Passion Struck with John R. Miles - John Lewis On: How to Create Your Virtual Legacy EP 83

Starting point is 00:00:00 coming up next on the Passion Start podcast. My mentor once told me when it starts to hurt enough for you to do something about it, that's the day that your life will change. And I guess that would be my advice to the audience is instead of trying to mask over that pain, trying to avoid that pain, not acknowledge it, acknowledge the pain, acknowledge that you are in a place that you're not comfortable in and that you don't feel good about and decide to make a decision to get off that rock and do something about it. And that's really the most important step someone can make in their life is taking that first step and getting started. Welcome Visionaries, creators, innov CEO, Navy Veteran, and entrepreneur

Starting point is 00:00:46 on a mission to make passion so viral from the INS Worldwide. And each week I do so by sharing with you an inspirational message and interviewing I achievers from all walks of life to unlock their secrets and lessons to becoming passion struck. The purpose of our show is to serve you, the listener,

Starting point is 00:01:06 by giving you tips, tasks, and activities, you can use to achieve peak performance and for too, a passion-driven life you have always wanted to have. Now, let's become passion struck. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Passion Struck Podcast and thank you each and every one of you

Starting point is 00:01:24 for coming back each and every week to listen, learn, and grow. And if you're new to the show, or you have someone that you would like to introduce it to, we now have episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes, group by topic, and it gives you an easy way to get acquainted with the show

Starting point is 00:01:42 and everything that we have to offer. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs and start your journey there and pass it on to friends and family members that you might know who need a weekly dose of inspiration in their lives. Today's episode is with entrepreneur John Lewis who is a former Division I athlete and founder and CEO of a virtual legacy, which is helping people all around the world take their expertise and turn it into online businesses and get their message out to everyone worldwide. And the today's show, John and I unpack his journey and his hate disadvantage when he was trying to become a Division one college basketball player.

Starting point is 00:02:26 What that experience taught him about resilience and how he has applied that into creating multiple million dollar businesses. He talks about how he helps entrepreneurs find their niche and more importantly, how they can navigate this new content economy that we're all in. And then lastly, we go into how do you build a personal brand? One that's going to make such a lasting difference for you and its impact on the world around us. Now, let the journey begin. I am so excited to have John Lewis on the Passion Struck Podcast today.

Starting point is 00:03:08 It is so great to finally meet you, John. Thank you for joining. Absolutely. I heard a lot of great things about you. Thank you for having me. Well, I'm excited for the audience to hear your story because I think it's a pretty dynamic one. And as we talked about at the beginning before we got on, I always like to give the audience a sense

Starting point is 00:03:26 of where you've come from, so they better understand where you are now and the changes you made. So I know you were Division one and Division two, basketball player, but maybe just use a starting point of what was going on before you started this huge climb that you're on now and what got you there. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:03:46 Well, it's actually starting in my upbringing. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana originally, and I like to tell people, most of the time, you make it out one of two ways from that area. It's either sports or entertainment. So as you spoke of a little bit, I chose the sports avenue, and I thought for sure that basketball would be my way to quote on quote, make it out. And I really had no concept of business at all to the point where I didn't even understand someone owned the McDonald's. It was just a place that I went to get burger. So and around 19 years old through basketball, I met my first business mentor. And this was a guy

Starting point is 00:04:21 who was making about $60,000 a week at the time. And being where I'm from, I had never heard of that type of money outside of sports or entertainment. So I was like, what are you doing to make this type of money? I have to learn whatever it is that you do. And that's when he introduced me to what I call the sport of business, which at that point was I determined would be a sport I would play for the rest of my life. And just like basketball, I ran into a lot of troubles and obstacles that I had to overcome. From a basketball perspective, my obstacles were physical. I'm five foot eight point guard, running around with six foot eight seven footers on the court. So there's physical limitations there was able to overcome those to play in college obviously.

Starting point is 00:05:01 So I saw business the same way. When I started at 19 years old, it definitely wasn't overnight success. I spent six years struggling to figure anything out. I remember paying for gas with quarters. I remember lights going on on me worrying about rent, worried about what I'm going to eat. But six years of enduring that and persevering, I was finally able to crack the total around 25 years old and build my first of two million dollar companies. So I'm definitely an interesting pat, interesting trajectory, but I'm excited to be here today. Well, being five foot eight,

Starting point is 00:05:33 you must have a great arc on your ball because if you're shooting the deep ball, you're gonna have to get it over those tall defenders who are all around you. You know, I happened to see the story of Michael Jordan maybe about six months ago and I didn't realize that when he was a sophomore in high school, he didn't make the team and it caused him to approach a work ethic that was unstoppable from that point forward in his career and it's amazing him, Larry Bird, others, how many shots these guys took before

Starting point is 00:06:07 games, how they showed up at practice a couple hours before their teammates. You know, as you were trying to learn this game of basketball and to perfect it, given that height disadvantage you had, how did you approach that? Because being 5-8 and getting to division one, I played division one sport. So I know it's not an easy transition at all. Definitely. Yeah, I mean, so as funny you mentioned the Michael Jordan story, something similar happened to me at a way younger age.

Starting point is 00:06:37 If you played sports, you're familiar with recreation sports and how every child is supposed to be picked for recreation. I actually got left off of the eight-year-old recreation team. I think that it was just a matter of circumstance. They skipped over my name, something happened, but I remember being an eight-year-old thinking, man, I just must not be good enough. And at that point, I was confronted with my first decision in life,

Starting point is 00:06:58 whether I want to cry about it or do something about it. And I chose the extreme route of doing something. And my dad to this day will tell stories of how this little eight year old was out at 1130 at night and put pitch black darkness shooting shots. And he had to call me in. Most kids have to get called off a video games or something. I'm getting called off a shoot in on my little basketball, going the backyard until 1130 at night because I was determined and I would never have that feeling again. And I remember as a eight year old score and 33 points in my very first game as a eight year old. So I never looked back at that point, but you talk about that

Starting point is 00:07:31 overcoming adversity. I actually embraced the challenge. One of my favorite players was actually Alan Iverson, another tiny guy for his position that just defied the odds. So I always looked up to him and tried to emulate my game after him and my dad will play with me in the backyard. And of course, he's a lot bigger than me at the time, only an eight year old, but he had no mercy on me.

Starting point is 00:07:53 So every shot I tried to put up, he would try to block. So by default, I developed this huge arch on my shot that you just mentioned, where I would just shoot the ball very, very high off my hands to get, because it was to get it over that defender. And that stuck with me throughout my career. And eventually I developed a jump shot with it where I would jump like three feet off the ground

Starting point is 00:08:13 as well as releasing super high to get that shot over the bigger defender. So, bottle line is I had to adapt and I adapted fairly quickly to try to get my shot over the bigger defenders. Yeah, well, I love that Iverson interview. We're talking practice. We're talking practice. Famous rant.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Well I have to tell you I probably wasn't much older than you and we moved from Chicago to South Central Pennsylvania and the school I went to St. Joseph's was known for their basketball program. In fact, anyone who was anyone wanted to be on that team. And I remember I started just working out. I was in first grade, second grade, just doing whatever I could to get better at basketball.

Starting point is 00:09:03 And then I finally got the big tryout. And my best friend made the team. And I got cut because it came down to him and I, and his dad was the coach. And I remember being so disappointed on that. But it caused me to kind of go into soccer and do some other things. But it was a good lesson of failure leads to other things in an early age. Absolutely. So for the listener who doesn't know you, I know you got into construction in an early age. In fact, you helped support Katrina

Starting point is 00:09:36 if I think I have the information correct. And then you also got into what I would say is kind of brand building. What got you into those two very diverse businesses? Because in many ways, they have no interconnection points. That's a great question. And honestly, to this day, I still struggle to like intertwine the full story and try to make it seamless.

Starting point is 00:09:59 But really the construction started because of being from New Orleans. And obviously, we had Hurricane Katrina, that devastated the state. And the thing about government contracting, which is what I'm involved in, is usually it's a very tight-knit community. There's these companies that have been doing it for years, and they just continue every storm. They pretty much pop up, and they help to support that storm. Katrina was such a huge storm that they had to go outside of the normal group of people that were helping to rebuild and reach out to others who were local in the area.

Starting point is 00:10:29 My family happened to be part of that group. So that's how my family actually got introduced to what government and disaster recovery was. I didn't pick it up at that point. It was kind of just like a one-off project. They made some money. It was great, and then they went their way. So fast forward, Hurricane Maria happens in Puerto Rico, and I got caught down there as a consultant actually for a company to help with tech matters. They knew I was involved in tech to help them rebuild down there as a part of that company. Long story short, the guy who wasn't paying his people on time, the people, I watched people suffer, and his project manager was pulling money out of his pocket to pay the people in the island. These people have already been hit super hard. It wasn't what they needed at the time. And I'm a big proponent of justice. So that actually spurred me into action to say, I'm going to create this company. I'm going to build it the right way. And I'm going to make sure that I take care of the people in the process. So me and that project manager, we started our own company called LGC on the island of Puerto Rico with the mission of actually helping people and

Starting point is 00:11:29 helping to rebuild the island as our first focus even over the money. And we went through many ups and downs. Obviously the person that we were working with didn't like that too much, what he wasn't doing the right thing. So we had to do, we had to do. And I went and actually knocked on the door of the top contractor on the island, prime contractor for those who know about government contracting, which rarely happens. This is a hundred million plus dollar company. They're not taking knocks on the door.

Starting point is 00:11:55 Glad somehow got through, got to the decision maker. So Tim won, what we were trying to accomplish, he gave us a shot. And a few months later, we were their best contractors on the island and really having a lot of success. But that's my journey in construction, which is completely separate actually from my journey in marketing, which is something like I said, I started at 19 years old. And even as I was building that construction company, I still was building my marketing company. And through that experiencing construction, it taught me a lot

Starting point is 00:12:23 about how to run a company in general, putting people in the right place systems, processes, tools, and I was able to take that knowledge and apply it to my online marketing company, which led to a lot of success there as well. The Passion Struck Podcast will be right back. I am so excited about today's sponsor, Athletic Greens, because it is a product that I personally use and love. In fact, athletic greens is completely transforming nutrition and helping so many achieve peak performance. This product is so easy to use and make part of your daily morning routine. And that's exactly what happened to me.

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Starting point is 00:13:52 slash passion struck to get started. Again, get your one year supply of vitamin D those five travel packs by going to athleticgreens.com slash passion struck. Now let's get back to becoming passion struck. I also have a construction background that I never thought I would get into, but when I left Arthur Anderson

Starting point is 00:14:14 because of the Enron debacle, I ended up getting a job with a company based in Australia called Lennlice. And Lennlice was a multifaceted business but ended up buying the fist largest construction firm called Bovis. And so at the time, I was the chief information security officer, but also got the title of Head of Enterprise Risk.

Starting point is 00:14:38 And so during the time I was with them, I probably went to two to 300 different construction sites, everything from ground zero at the World Trade Center to different projects that we had in England, Singapore, Australia, you name it. And it is a very fascinating business to say the least. And it's amazing how much it differs in one part of the world and the other. And so one of the things they were trying to do at the time was to just bring standards, especially around safety

Starting point is 00:15:09 to the group. So interesting interconnection point there. It is for sure. And like you say, construction is so different everywhere. New Orleans, it's one way and I know in Puerto Rico, they have all concrete structures, not just the house itself, but even the roof. And Puerto Rico is concrete.

Starting point is 00:15:25 So every region brings its own challenges. Well, I appreciate the background. I was hoping before we go into a couple of the other topics, you could talk about maybe what were some of the biggest adversities that you had to overcome as you made this switch. I mean, you covered it at a high level, but what obstacles did you have to overcome as you made this switch. I mean, you covered it at a high level, but what obstacles did you have to tackle? And what fears did you have to overcome?

Starting point is 00:15:50 And what choices did you make that define where you are today? Absolutely, I think for, especially for the Neuronge for Neuronge or someone just getting into the industry, I think that the biggest challenge comes in between our two years, it's our mind. And the mind is the battlefield. A lot of things that we believe are these huge obstacles or these huge things that could

Starting point is 00:16:10 derail us. It's really just things that are in our mind that we have to overcome. And I know for me starting off, the biggest one being a 19 year old kid, basically I gave up my college profession when I went to school for my whole life to take this entrepreneurial route. And I've grown up in school. I was pretty good at it. I made A's and B's always and my mom and parents obviously saw me becoming either a lawyer or a doctor or something like that. So when I let them know the news that I was going to be taking out this entrepreneurial route, you can imagine how it fell upon them and how they took it. They didn't really necessarily want me to go take this huge risky venture

Starting point is 00:16:48 in exchange for a promising possible career. So that was the first challenge that I had to go through. And I've met a lot of people, especially if you have parents close to you, spouse close to you, you're going to have to overcome people close to you, not really understanding why you're embarking on the journey you're choosing to take because there's a lot of risk involved and it's not a sure thing and there are many things in the world that are a sure thing. So that was the first thing that I had to overcome. Me especially

Starting point is 00:17:13 being a mom was boy, proud mom was boy, I would talk to my mom every day. We were always on the same page, always seen to see eye to eye and this was the first thing in my life that we really just completely didn't see eye to eye. And I remember even having to take a step back from my mother and talking to her because of the negativity towards my journey. But that's part of what you have to do. If you are gonna choose to do something, I would say one important facet is decision.

Starting point is 00:17:40 And that word is so powerful. And it means to literally cut off. And sometimes temporarily you have to cut off other things in your life that were very important to you, very promising to you for a temporary time period until you get to a certain level where now those doubters become supporters. Now instead of people saying why are you doing this, it's like okay, this makes sense. It clicks, but you have to allow yourself that time in your own little bubble and your own world going towards whatever it is you're striving for, until you have enough success and then

Starting point is 00:18:09 maybe bring back on some of those family members and people that you had in your life prior. So that would be, I would say, the number one thing. Prior to any external obstacle, it's in between your two ears and dealing with people close to you. I think of things as pretty binary. When I look at most of the population, I think there are those who subsist, and there are those who create. And those who subsist are in survival mode. And those who create have figured out

Starting point is 00:18:40 by looking at their self-narrative, what they are called to do, and then do something about it. And I think those who success, I call it their facing, they're choiceless. They're so complacent or numb or whatever you want to say about their situation, that they don't make any choice. And they just stay in this comfortable world where they're unwilling to make that choice to do the work to do something different. You're right, it all comes down to the mind.

Starting point is 00:19:10 Have you ever heard the story of the old man and the dog? Very common entrepreneur story that's told in most people represent the dog in this story because there's an old man and a friend comes over to visit him. In the backyard, there's a dog and the dog is crying. So the friend naturally comes over and he says, why is the dog crying? Can you help him? What can you do for the dog?

Starting point is 00:19:31 Why is he back there crying? He said, oh, he's just laying on a rock. And the guy says, well, why doesn't he move off the rock? And he said, it hurts enough for him to win, but it doesn't hurt enough from doing anything about it. And that's really the story of most people's life. It hurts enough for them to cry about it and complain about it, which nobody's really listening anyway, but it doesn't hurt enough for them to do something about it. And my mentor once told me when it starts to hurt enough for you to do something

Starting point is 00:19:58 about it, that's the day that your life will change. And I guess that would be my advice to the audience is, instead of trying to mask over that pain, trying to avoid that pain, not acknowledge it, acknowledge the pain, acknowledge that you are in a place that you're not comfortable in and that you don't feel good about and decide to make a decision to get off that rock and do something about it. And that's really the most important step someone can make in their life is taking that first step and getting started. Yeah, I kind of agree more. And I think if you look at employee engagement now, which globally Gallup measured at only 15%

Starting point is 00:20:33 of all of the world's 1 billion employees are engaged, set otherwise 85% are disengaged, which means they're not living at their full capabilities. I think a big portion of it comes down to this concept that I think so many people are casually engaged instead of being consciously engaged. Because casually engaged means you're just kind of going through the cycles.

Starting point is 00:20:58 You're doing the routine. Whereas consciously engaged means you are coming into whatever situation you're coming into, whether it's being an entrepreneur going into work, being with your family, with the idea that you're trying to be present in that moment and focusing on what's important versus, I think, in the casual sense, what appears to be urgent. And that's a great point. And that's such a huge shift for people getting into this world. You can't afford to be casual in the world of entrepreneurship because you won't thrive and you definitely won't make it to where you're trying to get to from a goal perspective. There's only way to operate as an entrepreneur

Starting point is 00:21:33 is to be intentional. And like you just mentioned, 85% of people are not engaged. So now when you hop over to this where you're forced to be engaged consistently or else you'll fail. That's just a huge transition for a lot of people to make, but it becomes easy for people when they're doing something that they love, which brings to another topic, which is I think the reason that a lot of people fail when they try to make the shift in touch with their shift is they solely get into it for the money. But if you're not getting into something that you're passionate about, something that you love, you'll find yourself just drifting through and kind of doing what you have to do instead of being intentional. And that's why a lot of people who try to transition to entrepreneurship fail

Starting point is 00:22:14 because you're not doing something that you love. If you do something you love, you're always going to be engaged. And it's not just about making a million dollars tomorrow, it's about building something that will last for your life. And that's why my company's name is the virtual legacy, because I believe in building things that are about to create a legacy, not only for your lifetime, but your children and your children's children. That's a very good point. I happened to be talking to a friend of mine, Jim McKeldy.

Starting point is 00:22:40 He was one of the founders of Square. And I wrote the first chapter of my upcoming book about him, and it's on the topic that you just said. And I said, what is the difference that you have found from now working with thousands of entrepreneurs from those who succeed and those who don't? And his response was, they find a problem that's worth solving and they stick to it. He said the biggest issue that he sees is that these companies that are spiraling out of control, they're not scaling, they're not doing whatever, it's they're letting

Starting point is 00:23:17 all these other factors get in the way of the main thing that should they should be keeping their focus on. So I think what you said is a great point highlighted by another great entrepreneur. Absolutely. Well, speaking of entrepreneurship, I know for me as I've started my own companies, there's this saying that you're best able to serve the person you used to be. However, I think it's difficult to turn that into a business model at times because it's hard to confront the person you used to be. And I know that one of the things your company does is help brands kind of identify what is that core audience or what is that core offering that you should do. What would be some of your advice to those listening

Starting point is 00:24:06 who might be struggling with this topic? Absolutely. I think I love what you said. I think the foundation is exactly what you said, which is being able to actually confront who that person was a lot of times in our life when we choose to bury the negative because the negative things cause trauma

Starting point is 00:24:24 and we don't want to feel that past trauma. So the very first document actually in my company, it's a document called the deep look in the mirror. And it's all about diving into your past, who you used to be, and what some of those things that you've experienced in your past, my how those things might be affecting you and your present.

Starting point is 00:24:42 Because it allows you to go back, feel those things, but when we feel those things, when you acknowledge those things, then we can make a shift and make a difference, which is what we're all looking for, a transformation, we're stepping into a new identity. So, to the beginning of the answer to your question, step one, you have to look that person in the mirror, you have to confront who that person was. Now, from a more practical standpoint of choosing your niche, I think that it's important to also remember where you were from a practical business standpoint during those times because a lot of times we forget that I meet with my target niche right now work with a lot of real estate investors and a lot of these guys are making seven figures eight figures even nine figures I sat down to climb a line that has over 450 million a multifamily real estate. And he genuinely asked me the question, how can I help other people? What can I give them?

Starting point is 00:25:30 That's a value. And I'm sitting here thinking, the worth over a billion dollars, what do you mean, what can you offer? There's so much you can offer other people. But so many times we get on this path and we forget where we started at. And it's almost like, what do I have to offer? When in reality you have a ton to offer. The person that's even one step behind you can learn a

Starting point is 00:25:50 lot about taking that very nid step. So especially if you're in the industry of giving someone a service or if you're coaching people, identifying who that old you was and some of the problems that you struggle with is a very great first step to why it's choosing a niche that you can help to serve. Yeah, for instance, with passion struck, if I had to boil it down to one word, it would be either apathy or indifference, because what we're trying to help people do is get out of that stuck point that they're in,

Starting point is 00:26:20 where they're kind of apathetic to everything that's going around them. And they're so comfortable with what seems to be around them, but someone happy in other ways that they're not confronting it. But my advice, and it's difficult, is to try to find a power word for the problem that ultimately you're solving and then build out from there is one thing that's helped me.

Starting point is 00:26:43 I love that. We do something similar. We do power statements. So when we help to develop our niche, we first identify who exactly are you helping? How do you identify that person? How does that person identify as an example a real estate agent?

Starting point is 00:27:00 Are they a new real estate agent? Are they an experienced real estate agent? If you called out in a room of people, how would they identify themselves? Who would raise their hand? So if I say, hey, all of my new real estate agents in the room, they would raise their hand if they're a new real estate agent. So that's step number one,

Starting point is 00:27:16 we identify who we're targeting and step number two to our power statement is we identify the exact solution that we want to bring them. And this is a very specific solution. As an example with the new real estate agents, I help new real estate agents to close their first prop or to sell their first property. That's a very specific target for a new agent that's very, very relevant to them. Now you have a guiding principle for what your service entails. Your service is now all centered around helping new real estate agents

Starting point is 00:27:45 to sell their first home, which by the way, is a pretty huge market to be in because there's thousands of new real estate agents getting started in real estate almost every single week. So, but that's just one example of how we help people to clearly identify who are you planning on serving and what solution do you plan on bringing to those people. And what is your thought on the type of services you can bring or offerings because when I look at

Starting point is 00:28:10 the product mix and it's going to lead us into kind of the new economy that we're going into. You know, I kind of came up in a world where when I built a new company the first thing I was focusing on was services because in many ways it's where you can make the money the quickest. But as I look at this new content economy that that we're fastly getting more and more into, I've now come up with this thing that I heard called dares. And what a dare is it's it's digital. It's automated. It's repeatable. it's executable and it's scalable. Because what I find with services is that you can get into it quickly, but some of those other aspects, it's harder to scale it out, where you see a lot of people now creating whether it's courses or seminars or this or that. What, having worked with all these different clients of yours,

Starting point is 00:29:06 how do you see those two different elements? I believe the best companies have a combination of both of those. I believe the dares acronym that you use, if you have that in your company, it allows you to give better service. I think the problem we run into is if we try to be strictly service-based, now I'm spending my time, like I am with you right now, delivering information.

Starting point is 00:29:31 I believe in this day and age, scheduling a call, a one hour call, just for the purpose of delivering new information is a waste of time. And that's where that Daerist model comes in, because people don't have, as long as the tension span anymore, they don't wanna give us much time.

Starting point is 00:29:47 The time that they give you, they want to actually get life-changing results for that time. So what we do is we package the information, like you say, we automate that information, put it into systems processes, they can view the information on their own. Now when it comes to the service element of what we do, we're either building

Starting point is 00:30:05 something completely for you, so saving you time, or if I want to call like this with you, I'm working on very, very specific problems and helping you to the specific solutions that I couldn't do through a video format. So to answer your question, I believe the best companies out there do a combination of those two things. Information is provided in an automated way, but when it comes to actually diving into problems and coming up with solutions for those problems, they're either doing it for you or they're sitting on a call like this

Starting point is 00:30:33 and working through them with you. So I think it's a combination. I have another way of representing it and maybe you'll disagree or agree, but I say nowadays people don't pay for information. They pay for the application. Absolutely. That information.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Couldn't agree more. Absolutely. Because people ask me, you know, why do you do this podcast and why do you give your episodes out for free? Well, I don't know about you, but I hate going to these paid, metered sites where you've got to pay for content. Because you shouldn't have to pay for the content, where the real money or momentum or whatever you want to look at, it's really about how do you apply whatever that information is,

Starting point is 00:31:17 whether it's to your life, a business, or something else. And I think that's where the publishing model today has got everything wrong. I don't know why I need to pay for Wall Street Journal article, I should be paying for them taking it a step further and telling me how do I apply that to my life? That's just name. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:31:39 And that's what's gonna separate you in this day and age is giving people things they can actually take action on apply. The education space is expected to go from 250 billion estimated right now to over one trillion in 2025. And I believe the reason that that shift is happening, it's not that new money is being created, although government is printing money that's holding other conversation. But it's not because of the new money that's being put into that economy. It's because people are taking their money from large institutions, where everything was just solely

Starting point is 00:32:10 information based in getting new information. And now they're paying people like yourself, people like myself. And the reason they're paying for that is because they want results faster. They don't want to have to wait years to actually get into making money, hope to get into making money. They want to pay me and they want to pay you

Starting point is 00:32:26 to give them actionable items to do that can make them money this month, their next month, their three months down the road. So the money is shifting from institutions over to people like me and people like you. And that's why that industry is expected to grow from 200 billion to around of one trillion to eLearning space.

Starting point is 00:32:44 Well, you're making my day because that's exactly what I'm trying to do. So I love the fact that there's that much growth in this industry. And when I think there are different ways you can achieve it, I think there's a do-it-yourself model, a do-it-with-me model, and a do-it-for-me. And you know, all those have different touch points both on the digital spectrum and services as we talked about before.

Starting point is 00:33:07 So if you were to give someone today some advice, I know when I was earlier in my career, I wasn't putting as much focus when I look back as I should have into my personal branding. And it's funny, I read an article recently that people go out with people who have a personal brand or are more comfortable by a huge percentage point.

Starting point is 00:33:35 And I think it's because there's reliability in that you have this public persona out there that you're gonna be more of a standup person. But I know I looked at some peers at the time and I was wondering, you know, why are they doing all these social media posts? Why are they writing articles? They should be focused on doing the work at the company. But I look back and I'm like, man, I made so many mistakes. So why do you think it's important for people regardless of what they're doing to start considering personal branding?

Starting point is 00:34:06 Well, I think that it's the only way that people can actually get exposure to what you have to offer. And I think outside of just the personal branding aspect and the sense of what it used to be, which is a billboard or you're in a magazine or there was many ways to brand yourself and get yourself out there. Nowadays, everything is more video based. So instead of me just going to look and see, is that person on a billboard? Or did I see their sticker on somebody's car? And that lets me know they're credible. Now I'm going to actually go to their page, see what they're talking about and see if they're actually giving value.

Starting point is 00:34:41 So I think that personal brand has taken even another step, which is actually delivering true value up front to people. Instead of it just being a name recognition thing, it's what does this guy talk about. I'm going to see go see John's page. What is he talking about? get me potentially to where I want to be. There's a lot more due diligence done on the front end from a personal branding versus like I said back in the day, oh, John, he's that guy on the billboard. Let me work with him. The game has totally changed in that aspect. People can dive so much deeper into your business on the front end and how you present yourself from a branding perspective and a value most importantly that you give up front will determine whether people want to work with you or not.

Starting point is 00:35:28 Yeah, and I know that there are those individuals who don't want to do any social media at all. So you go and you do a search for them and you can't find them anywhere. And having talked to some pretty powerful heads of human resources recently in companies, they're actually starting to look at that as a real negative because you know, they're wanting to see that person like you're saying speak. They're wanting to see you know, how they're projecting themselves, you know, what is the value add? How do they carry themselves? And so it's an interesting shift that we're in. That's all. It's your resume. There's no more paper resumes now.

Starting point is 00:36:06 It's a video resume and it's on your social media. And if you don't have anything on your resume, then you're going to lose that on a lot of people that would have otherwise worked with you. What's interesting that you say that how many companies are now using services where you have to tape yourself on camera, you know, giving a three to five minute presentation on why you want to join a company or topics that they want.

Starting point is 00:36:30 And it's pretty interesting because when I was getting hired at Fortune 500 companies, they would put us through this pretty robust evaluation where they would see how you work in meetings and other things. But I think that there are other tools that you can use, like these, that if you have people who can analyze, people's emotions, their emotion, etc., there's a lot you can learn.

Starting point is 00:36:55 Absolutely. I agree. So I did want to talk because one of the core topics I know that you're really focused on is how do you make money in this new economy? So I was hoping we could pick your brain there. And maybe the first point would be the listener may hear that and go, what are you talking about this new economy?

Starting point is 00:37:17 So when you think of the new economy, how do you define it? Yeah, I'm a huge economic skit to the point where I've read Adam Smith books that are super, super ancient and very hard to read. But the new economy for me, it actually stems from the older economy, which was back in the agricultural age. So it's estimated that in that agricultural age, about 97% of us were actually self-employed. Looked a lot different than it looked like today. There were blacksmiths, there were farmers, but the bottom line is everybody went to individuals

Starting point is 00:37:50 for specific services and used those individual services instead of using huge corporations like Samton Walmart. Fast forward, obviously the industrial age came, machines were created, the way that we used to have to do things change, and now a lot of those people transition into being employees. But the cool thing about economics is a lot of times it works cyclical. So the same thing is happening right now with the online space, and specifically pertaining to information, because we've transitioned into an era where new information is needed, those huge corporations, colleges specifically, haven't been able to adapt and move as quickly. It's one of the negatives when you have anything that's a huge institution,

Starting point is 00:38:30 their ability to adapt and change is very, very slow, which has left this huge gap now in the education and services space, which a lot of people, a lot of individuals right now have an opportunity to fill that gap. And that's why I believe we're going to get closer and closer. We may not hit 97% again, but we're going to start to trend closer and closer to most people being self-employed. So when I talk about the new error in this new economy, I'm talking about specifically the information economy

Starting point is 00:38:59 where instead of going to people that, once again, these large institutions, people will come to individuals for that specific information and that's where the opportunity is right now. The process that I would take for someone if they want to be a part of this. Number one, if you've already accomplished something amazing in your life or if you've already proven to be very competent at something valuable, I would just begin teaching that and sharing that. Even if it starts off for free on your social media, just sharing that information and seeing

Starting point is 00:39:27 what type of traction you get from people wanting to learn more about what you're doing. And if you haven't established something that you're great at or that you love, I would say start trying a few things out and dedicate a portion of your life to becoming a master at whatever that specific topic is. So that you can one day eventually turn that into information

Starting point is 00:39:47 that you can share with other people. But just like the agricultural age, like I said, 97% of people, this is now the information age where you have a huge opportunity to build your own business through education. Well, and for all those large companies in many ways, COVID probably did a disservice to them because I think more and more employees are realizing they don't need this job. They their services could be found somewhere else that the other thing I think is important for people to realize is to start building income that is residual or income income sources where if you put content out, let's say it's on a YouTube channel, it's the gift that keeps on giving because I was listening to Lewis

Starting point is 00:40:29 Hounds the other day and he was saying that a couple months ago his most popular video was something from four to five years ago and he had gotten like six, that I wasn't hits on it in a day. And you know, the thing, whether it's YouTube or whatever you want to put your talents into, these things are evergreen, because if you're doing the SEO correctly and if the topic is something that's meaningful, people are always gonna search out that information. Absolutely, it's a huge library, and you want to be at the top. When you literally, I like to compare everything new age

Starting point is 00:41:03 to old age so that people can grasp it, but this is just a huge library. People are looking for that information online and you want to be one of the top books in that library so that when they search how to be successful as an entrepreneur, how to unlock my passion, in your case, you want to be the first person that pops up in that library, first book or video that they want to watch. Yeah, and it's interesting. I wish I could figure out the YouTube gods because platform is changing pretty rapidly as Google is as for as YouTube is putting more and more emphasis on to understanding how people are growing their audiences,

Starting point is 00:41:42 getting views, other things. So it's making it right now a lot trickier than it used to be to build out. Well, the trick is we did like Google. Google bought it and they're turning YouTube into the video version of Google. So if you want to rank high on YouTube, then you want to get specific information.

Starting point is 00:42:02 And I like to create how-to videos. So how-to, the secret to unlocking your passion, how to unlock your passion for beginners. And the more specific that you get on that, because it's all based on keywords, the more specific when people look up exactly what you're, you're providing the easier it is to find you. So now, if I look up getting started entrepreneurship for beginners and your video says that in the title Then I'm gonna pull up your video versus someone else's so I would begin creating a lot of different Specifically titled videos. So when people search your very specific niche, then you're the one that pops up

Starting point is 00:42:39 But it's like a video library of Google now. That's what YouTube's trying to do That's an interesting way to look at it because I spend probably more time working on the SEO sometimes on YouTube than I do on actually recording the videos because I'm trying to figure out what's working and what's not. With what you and I do, you can't do the shop factor videos so to speak, so it's got to be something that's more credible and positive.

Starting point is 00:43:06 So as you look back, you're a young entrepreneur. What were some of the most important decisions that you made that have allowed you to scale as quickly as you have? What has made you be able to like robustly build this business? And why do you think outside of what I talked about before, you know, keeping the main thing, the main thing, you know, what are some of your secrets for, for why you've been able to succeed when somebody have failed. So the secret is actually that I didn't build actually, I'm young, but I, I guess quick is relative, right? But here's one of the secrets for me is a lot of people focus on the time aspect, and I have this formula that's called intensity over time.

Starting point is 00:43:52 And so my whole thing was, I'm gonna lack in time, because I'm a young entrepreneur, but when I lacked in time, I wanna make up for it intensity. So everything that I did, I did it just as passionate as me playing on the basketball court. I used to dive in the stands, I used to play with bloody noses, that same intensity that I put towards basketball, I put towards entrepreneurship, and I became a student of the game before I tried to get anything out of the game. So before I started trying to make a million dollars, my first two years, I dedicated

Starting point is 00:44:22 to listening and following my mentor, hands down question as no skepticism no questioning his decisions literally anything this guy told me I would do for two years, that's what I did. After that, three years, I dedicated myself to being patient in learning the game for myself. So as I was operating, as I was building my business, I wasn't measuring myself based on how much money I was making. I was measuring myself based on what I was learning in the process through hands-on application. And I think that that's a super important part of my journey. That's really overlooked a lot of entrepreneurs. I think get into the game. It's their first time ever doing anything. And if they haven't made a million dollars in a month, they want to quit. While you're playing for the wrong thing, you have to respect the journey. And any entrepreneur that comes to me brand new and ask, what should I do with my business, I say you should do anything with your business yet, which you should do is work for someone doing exactly what you want to do, or anything from them for a year to two years, then launch your business. So if you want the fastest route to really blowing up overnight, it's dedicate yourself to learning first, then dedicate yourself to learning

Starting point is 00:45:38 through application, then go ahead and worry about building your business. But I don't believe that anybody that has never touched the business world has any business just hopping in and trying to make a million dollars the next day. But will it happen, sure? But for every one person, it happens to 999,000 people are going to quit for false expectations. Yes.

Starting point is 00:46:01 And I don't know if you're a fan of Gary Vee. You know, there are some things that he says, I love and I completely agree with other things, you know, I'm on the fence about, but one thing I completely agree with him on is the thing you just mentioned and that's patience. And if I had a lesson to go back and tell my younger self, it would have been to have more patience. And because I think there's learning curves that if you, if you try to force something too quickly and you don't allow yourself to have that learning curve or fail your points, you can pass through it. And then it ends up biting you in the butt down the road. So that's something I tell my, my son's 23 and I tell him all the time because he's like,

Starting point is 00:46:45 I got this job, it's at this pay here, and then he starts comparing himself to others, and he's like, I should be making this. I'm like, Josh, you've got to have patience. The most important thing that you can be doing right now is sitting back and learning. Doing the best job you possibly can building up the best reputation you possibly can because that stuff carries, it pays forward. But more importantly, concentrate on serving others instead of serving yourself and try to remain humble in the moment as you're on this path. Because when you're young, you think I've got to accomplish it tomorrow. I knew I did when I was at Arthur Anderson I wanted to be a partner. When I went to Lowe's I wanted to be a sea level and sometimes that clouds your judgment as opposed to as you're saying take that step back be patient

Starting point is 00:47:40 learn educate yourself apply fail learn more and you're going to get further ahead by doing that than you are by trying to force the issues. Absolutely. Every single day of the week, and there's really four major assets, have I had to boil it down for someone trying to get into the game and learn. Number one would be the knowledge in your head, most important asset by far, in my opinion, number two would be the relationships that you build along the way. So people that you meet, people that you're getting your network, we say your network is your network. So just building that network of people is a huge asset to have, three, the reputation like you spoke about.

Starting point is 00:48:19 And I think the fourth one that's really underestimated is being able to budget and save aside a little bit of money for a rainy day. So I'm not talking making millions or anything like that, but with the job that you do have or wherever you are currently working for, saving away money to just live on, because the moment you decide to be an entrepreneur

Starting point is 00:48:38 and go full force with it and cut all other avenues off, having $10,000, $15,000 in the bank account is everything. So now you're not worried about, hey, I need to find money to eat and I need to make a temporary decision to take this job or to do this for that to eat. Now you get to make mistakes and have a little bit of cushion in the bank to help you to get through some of those mistakes, where if you didn't have that cushion, you probably end up being in a very bad situation. So I think if you can build those four things over two years, and dedicating yourself to working for someone else,

Starting point is 00:49:10 reputation, connections, knowledge, and have some money saved side, you're just, you're in an amazing place as a brand new entrepreneur. I think those are great four areas for someone to key in on. And I wanted to ask you one last question, and that is, and I always like to ask this of athletes, as you look back at where you're at now, what is the biggest lesson that you learned playing Division 1, Division 2 sports, or even sports in general that you still apply today? So I have to give two because they're

Starting point is 00:49:42 on equal footing for me persistence and teamwork. So persistence obviously physically it teaches you a lot about your limitations as a human being and being able to push those limitations and failure is always temperament and athletics. You hit your wall and you still got more you have more in the tank and you have to give more and that's constantly repeated self-throuches for leadership for me where I hit a temporary wall and I persevered through that wall and on the other side of that was my actual potential. So perseverance and then teamwork, which I think is very, very underestimated in this day and age. I see a lot of people that are out there for themselves and that's not the way to win. It never has been the way to win. You have to bring other people along with you whether that's employees whether that's partners whether that's not the way to win. It never has been the way to win. You have to bring other people along with you,

Starting point is 00:50:26 whether that's employees, whether that's partners, whether that's just relationships, you have with people in the space. You don't wanna focus on stepping on other people. You wanna have healthy competition, but still be able to work as a team and help other people to ascend with you. So I would say that's the two things

Starting point is 00:50:42 that sports taught me the best is persistence and teamwork. It's pretty interesting. I recently did a whole month of interviewing veterans in honor of the war on terror. And during an interview, four Navy seals and all of them gave those two answers, as you know, as I went through buds, it taught them persistence, answers, you know, as they went through buds, it taught them persistence, and it taught them that there's a reason they call them seal teams because no seal individually is going to win a battle or take the hill. It's them working as a combined team, whether that's carrying a small boat or a log above their heads during buds training, or them going out in a mission. Yeah, so I think that that's a great, basically a comparable answer to what you gave. So, John, incredible interview today, if there's

Starting point is 00:51:32 a listener who wants to get in contact with you or learn more about your company and working with you, how can they do that? I'll put this in the show notes. I appreciate it. Yeah, there's three ways. One is our website, the virtuallegacy.com. The other is my personal Instagram. It's just the athletic CEO. And then the last one is our Facebook group. It's just BYOB, Build Your Online Business. So those are the three best ways to get in contact with us and get some free value. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for spending your time with us today on the show and spreading your amazing wisdom. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. It's been a pleasure. What a great episode with John Lewis. So much advice and wisdom on building your personal brand

Starting point is 00:52:17 and navigating the content economy. Now, I want to take some time to recognize our fan of the week. Tina Vichon, who left us this review. The PassionStruck podcast is so inspirational and educational. This is a very important podcast for almost anyone, especially those who want a better life. I can't thank you enough for all your help. You really provide knowledge to learn here that is helping me live to my full capability. And your latest episode with Gail Swift on the power of taking action episode 77 is simply the best.

Starting point is 00:52:52 Thank you Tina so much for your review and thank you all of you who have left reviews for helping us on this journey and make Passion Go viral from NONION's worldwide. We now have over 1900 reviews on our way to crossing over 2000. And we have some great upcoming episodes, including one with Lily Wofford, who is a dating coach, but does it in a unique way by helping her clients learn how to profile and read body language. Retired Greenbray, Andrew Mar, who will come on the show and talk about how he overcame tremendous trauma from his time in Afghanistan and why he started the

Starting point is 00:53:33 War of Angels Foundation and how it is helping thousands of veterans recover from chronic traumatic brain injury. And then we also have Lori Sidel, who talks about tremendous diversity throughout his life that he has had to overcome, how he continues to build resilience, and how he moves forward constantly with the dream of making his life better. Thank you again for joining the podcast and learning and growing with us. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral.

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Passion Struck with John R. Miles - John Lewis On: How to Create Your Virtual Legacy EP 83

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