EntreLeadership - #118: Finding Your Greatness

Episode Date: October 26, 2015

Mega marketing expert Lewis Howes joins the podcast to share the tips and habits he’s gathered from interviewing “the greats.” It’s not about avoiding or neutralizing traumatic life experiences, he says. Instead, it’s applying specific habits and tools to embrace and overcome adversity. On the same path, best-selling author Whitney Johnson drops by to discuss how to go from stuck to unstuck and be successful in many unexpected ways. entreleadership.com/podcast Mission Statement Mapper Another great episode sponsored by our friends at Infusionsoft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Disrupting and adapting. Two words, major themes on this edition of the podcast. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, we're so thrilled to have you with us. Thank you so much for the download. Whitney Johnson is the author of a new book called Disrupt Yourself,

putting the power of disruptive innovation to work. I love this book. Came across my desk. I dove into it. Could not digest it fast enough. And you're going to love that conversation. Also, Lewis House, a former professional athlete, entrepreneur, and author of a new book, The School of Greatness, our two guests this week.

Now, we've done this on purpose. I love the topic of Whitney's book and I love Lewis's book, but I love his story even more. I talked about at the top, disrupting. and adapting. These two individuals and their life's work, their stories, they really blend together well. And we want to make sure that we're constantly bringing you not so much a huge name celebrity author, but somebody who really embodies what we're talking about. And Whitney's research and the book, Disrupt Yourself, play beautifully into the story of Lewis. In fact, if you entrepreneurs out there are in those early days of launching, you're really going to

appreciate Lewis's story. and how he adapted after some major disruption. So that's a big theme this podcast, so we hope that you really dive into this conversation. Also, if you haven't taken us up on our offer of the free mission statement tool, this is essentially how do you create a mission statement from scratch? We give you the practical steps, and then we're going to give you some actual examples

so you can see what a finished product looks like. And man, oh man, this is so very important to all of our organizations, whether it be nonprofit or for-profit. but you have to have a great mission statement, and it really does play into the long-term success of your organization. So take action on this. Very simple. We want you to text the word mission to 33444.

Mission to 33-444. If you don't want to text, you can also go to Entreeleadership.com slash podcast. Click on this edition, and you can get the link. We want you to get that mission statement tool. So I want to read you a couple things around this idea of, Disrupt Yourself. I love, love, love, love, love the title of this. And I don't know, you business junkies, you personal growth junkies, probably know the name Clayton Christensen. Famed Harvard Professor, back in 1995, he introduced the idea of disruptive innovation. And he is a co-founder

in a business with Whitney Johnson, our guest today. So I thought this was very, very relevant. And I want you to dive into this. This is what he said about disruptive innovation. The idea of disruptive innovation is a product, device, technology, or method that helps create a new market and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market. It displaces earlier technology's products or services. So disruptive innovation is a product device, technology, or method, that creates a new market. And it disrupts an existing market, obviously displacing the earlier technology product or service. If you think about your life, the disruptive innovations that you have embraced, it's a great idea. So how do you use disruptive innovation in your personal and professional life?

That's the conversation we're going to have with Whitney Johnson. I love this quote from Whitney. She says self-disruption will force you up steep foothills of new information, relationships, and systems. The looming mountain may seem insurmountable, but, But the S curve, which by the way we talk about in this conversation, the S curve helps us understand that if we keep working at it, we can reach that inflection point where our understanding and competence will suddenly shoot upward. I love this conversation because I think if we're all honest with each other, disruption is

not something we look forward to. It's just not a naturally enjoyable process. Think about it. When our time is disrupted, our plans are disrupted, our emotions are disrupted, all these things are painful. And disruption is painful, but it is a good pain. And author Whitney Johnson helps us understand this. I think this is a vital discussion, so let's get right to it. Get out your notebooks. Be ready to learn. This is Whitney Johnson, the author of Disrupt Yourself.

Whitney, it's so fun to have you on the line. We connected via Twitter. And when I first saw the title of this book, Disrupt Yourself. You know, book titles are a funny thing. Either they're good or they are blah, or they're awful. I don't think there's any other, you know, there's like three buckets. And I really like the title, Disrupt Yourself, putting the power of disruptive innovation to work. So, okay. Okay, let's explain what this is. We know how the words work. We know what disrupt is and yourself is. But what is this idea you've put together in a book? Well, disruption, you may be familiar with the term, and I think many entrepreneurs are the idea of disruptive innovation, a term coined by Clayton Christensen at the Harvard Business School. And it's usually used to define or to describe a low-end product that is initially deemed quite inferior and then eventually upends a market. So think about Amazon, on how it upended Barnes and Noble and borders, and how we now see Uber upending the yellow cabs.

And so what I took on these frameworks that we typically apply to products and to services and to companies and even countries, as I really delved into them working with Clayton Christensen, I discovered that they also apply to individuals, that you can start at the low end, and then you can climb to the top of a particular ladder, and then you can choose to upend your career.

And so that's the idea of personal disruption, is the willingness to get to the top and then to turn things upside down and to start over again. Okay, so let's stay here for a minute. So get to the top. Meaning what? Well, meaning in a sense, I mean, obviously you're thinking, okay, at the top of your career, but if you think about this in the context of getting to the top of a learning curve, so you've mastered, for example, you've gotten really good at your job, or you've gotten really good at doing your particularly good, photographer or you've been in a particular role inside of a company and you decide, you know what,

I've learned as much as I can learn. I've made as much money as I can make. Emotionally, I'm not really enjoying it as much as I did. I may not be learning as quickly as I was. And so it's time for me to go from potentially being stuck to unstuck by jumping to a new learning curve and trying something new. Okay, so I'm so glad that you broke that down because that is, I mean, this is gold, gold, gold. Now, I'm a sports fan, Whitney, and so bear with me here because I want to make this come alive. But for me, as I'm hearing you describe that, what does it look like to disrupt ourselves at the top of our learning curve? I think of big time coaches, coaches that have been winning for a very, very long time. Yet they stay relevant with the changing times by disrupting

and kind of innovating along with that. The example that comes to mind is Coach K from Duke, who for years would not recruit the one and done player. You know, know, the rock star freshman who's probably going to go to the NBA draft the next year. And he has changed that philosophy over recent years. And thus Duke, you know, always successful. But now they're, you know, they're competing with the Kentucky's for these top recruits. So just a quick example there of how that comes alive. And boy, that is so important when you look at long-term sustained success, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about this idea, in fact, high-performing companies, there was a really in-depth study done by Accenture. and what it learned is that the highest performing companies that surpass other, their peers on all financial metrics are those that develop capabilities before they need them. So what does that mean? They know that they've been at the bottom of the curve. They're climbing to the top of their learning curve. And before they need it, when it doesn't feel like they need to do anything at all because their margins are expanding, their business is humming. They may even be, you know, growing year on year

accelerating, they decide to develop the capabilities that they'll need for the future, which means they're effectively disrupting themselves because when you develop capabilities for the future, you're taking a slight step back, potentially sacrificing short-term productivity in order to have long-term gains. So absolutely, that is what has to happen. All right, so you mentioned curve a couple times in that answer. You call this the S-curve, and you've kind of described that, but just give us a real clear definition of the S-curve that you write about? I'm glad that you asked. So the S curve actually was initially developed by E.M. Rogers back in 1962, and he developed to describe how ideas spread. So think about it as to draw that in your mind.

Did it very low end of the curve. Initially, there's very little movement. And then typically at 10 to 15 percent of market penetration, you shoot up that steep, sleek back of the curve. And then around 90 percent market penetration, the growth then tapers off. And so what I've also done is taken that curve that we describe how quickly an innovation will be adopted to help us also understand the psychology of disruption. So for example, at the low end of the curve, you know that growth is going to be slow. So that helps you understand that you might get discouraged, but you don't need to because it's just supposed to happen. So to go back to your sports metaphor, if you're trying to learn how to golf, for example, initially you're going to be putting,

and chipping and driving and feel like you're getting absolutely nowhere. But as you put in those hours, it's eventually going to all come together and you're going to move up that steep part of the curve. Your competence will increase. Your confidence will grow. And you'll be able to do very little and you'll just be getting better faster and faster and faster. And then at the top end of the curve, you now know that things are going to be pretty automatic. It won't be hard for you to do. You could kind of just dial it in if you want to. And yet, if you do that, you're going to become, board. And if you don't jump to a new curve at that point, your plateau can become a precipice. So that's what I mean by climbing your curve and the importance of jumping from one curve to the

next and going back to Coach K, what he's been willing to do is he climbs to the top of the curve. He stays relevant by being willing in terms of his style of recruiting and coaching to continually jump to new curves. I love this. This S-curve. It's a great model, wonderful analogy. The Chapters of the book, folks, are the seven variables. These are things that we can do that affect our speed moving up the S. And I love that. I just want to list them quickly and then I want to dive into a few. One is take the right risks.

Two, play to your distinctive strengths. Three, embrace constraints. Four, battle entitlement. Five, step down, back or sideways to grow. Six, give failure it's due. seven be driven by discovery. So I hope you've written those down. If not, pause this right now. Go back and write these down. This is good stuff. So I want to dive into a few of these in our time together, Whitney. Embracing constraints. Gosh, that's hard to do, but super important. It's so hard. Talk to us about this.

Yeah. So when you're an entrepreneur especially, right? I mean, you are going to be short on something. It can be time. it can be, it's usually money. It can be buy in from the people who you need to, you know, buy your product or fund your company. Um, and it can be expertise. And the thing about constraints is that, so you may think, oh, if only I had more of X, Y, or Z. But constraints actually, um, give you feedback very, very quickly. And the, one of the most important things you need when you're trying to climb a new curve because you don't know what you're doing is you need feedback. So that lack of resources actually gives you the very feedback you need to climb the curve more quickly. And so it also forces you to this position where if it's due or don't eat, meaning you don't get

the business model right, then, you know, you just don't have a business. And so again, you're forced to continually iterate. And so constraints feel like they're actually a check on absolute freedom when in fact they can become a tool of creation as you're trying to build a business or to climb any learning curve. I love this. Page 45 of the book, you talk about constraints, help us stay focused. That's a really good spin for a mindset like an entrepreneur. I'm certainly that way.

And you look at constraints and it just makes you start to itch. You know what I mean? Makes you hot. You know, we entrepreneurs just get uncomfortable by the word constraints. Yet it really can't help us focus. And that's a great way of looking at them. Yeah. I mean, I just, of course, I used to always say, oh, constraints are so fantastic.

And then I became an entrepreneur and I realized, oh, I don't really like them, but they're actually very, very necessary. And, you know, again, there's story after story that I talk about in the book of how constraints actually become, you know, this tool of creation that I just mentioned. All right. Let's talk about another one. This is chapter five, step down, back, or sideways to grow. There's a lot of great truth to this. And again, just that sentence makes me upset. I don't want to step down, back or sideways.

Right. exactly, you don't. And yet, if you think about it, oftentimes, I mean, there are lots of different ways you can step down, sideways or back. There's obviously the stepping back in order to, you know, get a better perspective on a situation. But I'm thinking more of the kind of stepping back with a business where you may do something and everybody looks at you and says, what are you doing? Why are you pivoting? You've got this great cash flow business. Why would you make a change? One great example I talk about in the book is a company called Pluralsight. And what they had going, and this is an online development training, and they had, you know, this great in-classroom training. It was going very,

very well, company, very robust. And they realized, you know what, if we stay in this business, we're going to be out of business. And so in 2006, 2007, they basically made the decision to cut off about 50% of their revenue to start to go into online learning. Well, they did it. Everybody wonder what they were doing, but that decision to step back, to pull back their cash flow, to completely change their business, allowed them to go on to the trajectory that they're currently on, and they're now, you know, generating $70 million in revenue plus. Wow, that's great. But it's hard.

It's stature, it's prestige, it's cash flow. It can be very painful, but you have to look at it from sort of a net present value perspective, and then you can get there. I love that. All right. I want to get one more chapter in here. Give failure it's due. And again, this is counterintuitive, but it's so good.

I love the story in the book, and you reference this in your publicity materials as well. The story of Riot Games, they're a popular online game creator. They've got this game called League of Legends. Now, again, I got three kids, so I've never heard of it. But apparently this is wildly popular. And they have chosen to communicate directly to their wildly loyal fan base about their failures. What are they doing and why is this so wise? Well, because, you know, again, League of Legends, this is a game that my son has played

frequently. And what they found is that, you know, these gamers are serious, right? And so, and they're also very technologically savvy. So they were coming up with glitches in the system continually. And so Riot Games decided to turn it on its head instead of saying, we made a mistake, we made a mistake. They said, you know what? Let's just call them out and advertise it.

and basically invite our customers into the process of iterating, and it's turned out to be a hugely successful strategy for them. And I think if we think about that from a perspective of an entrepreneur or even an individual, when we're willing to say to people, oh, you caught this mistake I made, thank you, I appreciate it. Let's figure out how we're going to improve it. It moves you, it toggles you from this place of shame to this place of learning and development and inclusion as opposed to us versus them, it all becomes about us in this process together.

That's right. And another takeaway here is I'm listening to this story and I'm thinking these gamers are passionate, right? I mean, these are a passionate tribe of people. And when you own your mistakes and communicate to them, it goes from them loving your product to now they love you as well because they feel like you hear to them and you're aware of them. That's a big, big thing there. Huge community. Right. Exactly. Huge. Love, love that. What did you learn in writing this book about yourself and how you need to disrupt better or more often? I'm just curious as the author doing this research and kind of, again, taking Clayton's work and applying it to our personal lives from a personal growth standpoint. What did you learn? that is a great question i learned that um i'm better at talking about disruption than actually doing it um i think as most of us do right i think the thing that i learned speaking of failure is that it allowed me to take these ideas and as i wrote about them to take them more seriously and

to be more willing to allow myself to be sad when i mess up and to be more willing to allow the people around me to be able to mess up and then if I'm not willing to allow them to mess up, then maybe I've hired the wrong people. So that's been a really important lesson for me. And I think the other thing I've learned is that when I'm at the bottom of a curve to be more patient with myself, you know, when you sort of talk about that and think about it and write about it over and over that when you're at the bottom of the curve, you may not be on the wrong curve.

You just may be at the low end of the curve. That allows me, you know, given that I am so driven to be a bit more patient with myself, my children and the people around me. I love that answer, Whitney, because you were very honest, and it speaks to who we have to be if we're leading people. We have to lead ourselves, grow ourselves, and understand the S-cur from our perspective. But now let's talk about transferring that knowledge once we get it to the people that we have to lead from a team standpoint.

What would you say to men and women who are listening on that? Right. Well, so I would say, first of all, that companies don't disrupt people do, and so one of the fastest ways to drive corporate or organization-wide disruption is through personal disruption. And so whenever I'm thinking about these frameworks, I'm continually toggling back and forth. So, for example, on failure, you've got to have an organization-wide practice where you allow your people to fail, where you look for, are they actually ever making mistakes, good faith mistakes? If they're not making good faith mistakes, they're not pushing hard enough as a team or as an

individual. At the same time, you as a leader have to be willing to model that and say, you know what, I made a mistake. I screwed up. And how often do we hear leaders say that? I would say also within an organization, if you find that you're not allowing your people to fail, it may be that they're not working hard enough. It may also be that you have not hired the right people. Because when you're really invested in a person and invested in their good faith efforts, you're willing to allow them to fail. And so I think that's another aspect of it, I would say as a leader, is if you're not allowing them to fail, peel back why. It may be that your ego's too involved. It may that you've hired the wrong person.

Or it may just be that you need to get a little better at allowing them to fail. So I think there's a lot of different permutations and implications of these ideas. I love that. By the way, she just used two words there. Permutations and what was the last word you used? Implications. implications, permutations and implications. Try saying that in a sentence sometime soon. That was impressive. She is Whitney Johnson. The book is Disrupt Yourself, putting the power of disruptive innovation to work. I love this. This is a good read, and I think a very important topic and discipline to develop. Whitney, thank you so much for being with us here on the Entree Leadership podcast. Thank you for having me. She is Whitney Johnson. The book is Disrupt Yourself. Whitneyjohnson.com, if you'd like to learn more about what Whitney's doing, and she's

doing some impressive work. Also, by the way, she's the author of a book called Dare Dream Do. I love what Whitney's doing. So again, you can go get the book wherever books are sold. So a tie-in here. We thought it would be fun to give you two distinctly different conversations, but there certainly is a tie-in. And again, key themes on this podcast, disruption, and then adaptation. Disrupting, adapting because life sometimes dictates disruption and we either run away from it or we adapt. And I love Lewis's story. Now Lewis House, you podcast freaks out there. A lot of you listening here know Lewis. He's got a podcast called School of Greatness, the new book that we'll talk about in this conversation is School of Greatness. But what I like about Lewis, he doesn't try to

be super fancy, doesn't try to be smarter than the rest of us. The guy's just as a learner. And he's sitting down talking to people all the time. People that have achieved greatness. And I love that about Lewis. And you'll hear some of his story, but this guy was pretty much homeless. Had done some arena football, tried out for an Olympic team. The guy had some athletic success and injury happens. And he's pretty much having to reboot.

And he finds a market that he can disrupt. Online seminars. You call him webinars. And he's been wildly successful. That's why I wanted you hear from this guy. He figured out how to adapt. He disrupted. And he's been a wild success.

I love Lewis because he's in our space. We're not competing against Lewis. We're competing with Lewis. And what he's done with this podcast is simply astounding. And I love where he started from absolute scratch. Here's Lewis House story. You're going to enjoy it. It's fun to have you in students.

studio, Lewis. And I want people to get to know you. Because before we get into the School of Greatness, which was a podcast, is a podcast, and now it's become the book, you were an athlete, small college, and then you decide to get into handball on the Olympic level, play some arena football. Okay, so how did you get there? Take us maybe from those college athlete days. You know, the goal was to be in the NFL. That was my original goal. And I was too slow to make it the NFL. I had a couple tryouts and so I went and played arena football for a season and I got injured in the first season had to have surgery right here you can see it I had a bone taken out of my hip put right in my wrist so for about six months I was in a cast like this and for a year and a

half recovering so my dream ended of playing football and it's just you know god had a different plan for me to not play anymore so it was actually the greatest blessing and experience because I had this journey of constant learning, a lot of humility to see what was next for me. And I was on my sister's couch for a year and a half, trying to figure out how do I get off my sister's couch, get an apartment, and how do I make some money? And that's when the online marketing world, blogging, online business, entrepreneurship world I got exposed to. And I started learning from masters. I started going to events and conferences and getting the information I needed. Then it was all about executing. I took my athletic background and just said, how can I execute the best to

just get some results? And that's when I started taking off. A lot of entrepreneurs listening to this conversation, when you had the dream crushed, right? The injury, you've had this dream. I know you, just enough to know you are killing yourself for the dream. And all of a sudden, it's taken away from you. Yes. You have to start on a new path. This is really applicable to entrepreneurs who sometimes go after something and they got to change paths. What allowed you to stay in the game and find a new path? What was it about you? What allowed me to stay in the game was a vision and realizing that my life was made

for something. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was to do something big in a major way. I thought it was going to be through sports and inspiring people through that and living my dream through that. And I just knew that at 23 years old that this can't be it. This can't be like all my life was about as trying to get this one. dream. So it was first discovery mode. Okay, what do I really love? What am I excited about? What are my gifts? My talents? Because I wasn't that talented in school. So what is the gifts that I can bring

to the world since my identity is now gone. That's really good. So what were they? Yeah, I didn't know. Oh, you did know. I didn't know my gifts were. I was like, I don't know. I didn't graduate from college. I'm ignorant. Really what I discovered my gift was connection. Yeah. Connecting with people, but also connecting people to ideas and connecting other people to people. So early on I got on LinkedIn for about a year and a half during this recovery, started reaching out to people one by one, asking them about how they got to where they are in their career or their job, asking them what was the thing that they did to get to where they are?

I was just asking about their success. And I realized I had a good way of connecting with people so that they would respond. And then I had a great sense of figuring out what are the biggest needs people have, what are their biggest challenge is, and then connecting them to the answers or to the people or the information to get them the result. So when I would interview these top executives or entrepreneurs about how they got to where they are,

at the end, I would always ask, what's your biggest challenge in your company right now or where you're at in your life? And they would say, well, I really need this designer or we're trying to figure out the best salesperson to hire. We need a COO or something. And I'd be like, why just connect it with this same person that you're looking for three weeks ago?

Let me do an intro. So I was really good at connecting the do. for people, bringing people together, and then also helping them figure out their biggest challenges. That was early on what I was good at. Okay, that's a huge gift. And I want to talk more about that, but I think this is important because I think there's a huge difference between being audacious, okay? Having the audacity to ask someone.

You were clearly audacious. I was very audacious. Versus obnoxious. Yeah. Isn't that true? Yeah. Talk about the tension there and the difference in your mind. It's a dance, you know, and I'm sure you get people email you constantly to come on

the show and give me feedback and give me advice and what would you do in this situation and everyone always starts with I know you're busy but here's my essay of my life story I'm sure you get this all the time and what would you do and the thing is you can get the exact same result reaching out to someone if you dance differently with them if you keep it short and simple you find two or three mutual points of connection so uh I notice you're from Nashville and I used to drive through Nashville all the time when I play arena football and we both have a podcast, and I see that you're connected to Michael Hyatt. I'd love to learn more about how you became so successful in the podcast.

You open to get on the call for 10 minutes or meeting when I'm in Nashville next, as opposed to, here's my life story, tell me all the secrets to success, and do it for me. And I think if you approach it in the first way where it's like, I want to learn more about you, you're going to get all the answers you need by them telling you exactly how they did it. That's right. And people like to share our stories. Sure. We like to share our story.

Oh, yeah. And when you approach it like that, people are much more willing to give you time and give you energy and build relationship. Then it's your job to be so precious with that time and gracious and grateful for them connecting with you and then saying, how else can I be of service to you? So you just gave me your secrets to success. Now, how else can I serve you? What's your challenge? What can I support you with? Is there anything I can work on for you?

That's how I approached it. How can I serve, serve, serve? and I would never ask for give me help. Yes. And by doing that, people would automatically say, thanks for connecting me of this, this, and this, how can I help you? That's it. That's the payoff. The dance.

It is the dance. And that's a master class and how to network, which I hate that term because it kind of has this schmaltzy, cheesy, you know, scumbags, you know, kind of an image tied to it. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about how you connected people. So you gave us a bit of that story. And this is again a wonderful master class when you realize what Zig Zigler said. You know what he said. He said famously, and I've said this a million times, as many people I can tell them,

if you help other people get what they want in life, you'll get what you want in life. Exactly. You figured this out early on before you even knew what your business model was. But I didn't have anything to offer. But you had relationships. I had the ability to let people share what they were excited about. And that's what I could offer. Another gift that I have, I think that I learned that I have, I forget who said this, is that people don't care how much you know until they know much you care.

John Maxwell. John Maxwell. And when I read that quote years ago, I was like, oh, there's hope for me in the world because I don't know that much, but I can care like a madman to people. And I can care and execute and give and support and do whatever it takes to show that I care. And that goes much farther I've seen experience than knowing a lot of information or being intelligent or something like that because I would be nowhere without building relationships. It's not about how much I know. That's right. So let's talk about building your business again.

Here's what I love. Here's what I love about you. You really are a classic entrepreneur, you know, just kind of starting kicking the tires. I think there's a problem. And so I'm going to offer a solution and the reason for the solution. You did this largely through webinars, right? Yeah, webinars. LinkedIn early on and then webinars.

So talk about the early days when you saw a need and you went, I think I can feel it this way. Give us the description of how it started. You know, it was early on. I was just on LinkedIn reaching out to people one by one, you know, successful CEOs, trying to build relationship. And then friends started to see my profile and they're like, hey, can you help me with my profile and optimize it for me and show me how you're connecting with people and help me with whatever you're doing? And so I would do it for free for people. Then people said, hey, can I pay you to do this for me? And you optimize my profile.

So I was like, sure, I'm already doing this. It's already something I know. So I wrote a book about LinkedIn eventually. I was speaking about it, doing workshops because people had a need of learning LinkedIn. And I was the guy who was doing a lot of it at the time. You know, I still was struggling, just trying to figure out how to make money. I was schlepping books around the country, like trying to sell them for $10 a pop. I self-published it myself.

I was doing like a couple hundred dollars for an hour. I was doing like a LinkedIn makeover and I was trying to speak and hustle. But it got me some great experience. And it wasn't until I did my first webinar where I made $6,200 teaching the same thing I was teaching one-on-one with someone about LinkedIn. I did it to an audience of about 500 people, made $6,200 at the end, selling something that I hadn't even created yet, that I was like, whoa, this is mind-blowing, that I could get on a webinar, sell something that no one receives anything for right now. And I deliver it later and I get paid up front. it was just like such an incredible concept for me that opened me up to so many possibilities.

Break down your business right now for an entrepreneur. So you kind of get started in that world. Is that the, and that led to speaking engagements? Yeah. The book deal, obviously. We'll talk more about the book later. So I created,

so first I was like a LinkedIn course. And then we were selling a ton of these. I brought on a business partner to help me out. And then all these customers were like, well, can you teach us Facebook? Because we have no clue. It was like opening up to professionals.

It wasn't just for companies. college students at the time. So like, how do we monetize Facebook and use it for our business? And then Twitter was starting to get big and YouTube and email marketing. So our customers were like, this is our challenge. Help us. And we're like, okay, let's figure this stuff out. Let's find the experts to create the content and then package it up as a course and sell

this. And so we just kept doing webinars and saying, what do you need next? What's your biggest challenge? What do you want? Is it customer service? Is it lead generation? Is it traffic generation? Tell us and we'll get the solution for you.

We may not know it right now. we'll figure it out or we'll bring the expert in. So we started doing that for a couple years. And this was after a year and a half to be on my sister's couch, went from making like nothing to a couple million dollars in a few years. Unbelievable. Me and another guy and like a couple customer support people and we were outsourcing the design. But it was kind of like just putting it all together.

It wasn't the highest of quality, like production value. The content was great. So I think a lot of entrepreneurs get hung up on like they wanted to look perfect. They wanted to be perfect before they launch something. It paralyzes them. They're in like this paralysis, like prison where they never take action and execute because they're like, well, it doesn't look good. The logo

is not right in the little part yet. And I'm always like, continue to evolve your branding. Like my first time my website was up, it was horrible. Right? On my Lewishouse.com, it was the worst looking site. I was embarrassed by it. But I was able to put content on there and start driving traffic.

A year and a half later, when I made some more money, I could invest five grand into a little bit better header and the design and the back end. Continue to evolve the branding as opposed to being paralyzed of, I have to wait until it's ready to launch it. Pre-sell it. Launch it. Make some cash and then start working.

Start executing and hustling to get it to the level you want to be. Don't wait a year until it's ready because it's not going to be ready. This is such an important point to make because you've got to help people. You can have the greatest looking site, all the slick branding. But if nobody cares. No. Then you feel good about how it looks. But it doesn't matter.

If you're not making any money, then who cares? So I focus on creating the solution first. That's right. Giving people's solution to whatever it is they want and then continue to improve it as you go. This is a very good discussion. All right. The new book is called The School of Greatness, a real world guide to living bigger, loving deeper, and leaving a legacy. I like that.

Thank you. We don't have time to unpack the entire book. I like to pull out sections. Let's do it. of the book. And I want to talk to you because this idea of turning adversity into advantage, I think, Lewis, that this is simply put, and this may sound harsh, but I believe that this is the differentiator between average and life and excellent. Yeah. The average people who lead average lives somehow get knocked off course by adversity and never get back on the path. Do you agree

with that? I agree. I mean, we all face our own extreme adversities. Some people may have amazing childhoods and amazing lives, but we always face something, whether it be a physical adversity, an emotional adversity, an internal insecurity that we're not good enough or not worthy enough, whatever. We get our heartbroken, someone in the family dies, something happens. There's an adversity that we all go through, and it's how we overcome that and embrace it. So it's really turning your story into your success or your adversity into your advantage. and most people, you know, if I got injured,

I could have just been laying on my sister's couch for another three, four, five years and done nothing with myself. But I said, okay, I've got to use this and figure out what's next for me. And it became one of my greatest selling points. Part of my story is like, here's where I was and here's where I'm going, and here's what I did to get there. And a lot of people lose a job. And they stay jobless for a year or two, living on workman's comp,

whatever may be, not using it and saying, okay, what is my gifts and how can I maximize this opportunity as opposed to you're holding it back. It reminds me of Martin Luther King's famous phrase where he said so eloquently, you know, crawl until you can walk, walk until you can run. But whatever you do, just keep moving forward. But I do want to ask you, what have you learned from this book? Something that maybe you didn't realize is you sit out to write a book, you're trying to help others.

But I know this, that when you write a book, you can't help but learn. And so I'm curious. Name just one thing. I know it's a tough question on the spot, but something that you learned you didn't expect to learn. I learned that writing a book is hard work. That it's... It is so true. That it's put me up against all my triggers and all my walls and all my defenses and all my fears. It's like the scariest relationship I've ever had. And it's made me face a lot of my insecurities of, am I good enough? Or, you know, is this going to be great? It's called the school of greatness. It's not called

the school of average. What if like the words don't mean anything? What if people just ridicule it. What if it ruins my brand? All these fears that have popped up. And at the end of the day, what I continue to tell myself is that all I can do is give my best with where I'm at right now. And I think it's important for a lot of entrepreneurs to understand that. And so I'm learning to give myself a break that I don't need to be perfect. But as long as I give all my heart and give my best, that'll hopefully come across on the book and people will receive it in a powerful way. He is Lewis Howells, the book, it's brand new, The School of Greatness, a Real World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and leaving a legacy. And I can tell you this, it will encourage your heart. It really will.

And many times we just need, whether it's a book, a word, a pat on the back, to just keep us in the race. I think the theme of this conversation is just keep moving forward, even when you haven't figured it out. And that's what I love about your story. Thanks for being with us, man. Thanks, I appreciate it. Hey Lewis has some great bonuses. You can buy the book, School of Greatness, wherever books are sold. But he's got some bonuses at his website, greatnessbook.com slash bonus. That's greatnessbook.com slash bonus. And honestly, he's got so many great things he's given away. I don't have time to read it all.

But it is a wonderful, wonderful offer if you're interested in the book. So do check that out. Greatnessbook.com slash bonus. Well, I'm pretty excited because I just returned from a West Coast trip. We had an entree leadership event out in Los Angeles. By the way, I met several of you out there, and I always tell Eric this. It's so fun to meet our listeners, and he got to come out on the road. So it's great fun to meet many of you listeners out there. We appreciate you so very much, and please spread the word because we are growing,

and you are the reason we do it. So, again, thank you very, very much. So we were out there for Entry Leadership one day, and then we had our smart conference in Phoenix, Arizona. And that was an incredible event as well. But in the downtime, Eric, the producer and I hopped on the plane with Coach John Falcons, and we went and hung out with InfusionSoft. And Eric, I don't know how many episodes it was ago. I was talking about how you can learn from somebody when you go over their house. You know what I mean when you're first meeting somebody or maybe when you're dating a gal and you make that first appearance in their house, meet the parents.

that's when things get real. I mean, you know, you just can't fake it too well. When you get in somebody's home, you get in their environment. Wow. I had heard from Dave, who's been out there. Dave Ramsey's been out there, hung out with the team, that it was a great environment. And Eric, the producer, shot some really cool video of their culture. We're going to show that to you.

That's just a little tease. But I love what they're doing. We've told you for months and months and months that we work with them, that we love them, that they serve us. We're one of their clients. But, wow, it was really fun. And so I just had to say this in advance of Jeff Mask being on with us for another one question. Love what they're doing.

We're going to share more about that, how cool their culture was and why they're winning. So here we go. Let's get to one question with Jeff Mask. When we talk about freeing the mind, it seems to me to really accomplish this freedom. We have to kill the myth that the business won't survive without us at the top. I mean, you read any leadership book worth its weight, and it's going to tell you true leadership, is replacing yourself. But there's this myth that it won't survive.

What does that mean to you? Look in the mirror. Recognize it's not only you. And recognize that entrepreneurship is that process and that journey of relinquishing control. Finding the right ways to centralize your business. Finding the right ways to automate your business. Finding the right people to associate with and recognize checking your ego,

it can and will succeed without me. In fact, it must. it will only succeed to a certain threshold. Again, after consulting with hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, we have seen it over and over and over repeat. There's a ceiling that happens if the entrepreneur can't get out of their own way. Build the system. Build the culture.

Get your mission clear and automate it and centralize in such a way that you can work on your business. Think two, three years out instead of two days out and actually grow it in a way that's very central to your mission, staying totally aligned to your core. It's why we love our partnership with Andre leadership. We are just aligned in such a natural, powerful way of knowing who we are, what we do, and why we do it. That is so critical.

When you know that and you can align accordingly, let's partner up and help millions of entrepreneurs worldwide to get that freedom, that autonomy, that balance that they need in their lives that everybody needs. That's the beauty of what we do. And we are so passionate on this journey. Hey, you can go to infusionsoft.com slash entree. Infusionsoft.com slash entree for their playbook. Thousands and thousands have now downloaded this. It's still available and it's still great.

Their playbook on how small businesses are winning. These are case studies. Real examples. It's absolutely free. No strings attached. Infusionsoft.com slash entree. Well, hey, our summit 2016 is edging closer and closer to a sellout. It's in Dallas, Texas.

May 22 through 25. Entrateleadership.com slash summit. It is so funny. When we're out on the road, I have more and more listeners coming up to me at live events saying, you really weren't pulling our legs. You got a huge name coming.

Well, at live events, Eric, I can tell people from the stage. I can actually tell them who it is. But on this podcast, which is a broadcast, can't do it via the contract. So go check it out. Who the Big Shot is,

joining Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Henry Cloud, Pat Lynch, Tony, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, and Dave Ramsey. It's going to be a phenomenal event. Eric and I will both be there. Trust me, it is worth coming to. Check it out. Everything you need to know about the event,

entreleadership.com slash summit. Well, folks, that's going to do it for this edition of the Entree Leadership podcast on behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and our entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.