and we've been through stuff, we didn't have that back in the day.

I heard you talk about your creative letters that you had. That's all we had. We had hard copy mailed newsletters that came to us, but we never talked to Zig Zigler. No. We never talked to Brian Tracy. We never talked to Neerle. You know, we didn't talk to any of these guys that we were buying their stuff. It wasn't like today.

It was a one-way conversation. parents were in the military who am I going to call for advice I didn't have anybody to call so I just had to go with my naivity and my gut instinct to try to trust situations right and so anyway so lots of red flags but here's the thing you know and I wrote a book called the power of naivety after I really tried to determine how I found the success at least that I found in life was I was just naive but I'm going to try to answer your question because I know it's a long answer but the story is is where it's at is after we ended up shutting down that company, and the reasons we end up shutting down the company

is because Dialup went away and high speed came out. And I found out over time, after we dissolved that company and went bankrupt with that company, not personally, I still didn't have any money because I didn't have any money to lose anyways. I decided, or I learned that the hotel industry didn't have a budget to put a computer in every single room. So what I said was, why don't I just put a computer in the lobby of a hotel?

Not much expense, and let's just do one at a time. And it'll be very inexpensive. So I just started with one hotel. I drove to the hotel and I said, hey, I have this computer on a put in your lobby. And they're like, are you crazy? And I said, no, listen, your guests are going to use this. This was before there were smartphones, before people were carrying laptops. And that's how the company started.

And that was in 2002. And long story, fast forward ahead, 2013, when we sold the company to a private equity group, we got the $20 million in revenue. We had global contracts with companies like Hilton do everything. like Hilton do every single one of their hotels in the world across every flag, and it all started by selling it to just one hotel. And the reason that I was able to start it was by that time that three years of that 1999 to 2002, I had become an expert on the hotel industry, the buying process, the ownership organizations, the franchise organizations, and I was an expert at computers.

And so I was like the authority expert in this arena. So when I talked to them, they knew I knew what I was talking about and that's how I just drove it home. But ironically, you weren't an expert three years prior. You were from the insurance industry. Exactly. Selling insurance. Exactly. So how old were you?

Now you're like, where does we, where do we go with this? This is nuts. I've got so many questions to ask you, and I'm going to ask you in the order that I think our audience is going to most benefit from. One, how old were you when you met Mike? 29. So you're 29. So by the time you're now dial-up goes away.

We get high-speed internet. You're probably 32, 33? 32. Okay, and it's 2002, you're starting your own company. Yep. All right, I get it, one hotel at a time, the logic makes sense, this one works, now you've got this person as a social proof, you go to the next hotel, hey, we're doing it at this one, if it worked here, it's gonna work for you.

Hey, we're doing it this one, right? Exactly. I got all that. Exactly. But then something happens in 2000, late 2007, 2008, the economy crashes, yet you went on to sell your business in 2013 while everyone else was contracting, you sold a business, which is almost unheard of in that time. How did you, I don't even want to know how you sold yet, we're going to get there.

How did you weather 2007, 2008, 2009? You know, the interesting thing was we had our biggest years in 2008 and 2009 of our entire company. Why? 2008 was the first year that I actually made a million dollars in one year, personally. During the worst times of our economy, I remember being on the news watching the market getting crushed, and we're crushing it. And the reason why is, naively, I picked an industry. The hotel industry is really unique. So if you've got somebody watching that is selling

to the hotel industry or franchises, you're gonna appreciate this. When you become a brand standard on the budget line of a franchise, it's in the budget, it's there. It doesn't matter really what the economy's doing. Because they're budgeting it a year in advance, at least anyways, and franchise organizations like yourself,

you don't put anything in unless you know it's something that you're, your clients, your customers, whatever you call them, are going to be. Franchisees are going to be. No, no, your customers, the guests at the hotel, that they're going to want to use. You know, once you put soap in a room,

you're not going to take soap out. Once you put, you know, bands in your facility, you're not going to take them away just because the economy isn't doing good. True. So one of the things I recognized what set me apart from my competitors was I went after the volume play. And you had asked me earlier about, you know, well, that business centers have been around.

And I'll explain why the difference of why, we had the success we had was I went the volume play and I went out and struck deals with all of the major organizations to either become an approved vendor, which is the lowest, preferred, which is the next grade, and then mandated vendor. So some of the hotels that we did business with, I struck deals so great with them where we were profitable, but we were the mandated vendor. They had, it's not, they had to use us. It wasn't like, hey, you got to have this computer.

in the lobby and then go find somebody. It wasn't, here's, you got to have this computer in the lobby and we recommend these. It's you got to have this computer and you got to use Unigest. And we had just signed a big deal with Marriott and Choice Hotels right as the economy was collapsing. We had just signed those biggest contracts. So it was already in the budget. And once it's in the budget, it's got to get done. Think about it today.

The company that bought us has gone out there with an acquisition strategy. If you go into a hotel today, those are still there. even though now we all use phones and laptops that are connected to Wi-Fi with our own little personal hotspots, those computers are still in the hotel. Because once they get there, it's like they set it and forget it. It's just part of the thing. Yeah, and that was why we crushed it was because I had just signed the biggest deals right before the economy crashed. How much of this was timing well organized on your part versus just sheer luck?

I would probably say it was all 100% luck as far as when it happened and where it happened. And the reason I say that is I hated living in Memphis, Tennessee. Like, I just didn't like it. If you live in Memphis, I'm really sorry, but I just did not like Memphis, Tennessee. Sure. And I lived there 10 years. Luckily, I start my company in Memphis, Tennessee, and who resides in Memphis, Tennessee, Hilton. So the embassy suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Haldon, and Hampton Inn Brands reside right there.

there. One of my first clients was the regional director of Hilton, and he put my product in the Embassy Suites hotel, that all of the corporate bigwigs that would come from Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, the Bigwig corporates, would stay at that Embassy Suites to do their meetings with those franchises. So one day, my guy at Embassy Suite says, hey, the big boss came in and we're going to go after the business travelers with Embassy Suites. We want you to come in and show them what you do at our Embassy Suites because we want to do it at all of our 450. hotels across America. Wow. The same deal. Wow. And so that just catapulted. I mean, can you plan something like that? No. You just can't plan something like that. You know, I'm really,

I'm really grateful that you're being transparent about this because when I started Fit Body Boot Camp as a franchise, it was literally on the heels of the economic crash. You think about one-on-one personal training is very expensive, right? $600 to $1,200 to $1, $1,000 a month to work with a one-on-one personal trainer. The economy crashes, and not a lot of people want to work with a one-on-one personal trainer. Well, at that time, I was coaching and consulting. Well, they want to, they just can't expend it. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And so, of course, if personal trainers aren't getting clients, I'm

not getting any coaching clients at that time. Right. And I was so adamantly against the group personal training model, the boot camp model, because in my stubborn head, the model was one-on-one private personal training. And so how can we train people in a group? It wasn't until the economy

crashed in one of my clients, who later became a mentor, Jim Franco. I talked about him in my book, Man Up, said, he goes, hey, you do realize that there's coaches on the NFL field, like one coach to many professional athletes who are like the tip of the spear. And if one coach can train many athletes who play different positions, don't you think that one coach can train many clients who have one desired goal, which is to burn fat and put on some muscle tone? Right. And he completely changed why I looked at it in 2008. By 2009, we had launched FitBody Boot Camp as a franchise model.

And that literally saved my house from getting foreclosed because I pivoted. it from being the business coach to one-on-one trainers to now I believed in the boot camp model, one-on-many, and said, hey guys, I'm going to create this franchise, and by 2012, we had franchise, and off we went. But so much of it was luck. A mentor telling me, hey, you're looking at it the wrong way. In 2008 and 9, when the economy crashed, I was lucky enough that personal trainers were suffering, just like I was, as their coach, as their business coach, and I said, I think I created a business model here that might make sense. So much of it was luck for me. Strategy comes in later when you decide how am I going to navigate this to a multi-million

dollar brand. Right. Well, the cool thing what you just said there that I catch, because I see, this is what I do for a living today is you said, I was close-minded about this. Not that you were closed-minded to opportunity or business, which you weren't, but you talked to a mentor, who you respected, who you knew had experience that you didn't have, and you took his advice. You weren't an ask hole that just went and just kept asking for information. and didn't do anything with it, you actually learned. And I think that that's one of the most powerful things that a lot of people today aren't utilizing.

It's amazing. Even with a million followers on Instagram, the number one thing is, I don't have a mentor or anybody to talk to it. I'm like, Bedros has a podcast. Craig has a podcast. Look at all these people that have great information and knowledge. The only way to get in, you know, there's so much rhetoric. I could go on the whole show about this,

but there's so much noise and rhetoric around a lot of the quotes and memes on Instagram today that one of them being, you know, you're the average of the five people you hang around. Well, to hang around five guys like you, you're either going to work for you or pay to pay it. It's the only way. It's the only way. Because you, me, and every other, you know, guy and girl that likes to do this stuff, we'll put out all the knowledge general knowledge that we can. Yeah.

But if you want to be in that circle of five people, the only way you're going to do it is to pay or work for us. And most people aren't, most people aren't willing to pay for it or come work for us because they're like, no, I want my own thing. Well, are you, can you do your own thing? But the few will. Yeah. Most won't, but the few will. So I love that you said, a mentor told me because it's just, I think that's probably the most important thing to take away from this is that that one piece of knowledge changed your whole mindset and kept your business alive. And by the way, since then, people still ask me today, well, gee, Baderos,

do you have any mentors now? Because clearly, you know it all. This is one I'm most likely to crash and burn because there's so much at stake now. I have a speaking mentor. I have, I don't know if you've heard of the company, 1-800 got junk, the junk hauling company, right? Cameron Harold, the CEO of that company, or the former CEO, and he helped build it, I believe, to $200 million before he moved on. He mentors us, actually my second in command, Bryce, our VP. And so we've got a speaking mentor. I've got a CEO mentor.

I've got mentors coming out my ears because I want all the guidance I can have. Because the way I look at it is I look at my mentors as though these are outside eyes who have experience that I don't have in the helicopter looking to see what's coming up in my way and how I can navigate it. Like I'm willing to pay for that for them to give me the shortcut. to time collapse, so solve the problem, break through the bottleneck. And most people, I believe, don't get a mentor, not because they can't afford it. They don't believe in themselves.

They don't believe that once they get the information, that they'll act on it personally. So you made it through the economy. And I'm curious. This is, if I was, again, listening to this podcast as someone who subscribes, I go, well, all right, so you were a mandated, like you were a mandated product for some of these franchises. So how do you become a mandated product? Do you have to give the franchisor a kickback? Is that like a wink, wink, hey, if you make me mandated,

I'll give you a kickback when the franchisees install the computers. Is that how that works? Okay, so no. Yes and no, but it's in a different way. Okay. What I learned was there is a pay to play to get networked with the high level, you know, I never did business with the CEO, who is now Arnie Sorenson, I never did business with him at Marriott.

Let's just use Marriott for an example. Sure. But I did business with the regional vice presidents of the different brands. And what I learned was in getting in there and networking with the corporate team at corporate office was by sponsoring their annual meetings, their general managers conferences, their owner's annual conferences, that the more money I would pay to sponsor, the better the table I could sit at and the bigger the booth. So it wasn't, and it wasn't seen as a kickback. It was more portrayed as a, you're going to get time to hobnob with the executives. But by showing your support for the organization, you're going to learn more, you know, because not everybody's willing to pay. Like, I remember I was paying $50,000 a year to a couple conferences.

And all the other competitors that I had, because a lot popped up, they weren't willing to do that. So, of course, the executives at the organizations, they saw that. Of course, and they're going to give you preferential treatment. I mean, of course, your product has to be good and you have to provide great service, but when all things are equal and the competitors are all kind of doing the same thing, who do you think they're going to give the business to? Someone that's supporting their organization or somebody that's not. It's the same thing with mentoring and coaching.

If someone is working for me, then I'll mentor them all day long because I want them to succeed in the position and in life which makes them a better employee or some from coaching somebody the more they're paying me the more divided my undivided my attention is gonna be easy enough it was this it was the same exact way gotcha got you that's great advice because I know there's a lot of people again watching and listening to this and they might think well hey I want to getting good with this company well if that company or organization has an annual conference a meetup and expo it might be in your best interest to be there and sponsor

instead of just sending them a DM I can't tell you how many DMs and private messages I get on Facebook from people saying, hey, I want all Fit Body Boot Camp locations to start offering this exercise band or that kettlebell, right? When we say, hey, we sponsor our annual Fit Body Boot Camp World Conference or our gala, oh, you know, it's not in the budget. Well, if it's not in the budget, if you're not willing to pay and support me, how am I going to mandate you and pay and support you? Absolutely. And I see nothing wrong with that. I believe pay to play becomes a filtration process to see who's got the real balls in the business and who's just playing, you know, the little game.

Yeah. I think it's a whole other topic, but it goes like that for everything. I pay to play today. If I want to, if I want to meet somebody, one of the greatest ways that I've learned to meet somebody is to find out where they're donating a dinner at their house for a charity event because we all do that. And go buy that dinner for 10 grand. And then I'm going to get a whole night with that person and their significant other in their house with wine and food for 10 grand. and I'm going to have a loan time. And you're going to build, you know, wine and food. And it makes, you know, you're breaking bread. And so it's all about that. It's all a pay or play system. If you really want to elevate and get to that next level, that's what I try and teach is you got to be willing to do that.

You know, I'm going to share something with you that Craig Ballantan and I talk about kind of off-camera, and it's just never really made it on camera or onto the podcast. But I believe, Sean, that food, sex, and money are the, ultimate avenues of getting the outcome that you want. Absolutely. And you said, hey, you know, someone's hosting a dinner at their house for some kind of charity event that they believe in.

And it's a $10,000 buy-in to go to that dinner. Well, then look what you're doing. You're breaking bread with them in their house, right? And you gave them money. First, we're using Robert Chaldeini's one of his six laws of influence, reciprocity. Right. You gave money. You gave money.

They feel indebted now. They have to give you their ear. Exactly. The very least, they have to hear your pitch. not like it, you may deliver a horrible pitch, but at the very least, now they owe you something. They're indebted. So that's a robber child, and one of his six weapons of influences is reciprocity.

They owe you. Number two, you're breaking bread. You only break bread with people that you feel safe with, that you trust, and over-breaking bread, people put down their guards, they put down their ego, and we see the real humanity. And alcohol has a good way of influencing that, too. Absolutely. Yeah, alcohol definitely has a great way of bringing down the guards. So, of course, if you can help someone make a connection, there's been plenty of times where

I go, man, I really want to get in good with Sean, let's say. But I don't know what value I can add to Sean's world. But if I can connect Sean with my friend Randy from Skipio and they could do business together, they both own technology businesses, I become that conduit that brought them together. I put money in his pocket in his pocket. So food, sex, and money. And people go, well, what about sex? I'm not saying you ought to go buy a hooker for a person just to a faster thing, be my guest.

But off camera earlier we were talking about Frank Kern. A good friend of mine, he's actually like a brother to me. And he was going through a rough time many, many years ago. And one of my clients, Natalia, I just had a feeling that they were going to be a good pair. And of course, I asked Frank to come and speak at my mastermind, and they hit it off. And Natalia is now his wife, and they've got three beautiful children and live happily ever after, many trips to Paris. And the difference is that he wasn't introducing a hooker, it was matchmaking. Right, it was matchmaking.

Yeah, let's clear that up. Let's clear that up. The point of this is, like, what can you do to influence someone's, you know, sex life or love life or break bread with them? People, again, are too afraid to go to a conference that Sean is speaking at, and instead of just coming up to you like a fanboy, what if I said, hey, Sean, are you busy, can I buy you dinner tonight? Or if you're having dinner, how about we go to the bar and hang out, let's have a couple drinks together? Like, be willing to invest via money, via food, via making the connection, introducing them someone to, that might be the love of their life. And I believe that's the fastest way to getting to the outcome that you want,

assuming that you've got a great product and a great pitch, and you're going to add value to that person's life. Absolutely. So let's just walk away from that lesson for a moment. You're now... Well, you might if I... Yeah, yeah, please. You know, one of my mentors is a guy by the name of Tom Black,

and he's arguably one of the greatest sales trainers in America. He's been around for a long time, toured with Michael Victor Hansen back in the day. and he, in taking a few companies public and finding incredible wealth, like incredible wealth, he became a massive wine collector and became a world-renowned wine collector. And with that, has dined with, you know, not only celebrities, but with the greatest chefs in the world, the greatest winemakers in the world. I mean, truly drinking with them.

Wow. Crazy. So he taught me about what he is writing a new book called Doing Business at the Table. We're so used to doing business online that when we do meet a lot of times when people meet us face to face, they don't know how to communicate, right? Yeah. They don't even know how to talk. They know not talking short form communication on a DM, but you get them face to face.

They don't know about the law of reciprocity and saying, okay, let me ask you questions and get to know you and build rapport and trust so that the law of reciprocity kicks in that if I do that for you, you're going to do that for me. and they completely get lost at these having a drink or coffee or lunch or a meal. There's a whole art to that. There truly is. And I've closed some of the biggest deals that I've ever done in my life over a dinner where my mentor said, here, you need to start collecting wine. And you know, I asked you, because you just said you don't drink, so I don't bring you a bottle. But if somebody likes wine and you bring a 1982 Bordeaux or you bring some really special

wine that you can explain the history of it and what makes it special, they're going to remember. that you know that completely set you apart from the other 99.9% people yeah and then like I said you start getting that wine in you the conversation starts going and and so it's part of training I think that this day in Asia people should invest in that say that's a that's new sales training that people are missing out it is is get off of social media it's great to learn how to use social media to market and what have you but people are not investing in the training they need to communicate face-to-face

Dude, you know what's nuts about that, about what you said about how people communicate in short form? I forget if it was Yale or Harvard, but some professor in one of those two universities decided to do some wacky experience, experiment. He got two students, and I believe there are two female students, but the gender he said wouldn't matter. He sat them face to face in front of the class, and he says, talk, get to know each other. And it was very awkward. Hi, hi, how's it going? Good. This is all right. Now, turn your chairs backwards. Now you're back to back. Take out your iPhones. Here's each other's phone numbers. Go.

Man, they started to communicate emojis and they were able to translate their feelings to one another. They were able to share more via texting than face-to-face. That fine art at doing business to the table, as you described, is missing. And I think that's a massive tool for expediting the outcome that you want. Because listen, if you're DMing me, all I have is the words that go by, and I might be able to troll your social media and go, all right, this is a vibe I get about Sean. But when you're here three-dimensional, as a human, just shaking your hand, I can get a vibe, just seeing you, right, connecting. If you're asking me if I have kids or not, or if I drink wine like you did, I get to learn so much more when we're three-dimensional.

And I think, and I know we're going on a tangent here, but you nailed it. This is such an important point. In fact, so much so that I take my kids, especially my son, to speaking events with me. As I told both my daughter and son, as long as you guys maintain a 3.82 or higher, I'll just take you out on a weekday, take it to a speaking event, because to me, that's another form of education. And my son knows that if I'm on stage and he's in the back of the ballroom, usually where the audio video dudes are, and the next guy's getting miced up, doesn't matter who the person is. As soon as they go, hey, who are you? You're not just going to say I'm Badros's son and let them go, well, what do you play a young man? My son knows the three questions to ask. How do you know my dad? Where do you live?

Do you have any kids? And each of those questions, how do you know my dad? Well, we spoke in an event. What was the event? And he knows how to build rapport and ask questions. Because the more you ask about people, the more you get to know them, right? Absolutely.

And I know you're skilled at that, but not enough people listening to this episode right now don't have the skill of building rapport and said they start vomiting at the mouth. Hi, my name is Bedros and I do this and I started that, da-da-da-da. People, was a Zig Ziglar who said, People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Such a powerful lesson. I'm glad you kind of took us down on that segue. Well, think about it. You know, business is about what? Like we were talking to the person, Joan, was, you know, she's like sales. I'm like, yeah, I love salespeople. Sales drives everything. Sales drives operations.

You know, as I'm seeing your workplace here. You talk to all of these entrepreneurs. Let's just call them entrepreneurs. They want to be called entrepreneurs. And you ask them, do you have any professional sales training? Have you taken any sales? training classes like legit no how in the world do you expect to be a successful business person and not know how to sell that just doesn't even make sense to me like at all like and that's because

the greatest salespeople trainers that i know they're not on social media yet hardly they're just starting to break out there's one that has but his style is different than my style but they're just not out there yet. Because they're out there making so much money working for big corporations that will hire them that they're not on social media. So they're not expanding their knowledge base and all their nuggets of training to the to the Instagram audience, the social media audience. So the social media audience doesn't know who to get it from. Right. It's missing. It's missing. And no one's out there seeking it out. And there's a difference, as you know, because I saw your interview with Frank, there's a difference between marketing and sales. It's completely different. You have to know

how to do sales. I just think so many people, some people miss that. Oh, big time, big time. So take us back to the journey again. Now 2008, 2009, you weather that just fine because you were already a line item in the contract for the franchises. Got it, check. But then a few years later, 2013, you sell your company for 20 million, you said? Yeah. You sell your company for 20 million, which is substantial, especially coming out of the economic crash. So first, let me ask you this, how did you even decide you're going to sell? Did someone come to you? Did you go seek them out? How does this work? Okay. Back up to 2006. So I started my company in 2002 by myself.

Yeah. I proved out the concept to four or five hotels, and I had no money. In that previous failed venture, two of the guys from Florida convinced this professional tennis player to give them $200,000 to buy territory of Florida. And the tennis player lost all of his money. Ooh. Like lost it all. Yeah. Done.

So I had a good relationship with these two guys, and I knew who this investor was. because he was on TV, he was ranked in the top 20. So after I prove out the concept, I call one of the guys that knows the guy, and I said, hey, I want you to introduce me to Jason because I want to ask him to invest in this new venture. I know he lost $200,000. Let me go back to the guy that lost all $200,000.

How is that conversation going? So he goes, all right, I'll introduce you. So I call up Jason. I said, hey, Jason, I know that you know who I am. You know not about me. I know how much money you've lost. I want to let you know that I have now created the business plan and the model that I believe is going to be successful

and that I believe that can make back your $200,000. All right. I mean, it was at a pure excitement and desperation of not having any money to grow because I was really broke at this time. So he goes, we'll come down here to Florida to meet with my wife and I, and we'll meet and talk. So I bring down this, I buy business plan pro online

and I put together this little business plan and take it down the floor and I meet with them. And all I was looking for was $25,000. Did you talk about the epitome of naivety? Listen to this. I go down there and I say, hey, listen, I know this is going to be a success so much. And I want to protect you. You take 51% of the company for 25 grand.

Wow. I said, you take 51% of the company. I said because, quite frankly, if we're going to grow, we're going to need access to credit. And I don't have good credit you do. You probably need to own the 51%. So I was forward enough thinking there. Sure. He says, okay, I leave, go back home.

He says, let me think about it overnight. calls me the next day and he says, okay, Sean, we're in. So there's a guy that lost $200,000. I'm asking for another $25. As an investor today, if somebody asks me for $25,000, I laugh at him. I go, that's not enough money to do anything. I said, the biggest risk investments out there as an investor are the small dollar amounts, not the big dollar amounts. I'd rather coach you or mentor you and give you $25,000 of coaching. Like you were saying, I love that idea, then give you $25,000, because I know if I give you $25,000, you're going to need what? more another 25 another and another so I get the 25,000 from Jason he takes 51 percent and I just start building the company in 2006 I'm about to score this deal with with embassy suites and this is going to be a million dollar deal Jason doesn't want

to invest any more money and I saw so I approach a guy that I met at a trade show in Memphis that had a company selling to the hotel industry and I called them up and I said hey would you be interested in investing in the company I'm about to close this deal And I had had a conversation with him previously about being an investor, and he turned me down. And funny story is, so you don't want to listen to everybody that says your idea is not good. And let me tell you why. When I approached him in 2003 and said, would you be interested in partnering or collaborating? He says to me, I don't think computers and lobbies of hotels are going to be a good business model, Sean.

I don't think it's going to work out. But he said... Imagine if you actually listen to that guy? Exactly. But he did say this, and this is where, like your mentor said to you, change your business model. He did say to me, he said, because I was doing an ad-based model at the time, I'll give you the computer for free and also advertising to local restaurants around your hotel, and that's how I'll make my money. This guy says, Sean, here's what I would do. I still don't think it's going to work, but I would change your business model where you sell the computers to the hotels and charge an annual maintenance contract because computers are going to break down, and you need cash flow to hire people.

You know, as your salespeople are doing more, you're hiring more operations, right? So it's the same thing. So I said, okay, I wasn't uncoachable. So I took his idea, I changed it. So when I called him back in 2006, I said, hey, Mark, it's Sean again. I took your advice. I'm now doing $250,000 in revenue and I'm about to sign a deal with embassy suites for a million-dollar deal. Do you want in?

Wow. So he says, yeah. He says, I will invest $175,000 in your business for $51,000. And I'm like, well, I don't have any 1%. So I have to call Jason and say, hey, Jason, I need your stock back. And Mark's going to come in at 51%. I'll have 46% and you'll have like 5%. Or I'll have 45% or 44% and you'll have 5%.

And that'll equal 100. And he's like, well, what's in it for me? And I said, well, out of the $175,000 that Mark gives me, I'll give you $100,000. I'll take 75 and then we'll continue to pay you bonuses like we would as a company. So 2006, Mark invests in my company. He moves me to Nashville because he has offices like this, you know, and he says, you can just start here and grow. And 2009, we end up having the 50-50 kind of partnership issues, even though we weren't

50-50. And Mark was a great mentor, great person to do business with. He walked me into big hotels. but we started to have a clash of control issues of growth. And what I try to tell people, and here's a learning lesson that, fear is not the only thing that's detrimental to business partners and growth. So is greed. So greed and fear both can be very negative because here our company is doing really well

and we're clashing heads because I want to just keep crushing it. And he's like, Sean, relax, enjoy the fruits of your labor. And I'm like, no, man, we've got to take care. We got to capitalize on this growth and we got to keep crushing it. And so we had a lot of conflict. So we got in a fight. I said, I want to buy back the company. And he says, all right, give me a million bucks and you can buy back the company.

And I didn't have a million dollars personally, but I said, you know what? Let me see if I can get it. So I called the bank, who we had a great banking relationship with. I had a couple hundred thousand dollars that I had saved up by then. Between the bank and my cash, wrote my check for a million bucks. Literally. How did that feel? It was really crazy.

You know, I honestly don't. I honestly don't even remember the feeling. We took a picture of it, and I posted on Instagram. It's a cool Instagram post. But I actually don't even remember how I felt. But he ended up at the very end saying, well, I actually want to keep 10%, but give me the million. And I was so stupid, I should have said, no, I want 100%. But I let him keep 10%.

And I gave him the million. Now, by that time, Jason had already received all of his $200,000 and doubled, if not tripled, his money. So you made good on that promise. He made good on that. I mean, he made all of his money back. We're great friends. He's like, Sean, you were just like the coolest guy ever met. You honored your word.

You did what you said you were going to do. So he made all of his money back, not just the $25,000, but the $200. He made all of it back. But to answer your question, when Mark owned the 10%, he had a company. And we were working out of the same building. Mark, the asshole he became, business partners can be assholes too. Absolutely. We talk about that all the time on the Empire Show.

he decides to create a competing product to one of the products that we were taken out. Now, let me guess. Let me guess. For all of our viewers and listeners, you did not have an operations agreement between you and him that said he wouldn't create a competing product. No, absolutely not. We didn't even have a non-compete. There you go. Okay. So me being naive and stupid and at this time letting fear take control of the situation, instead of getting my own mentors outside of the relationship and what have you, is I, I say, well, instead of you doing that, why don't we just combine our two companies? We're both doing about, you know, I was doing maybe $7 million a year in revenue, and he was maybe doing six or seven in revenue.

I said, let's just create a whole new company, bring it together, your vested interest, our shared resources, and we'll be 50-50 partners in that. Convincing to do it, and we merged. From the day that we closed that deal, life was hell. But you still gave him that million, right? Oh, I still gave him the million. Absolutely. Life was hell. Because that was in 2009. In 2010 is when we merged. So from 2010, for that year that we merged, was our business was crushing it, making more money than ever. But my life was miserable because every single day I had to fight him for control issues because he was so egotistical. Hey, listen, I'm egotistical. I'm an entrepreneur. We're all egotistical to some extent. It just is what it is. But we started just fighting.

And in 2011, we just decided there's no way we're going to get along. And we said, let's just try to buy each other out. But we didn't have a no compete. So we used that over each other's head. And at that time, we had gotten to be so big financially, and we're doing like $3 to $3.5 million of EBIDA that I said, I can't come up with the money to buy you out. You can't come up with the money to buy me out.

Let's just sell it. So we brought in a financial CEO, and he kind of just left. to charge and we went out to private equity group strategic buyers and eventually one company said we'll do it and that's why we sold we sold not because business wasn't doing good we didn't sell because we wanted to cash out you wanted a divorce we literally had to sell the company because we just didn't want to do business together yeah life was miserable it's no different than people build a dream house so let me draw the visual for all you all listening and watching this so

they'll build a dream house together honey I love you we're gonna grow old this is our forever house we're gonna send our kids to college whatever it is I'll say And then all of a sudden, someone sticks his penis into another vagina that it doesn't belong into. And before I know what they're divorcing, and part of that divorce is we've got to sell this dream house that we built. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's what we warn about partnerships.

And people go, wait a minute, you and Craig are partners. You're warning us about partnerships. Craig and I have such a unique snowflake unicorn experience. Like, it's such a unique thing together that even though we both own 50-50 and the Empire Mastermind and the Empire Show, we both own work like we own 100% of it. And I even say this when Craig is here, and I'm sure he'll hear this episode, but he knows when to yield to me where creativity and marketing this thing is concerned. And I know when to yield to him where a structure of the mastermind is concerned because I'm so busy building the Fit Bodyw Camp franchise empire that I just leave the actual mastermind to him. I trust her judgment on it.

We've got a decade of experience together before we ever went into partnership. Well, you know the interesting thing with that, sorry to cut you off. But the interesting thing is, you know, you can do so much with operating agreements to really structure things. But you know, I just watched this movie Quincy. I don't know if you've watched it yet. It's about Quincy Jones. Amazing, amazing, amazing movie. So influential.

And he talked about... His daughter is on Parks and Rec for the record. Oh really? Okay, yeah. Oh yeah, that's right. Great show. Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra is the person that really was instrumental in Quincy Jones becoming as successful as he was. Although he probably would anyways.

He said they did business for X amount of years. I mean, a long time and never once had a written contract. Never once. So, you know, it's a fine line of doing a handshake deal. I've had handshake deals that we all were happy, and then I've had had them go bad, and I've had contracts that have gone bad and ones went good. You know, but I'm kind of gotten to a point.

I was listening to one of your episodes. It was with Patrick, that David. And he was talking about that as you get older and you get more to protect, you do get a little different in your risk analysis of life. And I love that part of that segment because I'm not as quick to jump into things now that you have a little bit.

Right, right. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that is funny how that works. So these days, now that you've sold your business, you've, and I believe there's a certain type of person who's just cut from the cloth of service and I must pay it forward. I'm that way, you're that way.

Really a lot of people on social media who are teaching for free. That's what we do. We teach for free. We give for free. Sure, do we have something to gain? Maybe we're going to be able to take equity in your business. If you're a shooting star, maybe we'll be able to get you as a coaching client or whatever.

But at the end of the day, we're creating content for a platform absolutely free because we feel the need to pay it forward and serve. Well, free to them because these cameras and these things, they get paid for. Yeah. We're standing in almost a million dollar studio here that we built out just for this show. And this is all free content we're putting out. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm glad you brought that up. But you do something very unique. You've decided to create a mentorship program where you are paying it forward. And it's called Most Won't I Will. Tell me about that. So I started on Instagram when I had, I sold my company in 2013, end of 2013. But in 2011 is where I parted ways and said, listen, you guys run the company. I was a CEO, but I'll take off because this is stressing me out. Just keep me on my CEO salary for the next few years in time.

we sell and I'll just leave quietly. I won't make a mess. And so I came out to, I said, I'm going to go out to Manhattan Beach, which is a place that I really love and I play volleyball and run the strand. And in 2015, after I had kind of invested in a couple little companies and taken some time off, I was on Instagram. I liked Instagram because I'm a very visual person. And I came across these millionaire accounts, you know, with the Ferraris and the cash and all this, but you don't know who runs them. They don't put their name on them. So you don't know if it's a young kid from another country or if it's a you or me. And I'm going, who in the world are these people? That's not how a millionaire lives their life. It's not just that. There's

so much more that goes into it. So it pissed me off. And I'm like, I'm going to create an account. But then I said, okay, I've been in entrepreneurs organization. I've gone through strategic coach coaching program. Dan Sullivan. Yeah, Dan Sullivan. No kidding. I love Dan. You know, I've done all these things And I'm like, I'm going to share the real life of the millionaire, but I can't call it millionaire next door. Even now that's kind of my lifestyle is I'm kind of that person. I said, I can't call it the millionaire next door. I can't use millionaire mentor because that was taken. So I'm like, you know, what is?

And I said, every single time that somebody wants to talk, they just want to ask a millionaire question. I'm like, I'll just name this thing, ask a millionaire. It's pretty simple. I'll just name it ask a millionaire. So I got the dot coms and I did everything that just to make sure Casey turned into something. and I had all of it from a handle perspective. And then I just basically started posting pictures of myself in Manhattan Beach and whatever and just doing the captions like we do today.

And like Gary V. says, I'm like, I was waking up at 5 in the morning, grabbing the phone, seeing how many messages I had, and I was answering all the messages. Then I'd take my shower, go walk on the beach, come back, answer questions. And I did that for literally 18 hours a day for like a long time, a long time. Then the guy that I invested in his company, this first company, he was couch surfing. He stayed at my house. I started mentoring him. And he comes home one day and he says, hey, my marketing director found this new application

called Periscope that came out. And you can actually do what you do without having to write it out. You just turn on the camera and you can talk and answer questions. And I'm like, done. So I get on a Periscope and start really making a name for myself there and people coming in It was to Ask a Millionaire show, and I would just turn it on and let people ask me questions. And that blew up. Instagram started going well.

Instagram Live came out. And then the overarching theme of everything, because I was really trying to teach. The point of the thing was I wanted it to teach and wanted people to get real advice and really figure out. From a real millionaire. And really had to make a change in their life. And it was always, you need to get a mentor. You need to get a mentor. And everybody would then start doing what?

I can't afford it. Or do you want to be my mentor? Yeah, do you want to be my mentor? Yeah, do you want to be my mentor? And I'm not thinking, now here's where you're really going to laugh, because I know you think my monthly fee is really low. I would say to people, why don't you just book a call with me? And they'd say, well, how much is it?

And I go, I don't know, send me 20 bucks. Send me $10. Send me $5. I had people would send me $5. And I would, I created a Google Voice numbers. I didn't have my cell phone. But I would literally talk to somebody for $5, $10. That's how much I really wanted to help somebody else.

Sure. So I started developing a pattern. There was a big need in this audience for mentors. Outside of social media, business people know to get mentors. There's just some weird thing about the Instagram audience. Yeah. Okay, that they just don't understand to get a mentor and pay for it. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to create a mentorship program because I had a pretty good little following.

So I did little polls and services. I said, if I started a mentorship group, who would join? Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm like, okay, done. created a little click funnels page, a website to take the payment online, and did a Facebook group. Nice. After about a year of doing that, I then determined, well, I don't know at all.

So just like you, me, and any person that's been in business a long time, we develop a network of people. And I said, listen, I know how to sell, but I'm not a sales trainer. So I called my friend Tom, and I say, hey, Tom, would you come into my Facebook group a couple times a month and answer questions for free? Sure, Sean, for you, I will. right hey uh jerry who owns a multi-million dollar supplement brand eo member actually he's in yPO i mean doing really well i said hey jerry you know about e-commerce and net suite and all the things of

distribution would you come into my mentorship so i started recruiting all my friends who were much more expert than me for free to come in and answer questions brilliant so then i increase the fees and man i'm telling you it is the i have learned more you know they always say you learn so much a student but you really don't truly learn until you become a teacher yes because you recognize your blind spots you recognize your inadequacies and you become a better leader true and so i've learned more kind of just mentoring and teaching than i did the whole time i was running a business so how does how does someone get into your mentorship program because i know you you charge an obscene amount of money for it yeah oh yeah absolutely so it's it's 48 bucks a month or 480 dollars a year

stop right there they're like i hear him say shot charge 40 000 dollars and i'm going Sean, stop right there. Did you just say $48 a month or $48 a minute? Exactly. You said a month? A month. Folks, that's about $1.60 a day and I'm not a mathematician and I could figure that out. And you put people in a Facebook group and you not only mentor them but you expose them to some top shelf entrepreneurs who walk to walk, talk to talk, and they've learned in the trenches.

Absolutely. You know, because... Why are you doing this? What's in it for you? So the first thing, I'll answer that, but the reason that I did this, under Ask a Millionaire instead of Sean Thomas was because, A, I've learned over time to let my ego go down and realize that I don't know everything and that there's more power in tribe and people than there is just singular. And so when I thought about this mentorship group, the reason I wanted to call it Ask a Millionaire is because I wanted it to be a very diverse group of entrepreneurs. Because one of your audience members could ask you, how did you succeed? What's your definition of success?

What's the best advice you would give me for this situation? They can ask you, me, and five other millionaires and get five different, completely different responses. True. There's massive power in that. Because then what we teach in mentorship is, is I'm not here to tell you what to do. That's coaching. Mentorship is I'm going to put you up on my shoulders and I'm going to let you see the world from my view and my experiences and you're going to take the knowledge and then you have to make the decision. That's the difference.

A lot of people don't know the difference between mentoring and. and coaching. Mentoring is I'm going to share experience. So if you say, I'm having a problem with one of my employees, a mentor is going to say, well, in my situation, when I ran to that, I did this, this, and this, you take that knowledge and do with it as you want. A coach might say, well, let's sit down and let's create a process in your employee handbook and your management processes, your review performance techniques, and all these things, and let's set out a process. That's what a coach does. Very different.

They're both very valuable, as you and I know. But the reason I did this under Ask a Millionaire is I knew that I could bring Tom and other entrepreneurs that were as successful as me or more. And there are a lot of people that don't want to do what you and I do. You probably have friends that go, what the fuck are you doing on Instagram? What? I do. Are you serious?

You do all that? One of them just recently joined. In fact, Joel Marion about five months ago. The tall guy? Yeah, tall guy, right? A $100 million supplement company. Craig Ballantine coached him in his first online business before he created a supplement company. We've been good friends.

And he just joined five months ago on Instagram. He's always been a giver of service. But he's like, what the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? But I have something within me to give to entrepreneurs. Now, his giving is more about people making an impact with their lives. Like, if you've got this life purpose, here's how to go do it. doesn't want to teach entrepreneurship. I do because I wish I had someone sooner than when I met

Jim Franco, my personal training client, who ended up mentoring me. Right. And so I felt like, gosh, I want to be that person to this social media platform, the audience that's out there. Yeah. But we have friends that just won't do it. Right. My most successful, really close friends, they would never do this, ever. So if we don't do it, who will? You know, we know there's a lot charlatan, snake oils, salesmen type people out there, they'll do it. Because they recognize the lost audience that's out there, especially on Instagram. I hate to say it, but it's just true. And if they don't know they're lost, then they should know.

They should learn to recognize if we don't teach them what real business people look like. Somebody has to be that face. But the reason I do this is after I saw my company, I said, hey, I got a choice of either starting another company. I'm already invested in about seven other startups as an angel investor. And I said, you know what? do I want to go back and start another company and put in that grind, the 18, 20 hours like I did,

or there's something to this Ask a Millionaire thing that is developing. So last year, I said, let me just give it, I'm going to give this a couple of years, and let me see what can happen with it. And this is what's so weird to say, Bedros, especially for the audience, is because, yeah, I'm a millionaire and I have everything that I want, but even this year I'll probably do $300,000 of revenue

and ask a millionaire, because our fees are so low and I haven't advertised. I wanted to just figure out what the business was going to look like. And I see people average, oh, I'm going to teach you how to make a six-figure business. Fantastic. So even back in the day, my goal was not to be a millionaire. My goal was to make $150,000 a year and work for myself. I forget that that's still a pretty cool thing.

That is. But coming off a $20 million business, it's a little humbling. It's really humbling. And it's been a really kind of humbling experience to go, okay, I'm building something again and learning everything that Craig teaches on his Instagram and everything that we do. It's been a humbling experience, but I did it because I do know, and I know you believe in the subscription-based business model as well, that little bit, the reason I charge so little is I want people to be able to have enough money left over

instead of me charging them 10 grand, even though I'm 500 a month. I'll go, but I'm going to get you to some classes. I'm going to introduce you to guys like you that you should pay 10 grand to get coached by. And if I'm charging them $10,000, there's only so much money that they're going to have when they're first starting out. Sure. So I'm going to give them the best value that I can for $50 a month. At $5,000, if I get it, you know, if God willing, I get that up to $5,000, that's still a pretty decent amount of money. And it's subscription-based, which is what I love about it. Love subscription-based. That's what I learned in my business. When you get that subscription revenue up over your monthly nut, man, life is great. And so that's why I charge so

little. But my goal is, is this to be my business. You know, this to be that business that I don't want to, I don't have aspirations to be a billionaire. I don't have aspirations to do anything more than to serve and get real philanthropic. That's my biggest goal is to make some more money to be really philanthropic. But this is my business and I love doing it. That's awesome, man. So if someone wants to get a hold of you, a real-life millionaire, like ask a millionaire. Where do they find you? Well, I want them to pay me by going to. So most won't Iwill.com as the website for the tribe. And literally the process is they sign, they join, and literally within the next 30 minutes, they're in the Facebook group talking to me. It happens that fast. Unless I'm here and then my

assistant is welcome them, but literally every single question I see and I answer. So it's not a program. It's real conversation and communication. If they just, want to find out about me, just ask a millionaire on Instagram or aka Sean Thomas as my personal account. Well, Sean, you've given so much, man, and you haven't held anything back. I really appreciate you coming out here. There's one thing I wanted to say that we share, that we share that you didn't know this. And there's a whole other side as we all do, because I've read all about you is, first off, you don't know that I was probably in a boy band when I was younger. Get out of here. You get a chance to talk about any of that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. People don't know. People were in a boy band. So I was in a boy

band and traveled with Ringley Brothers Circus for a year. So that's a whole other side of my life. That is nuts. We obviously have to have you back. Go on. But you talked in one of your, who were you talking to? It might have been Patrick and you talked about how

when you guys were broke that your dad you guys would go dumpster diving. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So I grew up in a family, low-income military family. Sure. So my dad, and I didn't even, just like you, it was like talking to myself. You didn't realize that you were fishing through trash. It was a game. It was just what we did. Like a

scavenger hunt. So my dad would take our family, my older brother and my mom, and we would go to the dump at the Army base on Fort Richardson, Alaska, where we were. And, you know, I'm talking miles of trash, that type of big dump. And we would just walk around all day long looking for furniture, food, anything we could have in the house. That is nuts, man. And so like, when I look, think back on it, I don't have a negative feeling about it. No. But I always wonder if that mentality of, you know, most won't I will, most people aren't willing to do what successful people are willing to do and what have you.

I just think that always just stayed with me was maybe subconsciously I just recognized that we didn't have. And my dad was showing us that you can't ever not be willing to do those things in order to survive. Yeah. But people like us, we had to go through, and I know that you went through this psychologically and mentally, through your therapy and everything you went through. We had to get out of that stage where we allowed ourselves to feel okay with the success. Right. You know, there's a lot of people like us that come from our backgrounds that we go through a really bad emotional stage, which a lot of people might go out and do the excess drinking, partying, buying of this and buying of that, and look at me, look at me. or it could go lots of other ways,

but at some point for us to get to that next level, we have to get professionals to help us get through it. But I always look back and think, you know, that we have that common interest that we probably have found success, and you're much more, you know, business savvy than I am, but it's probably because we were raised that way. Dude, isn't that nuts, though,

just the fact that when you think about it, when you were young and your dad takes you to the dump and you guys were walking around looking for furniture or what have you to take back to the house, it's that ability to be resourceful that when you started getting into business and your business partner is like, hey, I need a million dollars for you to buy me out of your life.

You're like, hold on, let me go figure it out. Again, you didn't have the resources. You only had a couple hundred thousand in your bank account, but you started going to the dump, if you will, looking for resources and you found it to be able to get them out of your life. Exactly. All the lessons of suffering and adversity from our childhoods

carry into our adulthood. Not enough people want to look back. and show gratitude towards that. I will, and I see that you do. Yeah. I think that's the point of differentiation. And every person that asks you a question, you can just flip it right back to them.

You say, you find the answer, and you'll succeed. Yeah. If I give you the answer, what'd you learn? Huge. How do you get, and it's like sometimes you just can't even teach that stuff. No, no. People just have to have their own individual wake-up call. It is the human experience.

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