Next Level Pros - #23: Keaton Hoskins: Founder of Over 35 Companies, “The Muscle” From Diesel Brothers, Author

Starting point is 00:00:00 You don't have to work for anybody. You don't have to listen to people, but please spend money on yourself and invest in yourself to get someone to mentor and help you. Welcome to the Founder Podcast, where we explore the journeys of some of the most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs from around the world. I'm your host, Chris Lee, a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building and growing businesses. Throughout my career, I founded multiple nine-figure businesses and learned a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in the world of business. I want to share those lessons with you by searching out the coolest guests on planet Earth and have them share their own incredible stories. But this podcast, it's not just for entrepreneurs. It's for anyone that's looking to be inspired by these stories of people who have overcome incredible odds and create something truly remarkable.

Starting point is 00:00:54 So join me on this journey as we explore the fascinating world of entrepreneurship and meet the founders that are shaping it today. Let's dive in. Oh, baby, welcome to another founder podcast. Today, I am joined by Mr. Keaton, the muscle, as he's known on his social media accounts. And Keaton has founded over 35 companies throughout his career, been a hustler ever since the age of 21. Many people know him as part of the Diesel Brothers show, along with Diesel Dave and Heavy D, and has been a part of just all kinds of cool things. He's got a really cool event that he's going to be putting on here in Utah pretty

Starting point is 00:01:39 soon that we're excited to talk about. Welcome to the show, Mr. Keaton. Thanks, man. I'm really, really excited to be here. I really appreciate it. Yeah, dude. Man, I just love getting to know new people. So me and Keaton, we don't go back anywhere. This is the first time meeting. Like, you know, he flew in in his chopper today, and I think he texted me for the first time, and it's like, yo, what's up?

Starting point is 00:01:59 Where are we meeting? So this is the most exciting part of podcasts when you haven't met anybody. Dude, you got a really cool story. are we meeting? So this is the most exciting part of podcasts when you haven't met anybody. Dude, you got a really cool story. Take me back, like 35 companies, obviously some of them solopreneur, some of them success, failures. Tell me about life, what got you to this point? You're 35 years old. So I was 19, decided to be a Mormon missionary, so I went on a Mormon mission. Nice. Came back at 21.

Starting point is 00:02:27 I had a really sick father growing up, all the way growing up, and I was the oldest of five kids. And all growing up, I had that father that was 9 to 5, 401K, become part of the company, stay there for life, and that's safety. Right. and that's safety. And when he was 47, I was 21, he passed away. And I watched the last year of his life, he just got thrown to the wolves. And he was actually the CEO of a really big company. And I watched everything that he taught me growing up go completely out the window. So where were you at? Was this in Utah? Yeah, it was here in Utah. I had just gotten back from being a Mormon missionary. I had been home for three months.

Starting point is 00:03:08 I actually didn't think he was going to live past me coming home. I thought he was going to die before I got home. I got home. I had been home for about three months. And I watched him deteriorate pretty quickly. And essentially, we had a few of those deathbed talks. And at the very, very end, he was very adamant. Like you got to go to school. You got to get your degree. You got a nine to five. You got to work your way up in companies. And he taught all

Starting point is 00:03:35 of my siblings that I got. There's five of us, four boys and one girl. I'm the oldest. He taught all of us that. And he was like, dude, this, this is the way, this is the safe way. And then the last two years of his life, I watched everybody just throw him to the wind, no savings, no nothing. They took it. He didn't have any money, mostly because he was so unhealthy and sick that everything went like savings, all of that. So he passed away. And I specifically remember thinking, you know what? I'm not going to live the life that he lived and I'm not going to die the way that he died. I'm not going to lay here on a deathbed with regret, realizing the way I lived my life was not to my full potential. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I was not a smart kid by any means. I was not smart, but I had in me a desire

Starting point is 00:04:24 not to do what he did. And I'll tell you, I tell people this a lot. I do a lot of mentoring now. The greatest thing that you can do on a daily basis is to think about death. And a lot of people, I think, think that's kind of morbid, but it places you in the right perspective. Well, when you're 21 and your dad dies at 47, you can't think about anything else other than death coming. So with that, I thought, you know what, if it's going to come and this is how it was for him and this was his safety, then I'm going to do whatever I want to do, plain and simple. I'm not going to work for someone. I'm not going to live by somebody's rules, which has

Starting point is 00:05:00 gotten me in some trouble. And I just committed that I was going to build whatever I wanted to build. And so from 21 until I'm 35 now, I have done nothing but wander around, see things that I want to do, find a void and try to fill it and build a business as simple as that. So let's talk about it. Obviously not all 35 were bangers, right? Home runs. Otherwise, like if every single one, you probably wouldn't have gotten to 35. So, so what was the path like, right? Like where, where did you find failure? Where'd you find success? Like what were some of the lessons learned along the way? You know, I always tell people this, cause I hear this a lot. Like you have to fail. You have to

Starting point is 00:05:38 fail. You have to fail. I'll be very, very clear, like really transparent on two pieces. I've never failed in a company. I've always made money, but I've never done what you told me you've done, which is exit with a big exit, right? I've never built a company worth more than maybe $10 million. I have now, but in the last, since I started, never really built a company worth more than at the most $10 to $12 million. So I realized the shotgun approach where you just kind of shoot it and go and go and go. And you don't build infrastructure and you just focus on cash and you just try to make money. I did learn through that, that there's

Starting point is 00:06:18 a much, much better way. I will say knock on wood, I haven't ever failed. And I only say that because I've never lost money in a company. I've never had a company I didn't make money in. Now, some of them, it was like, hey, man, you made $25,000. Let's get rid of this. It doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to toot my own horn and say I've crushed it. Yeah, I think really what you're talking about is just different level of failure.

Starting point is 00:06:40 Some people think failure is like bankruptcy. I went through that, right? My very first business, I tried to build big $2.2 million bankruptcy, lost money. I owed money to my father-in-law, my dad. It was absolutely terrible, right? That's what a lot of people think is failure. But I mean, to your point, there's good, better, and best, right? And good could be a definition of failure. For sure. And that's what it was for me, dude. I was only good in all of these companies. I was never better and I was never best. And I honestly, until about the last two years, I've never really been best. And so through that and that like thought process of

Starting point is 00:07:16 I'm not going to work for people, I'm going to build my own shit. I don't need any help, which was stupid. I learned that I could just be good. And with good, you can make good money. But I wanted to make real money. I wanted to be much bigger. And in the last few years, that's kind of where I've realized like, dude, those really were failures. Because if I would have done the first one, the second one, or the third one right, I would probably be a billionaire. I would probably be just crazy amounts of money. So it is still, there is a sense of failure in that, you know? So I like to share that because a lot of people are like, well, what failures? I don't know. I don't know if there was a failure. And I don't even know if I believe in failure. Failure is when you quit, right? But there's definitely like,

Starting point is 00:07:57 hey dude, you were here and you could have been here. There's a big difference there. So knowing, I mean, obviously you started to have a lot of success over the last few years, knowing what you know now, how would you do things differently? It's the reason why I have what I have now. So I have a mentoring program called Limitless Society. Yep. I just started it a year ago. I literally, I was sitting on a couch with my wife and I'm like, you know what? I want to make people rich. I want to help people become millionaires. She was like, okay, what does that, what does that mean? And I'm like, I don't know. So my dumb ass got on social media and said, I'm going to make 10 people a millionaire. No idea what I was going to do. No, I, you know, and essentially I was like, you know what? And I

Starting point is 00:08:35 had thousands and thousands of messages come in and I was like, you know what? I want to start a mentoring program. I want to help people. I want to teach them how to do and be something great. So when people ask me, what would I change when I go back? And it's always hard to say I would change much because where you're at now, you love, right? The one thing I would change in my life, if I could go back to my 21-year-old self, I would punch him in the mouth. And I would say, dude, you don't have to work for anybody. You don't have to listen to people. But please spend money on yourself and invest in

Starting point is 00:09:06 yourself to get someone to mentor and help you. And it doesn't have to be the, like, I have a mentor. That's not what it is. But going to somebody who has the life, the money, the family, the sources, the success you want and saying, Hey man, I don't know what it would take to, to, for some of your time, but could I just get some guidance from you? Right. Because, again, at 35, I don't know everything. But if I were to go teach a 21-year-old, I could help him miss so many pitfalls, and I'd probably be a billionaire today if I would have done that. Dude, amen.

Starting point is 00:09:37 I mean, and it's so funny because at least as a 21-year-old Chris, right? Like I wanted to pretend like I knew everything. Yeah. Oh yeah. Right. You want to act like you got figured out, right? You, you know, you take a little action, you're, you're doing all these things, but like, man, fast forward when I was 33 years old, that's the first time that I started spending money on mentorship, right? Like on coaches, masterminds, all the, all the different things. things and it wasn't until then then my life started to catapult absolutely like never before that everything before then was like yeah i made money it was good not great and then as soon as i and i think getting a mentor is actually about

Starting point is 00:10:17 swallowing your pride a hundred percent ego yeah it's ego it's like i no longer know everything and i know you know more than me. And knowing that everybody knows something that's different than me, and I want to grasp that. I want to take as much as I possibly can, and I'm willing to pay for it. Yeah. Yeah, so, dude, I love that. I love that. Dude, one of the things that I say now, I've become really good friends with Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant's mentor. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:42 And I had this conversation with him and I'm like, I just, I sometimes worry like, is mentoring really worth it? And he looked at me and he was like, Michael Jordan was the greatest ball player on earth. And he had a mentor. What makes you think that you're even close to as good as he was in basketball at anything. And he had a mentor. And then I was like, Oh, you're right. And I've never met anybody yourself included. Who's been successful. That's like, I did it completely by myself. I never had anybody help me. It just doesn't work that way. But then you turn around and you look at those who didn't swallow their ego, let go of their pride. And they're like, I'm still banging out, making two, 300 K a year. And I refuse to listen to anybody. All right, man, you're gonna

Starting point is 00:11:24 stay on that path for a really long time. Yeah. So tell me, tell me about like what, so obviously mentorship really changed your life, right? Like once you started bringing on mentorship, what else would you say like is the secret sauce about Mr. Keaton, right? Like if, if separate you from the rest of the world, what makes you completely different? Um, man, that's a hard question to answer. I would love to say that I'm different than everybody. And I don't know, I don't know pridefully if, if there is an answer, but I'll tell you my first thought. Um, I think, I think my core belief in God and the fact that I believe God is my father and that I'm actually his child and I'm heir to him gives me an ability to understand that I truthfully have capabilities that are way, way, way beyond even what I accept right now.

Starting point is 00:12:17 And one of the reasons that I started Limitless Society and even named it Limitless is because I actually really do believe that every single one of us are limitless. So if you ask me what's different, it's that I have been able to have an ability to see in myself and in every single person around me their own capabilities. When I sit down with people all over the world, I don't care if you make 60 grand, you make 30 grand, you make three million dollars a month, I don't care what you make. And I can look at you and truthfully feel in you that you're not living up to your potential and that you truthfully have way more capabilities and then convince you of that. I think that that's something that most people are not able to do, not even with themselves, but definitely not with other people. So when you spend time with me and you'll learn this, cause we'll probably have a great relationship after this

Starting point is 00:13:06 podcast. I surround myself with people who are just willing to let go of limiting beliefs and say, Hey, maybe just maybe anything is possible. And Hey Keaton, I want to push you to that. And I want you to push me to that. Everything I've done, no matter how great, no matter how small, I believe that it's not to our full capability. So let's dive into that a little bit more. You're talking about this limitless potential. What experiences, what created that belief in you? Obviously God, right?

Starting point is 00:13:35 Like what your full potential is. But like what experiences did you have that you're like, man, I can do more. I can do more I can I can accomplish more like like for me in my career there were times that it was just like wow that's what Chris is capable of right I go back to when I was knocking doors right and selling a home security systems and I was in a competition for a Range Rover and the most sales I've ever made in a day was eight and then in the championship for that Range Rover, nothing else

Starting point is 00:14:05 changed except for my, just my belief pattern. And I sold 18 in a day, right? Like that was a day, like I can never live that down. And it's only one thing that I could ever experience that I having experienced that I can never deny it. What are some experiences like that, that you've had in your life that I think the reason that I truthfully believe this is because I see myself in so much inadequacies from the very beginning. I look at myself in two ways. I firmly believe I'm the best there ever was. At the same time, I understand that I am so inadequate in everything that I do. And I understand when I see my own inadequacies, my own flaws, if I'm able to do what I'm able to do and make millions of dollars and have crazy

Starting point is 00:14:46 amounts of success, I literally can think of something now and I can do it. Like, it doesn't matter what it is, like the event that we're doing. But what got you there? I think getting to a place of true, true understanding that what you have to do a hundred percent, and this is really hard for people. And a lot of people say they do it, but it's really hard. If you can stand in front of a mirror and look that person in the eyes and be 100% real with that person, like real, real and say, Hey dude, if you're fat, you're fat. If you're sloppy, you're sloppy. If you're lazy, you're lazy. If you're, if you're, if you have an ego and you're prideful, you're fat. If you're sloppy, you're sloppy. If you're lazy, you're lazy. If you're, if you're, if you have an ego and you're prideful, you're prideful. Whatever it is, being able to look at that person and say, dude, this is what you are. And this is what you want to become.

Starting point is 00:15:36 And there is a deficit. There's a gap, plain and simple. If I can't accept that, which most people don't, if I can't accept that, I can't beat it. I can't fix it. If I stand in front of myself and say, dude, you have inadequacies and flaws like crazy. I accept them. Now let's go to work and change them. And then in that, I watch the progress. That's ultimately where it has all started. I'm like, dude, like when I'm 25 years old and I set out to make a million dollars and I make a million dollars. The first time I made dude, like when I'm 25 years old and I set out to make a million dollars and I make a million dollars. The first time I made a million dollars when I was 29 and I made the million dollars, I remember going, holy shit, this big, dumb, goofy dude just went from no money to

Starting point is 00:16:19 a million dollars. It took me nine years, but I did it. And with all of my inadequacies, like there's no way there's people out there that are less inadequate than me. There really can't be. And because of that, it cultivated in me this idea that, dude, if I'm, if I'm all the way down here and I'm able to get here, every single motherfucker I've ever met can do that. Every single one of them. You're getting me fired up. So what the principle that you're sharing right now is that is the one that so many people miss. Like you said, it's the principle of operating from a stance of truth, right? Like so many people deny the truth. We are the biggest liars to ourselves, right? The self-deception that happens until we accept a point of truth, we can't change, right? Because exactly. If you can't, if you don't say

Starting point is 00:17:05 here, here, you can't identify the gap. Like this is, this is a principle and it's, and it's really not that complex. It's just, we've got to get, we got to become tired of lying to ourselves. Yes. Tired of pretending I work hard, tired of pretending that I'm in shape, tired of pretending that I'm a good husband, tired of pretending that I'm doing X, Y, and Z, and just say, this is what I am. This is where I want to be and get after it. So I wrote a book on divorce. It's called Going to War with Yourself, the handbook on divorce. And in there, a lot of people, they're like, well, I'm not going through divorce. I'm not going to read your book. The book is about self-development. And ultimately, every single principle that I teach in there has to

Starting point is 00:17:45 start with one thing. You have to be able to accept that you are not what you want and you're the sum total of your choices. Like everything I am is from what I've chose to be. If I want to change, I have to understand through honesty that there is a deficit. And if there is a deficit, I can then go to work and change that deficit. But it's the same thing when you talk to an alcoholic. Are you an alcoholic? No, I'm not. Well, then you can't fix it until you choose to be honest with yourself. You can't fix shit. As soon as I was honest with myself, as soon as I saw the deficiency and then I saw the progress, I fully accepted in me that I could do anything. And because I placed myself here in

Starting point is 00:18:27 a society of people that are here, if I can do it, everybody can do it. And that's why that's what I teach. Amen. Hallelujah, baby. I love it. Good stuff, my brother. So let's shift gears a little bit back in a little bit of your professional career. So we were talking before the podcast, kind of, uh, you know, some cool things that you guys, you guys were pioneers in the, I don't even know what you call it in the marketing where you give away, give the giveaway, the giveaway. So tell me about that experience, how that all came out. I love good stories like that. So, so everybody knows, you know, we had a TV show called diesel brothers where it's diesel Dave, heavy D and myself before the show actually started, we, we had a company, called Diesel Brothers where it's Diesel Dave, Heavy D, and myself. Before the show actually started, we had a company.

Starting point is 00:19:07 It was called Diesel Sellers. Heavy D and Diesel Dave started it in their garage. I grew up with those guys, so we were really good friends. We were actually all building trucks at the same time. And when we started the company, essentially Dave was like, hey, man, we're going to show companies that we can take Facebook and market their company. So we started doing that like door to door. Hey, we want to show you, give us money and we'll show you, you can market your company. Nobody, nobody believed us. They're like, ah, this Facebook, this social media is bullshit. It's going to come and go, you know? So Dave came back and Dave was like, dude, we have to show them.

Starting point is 00:19:42 Why don't we start an apparel company? Let's give away a truck. We have two, 300,000 followers on our Facebook. Let's give away a truck. And in that giveaway, they will buy our apparel and for every dollar they spend, they get entered in to win the truck. So it's essentially a lottery. Totally cool. Coolest idea ever. Well, Dave starts to get into it and he realizes to do it legally, you actually have to offer it for free. Right. They have to be, you have to be able to mail in, right? Yes. Which we didn't know. We didn't know that. And so Dave was like, holy shit, dude. So we're going to start a lottery that essentially people can win a $75,000 truck for free. Now in 2012, when Facebook has, was new and all of this was new, we didn't have any money. Right? So Dave's like, well,

Starting point is 00:20:31 we're going to build this and hope to that it works. Right. They had a rubber bands that said diesel power on them. There was like three shirts. And essentially we just went to Facebook and said, here's a bad-ass truck. If you want to win it, all you have to do is buy from us. And then on the website, it said at the bottom, you can mail an entry and every mail-in entry, you get one entry. So it was like, holy shit, dude, let's hope. Please don't mail in. And dude, the first few weeks you start to see a lot of mail-in entries. You're like, holy shit. Three months in the first giveaway, we did about $6 in in sales awesome what was your margin on that a lot because it was such cheap right it was rubber band i mean i hate to say it but it was garbage yeah it was a rubber band that cost us 12 cents that we sold for three dollars a shitty

Starting point is 00:21:18 shitty shirt for 25 bucks how much did you have into this truck? Oh, it was the 75. So you had 75 grand into this. Yeah. Sell 650, right? You're going, I mean, you're gambling this whole thing on that. And you have no money. None. And dude, this is one of the greatest things I love about heavy D he's a nut job, but dude, he just does stuff and he just knows it's going to work. Like I've watched him do it over and over again. So he did it. And it was like, holy shit, this is crazy. So we do the giveaway. We see 650, $700,000 come through. And it's like, oh my gosh, this is real. And then we realized that the more viral shit we did on YouTube and the more viral stuff we did on Facebook, the more our crowd grew. Right. So we were like, you know what, let's start doing stupid skits. So that's where Diesel Dave came in. All of us got names. They gave us all names and we started doing these stupid skits.

Starting point is 00:22:09 We did a skit with Rockwell watches, actually. We put an exhaust pipe into a bathroom of one of our buddies who was taking a shit and we filled it up with black smoke. Dude, it had 100 million views. Facebook went crazy. YouTube went crazy. Everything went nuts. And our following grew and grew and grew. Most people don't know this, but we were famous before we had the TV show because we were growing our social medias to make more money to market, right? So we did that. We did two truck giveaways and crushed.

Starting point is 00:22:40 The next one, I think we did a million dollars. Jay Leno saw us and our skit and had us out on his show let's go he pulls diesel dave up out of the crowd he's like what is this this is crazy and so you know dave explains it and that's when the discovery channel saw us discovery channel is like these guys are nuts we got to do a tv show so from there on out we started a tv show but realistically realistically in 2012, we started and launched the giveaway model. One of the cool things about my event in September, I'm going to have heavy D on the stage. It will be the first time he gets on stage and tells people this story

Starting point is 00:23:15 and actually helps people understand the giveaway model. Most people now don't understand it's too saturated. It doesn't work anymore. And everybody's like, how do I do the giveaway? How do I do the, you can't, right? It's very, very hard. And what's funny is we are, we're the innovator of all of it. So we realized in about 2016, 17, when the giveaway model started to get saturated, we would then change to cash. So what do you see now? You see cash giveaways, Hey, buy our product and get entered into win a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars. And that has now been saturated. So why does that work? It not like giving away a truck? Um, because your demographic grows. Cash demographic is the biggest demographic in the world. Everybody wants cash. Not everybody wants a truck and not everybody wants the truck that we build. We actually noticed because we did, I think we did over a hundred truck giveaways.

Starting point is 00:24:04 We noticed what trucks were well with the demographic and what trucks didn't. We would build bad-ass trucks and be like, why does nobody like this truck? They're like, I can't drive that. It doesn't work. We built crazy. So then we opted out and said, hey, if you win, you have the opportunity to take the truck or a hundred thousand dollars in cash. They were taking cash.

Starting point is 00:24:22 And that all, yeah, they always took cash, but that's's actually what helped us so we launched this and we just crushed it and then last year we we were eight seasons into uh diesel brothers and heavy d myself and diesel dave were like you know what dude i don't want to do this anymore discovery channel is going to ride us out until we just bomb out and we don't want to do this with them what what was your guys contracts like what kind of money were you making on the on the show it's so funny dude every time i ever post anything people because i was the parts guy on tv right because people think that that's real right there everybody's always like dude you made all your money from tv like dude i wish um our first season i think i got paid fifteen hundred dollars an episode we did like 15 episodes right

Starting point is 00:25:05 so not very much twenty two thousand dollars oh it was horrible then our second season because we were the number one show on discovery we were to this day we were still the biggest uh premiere show discoveries ever had and discovery is the biggest channel in the world there's no channel bigger than discovery our second season we were like hey so you need to renegotiate yeah we know and they're like well you can get three percent we're like all right man we're out we're not coming back for three percent right so then they upped it i think my second season we did like three thirty five hundred bucks and then by the time we got to the very last seasons i think i think i was making like 10 grand an episode. So 150 grand for a season. If that, because we did between 12 to 15 episodes a year. So dude, there's no real money in it.

Starting point is 00:25:51 So it was really just gaining following, gaining reputation, which I mean, that's where the real money is. Absolutely. And that's what I capitalize on. 100%. And this is no sleight of hand to Diesel Dave, because I love him to death, but he hasn't done that. He hasn't taken that notoriety and that credibility and turned it into cash. And it's one of the things that I tell people that, you know, when people come to me, they're like, well, you had a TV show. I'm like, yeah. And so did Diesel Dave.

Starting point is 00:26:16 I'm a multimillionaire. Dave hasn't made that money because he didn't turn that into the cash that he could have. He wrote out what we made and then that was it. And there's a little bit of money to be made, but not if you don't put in the time. Right. So, and I always tell people this too, we got sued by the EPA about five years ago, four years ago. We lost. Everything I ever made on TV, I paid to the EPA. Wow. Everything.

Starting point is 00:26:42 What was that about? Was it about like- Essentially, yeah. Mission stuff? Yeah, it actually wasn't the EPA. It was a group in Utah headed by the EPA where we were blowing black smoke and we were, we were America's favorite trucks. So they came after us. They sued us for $4 million. I'm the only person on that show. Cause I actually don't own the company. I did a long time ago and got out, but they came after me personally. I was the only one. So about three years ago, I built a house up on the mountain. I bought land up there

Starting point is 00:27:11 for almost a million dollars that they, they seized it. So you can't have this until the lawsuits figured out. So I said, all right, I'll pay my fine. I paid myself out every dime, actually way more, but all the money I ever made from tv i paid out on my yeah and then i got out heavy d to this day is still in the lawsuit he's still fighting yeah oh that gives me a pit oh dude it's the worst it's the it's oh yeah when we when we were first in business we we were facing a million dollar penalty from the state yeah like six weeks in you know i was just was just like, I've got a million bucks. Like what? Come up with a million bucks, dude. Those are, those are the worst times.

Starting point is 00:27:51 Horrible. But you know, the thing that you learn as an entrepreneur, there's always a way through it. Always. Always. And most people give up during those situations. And early in my career, you know, I would, I'd see the walls caving in and I had no idea how, and I wasn't asking for help. I wasn't looking to mentors and saying, how do you get through this? Had I done that, it would have been way easier to get out of. You probably would have saved a ton of money. Oh, yeah, dude. I would have got through my bankruptcy.

Starting point is 00:28:14 I would have never filed bankruptcy knowing what I know today, right? Because, yeah, I think for the audience, it's really important to know that no matter what you're facing, take it day by day. And there's typically a way to negotiate because ultimately you're dealing with people and there's ways to figure it out. I always tell people if you want to judge the type of entrepreneur you are or if you are an entrepreneur, if you see a wall and not a hurdle, you're not an entrepreneur. Everything in your life is a hurdle. And it depends on how much you want to jump, but it's always a hurdle. And those who learn how to efficiently and effectively get over those hurdles quickly are better and better and better at being

Starting point is 00:28:55 an entrepreneur. That's it. Because every single thing in life is not a wall. There's never a wall. Dude, I have been in the craziest places in my life where I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to figure it out. And it just became a hurdle and not a wall. Whereas most people go, I can't, I'm out. I'm going back to the nine to five. I can't do this. In fact, like to your point, whenever I'm presented with a hurdle or a big hurdle, I love it. I take a on head on because I know on the other side isn't competition, right? Like the higher barrier of entry, the better, dude. Give me the biggest barrier of entry I'm going after. It's the same strategy we used in our solar business.

Starting point is 00:29:31 Everybody was going after the states or the markets in which solar was low-hanging fruit and made sense. We went after the worst state and we built our headquarters there. And we said, we're going to move from the top of the tree down while everybody is fighting over this. We're just going to take this high barrier of entry, high, you know, difficulty. That's why you made so much money, dude, because you decided to find the wall that everybody kept saying was a wall and said, no, no, no, that's just a hurdle. It's just a really high hurdle.

Starting point is 00:29:55 And as soon as I get over it, it's high money too. Absolutely, dude. It's, it's the best dude. This is a, this is fun and exciting. So let's, let's shift gears into, uh, airplanes and helicopters. So let's shift gears into airplanes and helicopters. Yeah. Dude, so you got one, two choppers? What do you got? I got, well, I have one chopper that I personally own, and then we have one that our Blackhawk, in fact, my pilot's here.

Starting point is 00:30:16 He's actually the Blackhawk pilot for the military. And, dude, I'll tell you. So the UFC's fights are in town, and we're hosting a lot of the fighters, and all of them want to go hosting a lot of the fighters. And all of them want to go on a Blackhawk flight. So we're trying to figure out between now and the fights tomorrow night how we get all of them on the Blackhawk. Dude, I'll tell you. Helicopters is cool.

Starting point is 00:30:37 By far way cooler than planes, cooler than anything else. But at the top of that list is a Blackhawk. And, dude, it is unreal to take people on a Blackhawk. Dude, what makes it so amazing? I've never been on a Blackhawk. Dude, what makes it so amazing? I've never been on a Blackhawk. I'll tell you, any helicopter is fun. Blackhawks are meant to be a heavy-duty piece of equipment. Like, it's supposed to be lifting a lot of weight.

Starting point is 00:31:03 When you buy something from the military and they give it to you as a civilian, they take all of that off, everything. So you have a machine that's meant to be very powerful and pull tons of weight. You take it all out, and then you just put a few people in there. It is unreal. I mean, dude, it feels like you're riding on a roller coaster. So tell me about the experience you recently had with Tony Robbins and just building credibility. I mean, you don't have to share the whole story, but just like I think this was an important lesson to learn that most entrepreneurs don't understand. They look for transactions or

Starting point is 00:31:29 whatnot and just the ability to give, tell us about that. You know, I have this conversation just two weeks ago. I was trying to teach and I want to teach the same principle here. And I don't know how big your audience is, but if you guys don't take anything from this call, this is what they need to take. Those people who become non-transactional characters are the ones that are the most successful in their life, 100%. And I have prided myself accidentally on being a non-transactional character in everything that I've done. And you'll learn, you know, as we have a relationship, I'm very non-transactional. I'll show up, I'll do stuff, anything you need. And I will never, ever ask for anything, tally up anything. I'll just always be

Starting point is 00:32:05 there because being non-transactional has changed everything for me. It's made my life what it is. We showed up and we were asked like, Hey, Tony Robbins is flying in. He flies his private jet into this, this city and his house is in this city. And they're about a four hour drive. He needs a helicopter to fly him from his jet to his house. It's a 20 minute flight rather than a four hour drive. Yeah. So he's, everybody's asking around in Utah who has a helicopter, who does charters, right? We don't do charters. Somebody said, Hey, uh, can you take Tony? I'm like, yes, I can. A hundred percent. So we said, Hey, we'll take the Blackhawk. So we told his team, we told his team hey we'll take him to Blackhawk

Starting point is 00:32:46 Somebody said hey we found another charter Yada yada yada And I thought nah we lost our opportunity Tony found out that we had a Blackhawk He's like are you guys kidding me No way dude I'm going in that Blackhawk He didn't know who we were All he knew we were going to give him a ride in a Blackhawk

Starting point is 00:33:00 So we fly up we pick him up in his ginormous jet He comes out What's he flying? I think it was a 727. Oh my goodness. Dude, it was huge. He rolls out and he's like barely awake. And I'm like, how was that? He's like, oh, I got two bedrooms in there. And one of them is a soundproof bedroom. He's like, I slept for three hours. I'm like, holy dude. Next level. That's where I want to be. Right. So he gets out. He puts his family in. He actually, most people don't know this. Tony has a two-year-old.

Starting point is 00:33:28 Really? Crazy, yeah. He had no idea. And him and his beautiful wife, his daughter, they get in the heli. And a Blackhawk is not quiet. It's not comfortable. It's meant for utility and a lot of fun. So we put him in, and it's loud as ****.

Starting point is 00:33:42 And we're trying to talk. And it's a cool experience because I'm just like, I'm with Tony Robbins, you know. We fly him to his place. We land in his yard. They get out. They go. And he says, hey, how can we repay you? How much do I owe you for fuel?

Starting point is 00:33:55 Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm with Dave. And we're like, oh, you owe us nothing. We just wanted to spend some time with you. That was it. And he was like, and I specifically remember this because he looked at both of us and he said, wow, that's all he said. Wow. Well, I really, really appreciate it. Why don't you guys come in for lunch? And I, I automatically, I looked at his wife and the two assistants and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:34:16 I know what this is. They're like, can you just not invite people over? Can we just have our family time? Right? So I said, you know what, man, we really, really appreciate it. But go have fun with your family. And he's like, well, what do we owe you for charter? He said, oh, I said, we're not a charter, dude. We just jumped on the opportunity to take you. So he we leave, you know, and I'm just like, gosh, damn it. Did I miss my opportunity? I really wanted to ask. At this point, did he have your cell phone? Yeah. Yeah. He said he actually we took a picture and he said, let me send you the pictures. Give me your cell phones.

Starting point is 00:34:47 So I get home and I'm just like, God, man, I missed my opportunity. I got some cool videos, whatever. And 1.30 in the morning, I get a message. And I could probably find it. We can listen to it. But it's a voice message, 1.30. And he's like, Hey, uh, I haven't really met a lot of people like you. And I really, really loved your energy and your spirit. And he even said, he goes, everybody's looking for a transaction from me. And you guys

Starting point is 00:35:15 didn't ask for anything. He's like, I really, really would like to see you again. And I would love for you guys to come to my house at the end of the week for lunch. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is great. This is just the best. Cause this is the dude I want to spend time with. Right? Yeah. I'm pretty sure he charges like a million dollars for a day. One hour, one hour. And I know it used to be a day. Now it's down to an hour. I asked, Oh my goodness. I said, okay, so what's, I had a buddy that essentially had a partner that did it. And he was like, dude, he paid a million dollars. He got an hour and a half with him. Wild.

Starting point is 00:35:47 So I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is it, dude. Well, the Blackhawks down. One of our pilots not able to go. So I'm like, let's take my helicopter and we'll fly out there. We'll pick him up and we'll take him back to his airplane. But he wants to have lunch. So we roll out there. We go to his house.

Starting point is 00:36:04 It's just Dave and I, we roll into his house. He has this munch made for us. And he's like, and I'm like, what's he, what is he, what are we going to talk about? He's like, I just wanted to spend time with you guys, dude. And immediately I'm like, there's so many things I want to say. I'm just going to shut up. I just want to hear you talk, right? So we sit there for a few hours and just listening to him. He's telling us the craziest stories, how he started. So I said to him, I said, Hey, Tony, I wanted to ask you, how did you get from the beginning to where you are in this space? And he said, that's a really interesting question. Why do you ask? I said, well, this is what I do now.

Starting point is 00:36:39 He goes, Oh, are you into coaching and mentoring? I said, yeah, just as of this year, I just started. And I kind of told him about my program and everything. And so he gave me tons of great advice, like phenomenal advice. And at the end of the lunch, it was like, all right, well, let's go and fly back to the jet. So we get in my heli. He starts asking us questions and he finds out that we're, I mean, I don't want to say famous, but he finds out that we're quote unquote famous. He's like, holy, you guys have 7 million followers, 10 million followers between the two of you. He's like, who are you guys? We're like, well, we had a TV show. We're really big on YouTube. We blah, blah, blah. You know? And now he's like, wait a second.

Starting point is 00:37:18 You guys showed up to give me and my family a ride. You didn't ask for anything. You didn't, we didn't even ask for pictures. He was the one that wanted pictures with his wife and him in front of the Blackhawk. You didn't ask for and you flew back out. He had lunch with me. Now you're taking my, you still haven't asked for anything. And I was like, yeah, we just wanted to spend time with you, man. So we get there, we land, uh, we put him in his jet. And again, I get a message. Dave gets a message one in the morning. Hey, so I love you guys. You guys are awesome. Number one, I want to invite you out to my next event. I want you to be backstage with me. Just hang out with me. Number two, I want you and your

Starting point is 00:37:55 wives to fly to Fiji to my resort with me and spend five days there on me, a hundred percent on me. And, and, you know, like you said, Keaton, I would love to come to your next event. I would love to help you out. So dude, we leave and I'm like talking to Dave and, and literally I said to Dave, I said, dude, this is that I'm talking about when you show up and, and the story is about Tony Robbins, but this is the piece to it that should make the most sense to everybody. It doesn't, it shouldn't be Tony Robbins. It should be everybody, every single person in your life. If you become a non-transactional character, a true non-transactional character, not the motherfucker that's tallying in his mind while he's doing the transaction, but a true non-transactional character to everybody, you will change every single thing in your life. As I told Dave, and so of course,

Starting point is 00:38:46 you know, Tony saw and dude, we've, we've text and talked since, and it's phenomenal. But I realized that the response I got from him is the same response I get from every single person that I have an interaction with. And it's this, I don't know who this guy is. I mean, you didn't know who I was when I got here. I don't know anything about him. I don't care if he's famous, he has money, whatever. I know that when he stepped in, he was a non-transactional character. He never asked for anything. He showed up, he paid for, he took care of things. And not one time did he say, what can you do for me? Rather, how do I bring value to your table? And I don't want to tally. I just want to bring value to your table. You know, it's interesting. And I'll bring this to like a Christ-centered principle.

Starting point is 00:39:28 It's the principle of charity, right? Like true charity, like pure love. Like when you operate in the moment, zero expectation of reciprocation, right? Like, and you just give and you give, right? I mean, that is the ultimate example, and this is the reason why so much value comes back. A hundred percent. And I think that principle is so overlooked. If somebody came to me and said, I have nothing and I want to build an empire, I would tell them, then you need to become a non-transactional character. If you become a non-transactional character and you step up to every table, every table, and you say, I have very little value, but what I do have,

Starting point is 00:40:06 I will give and I expect and want nothing in return. Even if you have to do that shit for year and year and year and year, at some point, everything changes for you, everything. And then you should lean into it more and more and more. And then you get to a place like me and you, where we now have a lot of value and we have a lot of shit. And when people ask, we show up. And it's the same thing that the two nights ago, I have this, this a thousand dollar tip dinner that we do here in Utah. And it's kind of branched out all over the world. Same thing. I have people come to my house with a food truck. I invite all my friends who have a little bit of money. And I say, Hey, we're going to give this

Starting point is 00:40:42 guy a tip of a thousand dollars each. We bring them up. We bring him up to my house. He actually was a hot dog stand, pretty much. We gave him $31,000. Amazing. After all of it was said and done, we showed, we tagged his Instagram. We gave him money. We did all these things.

Starting point is 00:40:58 He actually messaged me and said, hey, man, what do I owe you? I said, you owe me nothing. I want nothing from you. The only thing I want from you is to succeed and take what I gave you as a hand up, not a hand out. I don't want anything in return from you, my man. That's it. And you treat every single person from the very top to the very bottom, the same and become a non-transactional character. I'm telling you that it will carry any person where they want to be in life that's freaking awesome dude so what right now gets you excited

Starting point is 00:41:33 about life obviously you got a lot going on you you're a principle-centered human being you're you're giving a lot like but what you got money you got family. You've had a lot of success. What gets you out of bed in the morning right now? Truthfully now, and it is such a cliche, but I wake up now. I have principles that I live by, and I have habits that I do every single day. What are some of those? Share some of your morning hacks. One of the first things I do when I wake up is I just spend a little bit of time, and I think on my death. I think on my death, my wife's death, and my children's death every day.

Starting point is 00:42:10 I love that, by the way, because there's so much motivation in that. Dude, and there's so much perspective. And even the other night, my wife will be pissed if I say this, but the other night we argued the night before, and we were kind of like a little bit upset. And I laid in bed that next morning and I thought, what if I lost her today? What if this was it? What if right now was the last interaction I had with her? And when I bury her, am I okay with this last interaction? And it, it changed that perspective. Right. And so I wake up, I think on my own death, I think on their death. And then immediately, immediately that takes me to the state of gratitude. And then from there, I operate. And I only try to stay within that

Starting point is 00:42:51 mindset of gratitude for the rest of the day. And whatever I have to do to get back to there, because you know, we always are like, whatever I have to do to get back to the state of gratitude, I will do. And then obviously at the end of the day, I do the same thing. As I go to bed, I'm like, man, I'm really grateful for this day. But what if today was the last day? What if it's my child's last day or my wife's last day? And then of course, it puts me back into the perspective before I go to bed of where I want to be in every interaction with every single person. So ultimately for me, like I tell people this all the time, and it does sound a little bit morbid until you really dive into it. Dude, if you think about death often, you're going to be a real big piece of shit if it doesn't put you in the right

Starting point is 00:43:33 perspective, plain and simple. It's true. It's true. I think, uh, I think you actually spent time with Andy Elliott the other night. Yeah. He was the one that came up to my house for, uh, yeah, for the, for the, yeah, to my house for, uh, yeah, he actually has a, uh, a, a sales tactic where he talks about death, right. Where he's like, Hey, if I was going to kill you or kill your mom, right. And, uh, unless you produce 20 this month, right. Hey, would you produce 20 this month? Yes, I would. Why does it take me threatening your mother's life in order to get you to that point of action? Dude, I tell people this all the time. My brother actually argued with me about it the other day when I said it. I said, if we put every single person on this earth in

Starting point is 00:44:14 prison and said, you don't get out till you make a million dollars, you know how quickly they would get out? Oh my goodness. Every one of those motherfuckers would be out probably within less than a year. Yeah. If all you did did was say the only way out of this is to make a million oh i'll be done give me three months i'll make a million dollars i will figure out why does it take that well here's here's the crazy thing is that most of them operate in a position of prison but they don't even they don't even realize it right like i mean they are just slaves to their jobs slaves to their bills slaves you know it's it's crazy i have a um i i did an event in new york uh like three months ago one of my really

Starting point is 00:44:50 good friends nick santanastaso i don't know if you know who he is yeah the guy that's yeah he has one arm and no legs and um he he got on stage and he was like hey every one of you is in autopilot and you know everybody's like i'm not an autopilot no, no. 99% of people by the time they're 35 are in complete autopilot, 100% autopilot. If, if I can get you out of autopilot, I can get you to succeed. And so again, you, you talk about perspective, like autopilot takes you completely out of perspective. You literally just go, all right, I'm in autopilot and I just get done. I don't know how I got here. I can't even remember driving here because I'm literally an autopilot. If you can change that, get out of that, that autopilot, get into the perspective you want, then everything changes.

Starting point is 00:45:33 But you don't do that unless you put yourself there either by force or by somebody else. That's why I say, if I throw you in prison, bro, in 60 days, you're going to come up with a million dollars, but you're an autopilot. So you're not doing right. You know? Right. I love that. I love that. So advice for somebody that's feeling like giving up, whether it's giving up on a venture, giving up on their marriage, giving up on life. What advice do you have for that person? You know, I think everybody feels that. I think everybody at some point in their life feels that. A lot of people feel it way, way, way more often. Like, I want to give up.

Starting point is 00:46:14 I want to give up. I want to give up. I love, I actually, when I was a missionary, I memorized the Bible word for word. From New Testament to Old Testament, memorized the whole Bible. And one of my favorite stories, and you'll know this because you were a missionary, but there's the story of the refiner's fire, right? And the story of the refiner's fire is really simple

Starting point is 00:46:33 for those of you who don't know. Essentially, they would refine metals by burning off the infirmities. They would essentially put gold or silver on the end of a bar and they would spin the bar, right? And they would spin it over the, and they would spin the bar, right? And they would spin it over the fire. And they would continue to do it until it was hot enough that it burned off the infirmities. And when they knew it was done, they could pull it out, and they would see their reflection in it,

Starting point is 00:46:55 and they knew that the infirmities had been burned off. But if they left it in the fire too long, it got destroyed, right? So when people talk to me about giving up, I think about one simple principle. You are gold, you're silver, whatever you want to pick. You are in the fire. If you decide to give up, you are giving up on burning off infirmities and becoming who you're supposed to become. If you decide to go too early, you get destroyed. If you get left in too long, you get destroyed. But here's the coolest part, especially if you're like myself and you, if you believe in God, you got to understand God's not going to leave you in that fire until you're destroyed.

Starting point is 00:47:34 It's not going to happen. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to become better and progress. So if you are the gold and you are in the fire, stop thinking that you know better than God to pull yourself out and ruin yourself in the middle of the fire to make you what you're supposed to become. I have people all the time like, I feel like I'm giving up. You know what I say? Cool.

Starting point is 00:47:58 We'll stay a little bit longer because you got to burn off a lot of shit, my friend. A lot. Oh, dude, that's great advice, man. I think everybody needs to hear that, that the reality is, yeah, we all need, we have room for improvement. We need to be going through it. It's the only way that we improve is by going through this refining process. So love that, man. Well, dude, what is the best, you know, a lot of people are already following you on social media or whatnot, but where's the best medium? Is it, I answer every one of my DMS. I get thousands of them a day, but I, yeah, I really do because it's important to me to connect in some way.

Starting point is 00:48:52 And because my mentor program limitless society is so important to me, I'm taking so much of my time to speak to people who I think need help. Yeah. So for those of you who are here, you can follow me on, on Tik TOK and Instagram and Facebook, but if you who are here, you can follow me on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, but if you want to talk, they can actually get to me through Facebook or through Instagram. Instagram DMs. Okay, cool. And then tell us a little bit about your Limitless program that you got going on and this big event that you have coming up in September. Yeah. So the program, the mentoring program that I have is very, very simple. If you want to just become rich, go somewhere else.

Starting point is 00:49:27 I tell people that all the time. If you're just looking for somebody to make you rich, go to a different guru. It's not me. If you want to become the best version of you, the most successful version of you, that entails five things. It's mental health, physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, and financial health. If you need help and you want to change your life in all five of those areas, you need to be in Limitless Society. That's what I teach. Limitless Society is a group of people that we meet every week. I do two

Starting point is 00:49:55 meetings a week on Zoom, and we teach principles on how to build businesses, how to build yourself, how to build your relationships, everything pertinent to those five pillars. In that, I do do one-on-one mentoring, but I'm very picky with that, and I only pick from people within the group. Now, in that whole group, because this is like my whole focus, I mean, I still have six other companies and things that I'm doing, but I have CEOs in all of them because I'm only focused on one, Limitless Society. In that, we do about three times a year, we do events. And the events are supposed to be life-changing. This year, I've done two, and my last one will be September 23rd. That's here in Salt Lake.

Starting point is 00:50:35 I have who I believe as the baddest speakers on the planet pertaining to life-changing, right? And dude, I don't even have the list in front of me. You got like Gary Vee, David Goggins, Ed Milet, Andy Frizzella, Eric Thomas, Tim Grover, Russell Brunson, Dan Fleischman, Roman Atwood, Heavy D, Cody Sanchez. I mean, dude, I literally, the list is insane. It's deep. And these events are supposed to be a pivoting moment in people's lives. So we're doing one day with 14 of the most powerful speakers. It's going to be a lot.

Starting point is 00:51:13 Like, it's going to be very powerful. People are going to have to take a nap after. We're doing one full day on September 23rd, and it's just going to be chaos. Like, tons of people changing lives in that the, uh, the, the way to get tickets to that is the limitless arena.com. You can get in, we have tickets from front row to backstage to 9,000 tickets as well. We have 9,000 tickets. We've sold about 1500 so far. Wow. Yeah. So, and I honestly, I kept thinking about this actually today. The reason I'm doing this is twofold. I want to bring massive amount of value from people on stage,

Starting point is 00:51:50 but what I really want to do is I want to connect 10,000 entrepreneurial minds. Yes. And if I can put them all in one dome and say, Hey, why don't you network with everybody here and bring every good entrepreneur together? That's the thought of this. So it's not just look at all these bad-ass speakers. It's, Hey, Hey man, in your section, there's tons of multimillionaires and billionaires that are entrepreneurs that you should probably connect with. Hey, we're going to be here for 12 hours. Let's start networking. I freaking love it. You know, it's interesting in the event space you know no shade on grant cardone but you know his his 10x con ends up being just a big pitch fest for sure you know

Starting point is 00:52:31 and nothing i hate more than a pitch fest i'm with right like just give me some content give me the good stuff it's actually why russell brunson's uh program is pretty awesome yeah yeah funnel hacking live so like the fact that you're doing this with 9 000 there's not many people doing it in the space that it's not just, like I said, a big giant pitch. Well, dude, here's the thing. And I've told people this outside of Russell Brunson, because he is going to pitch his funnel stuff. But dude, that's one pitch. Yeah. I told him, I said, listen, man, because I made it really clear with everybody, there will be no pitching. This is not a sales pitch. This is a life-changing experience. The pitch was to buy the ticket to come to the event. At the end of the day, if you want to join Limitless, great,

Starting point is 00:53:09 but I'm not going to tell you like, hey, you got a hard, I'm a hard closure. Hey man, if you enjoy this, everybody on Limitless actually gets to go to these events for free. I tell people that all the time, which is great, but there will be no pitching outside of what Russell Brunson's product is for ClickFunnels. the whole event is these powerful dudes just saying, let me tell you what I know without any other purpose than I want to change your life. I'm not trying to sell you something. And that I think is where the value is. I love it, man. So yeah, if those are listening, if you haven't bought a ticket, you're not following the muscle, make sure that you're following Keaton. He, uh, yeah, absolutely do.

Starting point is 00:53:45 Thank you so much for these incredible bombs. Uh, you know, awesome nuggets that you dropped with us today. Appreciate your time, dude. Until next time.

Next Level Pros - #23: Keaton Hoskins: Founder of Over 35 Companies, “The Muscle” From Diesel Brothers, Author

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