Motivation Daily by Motiversity - WAKE UP DETERMINED & DOMINATE THE DAY - New Motivational Speech Compilation

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

WAKE UP DETERMINED & DOMINATE YOUR DAY!Speakers:Marcus Taylor: http://bit.ly/38FUFoS​Joe RoganDavid MeltzerMel Robbins (speech credit from Lewis Howes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ1CeLJUcO8Reed DuchscherTerrell OwensMusic:Really Slow MotionSoundstripeEpidemic SoundAudiojungle Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello listeners. Motivosity is excited to share that we have launched a new podcast called Morning Motivation by Motivore. If you are looking to start your day with positivity and the most uplifting motivational audio, this is the show for you. For today's episode of Motivation Daily by Motivority Podcast, we are sharing a recent episode from the Morning Motivation Podcast. If you like it, go follow the show. New episodes are being released every week.

The link is in the description. If you can hear my voice, you've got work to do. You need to elevate others to elevate yourself, but also you need others to elevate you. So many people live their lives like tubes. Food in, food out, paycheck in, paycheck out. And so you may be average, you may be ordinary. But you have the opportunity every single day to make extraordinary decisions and what you do today will determine your future.

At some point in life, we're all going to struggle. You are not your past. You're you, you're you right now. You might have done some things you wish you hadn't done. Don't dwell on that. You learn from it, that's fine, but don't dwell on it. Just keep moving. Keep moving.

You don't use it as fuel. Say never again, I get what I did wrong, but don't think that you're that person that made those mistakes. You're the person who's learned. We're going to be confronted with something. There's going to be some obstacles that we feel that we can't overcome or when you're on your path to success. There's always going to be those roadblocks here and there. It's just, it's a part of life. You've got a destiny to fulfill. You've got a purpose to walk into. You've got a test to pass. You've got dots to connect. Rooms to walk in. Stages to stand on. And

able to sit down at. We all want to do something. We all want to be somebody. We all want to go somewhere. Let's dispense with the painful conversations of what happened in your path. My advice, I really struggle with just being patient for certain things to happen, especially in my 20s. I was the type of person who thought I was going to find success early on and thought at like 24 years old I would already have this, you know, successful job or successful business. And it takes time. It takes time to personally grow. It takes time to figure out what you want to do in life, what person, what type of person you want to become, and then like what's important to you.

There's always going to be those roadblocks here and there. It's just, it's a part of life. And I think that's what's so rewarding when we do achieve what we achieve is because of those failures, because of those struggles, because of those roadblocks. Athletes that have achieved an amount of success, I think when there's doubt creeps in or There's naysayers, or there's doubters. I think the best thing that I ever did, I ever did, but obviously I think was believe in myself.

That's first and foremost. You are not your past. You're you. You're you right now. You might have done some things you wish you hadn't done. Don't dwell on that. You learn from it, that's fine, but don't dwell on it. Just keep moving.

Keep moving. You know, use it as fuel. Say never again. I get what I did wrong, but don't think that you're that person that made those mistakes. You're the person who's learned. I think that endurance, enduring something, and building up that ability to endure things,

that's also a very important mechanism that you could apply to everyday life. Like that, the mechanism of understanding how to endure, there's a lot of people just running from discomfort. They're running from it. They're just avoiding it. It's so easy to. And like, if you get distracted for a second,

you're like, yeah, let me check my phone. You just start going through your phone and looking at bullshit. and you're just distracting yourself from the tiniest frustration of boredom. It's the little, we don't get bored anymore. Or if we get bored, we get bored for these tiny amounts of time, then you get distracted. So your distraction is eliminating your boredom. But the problem with that is like there's certain thoughts that only come to you when you're thinking,

when you don't have any input coming in. When we're constantly looking at our phones, the only input you're getting is input from other people. And sometimes that's good. Sometimes you get good stuff out of that. But it's like a diet of only fruit. You know, you need some protein.

Yeah. Like this is, you need to get some other things in your diet. You know, and I think having discomfort in your diet, like having it as a regular part of your life, it minimizes the amount of other kinds of bullshit. And I think that insanity and greatness,

are next-door neighbors, and they borrow each other's sugar. There's something about mastery, like true mastery, that requires you to shut off massive areas of your life, personal areas, relationships, education. My education was a joke. I mean, until I was 21 years old, until I started doing stand-up comedy, I didn't read books. I mean, I might have read a Stephen King book here and there for, to kill time. I was on a train on my way to training. but there was no desire to educate myself.

If I was educating myself, it was maybe reading the Book of Five Rings to learn better strategy, to be a better fighter. That was all it was. Was there ever a point where you said, I'm a little out of balance? I need to go the other way. Well, I realized I was a flawed person for sure.

And I think in realizing you're a flawed person and... What helped you realize that? Just fucking up. Just being an idiot. You know, realizing, you know, girls would get mad at me or maybe guys would get mad at me, whatever it was.

I realized that I had flaws, you know. I knew that I was, and then also failing at comedy. One of the hardest things to do is to go from being really great at something to sucking at something. And that's something that you suck at is now your path. You know, and that's what I found myself in comedy. You know, I could get laughs every now and that, but I knew I wasn't anything special. I knew I was terrible. And there was something exciting about being terrible because I had potential, because there was potential for growth.

You know, if you start doing it. and you're great at it, like, naturally. Like, maybe I wouldn't have had the motivation to do it as a living for 25 years like I've done. I don't know. But at that time, you know, making that transition from martial arts competition to being a comedian, that's when I started going down the road of balance and started trying to balance myself as a person. And I started trying to almost educate myself to have more things to talk about on stage.

And then along the way, my curiosity started. the blossom and then I started to just be interested in things for being interested in them and as I got better as a comedian I became less worried about what other people thought about me and more worried about just improving and keeping you know keeping this sort of momentum going and as I relaxed more you know in having some success in life and sort of not worrying about bills as much not worrying about my future Then I started to explore altered states of consciousness, and then I really started opening up the door to the whole yin and the yang. Life is filled with so many different kinds of experiences that are available, and that's one of the things that you sort of open up to when you relax. When you relax and you don't worry about what you look like, you don't worry about what you sound like, you don't worry about how people feel about you.

Because you've thought about all these different things on your own, and you've kind of corrected as many things as you can correct given that time period. You feel comfortable that you're on a good path. You know, then you sort of can entertain ideas that maybe you wouldn't if you were insecure or more insecure. You know, I think we're all, I think you have to be insecure if you're finite. We're worried about death. We're worried about disease. We're worried about loved ones. We're always going to be, in a certain sense, insecure.

You know, we're worried about being sexually attractive. We're worried about being socially interesting. Sure. You know, there's always going to be some form of insecurity. But that's also part of the best. balance of life too. It's like you don't ever get to bliss. What you get to do is chase bliss. You get to enjoy the moment. The moment is amazing and it'll go away and you'll be fucking tired. And you got to get up, you know, and you got to drive in traffic and you're not going to like it.

And you got to, you know, do some shit you don't want to do this. A lot of times where I work out where I don't want to. You know, and I'd make myself do it. If I was living in bliss, I'd just be a fat fuck sitting on the couch, you know, thinking that I don't want to do that. My life is a. about enjoyment. No, there's enjoyment in doing things you don't enjoy. First thing I tell people is you can't find outside of you, what you can't find inside of you. And so I like to ask myself open-ended questions. What are you doing today that you like? What are you doing today that you don't like? How can I be of service or value to that? meaning to make those changes or who sits in a situation that I want to be in to give me directions

on how to heal that. You need to elevate others to elevate yourself, but also you need others to elevate you to elevate you. It's amazing. So so many people live their lives like tubes, food in, food out, paycheck in, paycheck out, or Camus the Stranger, the myth of Sisyphus, push the boulder to the top of the hill every day just to have it roll down to the bottom because they have no coherence. They can't remember what's important to them. And then they can't do it. I've created coherence, practices, and then effectuating the mind, body, and soul through mindset, heart set, and handset in order to be efficient, effective, and statistically successful in those practices. See, prioritization, the antidote of procrastination,

and feeling overwhelmed is a matter of understanding what's important to you. When you have your non-negotiables, you already get the most important things every day done, but now, according to circumstance, I get the next most important thing and I can make decisions like this because I already know what's important personally, experientially, giving and receiving wise every day in a trajectory that scares the shit out of everyone else, even me for the future, because it's unlimited. So when I tell you and I meet you the first time, hey, what do you do? Oh, I'm going to change the world. People are scared of me. I tell them how I'm going to do it. I'm going to empower people to be happy to make a lot of money, help a lot of people and have a lot of fun. Over a billion people, by the way.

they're even more scared of me. It's not a low bar. No, but it shouldn't be because there's no limitations in the future. But people don't do it. They'll laugh at you, scoffing you and make fun of you. And guess what? When you do it, they'll applaud you.

That's all I want on my tombstone. He was kind. First of all, look up and then breathe. Think about what you want. Think about how you can help and who can help you. And then start thinking about how. and then prioritize that very first step, prioritize that very first day,

start thinking about what you want, and continue every day enjoying that, consistently, persistently, in the pursuit of your potential. Also, have an open mind. I promise you each day will become easier. It will aggregate upon itself, and pretty soon,

you too will be an overnight success. So many people that are full of hate, condition, judgment, ego, they don't understand. they're in search of something they already have. Most people will tell you when they're in that mindset, I need to get more money, I need to get more healthy,

I need to get more worthy, I need to get more happy, because they're full of hate. If I can teach them not only to look within and heal, but also to have faith, and then finally to say, wait a second, if I am connected to and through the greatest source,

power, omnisional, knowing, omnipresent power that loves me more than my mom, then I am happy. I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am worthy. I just got to figure out what I'm doing to interfere with it. And this hate is interfering with my truth, my potential, my love, the light, and the lessons of the journey that I've been blessed with, with full appreciation, acknowledgement, and the ability to dream and to ask for more. So many people waste 80% of their time on things that bleed them. I reconcile my time with gratitude saying, yes, there's light, love, and less.

in everything every interview every circumstance event and every person an idea but is it worth my time therefore I'm feeding that which feeds me not getting bled and it allows me to be more productive accessible and gracious people will say to you when you talk about David Meltzer I don't know how that guy does it he's one of the most active people I've ever said they might even call me busy I hate that word because busy means unavailable I'm accessible but I'm only utilizing two hours and 17 minutes to be not non-negotiable that leaves 21 hours and 43 minutes to do whatever the F I want and so

how do I prioritize the other 21 hours and 43 minutes now remember I'm still more active just having a minimum amount of time 270 minutes I have all my prioritized things guaranteed done every day I'll always be healthy I'll always have great family and I'll always utilize my time effectively now all I got to do is have what I want who I can help who can help me how best to get that done and then I'll be able to prioritize because I always know what's important to me and I always know how to reprioritize it. Should you have big dreams? Of course you should. Should you dream of building a mansion on the ocean if that's your thing? Yes, should you dream of

the log cabin? Yes, if you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Broncos, should you put, yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about, yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. You dream about the end. you make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life. That literally, as you're sitting in your studio apartment, and you're looking for a job, and you're staring at a mansion going someday,

it's going to make you feel like a loser. Because the gap between where you are and where you want to go seems insurmountable. And so what happens, based on the research, is when you only visualize the end game, it's demotivating. At first, it's really fun. to like have a bottle of wine and make your like collage and I'm gonna visualize.

I'm gonna slap this up. There's my vision board. This is fabulous. Law of attraction baby, come up. I'm about think about it. It's gonna come to me. Okay, I've been doing this for two days. I'm not, I'm still in this apartment with the cap box that needs to be changed.

The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge between where you are and where you need to go. And particularly the horrible stuff. Visualize working a day job and telling your friends. friends that you're not going to go out tonight because you're working on something. Visualize making cold calls and being told no. Visualize not going to that party because you're staying in on a Saturday and not going to the barbecue because you're putting in the work. Visualize sitting at a seminar and learning for other people. Visualize watching YouTube videos. Visualize your first ever course failing miserable. Literally that's the sort of thing that you want to visualize yourself

doing and pushing through because that's going to help you do the work. As you will start to realize you are walking by an entirely different world every single day because you're not looking for it. There are opportunities. There are signs. There are mile markers on your path that you are literally tuning out. And we can all sit in this moment and look back and see how the dots of our life connect us here. You start to ground yourself in the idea that this too is a dot on the map of your life. And it is leading you somewhere incredible. Law of attraction is simply your thoughts become things. And it's true. We've talked all about how when you have a negative self-talk, it tends to draw more of that to you. I think about it like lint in a dryer. Once negative stuff

starts collecting, it collects a lot more. So here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting. everybody at least kind of in the mass market what you're trained to think about when you think about manifesting is vision boards and when you hear the word vision boards you think about the big stuff so let's use your example of the marathon the vision board would be Lewis crossing the arms up the metal exactly high fives yes I did it exactly that will not help you because when you hit mile 13 on the actual race and it is sleeting rain and it feels nothing like that thing on your vision board you're going to start a negative dialogue i can't do this my knees hurt this is not what i thought it was going to be i'm not ready for this i didn't train for this and you are going to

tank yourself what you do by visualizing the bridge is you train your nervous system and your mind to do the hard work so you should visualize not crossing the finish line but what is it like to be mile 12 when your batteries run out on your earbuds. I'm serious and you keep going. What's it like when your shoe lace breaks and now your heel is lifting and you're starting to get a blood blister at mile 17? What's it feel like when you wake up and it is pouring rain and you visualize yourself running anyway? That way when you visualize the work you are preparing your body for it so you're not resistant to it when it comes and so you are literally building up almost like

this resilience and this muscle inside of you to do the work to get the thing so yeah create the vision board but make sure in addition to crossing the finish line you have somebody running in the rain you have somebody who you have an alarm clock that says 513 you have you know these images that show the stuff that you don't want to do so like for people who want to launch a business for example like a lot of people that I'm sure follow both of us are or dying to launch a business, or interested in being an influencer, social media,

or making money online, and what you visualize are the checks, or you visualize the money you're going to make, or you visualize how cool it's going to be when you're a lifestyle entrepreneur, whatever the hell it is. Don't do that. I am constantly training my mind to work for me.

And there's this little trick that I talk about in the book that is all sort of the beginning of having a high-five attitude. And a high-five attitude is the ability to catch yourself when you're going mentally low and to flip yourself back up into a high-five attitude. The thing that I know to be true is that you cannot control the things around you. You can't control what's going to happen.

You can't even control how your nervous system might respond or what thoughts might pop into your head. But you can always choose what you do next and what you make it mean, right? And so that's where all the power is. We've talked a lot about negative self. And part of the reason why negative self-talk is so crippling is not only because you've repeated it for so long and now it's a pattern, but it's also because you have a filter on your brain

called the reticular activity system. This puppy is the keys to everything. And it's remarkable that most of us have never heard of it. We've experienced it, but we don't know how to use it to our advantage. So the RAS, imagine a hairnet on your brain. Only it's like electric, meaning it's alive, okay? Now, the RAS has one job, and the job is block out 99% of what's going on and let in 1% of what's going on. Our brains at this moment in history are having to process about 34 days worth of cell phone data in one day.

It's crazy. And so your RAS has a monster job. It's like a bouncer at a bar. You're not coming in. You can come in. There are only four things that automatically get through the bouncer in your brain, the RAS. Number one, your name. So you've experienced being in a crowded place and somebody's like, you think you hear Lewis and you're like,

huh, somebody call my name? That was a bouncer in your brain. The second thing that always gets let in is any threat to your safety. So there are loud noises all the time, but only ones in close proximity make you go like this. That was the bouncer in your brain letting it in. Okay. The third thing that gets let in is when you sense that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else. And the fourth one, and this is where this is the billion dollar thing that everybody needs to know,

the bouncer in your brain lets in whatever you think is important to you. So when you get intentional about telling your brain what's important to you, like I'm interested in a Tesla, your brain's literally like, oh, let's let all the Tesla's in. Come on in. Here's the downside to this. If you have told yourself that you are a bad person for the last 10 years, guess what your brain thinks is important. Examples that mean you're a bad person. So I'm going to give you a very specific example.

So I personally don't think I'm a bad person. I don't think I'm perfect, but I know I do my best. I mean well. I don't have that story about myself at all. I used to, but I don't. Let's say I oversleep and I miss the dentist. I miss the dentist appointment. I'm like, oh, I got to pay the $25.

I got to reschedule that thing. That kind of blows. That's all I think. And then I go on. My daughter, who constantly beats herself up and says she's a bad person. This is a real example, by the way. She oversleeps, misses a dentist appointment,

and it becomes, see, I always screw everything up. I'm a terror. I'm always messing things up. I'm a bad, like, everything that gets let in confirms that you're a bad person. She finds proof and evidence. Yes. That's the bouncer in your mind. I'm here to tell you that when you get intentional about what you want to think about yourself, it changes in real time what your brain lets in and what it doesn't.

That helps you with the other things that you're doing. The high five in the mirror. I'm not thinking about that. the pathetic monstra hey you know just because I miss the dentist appointment doesn't mean I'm a bad person I'm doing the best I can here give myself a break right

I five you know what I'm saying shake it off get back in there it's true right because it's these little things somebody cuts you off somebody reaches for the last thing of cereal that you wanted to buy at the grocery store you think it's like a sign that the world's out to get you this is all your story

and your mind skewing the world to prove all of the stuff you keep repeating and the only way to get a handle on it is to start acting the opposite like high-fide yourself even though you don't feel like it interrupt the crap that you keep saying

put your hands on your heart and settle your body down all of these things are things that somebody does when they care about themselves when they think they deserve to be treated with kindness when they think they deserve support

and when they realize they need it it does begin with you. For Jimmy and I, we had never really envisioned how big this could be until we launched the business. And then a couple weeks later, we were like, holy cow, this is actually catching fire. The Mr. Deere relationship, it was a, it was a mutual introduction between a friend of mine, Jobless Garrett. He messaged me out of the blue one day. Hey, I met this guy. His content is really interesting.

I think you should meet. I was like, okay, sure. send me his channel. And the first video that I watched was Jimmy spinning a fidget spinner for 24 hours, and he was just sitting at a desk. And that was kind of the first video I watched, thought it was incredibly strange. The next video I watched was him counting to 100,000, which was like totally legit. 99, 900,000. 100,000. This guy's crazy. I need to meet him just through Twitter DMs. And that's how Jimmy and I met. Jimmy and I clicked. I think our obsession for the internet and YouTube

just really allowed us to get along and kind of see each other. And I complimented him in an area that he didn't necessarily want to do, which was business and operations. And he's just so good at what he does in terms of video making and being a marketing genius. And so it was really just a good relationship from the start.

I really struggle with just being patient for certain things to happen, especially in my 20s. Like I was the type of person who like, thought I was going to find success early on and thought at like 24 years old I would already have this, you know, successful job or successful business. And it takes time. It takes time to personally grow. It takes time to figure out what you want to do in life, what person, what type of person you want to become. And then like what's important to you. And so I've had to, you know, probably

humble myself more than most people of just like being patient and just kind of like enjoying the journey in the process as like cliché as that sounds. Like I've found a lot of in the journey of growing this company over the last five years that I really just didn't think I was going to have in my 20s. My advice for creators starting out today is it is the easiest time to become a content creator right now. And it's the best time for discoverability for any content creator starting out. I tell a lot of creators that are just starting out to really just like focus on short form to start. Kind of hone in on your craft on YouTube shorts, TikTok, now Instagram Reels, figure out like what that content is. stay true to yourself, make things that you're truly proud of.

And this is something that, you know, Jimmy tells a lot of content creators is like, your first 100 videos are going to suck. So it's like once you get to that like 100 video, go back and look at the first five and you're going to cringe at how bad it was. And so you really have to focus on making each video better than the next. This is a long game. And if you're not willing to put in the time and effort, like just don't, don't even compete because it is hyper competitive right now for attention.

You can go on TikTok or YouTube shorts and make 10 second or 15 second videos and the organic reach of those is unmatched currently. I mean, just look at my TikTok, which like I'm not a content creator, but I have had multiple TikToks get 5, 6, 7, 800,000 views just like filming a day in my life or talking about like here's the five reasons why Mr. Beast is successful or here's like three ways that you can become a content creator. it's hard to make a living just making 10 second TikToks. Not only is it incredibly difficult to monetize, brands are just not as willing to sponsor that type of content as they are long-form videos. And so after you figure out those first things that I said, now start figuring out how you create maybe four or five-minute videos

into 10-minute videos. So you can actually have AdSense and mid-rolls and you can do a 60-second brand integration, like things that are tried and true and working for a lot of content creators right now. And so hopefully for the content creators watching, like, hopefully that's helpful. And again, like, each, each, each, like, video you post, some you're not going to be proud of. But I think if you really focus on, I need to make a better video next week and the week after.

Like, you're eventually going to get really good at that craft. It might take you years. And Preston and Jimmy and typical gamer and a lot of these guys, they're on year 10, 12 of their careers. Jimmy's not on year four. Jimmy was creating videos since he was 13 years old. It just took him a long time to figure out what his style is and what he actually wants to create. If you're not passionate about the stuff you're creating, you're going to get to a point where you just don't want to make it anymore. And I think I've done a lot of thinking about creator burnout and why it happens.

And I think one reason creator burnout happens aside from the like they're doing everything. They're the director, the producer, the editor. and like they have this creative fog that starts to happen after they produce a lot of videos. But a lot of times as well is like they just never loved the type of content they were creating. Maybe got forced into a niche because it started doing well and then they doubled down. And then two years after they were like, man, I really do not like this type of content. I don't want to wake up today and make this type of content. It's like you have to really enjoy what you do.

If you enjoy playing video games and you can make that entertaining, start there. You don't have to just go trend hack and do something that's doing well for other people. For the first few years, it was mostly Jimmy. He had all these ideas on a whiteboard that he wanted to execute, that he had come up with over the last six or 12 months. And so still to this day, he has all these ideas that he wants to execute. And a lot of them make for massive YouTube videos. The issue today is like the videos have become so complex and so expensive

that they take months of planning to actually film a video. like no longer are the days of like filling my friend's backyard with a million orbies where all you need to do logistically is like get a million orbies to north carolina and actually put water on them to make them big and then throw them in your friend's backyard like those those videos like although in 2018 2019 we thought were very challenging they were very easy to pull off comparatively to like giving away a chocolate factory and recreating squid game and all this other stuff that it's now come to um and yeah i mean the videos have just become so complex. And I don't see the stopping. Like, they're just going to get more expensive and more complex as he continues to raise the bar. I used to think there was a limit, like a couple years ago when he would post it. Like, we did this video that's, um, it was, can 50,000 magnets stop a bullet? And so the video content was not great, but the concept was amazing.

It was like 50,000 magnets on a wall. can it affect a bullet or stop a bullet? And the video throughout the first day did so well. I need to go back and look at the analytics, but I think it got like somewhere in like the 20 million views within the first 24 hours. To that point, we had never experienced anything like that. The video went on to get 60 million views over the course of a week,

which at the time, this was like 2019, like him and I's minds were just blown at how crazy this video did on YouTube. And so I was worried. back then I'm like where do we go from here like how do you get more than 60 million views in a seven-day period like that's never been done on YouTube outside of music videos and so it's like something that I worried about a lot early on and now I'm like less worried about it just because like I know the videos being filmed I know the scale of them like I know like what the next

four months look like but pretty early on like I had that worry is like how does this continue getting bigger but now it's like after you do Squid Game and giving away a chalk factory and some of the stuff that's getting filmed right now, I'm like, this bar is just going to continue to go up. I had worked so hard to get an opportunity at an NFL sports agency for something that I thought I really wanted. You know, for multiple years, I wanted to work in an NFL sports agency. And so to finally get that opportunity to get in the door to start to make traction and to work with the people I worked with was incredibly fulfilling for me at the time. But I started to get this sense that the sports world was a little bit behind

of where everything was moving. Everything was becoming more digitally focused. People were starting to make careers on the internet. I started to find Minecraft and Roblox and started to realize that like 14, 15 year old kids were making their own servers and monetizing their own servers and selling cosmetic items. And so I started to see that like there was other creative. that were gaining traction and especially in the video game space. And so when I started Night Media, I really kind of latched on to a lot of video game channels, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto specifically. So it was like typical gamer, NOJ 456, Preston plays.

There's some of the bigger names now that people, you know, know, like Typical Gamer now is 12 or 13 million subscribers, Preston S20. These channels were really small when I initially found them. And so that's kind of how I latch myself into this. business is like the dude perfect relationship and then kind of started representing video game channels and that's when night media started in early 2015 and so my brain started to just kind of wrap its head around like all the things that were going on on the internet and all the businesses that were starting to be built on the internet and so i got this like sense that i was

being left behind and it started to give me anxiety and i remember having this anxiety for months on end that I loved what I did at that NFL sports agency and I loved the work and the people I worked with, but I just for some reason, I felt like there was a bigger opportunity happening that I wasn't a part of. And so that's when I started doing a lot of this research, and I fell into YouTube,

and I started watching personality channels for the first time. I obviously had watched YouTube, how to change a tire, how to fix this, but personality channels, you know, this was 2013, I still had not watched personality channels. I didn't know they existed. And so once I found that, I kind of just went down the rabbit hole in a lot of these different channels. And so I then had to like have a conversation with myself of like, what do I want to do with, you know, the rest of my life?

Do I, do I want to be an NFL sports agent, which is a grind in itself? And, you know, we were recruiting kids in, you know, that went to USC and Alabama and Florida State. And it's like you're constantly traveling and it's hyper competitive. or do I want to go carve out this little niche for myself and something that I started to believe in, which was a dude perfect. And so it was a hard decision. And I think for the most part, like I remember having this conversation with my parents and for the life of them, they, like, couldn't understand why I would give up this dream job at a sports agency

to go really start my own business in Dallas, Texas, working with YouTube creators because it's just they couldn't wrap their heads around. like how is this going to become a business? Like people watch channels on the internet and these channels make money. How do they make money? So they couldn't really wrap their head around it. But I mean, I just ultimately like after thinking about it and after sleeping about like sleeping on the decision for a long time, I woke up one morning and I just was like, it's time. I feel in my like gut, I feel like this is the right decision and I've always been a person where I like I trust my gut.

And I didn't look back. I packed everything up. I moved to Dallas. I started my business, which is now Night Media. I don't regret it for a second. But at the time, like, it was really tough for the first year and a half to two years. When I tell you, like, people didn't understand it. Like, I truly mean it.

It was hard to gain any type of traction within the brand and advertising agencies because they just, they didn't see the opportunity like I did. And I was pretty early to the situation or early to the, to the, to the, to the advertising agencies. of brand sponsorships on YouTube and so I just kept at it because I love it like I truly believed in it and I knew I could make a business out of this but it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make is leaving that you know sports world of what I thought I wanted to do and trying to like be an entrepreneur and start my own business if you're really good at what you do as a manager these relationships are going to last decades right and so if you're looking at it with a long-term mindset of okay

this is a 10, 20, 30 year relationship, you need to really get along with that person and understand that person. And so a lot of the time that Jimmy and I spent together early on was just kind of asking each other questions and getting to know each other. And then I started asking him questions about like, what do you think of this video? What would you have done in this video? And so it was really just relationship building for him and I at that point. I didn't, like, whether I represented him or not, didn't really matter. It was more like, can I get along with this person, do we see eye to eye, can we do business together? And that's kind of how we think about it now to this date. Like, night doesn't represent 400 people. We represent 30, maybe 32 creators. And we have

deep relationships with those people because we take time to get to know them, but we also understand like this is a long game. At some point in life, we're all going to struggle. We're going to be confronted with something. There's going to be some obstacles that we feel that, you know, we can't overcome or when you're on your path to success, there's always going to be those roadblocks here and there. It's just, it's a part of life. And I think that's what's so rewarding when we do achieve what we achieve is because of those failures, because of those struggles, because of those roadblocks, athletes that have achieved an amount of success, I think when their doubt creeps in or there's naysayers or there's doubters, I think the best thing that I ever did,

obviously I think was believing myself. That's first and foremost. Those roadblocks can come in different forms. It can be own mental roadblocks. It could be outside criticism. It could be media. It could be anything. It could be personal problems.

It could be family problems. I mean, anything can trigger you and to try to get you off track. Those are struggles. I think an athlete, again, to get to where you want to be and the process in which it takes to get there, you have to be a day. addicted. I saw and I listened to what the coach said and they saw in me, which was a lot of

potential. And I just wanted to build on that. But at the end of the day, we're all going to struggle. I struggle, but I didn't quit. And that's what I encourage a lot of people to do. Just don't quit. You know, it's not how you start. It's how you finish. And so for me, that mindset of just not wanting to quit, not wanting to succumb to the ebbs and flow of the game and, you know, disappointment, having short-term memory. Nobody's perfect. You're going to have those days. Some days you're going to have it.

Some days you're not. And it's the great ones that look beyond that mistake and just have short-term memory and go to the next play as if the bad play just didn't happen. That's where you have a small percentage of great athletes in every sport. You have your average, you have your good, and you have your great. When you talk about the goat, or you're talking about the greatest of all the time, I may not be considered the goat in some people's eyes, but if you look at me and you look at my highlight, I definitely fit the description.

If I didn't have the coaches that pushed me, push me beyond really kind of, I think, my own limits or my own expectations, I don't think that I would have become the receiver that I became. I don't think I would have been this guy that became T.O. Obviously, like you said, when you talk about physically, I fit the description of an athlete. I fit the description of one of those physically imposing receivers, I guess, became a poster child for prototypical receivers that came after me. Because if you look at the transition of the receiver position before me and after me, they start to become bigger, faster, and stronger.

You think of guys like Calvin Johnson. They call them Megatron. You think of Julio Jones. These are big body type of receivers that possess not only just the hands and catch radius. but we think about the speed and the power of these guys. I think that's something that people marvel at, marveled at as they saw the progression each and every year that I played in the National Football League. And I think after my third year in the league, after I made the catch against the Green Bay Packers,

I think that instilled a lot of confidence in myself that I could play and I could play on a big stage. It didn't start out particularly well, but that's where the cliche, you know, it's not how you start, it's how you finish. I realized as I started to really score touchdowns and my touchdown celebrations became a topic of discussion, you know, I thought it was something positive, but when commentators and analysts started to really create this narrative that I was being selfish or I was taking, taken away from the team concept or making it all about, about me or becoming selfish, honestly, I didn't take that very well. I didn't think that that's what I was doing.

And so for me, I could have allowed that outside noise that criticism manifest and really deterred me from really doing what I really wanted to do and be productive on the football field. If I would have allowed that to really eat at me and not allow myself to be who who I was in the football field, then it could have been disastrous. It could have been like pretty much, it could have made a break, you know, who I was as a

talent. And it could have made a break really my career. But I think it all, like I said, it all stems from, you know, how I was raised and my grandmother and the things that she taught me. She basically told you, yeah, people, when you start to become successful, they're going to people, you're not going to be 100% liked by everyone. And so I didn't, there was so many layers and so many elements of being a professional athlete and being in that sport.

You're going to be subjected to criticism, whether you do good or bad, and people are going to talk about you, good, bad, or what have you, but you have to be strong-willed, and I think that's who and how I was, and I think a lot of that, like I said, stem from the upbringing of my grandmother.

But at the end of the day, I think an athlete, again, to get to where you want to be and the process in which it takes to get there, you have to be addicted to bettering yourself. You literally, you have to be addicted to bettering yourself. And that's what I became. I became addicted to the process of the success that stemmed from my off-season workouts.

Once I got a personal trainer after my third year, it was very different in my approach and things that I had ever done since high school and college. But I was receptive to that because I hired him as, as my personal trainer. You know, we had that dialogue, we sat down, and we talked about what I wanted to accomplish, not only just from a football standpoint, at that point in time going into my fourth year, but what did I want to accomplish with my workouts? What did I want to get better at?

What did I, from a physical standpoint, how did I want to get better? He asked me, you know, assess your body. What do you want? What do you want to get out of these workouts? And so for me, I was a skinny, growing kid. Yeah, I had, you have six three frame coming out of college. At this time, you know, three years into the league, yeah, I was physically imposing. But I wasn't satisfied at where I was at that point in my third year going into my fourth year.

Yeah, I had come off one of the biggest game, made one of the biggest plays, catches in my career. At that time, you know, considered one of the biggest catches, I guess, monumental. type of catches in 49th history after the, after the catch, you know, by, by Dwight Clark. And my catch was, you know, kind of pegged myself as the catch too, considering, you know, wild card game, you know, really a rivalry over the years between San Francisco, Green Bay Packers, two Hall of Fame quarterbacks now in Brett Farr, Steve Young. And so like I said, I played in a very monumental game where the stakes were high, wild card game. The game honestly went down, almost down to the last seconds.

So that's something, again, like I said, that catapulted me to be where I am today.