The Rich Roll Podcast - Lewis Howes: Living A Passionate Life

Episode Date: April 4, 2013

Life should be lived passionately. So says today's guest Lewis Howes, and I couldn't agree more. If you are immersed in the online marketing world, you've probably heard of Lewis — a former professional football player & renown pioneer lifestyle entrepreneur. But in case you haven't, let me introduce you to his universe. Lewis is a former two-sport All-American (football & decathlon) and current world record holding athlete (most yards received in a single football game), has graced lists such as Details Magazine’s “5 Internet Gurus Who Can Make You Rich” and Incomediary.com’s “50 Most Influential People in Blogging.” Most recently, Lewis was ranked as one of Genjuice.com’s top “100 Most Desirable Mentors” along with the likes of Barack Obama, Russell Simmons and the Queen of Jordan. In just three years, my man went from a depressed and aimless former professional Arena-league football player who's career was cut short due to injury sleeping on his sister’s couch to running a seven figure business. He began his entrepreneurial career by hosting LinkedIn meetups around the country, and co-authoring the successful book LinkedWorking. He has hosted over 400 webinars, spoken to thousands at conferences and events, and educated career professionals and business owners around the world on the power of LinkedIn. Not enough? He's also a member of the U.S. National Team Handball squad. He loves CrossFit too. Don't worry, we get into all of it. Oh yeah, he's also the host of The School of Greatness Podcast, currently blowing up charts on iTunes. I was honored to be a guest on his show a couple weeks back and am pleased that he joined me for an enlightening and inspiring chat about discovering, unlocking, and unleashing your best, most authentic self – my favorite subject. I hope you dig the show and end up as inspired as I was sitting down with him in person. Enjoying the podcast and want to support the show? Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and leave a comment on the iTunes page for the show. Thanks for listening and enjoy the program! Rich

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, Episode 23, with lifestyle entrepreneur Lewis Howes. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. My name is Rich Roll and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. My name is Rich Roll and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. If you're new to the show, who am I? Well, I am an ultra distance triathlete. I am the best-selling author of the book Finding Ultra, which came out last year, which by the way, the paperback is coming out at the end of May. So if you've been waiting and waiting and waiting until the cheaper version of the book comes out, wait no further. You can pre-order it on Amazon. It drops May 21st and they're taking pre-orders

now. So check that out. I'm also a plant-based nutrition advocate. That's a long way of saying that I'm a vegan. I subsist on a whole food plant-based diet to energize my body and fuel my training. I'm a public speaker, motivational speaker. I guess you could call me a holistic lifestyle entrepreneur, whatever that means. I'm a recovering attorney and a family guy. I've got four kids and have been married coming up on 10 years now. I started this podcast back in December with a simple goal, to share with you many of the people and personalities that I've come across along this fantastic journey that I've been on, and to share with you the inspiring voices who have helped me along the path, the forward thinkers in health and wellness and fitness and personal

lifestyle maximization, I guess you could call it. My guests have been doctors, nutritionists, world-class athletes, entrepreneurs like our guest today, trainers, and a whole plethora of very interesting, like I said, forward-thinking, sort of paradigm-busting minds and personalities. and personalities. I'm bringing them to you with the simple goal of trying to empower you to achieve your best, most authentic self so that you can unleash your own personal power on the world and become more fully actualized as a human being. Because when I talk about health, people always tend to say, well, you know, they want to know about the diet and what I eat. And I always look at food as sort of a shared communal experience. And it's the starting point. It's the starting point to health. What you put down your

throat, what you eat is a portal into everything else that you do. But it's also just a starting point. Once you clean up your diet and you're eating healthy and you're feeling good, well, what do you do with that energy? And in my case, I tend to perceive it as a means of embarking on your own journey to achieve your very personal destiny. And so I like to bring all sorts of different guests on that aren't specifically going to talk about food, but all sorts of facets of life that I consider to be encompassed under the umbrella of wellness.

And by wellness, I mean a holistic balance of mind, body, and spirit. So thanks for joining me. What can I tell you? It's been an interesting past couple weeks. I just got back recently from Charleston, South Carolina, which is a fantastic town. I was only there like a day. I wish I could have been there longer. It's such a cool city. I was able to get out on a morning run and explore the city, and it was quite magnificent. I can't wait to go back there. But what I wanted to tell you is that I had the opportunity

to visit the College of Charleston, where I got to speak with the students. It was my first experience speaking at a college, and the remarkable thing is that my book, Finding Ultra, is on the syllabus for a required freshman class called really, to me, not just mind-blowing, but kind of affirmation of this journey that I've been on. Affirmation that people and also young people are looking for sustainable health and lifestyle solutions. It's an amazing time in this health and wellness revolution that we're on, and it was a privilege and an honor to go speak with the students

and to the general public about the subjects that I'm passionate about that I'm trying to convey to you by way of this podcast. So it was really great. I'd really love to do more college speaking, so I'm looking into trying to do that. So any of you out there who have anything to do with the college who'd be interested in having me come and speak, get in touch with me, man, because I would absolutely love to do that. And I'm getting ready to go out on the road again. I'm going to be hitting the Worcester, Massachusetts VegFest on April 14th.

I'm going to be in New York City for a couple days, and I'm going to grab some excellent podcast interviews when I'm in New York with some folks that I know there. And then I'm going to be in Ottawa, Canada that following weekend for Plant Powered Ottawa. Dr. Michael Greger and I are going to be speaking and hanging out with people. So if you're in Ontario, Toronto, Ottawa vicinity, check it out.

I think the website is plantpoweredottawa.com. It might be sold out. I'm not sure. But there might be still a few spaces available if you're inclined to come and hang out with me and Dr. Greger. And if you don't know who Dr. Greger is, you should check him out. His website is nutritionfacts.org. And he was a guest on the podcast. He was one of my early guests and I think might still be one of my most popular podcast episodes to date. What else? If you are enjoying the show, we put up a donation button on richroll.com on the podcast page. And I want to thank everybody out there who have donated to the podcast. It's kind of amazing to me because I'm

just here to provide a service and bring it to you for free. And so many people have, I suppose, gotten so much value out of it that they felt inclined to throw us a few bucks to keep the pirate ship going. And that means more to me than you can imagine. This show will always be free. I'll always continue to bring it to you for free. But if you want to support, that's a great way to support the show. A couple bucks, you can do a monthly subscription, throw us a couple bucks. It'll charge your PayPal or your credit card a couple bucks a month. You don't have to sweat it anymore, and no big deal. Also, we have the Amazon banner ad up on richroll.com on the podcast page and on the blog page.

So if you're going to buy something on Amazon, hey, do us a favor and just click on my Amazon banner first to take you to Amazon. Buy whatever you're going to buy, and it won't cost you anything extra, but Amazon will throw us a few quarters, and it will keep us going. A cool idea, actually, that somebody suggested is to just, if you have a little icon on your browser for Amazon because you buy stuff on Amazon all the time, just swap that out with the link that MyBannerAd forwards you to and put that up in your browser so then you don't have to think about it anymore.

You don't have to go to richroll.com. You'll just have that link right up in your browser as an easy way to click to Amazon. And that way, you make it even easier for yourself, and it continues to help us out. So let's get to today's episode. Today, I am very excited to have lifestyle entrepreneur, Lewis Howes. And Lewis is a guy who I was introduced to by a mutual podcasting friend. He's kind of a remarkable guy, actually. He's done quite a bit in his young life. I guess he would call himself a lifestyle entrepreneur, but he's much more than that.

He's a former professional arena football player. He was a standout college football player. And he's kind of one of those jocks that can play every single sport. He's strong, he's fast. His dream was always to be in the NFL. He didn't quite make it there, but he did play professional football in the arena league. And he's currently a member of the U.S football in the arena league. And he's currently a member of the U.S. national handball team. So he's going to tell us all about handball, which I find fascinating. But in the wake of his professional football career getting cut short due to an injury, he had kind of a line in the sand moment. And if you know me, I love line in the sand moments. I love these

sort of midlife epiphanies that occur. He was depressed and on the couch, and I can certainly identify with that. That's a big sort of thematic through line in my story, confused about what he wanted to do with his life and what to do next. And, you know, as a, as somebody who had spent his entire life pursuing athleticism, uh, to find himself unable to continue to pursue that, uh, is a, is kind of a scary thing. But, um, through some of the tools that he's going to talk about today, he was able to sort of identify what his passion was and put that into motion and sort of smash cut to now. He's become an extremely successful online entrepreneur. He's figured out how to leverage his knowledge base through the internet to create a very successful online business and allow him to pursue

the lifestyle that he enjoys, which is a pretty cool lifestyle. So he's going to tell us all about that. I did his podcast a couple of weeks ago, which is blowing up on iTunes. It's called The School of Greatness on iTunes, and you should check it out. He has some really awesome guests on his show. And I was really honored and proud to be a guest on his show the other week. People seem to enjoy it. I really got along with Lewis really well. I think he's a great guy and thought that he would be a great fit for this show and to kind of tell us a little bit about his story and how he kind of navigates life. And like I said, for me, health extends beyond just, hey, what do you have for breakfast?

It's sort of how do you unlock that personal power and unleash it on the world? How do you become the most authentic version of yourself? I guess what it boils down to is how do you maximize your happiness? How do you design the lifestyle that you want that will make you happy and fulfilled that is in alignment with what you feel your legacy is and what you want to leave behind you know on this earth in this short life we're brought to you today by recovery.com i've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering

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option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Without further ado, let's get to it. Ladies and gentlemen, Lewis Bowles. Thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Yeah, I got to come out to your place soon. You do, man. I tried to make that happen, but I live out in the boonies. It's hard.

In LA, you end up driving so much that it's hard to get people to come out to our neck of the woods. They think we live in Santa Barbara or something like that. It's far, for sure. It's really far. I'm so used to it now that I don't think about it. For me, to drive into town is no big deal. But yeah, we want to have you out, man. We'll cook

you a big vegan meal. You're my new project, dude. I'm going to get you vegan by the end of the year. We'll see. I'm getting closer and closer. So we'll see. We had such a good time on your show. That was really cool. I thought it would be great to

you know spread the love around a little bit I appreciate it everyone loved your content so cool I mean you're rocking it

you know let's just talk about podcasting for a minute so we can you know alien everybody and lose subscribers quickly

sure it's been really fun for me I mean and you just started yours shortly after, after mine and your gangbusters are showing your podcast on the homepage of iTunes and you're getting featured and you got great guests. So anybody who's just tuning in and we'll get into who Lewis is and all that kind of stuff in a minute, but, um, you know, stop what you're doing and go subscribe to his podcast. it's great stuff. Yeah, thanks.

Why don't you tell me a little bit about what your goal is with it? Yeah, this podcast is called The School of Greatness. And my goal is to help as many people find out how to become great in their own lives. So it's a couple of goals. One, the goal for me is to connect with some really inspiring people business minds athletes celebrities so it's like a social capital um thing for me to like build those relationships and have a platform to share their content and then the second thing is to share amazing information with an audience you know when i moved here to la i was like really tired of this driving stuff and i was like how

can i no wonder you wouldn't drive out to my house exactly I was like I don't even like driving a couple miles away but I was like how can I leverage people in the car for hours and hours like because I lived in New York for a year and a half and I didn't have a car in Ohio when I was living downtown in Columbus and yeah I was like I've got to figure out a way to build an audience doing this so podcasting I mean was that the idea because you're I mean you're somebody who's, in some respects, has really mastered the internet. You figured out how to really create a lifestyle and a brand and a very good living off, essentially, your laptop.

And you have lots of avenues that you pursue to that end. You use LinkedIn. You've got these webinars. You've got these online products. Do you have a membership site now? A couple of membership sites. You got it all going on. I want to learn how to do this.

I'm trying to monetize. I don't know what I'm doing. So then you wake up one day and say, I'm going to do a podcast too. How does that fit into the spectrum of all the other internet things that you're doing? For the last few years, I've been doing a lot of different things online and specifically webinars creating products information products doing this membership site stuff

coaching you know teaching people creating content and i like to keep things fresh and do some things that are new and i've never done podcasting. And I was always kind of weird. It was like, it seemed like it was cool like four or five years ago or something when people started really doing it. But it was like, I don't know. I just never knew what I would say then, I guess, or what type of stuff I would talk about.

And then I didn't want to talk about LinkedIn on a podcast every time. And then- Well, now there's all of these online marketing podcasts and stuff like that. That's its own subcategory. There's a lot of them. And then it seemed like podcasting was dead for a few years.

The last couple of years, no one was doing it, or it wasn't even more mainstream yet. And now Joe Rogan's making millions off of his and Adam Carolla. Is he making millions, you think? I think he's making a good amount. I don't know specifically. I know he's making, with a couple of his sponsors, he's making some really good money off of affiliate sales,

plus just getting cash for having a sponsorship. But I think what he's doing, he's built such an amazing audience that he sells out everything that he goes and does now. I mean, it helps. There's so many comedians with podcasts now, and it really helps them sell out their stand-up shows, and it becomes a more direct- consumer kind of thing so people who you know are interested in comedy they don't just show up at a comedy show and not you know what you get what you get or whatever like putting

a record on you've never heard before where they're actually going to see that person they're familiar with them they know what their humor is and that helps them if they've been following him for six months or a year then it's like it's so much more intimate and they're willing to spend more and they're willing to buy more merchandise. Right. I think it's just another tool to use for people that are providing content to develop a deeper relationship with their audience.

Yes. And I think it's more and more people. I mean, I discovered podcasting, I say it all the time so I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I discovered it when I started training a lot and I need something to listen to on long rides. And that was back in 2008, like early 2008,

when it was really kind of brand new. And I think Corolla was really the first kind of mover and shaker to move into it and try to turn it into a business. And a lot of people have followed suit. There's still a lot of people that don't really understand podcasting. I mean i mean basically i'm i'm in my car driving around la all the time and i just program my own radio station of all the stuff i like to listen to and

try to expand my mind a little bit rather than just turning the radio on and you get what you get right right no i'm loving it it's uh been a lot of fun i think i'm about to hit a hundred thousand downloads like in the next day or two. So for me, the first three months doing that, I feel like that's decent. Yeah, that's a lot of people. I think people, they hear you and then there's an emotional connection and a

loyalty ensues and the sense of knowing you and kind of who you are. The long format conversation has just gone the way of the dodo. And now podcasting has brought it back. And I think people enjoy that and they like that because you just don't get it in any other media resource available to us. Right, unless you're listening to NPR or something, I guess, right? Yeah.

Of course. And so my thing is when my book came out, I made a decision to shut my law practice down and really give it a go in this kind of health and wellness space. And all I know, like it was a huge leap of faith and I want to get into kind of, you know, your story and how you made this leap into what you're doing now. But for me, you know, I just got so much great feedback about the message I was putting out. And I just felt like I need to make a go of this and see if I can try to turn this into some kind of professional, more professional kind of vocation. You know, I've got a family, I've got kids, I got to be responsible. I've got a house. Yeah, I've got a

lot of responsibility. And yet I also know that, you know, I don't know that the world needs another lawyer and, uh, and, and you just don't get, you know, practicing law, I don't get the feeling that I get when I know that I've helped somebody else out and I get emails every day from people that are responding to it. And so I'm trying to figure out how I can, you know, all I know is that I love creating the content. Like I'll do the podcast for free forever. I don't care, you know, because I just like it. You know, I'll make videos, I'll blog, I'll do all that stuff. I don't think about how that's going to translate into making a living. I do it for the love and I do it for just pure service, really.

And I enjoy putting that message out there. But because I have all these responsibilities, I've got to figure out a way to make all of this work or I'm going to be back in the law office soon. So anyway, I hope you can help me out a little bit. Yeah, well, there's definitely ways to monetize anything you're doing. And I mean, I spent a year and a half, two years not making any money when I was starting out,

just trying to figure out this stuff as well and discovering what people were doing and trying different things. But I think it really starts with being a credible expert on something. I mean, some type of passion and expertise that you know more than 99% of the people or half the people. Because if you can teach 50% of people something, then they'll pay you for it. I feel like I've got that part figured out. You've got it figured out. Yeah, you took the leap of faith.

I don't have the payment part figured out. Exactly. I feel part of it is psychological for me too because I spent some time studying how all this online marketing stuff works. And I watched a bunch of webinars and went to a bunch of membership sites and tried to see what people were doing. And quite honestly, I got turned off by the whole thing. I

felt very pitched to, I felt like it was spam. I felt like a lot of them are people saying, yeah, I made a million dollars online and you can too, you know, pay $99 and you'll get access to all of my secret information. And I was like, I just felt like this is a big, I don't know. For me, at the end of the day, the most important thing is being authentic and being real and just being a human being, being about the whole thing and being willing to talk about when I made a mistake or failure and trying to share what has worked for me. And when I started looking at all that stuff, I was like, this doesn't feel good to me. It doesn't feel like that's not, if I was to start doing that, I think I would undermine the entire audience that I've worked hard to kind of cultivate that I'm trying to help. Right.

I think a lot of the messaging and the design and the copy out there online, people promising different things, if you're just getting into it and that's all you see and then you start teaching people the same thing you just kind of follow that pattern so a lot of people just like follow along the spammy ways of marketing i guess stuff but i think the authentic people build the true audience that stays with them for life so you're doing it the right way right i'd rather build it slowly and organically and just you know So you're doing it the right way. I'd rather build it slowly and organically and just make 99% of it free

and hopefully valuable to people out there. And once in a while, maybe throw me a couple pennies. And that's why I put up the donation thing for the podcast and I put up the Amazon banner ad. And if people feel good or inclined to support the show, then they can, but they don't have to. You know what I mean? It's up to you.

Your audience is mostly what now? The demographics of the audience? Who are they? Are they people trying to do what you did, which is lose some weight, get more active and fit? I don't have exact Google analytics on it, but I think that just based on the emails that I get or the comments or whatever,

I think it's pretty broad. It's not just triathletes and marathon runners. It's, it's middle-aged guys who are trying to sort of recapture their health and their fitness, who are frustrated or maybe feel trapped in their jobs. It's actually a lot of, you know, a lot of women too. Like I remember when my book was, you know, when we were working on, when I was working with my editor on my book and my editor in New York at the publishing house, and he was like, your audience is, you know, middle-aged guys that watch SportsCenter. And I was like, I don't think so. You know, there's like a huge passionate vegan market out there and there's a lot of, that's predominantly women. And, you know, I think that there's a bigger audience out there and that's you know that's what i think it it ranges

you know it's a lot of people that are just into wellness health and fitness in general who aren't runners and aren't triathletes and it's yoga people and people that are into meditation people that are in spirituality a lot of women that are just into vegan food and you know i don't know yeah so it's broad it's you know it So it's not one very segmented sector. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely lots of ways you can monetize, in my opinion. There's coaching, which you said you don't want to do, but there's a high-level coaching that you could do.

There's a membership aspect where, okay, we're doing this podcast and the content on the blog for free, but I'm going to give you guys exactly what I break down for my training every day. I'm going to give you my training workouts every day and every week. So there's some type of element to that. I'm thinking hard about a membership site,

and I actually put it out there a couple weeks ago and asked people to send me comments or whatever on what they would like if they'd be interested in that. I want to just do it, make it, I don't know, $25 a month or something really cheap and then just create a four-wall community where I can enter. Because now it's gotten to the point

where I get so many emails, I just can't respond to them. But I want to be communicating with the audience and if I could create a community where I can really interact and be helpful rather than just not have the time to respond to an email or just give a short response that isn't that helpful, I think it would be a good way to do it. And the simplest way that you could do it is have a private Facebook group. Because everyone's on Facebook, and that could be your form. Say, hey, it's $20 a month, and it's just a Facebook group.

Right. And stop paying, I remove you from the group. Right. That's the easiest way you could do it. Right. As opposed to building a site and having a remove you from the group or whatever you know that's like the easiest way you could do it right as opposed to building a site and having a forum and content every week or whatever but something like that yeah it's interesting and you know one of the things i know that you you you always say one of your guiding principles is is you're not afraid to fail and you're not afraid to succeed right you know and i think that's powerful and potent and

you know i i'm not afraid of failing but i think i still have some kind of weird psychological residue that that is afraid of succeeding you know or or feeling like i don't deserve it or i'm you know i'm i can't you know i'm not in a position to ask people for money what do i know right i mean i think i think i feel fear of failure and success i think i like you know when i do something i feel a little bit of fear like is this going to work out or is it not you know but i don't let it hold me back like i think people think uh you know courage doesn't mean you're not afraid everybody experiences fear it's what is your behavior in the face of something that's frightening like are you going to push

through it are you going to let it you know make you shy away from meeting a challenge head on? Yeah. And for me, I'm always willing to take it on head on no matter how afraid or how stupid it's going to make me look if I do fail or succeed. Where do you think that comes from? Probably a lot from my childhood of being the youngest of four, never feeling accepted, kind of like a goofy tall kid all through elementary school, always getting made fun of, not having friends, and really being, I think, angry a lot as a kid that I didn't have that acceptance or acknowledgement. And then I remember there was a pivotal moment in third grade

where I was picked last for a dodgeball game for our class. There was two popular kids, guys, who picked the teams, so they go one at a time. They picked all the guys and they started picking all the girls and I was the last person to pick. I remember it wasn't even like, okay, Lewis, you're on this team. It was like I was the default last person. I just went on the other

person's team or whatever. I remember just being so mad in this dodgeball game, just slamming the ball in people's faces, catching everything to try to prove them wrong that I was good. After that, I just spent all my nights in the basketball gym just faces, catching everything to try to prove them wrong that I was good. And after that, I just spent like all my nights in the basketball gym, just like playing with older kids to try to get better as an athlete. And once I started to win and kind of develop into my body and, you know, my skill sets and athleticism, you know, these older kids would acknowledge me and be like, they'd want

me on their team. So it was like, okay, and now I'm being accepted. And I think, uh, when you make that make that that link in your mind like that mental equation of oh i actually worked hard at this and tried to get better and now i'm better and look at how i'm being received differently than i was before everyone accepts me now i think life you know oftentimes and i talk about this a lot and i talked about in my book but you, we all have these sort of definitive moments in our life that change things or set us on a different trajectory. And I'd read about that third grade episode and you know, my, my youth was very similar. I was, you know, we're different kinds of athletes and you developed into somebody who's got a lot of, you know, sort of eye hand

coordination skill and strength and power. You know, I'm the endurance guy, but I was always the last guy for dodgeball, handball, softball, baseball, basketball, and I'm still terrible at any kind of ball sports. Like I'm, I'm awful at that. Well, it's like Michael Phelps, he's bad too at everything, right? You know, like the pool was the one place where I could go and, and, and do well because I couldn't do any of those other things. But I think that that motivated me to find something that would work for me. You know, instead of like, I just, I tried, I tried to play basketball. Like it wasn't happening.

Right, right. So, you know, I went in another direction, but it did motivate me to work hard in the pool and get good at that. Like I realized I had some potential there and to double down on that. And, you know, the sort of aptitude to be able to identify that moment and understand the kind of importance of, you know, of what it is, even, you know, even if you're reflecting back on it now to go, wow, that that's what that happened. And, you know, I've had a couple moments like that in my life so that when it happens again, you can go, oh, this is another one of these moments. Like I have

a choice right now. What choice am I going to make? Am I going to make the courageous choice or am I going to make the fear-based choice? Right, right. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, I've got lots of friends. I feel, you know, family is very loved by my family. Obviously, they've got a decent-sized audience and they appreciate the content I give them. So I feel like I'm accepted now. But I still have this drive to, drive to continue getting better, reaching a

larger audience. And now it's just inspiring people to be the best version of themselves, I guess. Right. And I think that that's the key. And that's definitely the underlying theme of this podcast. I mean, it's a fitness and health, nutrition-oriented show, of course. But for me, it's more about what's behind that or where does that lead you. And for me, it's all about getting in touch with who you are and unlocking that best, most authentic version of yourself. Being able to be acquainted with yourself enough to know, this is the thing that gives me a heartbeat. This is what I'm passionate about. I mean, if you're, look, a lot of people are walking around completely disconnected. They don't even know what they want. They don't, they don't know, you know,

if you said, what is your dream? And maybe it might be like getting a fancy car. That's not an answer to me. It's like, well, what is it, what is it that you're passionate about? What do you want to, what do you want your life to be about? And, you know, I didn't ask myself those questions until much later in life. And I wish I'd been in a place where I was doing it sooner. But I think we all have something inside of ourselves, some passion, some dream, some, you know, something that we want to express more fully. Right. And true health in a holistic sense, you know, really is bringing that to the surface. Yeah. To a point where it can become, you know, really is bringing that to the surface to a point where it can become,

you know, a defining aspect of your life. And that's what you're sharing. That's your legacy. That's who you are. And I think that, you know, you're a great example of somebody who is stepped into that. And you're, you know, you're a very actualized human being. And, you know, if somebody were to say to you, you know, on the heels of your injury in football and not being able to play anymore, that you'd be sitting here now doing what you're doing. I mean, you're an unlikely candidate for that, right? I would have never thought. Yeah. So how does that journey unfold? And, you know, in the introduction, I'll tell everybody what that is so we don't have to. Yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, you're talking about after my injury

like how did it all right well why don't we recap so so uh so you know you're a college football star your dream is to be in the nfl right that's what it was all about for you yep right so everything in college was just about getting ready to be an nfl football player no backup plan and uh yeah and i made the arena football league. Well, in high school though, was it, you're like,

now I'm going to play. So even when you're in high school, it's like, I'm going to be in the NFL. In high school, it was like, I wanted to be in the NBA first because I was like a 6'4 freshman and I thought I was going to keep growing.

And I was like starting on varsity as a sophomore and I was like, you know, doing really well. And this is in Ohio. This is in St. Louis. I went to a private boarding school

and it was, so I was like. I went to a private boarding school. And it was, so I was like, I want to be a professional athlete. It was like basketball. Then I realized as I started playing football and that I was really talented and I was the prototypical NFL, like wide receiver, height and weight. Going into college, I was like,

this is probably the better sport for me. I was a decathlete as well in college and I was an All-American in that sport. But I didn't want to wait four years until the Olympics to maybe have the chance against the best athletes in the world. You're like Brian Clay. Exactly.

Did you just have him on your podcast? I did, yeah. He's a mutant. That guy's amazing. So I took on football. I had some NFL tryouts. Didn't make them because i went to a smaller school and it's just kind of hard to make it in a small school especially if you're not like the speed prototype and i was running a 4.640 and i needed to run about a 4.4 for them to like give me a good look and i uh so i went and played arena football for a year year and a half really. Started like the end of the season on one team

and then my rookie season, I went and played a team in Alabama and I got injured in the second game. And it was, I played the rest of the season with a broken wrist because I was kind of in denial. I was like, I'm not going to sit on my rookie year. I'm just going to play it through. That's all I wanted to do. I didn't care about anything else. And I knew I needed to get some good reps and some like game film in to show it to the NFL teams to give myself a chance. I had surgery at the end of the year and was in a cast for six months, a full-arm cast. And then I was sleeping on my sister's couch for about a year while I was recovering because I didn't have any

money, I didn't have any savings, and I didn't have a place to go. Luckily, my sister brought me under her wing and I ate all of her macaroni and cheese leftover and whatever she had. I was struggling to try to figure out what am I going to do next? It was like a depressing state. Just to add a little color back

to the arena football days, that's a bizarre world. It's not the NFL. I mean, what is that culture like? Is everyone there just trying to get to the NFL? That's it. I mean, I was in Alabama in a small town called Huntsville, Alabama,

which is like another country in my mind. It was so southern and different than what I was used to in Ohio. I was one of three white guys on the team. I was friends with everyone, but it was just like the cultural differences and just the things that these guys were doing on the bus ride. We'd have 15-hour bus rides to

Florida or whatever. The glamorous life of a professional athlete. Three high and bunks in these buses and 350-pound dudes above me, two feet away. And it's just like, uh, it's a whole nother world.

You're in a football world. I mean, how many, and how many people show up to those games? You know, it depends on like the city and how good you guys are, but anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000. So it just depends on like how good the team is.

But, uh, and is it sort depends on like how good the team is. And is it sort of cutthroat in the sense of, you know, hey, you know, I'm trying, everybody's trying to get to the NFL,

so it's a zero-sum game. Like, you know, if you're doing well, then I'm not doing well. I mean, are there NFL scouts that are coming to these games?

I mean, how does that work? Yeah, they're picking up guys, you know, mid-season, end of the season, stuff like that.

It's usually in the off-season. It's like during the winter time because it's indoor. But they're, you know, having guys come to training season stuff like that it's usually in the off season it's like during the winter time because it's indoor but they're you know having guys coming to training camp and whatnot the thing is every week you never feel comfortable because they're always bringing in about five to eight new players at different positions just to have them like fresh legs to try them out to see if they're going to make the team so if you have a bad week they can cut you at any time so there's no job security there. No job security. And it's just like bushly.

Like the coaching, you know, it's hit or miss. The coaches, they don't care about you. It's not fun anymore. There's, you know, fun moments, but it's not like college where you're like having fun with your buddies. These are like almost your enemies because you're fighting against each other every day in practice. If you mess up too much, then you could be gone the next week right another person's in the locker so it's uh i don't know it's just and you're not getting paid much getting like a thousand bucks a month right and if you make scores awesome if you score a touchdown you get like a $50 bonus

and if you win you get a potentially just completely destroy your brain and your body everything man i mean i broke my wrist and i crumbled it for the rest of the season just And you could potentially just completely destroy your brain and your body. Everything, man. I mean, I broke my wrist and I crumbled it for the rest of the season just because I was like, I need a player or else I'm not going to get paid. So you just played that one season and then that was it. That was it, yeah. I mean, I had surgery and then I wasn't ready to come back in a year later. And so I had to take a whole other year off, basically two years off in order to come back in a year later. And so I had to take a whole nother year off, basically two years off in order to come back if I wanted to.

And then the arena football league actually went under for the year. It like folded because of the economy. So they just kind of shut down the league and then they came back a year later. So I'd missed two years of football and I was just like, I still wanted to come back, but I was like, I can't go to the arena league and then try to make it to the NFL.

I'm going to be back, but I was like, I can't go to the Arena League and then try to make it to the NFL. I'm going to be 27 then. They don't take 27-year-old rookies who aren't blazing fast in the first place. Right, except in the movies. Exactly. Unless you're Kurt Warner, it's like if you're a quarterback and this and that. I just needed to find something else. I didn't have a choice. I had to figure out what I was going to do next.

It's a weird thing when your whole life has been about being a great athlete or you're funneling towards becoming a professional athlete. You kind of put all your chips on the table for that. And that's all you think about. That's all you do all day is train. And then literally overnight, it's over with. And there's a sense of, I mean, I experienced this on a very low, low, I mean, you know, swimming, no one's making a career. I mean, Michael Phelps does now, but in like the eighties, like nobody, you know, and I mean, I was essentially a bench warmer at Stanford,

but I was surrounded by Olympic champions, you know, and NCAA record holders, American record holders and, you know, gold medalists and the like. And it was interesting to kind of observe at an arm's length, like how everyone kind of managed integration into regular life after that. Like some did very well and some struggled with it. And even me being a benchwarmer, like when my swimming career was over, like I was in free fall. Like I was like, I never thought about what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't- Just train all day. I didn't think that far ahead, even though I was at this great college and had all these resources and the like, I was so focused on being a, being a good swimmer that when that

was over, it was very disorienting for me. And I, and I struggled with it. So I can't imagine somebody who's, you know, performing, you know, in a, in a major sport where they're getting paid and all of that, and then that's over. I mean, that must be, it's got to be crushing for a lot of people. And you think, well, you have all these, the skills that you develop as an athlete, the ability to focus, the ability to kind of follow through and be task-oriented and show up on time, apply yourself. And all of that is seemingly very translatable into the real world. But, you know, I had trouble translating those skills and, you know, I think a lot of people do. So, you know, for you, you talk about, you know, having a depression for a while and what that was like. Yeah. I mean, I think all these skills are

very translatable and I wouldn't be where I am today without being an athlete and having that mindset. But a lot of guys can't translate it over because they're not passionate about anything else. They haven't figured out what they're passionate about. They love football or basketball or whatever, but then when it's done, they don't want to go to the desk. All those resources are applicable because they care about what they're doing.

But if they're going to go work at a used car lot, they have no passion to get on time and fall through and work together as a team. And it's not exciting. There's that energy and all of that is gone. Yeah, exactly. So for me, yeah, I spent a year and a half trying to figure out what I was going to do next.

And my family was super supportive. They never really made me feel bad about recovering and kind of losing this dream. They were so supportive. My aunt gave me a little part-time job at her pharmacy. My brother, I was doing some MySpace marketing for his music stuff. I was doing some little things here and there just to make $100 a week or whatever so I could pay my gas or something. I remember my sister, it was about almost a year I'd been living there and I hadn't paid her any rent.

I hadn't really, you know, for the first seven months I pretty much moped around and didn't clean, didn't help out because I was just like depressed and she put up with it. And then she started to be like, okay, you know, I get to start paying some rent or get to find a job soon or something like this because it was a year and i started looking for jobs i was like maybe i'll get into like sports marketing because i have a sports management like background and i'm interested in sports so i applied to like some of these jobs on in columbus ohio i remember getting a couple interviews the first one it seemed like a cool company but it was like a 35 40 000 paying job and for me at the time i was like i'd be rich you know because i was broke but i was like the day of be rich because I was broke. But I was like the day of the interview and I just couldn't go in.

I just like, I didn't even email them to cancel. I didn't do anything. I just couldn't go. I couldn't get myself to go because I knew if I went in there, I could get the job, I felt like. And I was like, I don't want it. I don't want to go somewhere every day and be building someone else's dream. I want to do what I love. Yeah, whereas most people, well, first first of all it's amazing you have that support because most people would yeah most dads or whatever hey man you know get a job you know welcome to the real world right

exactly and then secondarily you know to have the self-awareness to say this is not right for me i mean i would have just said hey man i gotta get a job you know let's take it this is this is the way of the world. I think when I had a taste of like the lifestyle that I wanted, which is like you wake up around 9 or 10, you go to practice for two hours, you lift in the gym for an hour, you get like, you know, go to the pool and do some rehab stuff. Sounds good.

Like who's going to, how am I going to get paid to do this? Exactly. And then at like one o'clock, you're done for the rest of the day to go play video games or like watch TV or hang out with your friends. I was like, and then you play in front of 15,000 people on the weekends.

It was like, why would I want to do something different than that feeling? I had the taste, even though it wasn't the NFL, it was like a taste of this cool lifestyle. And I knew that I could figure out a way to like experience that feeling whether or not i was doing the same things i could create that environment for myself that's what i wanted to do and so for the next couple years i was kind of on that journey of like how can i create my

lifestyle i don't need a lot of money but how can i like afford the things that are going to give me this kind of flexible lifestyle right and that's what. Kind of on a Tim Ferriss four-hour work week model. It's funny because I read, my brother gave me that book when I was injured. I got that book for Christmas when I still had my cast on. And it was like,

I never even thought of those possibilities of like building a business online and having like a passive income and all these things because I didn't know anything about business. And so reading that for me was really, at the time, mind-blowing because I was just like this

athlete-focused person and had no clue you could make money online. And I think not having any experience or working in a business before or anything like that, it allowed me to just be so open to the possibilities that anything is available to me if I just take action and just follow a proven plan and just go after it. So when I was doing this and I was kind of like growing an audience and started selling and making products, people would ask me, people who I knew who were doing this online for like five or 10 years, I started to surpass them. And I was like early on reaching out to them for advice and kind of following what they're doing. But then I started surpassing some of these mentors of mine who I felt like were kind of online marketing geniuses. And they started coming to me and being like,

how are you doing this? And I think a lot of it's just because I wasn't so messed up in the head of what I could or couldn't do. You didn't have to break a pre-existing paradigm for how to create a business. I was just like, anything is possible. This is the lifestyle I want, and I'm going to do it. And I want to find the people who can help me.

And really, it started when you started creating a LinkedIn group for sports, for sports entrepreneurs. And then having meetups in various cities and then kind of compiling this group of people that spread across the United States. And then showing up in person to meet them. But how does that turn into a business? How is that supporting you? Yeah, so I did like 20 local events in different cities around the country in, was it 2009, I believe. And so I was started doing them for free. And then I started to charge like five bucks at the door, then $10

and $20. And I started to get sponsors. I started to get commission from the food and bar sales, if it was a restaurant. And then I wrote a book about linkedin so i was selling books i was trying to figure out any way i could monetize these like little events where i was getting 300 to 500 people to show up it just got so exhausting like being there and building relationships like one by one and shaking everyone's hand like i was so tired for a few days afterwards i was just like man it's a lot of work and i'm only making like two or three thousand dollars you know doing these like cap it was nice cash but it was just like it's a lot of work, and I'm only making $2,000 or $3,000 doing these. It was nice cash, but it was just like, it's not worth it.

And it's all my time and energy to promote these things. There's got to be a better way to help people. Because I was trying to help people come together from online to offline to build their business. I was like, there's got to be a better way to serve these people and then also make a better living from it. And it was the moment I did my first webinar, which is basically an online seminar where we had like 600 people on, where I made, I talked about LinkedIn marketing. I talked about like how to grow your business using LinkedIn. And at the end, I offered like a $150 training that teaches people more about the advanced strategies. We made $6,300 in that hour. And it was at that moment I was like, oh my God, I'm sitting here in the comfort of my

living room. I was actually in my brother's place renting a room for him at that time. But I was like, I'm sitting at the comfort of a living room. I'm not speaking to everyone one by one and shaking their hands. In your underwear. I was in my underwear. Exactly. It was super hot.

It was in the summer. shaking their hands. In your underwear. I was in my underwear. Exactly. It was like super hot. It was in the summer. And I was just like,

I can make $6,300 and I don't have to travel to go like host an event. And I made double that I made like doing the whole the work for an event. And I was like, this is, you know, something new.

And I was just like, I'm going to do a webinar. I could do this every day for the rest of my life if I was going to make, you know, $6,000. So you weren't charging for the webinar.

It was just a free hour like, you online like video or audio it was like a conference audio it was audio but you could see like my screen so i'd put up a slideshow and like share some content and slides oh i got talk and um yeah and over the last few years i've probably done over 700 live webinars and a number of automated webinars since then. Just learning. So I was like, okay, I'm going to learn everything I can about webinars, maximize this thing so I can make the most amount of sales off these webinars and serve the most amount of people at the same time and become a better presenter, share better content, create products around this. share better content, create products around this. Each day it was just like setting up webinars,

building relationships with people to promote webinars, learning how to speak better, learning how to present, like everything to maximize what I was given or what I'd figured out, which was webinars. And behind it all really is this, I mean, what I get from you, which what I don't get from a lot of these other people is just a sense of, you know, enthusiasm and authenticity. Like you're really having fun doing this. You're enjoying helping people. And I think that's really the defining principle to long-term success and what you're

doing. I mean, you know, people can tell, like we talked about earlier, you know, whether it's pitchy or what have you, but you know, you just seem like a, you seem like a good dude. Right. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I think when you're, uh, when you're excited about, like for me, I was always excited about my lifestyle and the possibilities of building something awesome, like this community and these products and things like that and learning and just connecting with awesome people. And so that excitement, I was able to always have great energy around it. Like if you're not excited about what you're doing, you're going to have low energy. For me, that's why I was able to have this high energy all the time

because I was just like, this is so much fun and I'm learning so much and I'm helping so many people. Right, and it's such an interesting time because really every single person has this sort of distribution access to right self-create what they want their profession to be in certain ways if you have a message then you have a microphone and and you can build your own audience around that if you have something to share that's of value and you're of service to people and and uh you know it's cool to see you know look there's a lot of people that feel stuck.

You know, they feel stuck in their life. They're in a cubicle every day. They hate it and they can't see their way out. And so if you were to say to them, hey, you know, you can take control of your life. I mean, they don't, where do you even start with that? You know, I mean, it's tough and I have compassion for that. And I've been there. You know what I mean? it's, it's tough and I have compassion for that. And I've, I've been there, you know what I mean? I know what that, I know what that feels like. So, you know, what is something that you could offer to somebody who's in that position? Who's like, you know, I need,

I need to find a way to live my life and, and, you know, make a living, but find more enjoyment in what I'm doing and find another way. Right. I mean, part of me would, it's tough because if you have responsibilities and kids and bills and stuff, it's tough to just say, okay, I'm going to quit everything I'm doing and go do this full time because you might be screwed for a year or two. It is going to take some time to develop new skills. Everybody has free time, though.

People tell you they don't have free time. But if it's important enough to you, you can cut other stuff out of your life and, and make the time to start taking baby steps in a new direction. I mean, you could go to bed at 10 and get up at 6am and work for two hours before you have to go do work or whatever, get up for your,

you know, kids or something. So, uh, I definitely think that you can start anytime. These are going to figure out what it is that excites you. It's figure out what it is that really excites you, then you're never going to get bored of doing that.

If you've been excited about it for your whole life. So I don't know how you got into, I guess swimming you were excited about. Well, I was always, you know, yeah, I love swimming from the,

as a kid, you know, and part of my journey was kind of, you know, sort of reconnecting with that part of my life. But if you're so disconnected that you don't even know, and I know people like that. And I think that- They have no clue what their passion is. It's like, what do you say to somebody like that? But, and for me, I would say, well, first of all, for me, it always starts with food. Like,

what are you putting into your system every day? You know, let's clean that up first. That's true. Let's ungunk the engine a little bit because if you're eating like crap, like I know when I'm eating like crap, I'm not thinking clearly. I don't feel aspirational about anything. And I'm disconnected from the better version of myself. So I would say that.

And then it's an inside job, man. You know, no one can answer that question for you. Only you can answer that for you. And that takes work. Right. So for some people, that means going to therapy for other people that might mean, you know,

starting to exercise and feel yourself and your body again. And for others that might mean meditation or some combination of all of those things, but you have to kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's work,

you know, just like anything else, but the, the, the gift and the value of kind of, you know, having some sort of realization about what your life... We all have it inside of ourselves.

It's an unlocking process. And I would say the second, well, maybe if not the first important thing after what you're putting in your body is really what thoughts you're listening to and what you're accepting from other people telling you. Because if your spouse is always saying, no, you can't do this, you can't do your own thing, you've got to make sure that we're secure and have this and this,

then you're never going to be able to break free from that. Or if you're telling yourself that. Yeah, if you're telling yourself. I've had to work really hard to overcome negative thought patterns. And my wife catches me all the time. She's like, why are you saying those things? You're going to create that reality. If you're like, like I said, something like my car is starting to break down all the time, right?

And then my buddy dumped a green smoothie on my laptop, like, you know, the same day. And I was frustrated. It wasn't his fault. It was an honest mistake. And the guy is so awesome. He made, you know, he made sure he got me all set up again and totally whatever it's all fine um but it was one of those moments where i was like everything's breaking you know it all kept breaking she's like it's gonna keep breaking if that's what you're

saying because that's what you're putting out into the universe you know and if instead you said um wow isn't it awesome that greg is being so cool and he's gonna make sure that you get another laptop right away so you don't even miss a day of work? What a great friend. That's a different way of looking at that scenario. And she's right. And it's hard.

I have a whole lifetime of negative thought patterns that I'm constantly working on. And it's hard work. Because my default is the other shoe is going to drop and it's all going to fall apart. And you've got to overcome that stuff. default is like the other shoe is going to drop and it's all going to fall apart. And, you know, you got to like overcome that stuff.

I don't know when, like my default is always like towards gratitude. That's the key. That's the key to everything. I think gratitude and service, man. I think it all started to change like in high school because I was really like angry and upset. Like I was a kid growing up and like not as accepted like i talked about but then like

in high school like i just felt like so accepted just with everything i was doing i was friends with everyone i didn't have like one sports click i was like friends with everyone my junior and senior year and i started to like just really be grateful for my experience my opportunities like my first 18 years and like how far i'd come and I don't know why but I just started you know the people I was surrounding myself were so positive that I just started being more and more positive and I think it's all about the people you surround yourself with that well and then you know water rises to its own level so when you're putting that out to the world then those are the kind of people that you're going to bring into your orbit you know

and I think I read something that you wrote, maybe it was in the Forbes piece where you said you were depressed when the football career was over and you're on the couch and you're depressed and not seeing a way out, that one of the choices was I can be depressed, I can feel bad for myself, I never made it to the NFL, I played one season of Arena and I broke my wrist, this is terrible, but instead you can flick the switch and say, you know what, how awesome of arena and I broke my wrist like this is this is terrible but instead

you can flick the switch and say you know what how awesome was it that I always wanted to be a professional athlete and I got that opportunity and I made that happen like that's that's fucking awesome yeah there was definitely doubts in my head because you know there was better athletes than me at my school who could have played you know arena or the NFL I thought and but they never went for it they were like too scared or they just didn't want to or something, but I think it was really because of fear of not making it. I was like, I'm going to make it no matter what, at least be a pro athlete, even though it wasn't the NFL. After I got injured, I was still a little fearful. I was like, oh, my friends aren't going to

accept me because they're going to say I didn't make it or whatever, this and that. I really started to, after a few months, I was depressed for a few months and I wouldn't say like serious depression, but I was just like moping around and didn't know what to do with my life. I was just like, I've got to find people who can support me and help me figure out what I'm going to do next. I reached out to a few mentors who gave me great advice. I was like, okay, here's an opportunity. I've got all this free time on my hands. I can go back and finish school now. I've always wanted to learn how to overcome my fear of becoming a public speaker,

so I went to Toastmasters every single week and learned about public speaking. I met with a famous inventor who became a great mentor and friend of mine now who taught me all about product development, inventing, licensing, like manufacturing, everything there is to know about how to get a product to market in retail stores. And so I was just learning about like marketing and everything else as well. Like I'm working with him like every day for a year or two. And you know,

I was just learning all these new skills and I wouldn't have, if I was still playing football, I would have just been stuck in football mode all day long. Nothing else matters. Heroes developing relationship building skills, public speaking skills, business skills and everything else. It was

the biggest blessing to learn these skills and have these opportunities and I wouldn't have that if I was in the NFL. A lot of guys get stuck in the NFL and then when they're done, they go broke two years after their retirement. Yeah, that's a huge problem. Or they're like having serious mental issues or people, you know, people recently are committing suicide a couple years after they retire.

And it's just like, they don't know what to do next. Even though they were a superstar, that's like, that's their identity and they're 30 something years old and now what do they do? Right. Yeah, it's a big challenge. It's what we were talking were talking about earlier about you know when your whole life is about that and you're yeah you're you've invested so much in a particular identity you're attached to that identity and when that identity is no longer like overnight literally you know what do you do like it's it's it's scary and and disorienting and it goes into you know how we attach attachment to things, whether it's your car or your job or your house or anything.

It doesn't matter what it is, but we all want to create an identity around something. And we all kind of mentally hold on to things and associate them with who we are. lot of the kind of you know mental and spiritual work and where meditation has helped me is in is in you know detaching you know uncoupling those attachments saying you know yeah i have these are these are things in my life but this isn't who i am you know i'm not defined by any one of these things you know i'm i'm more than that and i'm different from that and i'm i'm all of these things and none of these things and i think you can always reinvent yourself if you choose to you know but if you're if you're so attached to a certain identity, you're not going to, or you're going to have to struggle with that more, I think. Exactly. But then, you know, and going back to gratitude and

service, I mean, for me, just in my experience, I mean, those are kind of like two of the defining principles of recovery. And it's a practice. Like, you have to practice gratitude and you have to practice service and when i'm feeling down or i'm feeling like my life isn't working the way i want it to it's like i'm i'm all up in my head you know and most of that is not real anyway it's just these thoughts and saying these thoughts are not real i can choose to believe them or not the best way for me to shift the way that i'm thinking is to pick up the phone and help somebody else who's kind of having a harder time than me. Right. You know, and when I do that,

then suddenly my problems go away. I feel better. You know, even if it's Machiavellian, even if it's like, you know what, I feel lousy, like I want to feel better. I'm going to help someone solely for the selfish purpose of feeling better. You got to fake it till you make it better. Yeah. Yeah. And then being, and then just like practicing gratitude. For me, it's hard for me sometimes. I'm not always in gratitude, but when I am,

like my life's better and those problems that I think I have sort of miraculously solved themselves. Right, right. And then, you know,

and sort of the riffraff in my life goes away and a higher quality, higher vibrating, you know, people come into my life and my life is enriched and hopefully I'm enriching theirs. Right.

Yeah. So service, gratitude, people. That's it. Inside job. That's it. Right. I mean, you're a really positive guy. I try to be.

You know? I try to be. I mean, just out of the womb like that or like. No, again, I mean, I wasn't positive when I was a kid and I used to fight so much, like, especially in sports. when I was a kid and I used to fight so much like especially in sports I would just get take things so personally if someone like said something wrong to me or did

something I felt was intentional I would just like react and take it so much offense and it was I remember freshman year I was so mad that I did not make the senior basketball my freshman year because I was better than a lot

of these guys who are playing and I made JV and I was like the starter and you know scored a ton of points and the coach really helped me stop being so angry like I was so mad but I didn't make it the varsity in my freshman year and I was was so mad, like just in practice and games. And he would guard me actually in practice. And he would like talk to me in my ear, like get in my head and also just like physically get in my, in my head. And he was like, and I couldn't react to him.

So it was like, I had to learn how to not react and just be like, learn how to play when people are going to just be dirty with me constantly and just like learn how to overcome it and accept it. And once I started be like, learn how to play when people are going to just be dirty with me constantly. And just learn how to overcome it and accept it. And once I started, that was the best lesson for me of overcoming a lot of anger issues. And just not being grateful and thinking everyone's out to get me. Was that basketball season with him just really teaching me how to become a man. And not be this little boy who's just upset all the time.

Right. Yeah. The importance of mentors again. Man, so powerful. You know? And mentors you just really appreciate and look up to and like respect. So who are your mentors now? Well, I've got a few that I work with, that I've been working with for the last few years.

And I really consider them just more good friends that I just lean on every now and then now. But a guy named Stuart Jenkins, who is the vice president of innovation at Decker's, which is a big shoe brand actually in Santa Barbara, a billion dollar brand up there. He's always been a very big supporter of mine and helped me with just making sure I follow my heart and making good decisions,

very ethical, more decisions in every part of my life. And he's also very smart in just business in general. So I've leaned on him for that. Another mentor of mine early on, this guy named Frank Agin, who I co-wrote my LinkedIn book with, who was a really smart public speaker, really talented, amazing relationship buildingbuilding expert and networker, and just taught me all about how to build quality relationships with people. And then Chris Hawker, who was this famous inventor, who was one of the most brilliant minds I've ever met, just coming up with an idea and then actually making it real

and then also making a business out of it. So there's a lot of inventors who are like, I have this idea and I can making it real and then also making a business out of it. So there's a lot of inventors who are like, I have this idea and I can create it, but then they don't know how to market it or brand it or build the relationships with the right companies to license it. He can do all that. So it's pretty impressive.

And they're all still great friends of mine and great mentors. I would say that I just have a lot of quality-like friendships with people who I respect now in very different aspects of life. It seems like your approach to everything that you do, I guess lifestyle, entrepreneur, if somebody said, what do you do?

That's just what I've been saying more in the last six months because I don't know what to say to people. It depends. If it's another author or writer that I know, I'm like, yeah, I don't know what to say to people. It depends. I don't know either. If it's another author or writer, then I know. And I'm like, yeah, I'm a writer as well, or I'm an author or whatever. If it's an online marketing person, I'll just say I'm online marketing. But for people in general, I'm just saying lifestyle entrepreneur.

And then they ask, what's that? And I'm like, oh, you don't have a job. Right, exactly. Well, I say entrepreneur. I used to say entrepreneur. And then people would be like, you don't have a job. And then I'd be like yeah it's fine if you want to believe that

you should just hand them the magazine that you're on the cover of exactly right what is that what's the magazine it's called Aspire Magazine it's like a magazine

for entrepreneurs I just saw your Instagram with that that's pretty cool thanks is that out on newsstands now it's just on iTunes so it's just an online magazine

yeah but I'm telling people lifestyle entrepreneur now because it's easy for me to say when they they ask, what's that? Does that mean you just don't have a job? And I say, no, I build my lifestyle around my business as opposed to my lifestyle around my business. And I'm just focusing more on myself and building passive income so I can fund my life.

more on my myself and building passive income so I can fund my life so yeah and it's a very you know creative unique approach to business and life and it's cool to see you making it work and it begs the question of something that's really interesting to me which is this sort of connection between athleticism and creativity or artistry because growing up i always thought you're you know either you're an athlete you know the athletes and the artists they don't mix there are two different crowds of people you know what i mean you're a jock or you're the guy who's drawing in the corner or reading comic books and i was always you know i was a different kind of athlete because swimming wasn't a mainstream sport and you know i was always, you know, I was a different kind of athlete because swimming wasn't a mainstream sport. And, you know, I was always into kind of more artistic kind of stuff. Like I acted in the plays and I like to read books and I was a loner, awkward kid.

And I always tried to, how do I reconcile this? Like I have to choose one of these things or the other. Like you can't, I can't be both. And, you know, only in recent years am I realizing, no, you can be both. Only in recent years am I realizing, no, you can be both. You can leverage the best things of both of those things to live like a more creative existence. Maybe you're not a painter, so you're not an artist in that definition. But if you take a broader definition of what an artist is or a creative person is, how do you express what you do with your fitness or your athleticism into sort of your own personal kind of imprimatur on that that in many ways I think can be qualified as art.

I mean, I just read, I'm thinking about this a lot because of Seth Godin's new book, The Icarus Effect. Have you read that book yet? I haven't read it yet, no. I mean, essentially what he's saying is the American workforce is suffering

because everybody in the corporate world is kind of a drone. And we don't value or reward creative thinking in our workforce. Whereas the one kind of outlier who has a different take on maybe how something should be done within the sort of infrastructure of a big company,

that should be the person who should be listened to. And the company should not be afraid to fail and they should try new things and be more nimble and facile. And we kind of crushed the spirit of that, like get on board. And he's sort of saying, you know, we're all artists,

like whether you're working in a cubicle at an insurance company or, you know, you're Picasso, whatever, we all have an artistry inside of ourselves that we should be expressing more and that as a culture, as a society and in business and what have you, we should be rewarding and celebrating more than we do. Right.

I agree. And I think that you're somebody who's navigated or, you know, managing kind of both ends of that spectrum. Like you're an athlete and you're still an athlete. And I want to get into that in a minute. But you're very creative in your business endeavors and you're doing lots of different things. You can't say, oh, I do this one thing.

There's no term for what you do. And that in and of itself, I think, that is artistic in and of itself. That is creative. Your profession is a creative expression of your lifestyle and how you want to live your life right exactly and i think yeah i mean if you're going to try to make a living off of like all these different things you got to be creative and how you're going to do it and like you know not just a paycheck from one place you got to figure out how you're going to like right and you figured out you were the first person to kind of

figure out linkedin really i mean i mean i don't know if you were the first well you were you wrote a book about it so you know you no one else had written a book about how to like create a career off of leveraging relationships on LinkedIn so you know that was a sort of thinking outside the box thing right yeah yeah and again I wasn't tied down to any like beliefs of what I could or couldn't do and I think I can give that you know my dad would always push us to like try all these different things. Like, I was in the choir my whole life and played guitar, still play guitar today and, you know, was in the musical as well. And your brother, right?

Like, you were telling me about your brother? Yeah, he's the number one. Tell the audience about that because that's crazy. My brother's the number one jazz violinist in the world. And he was, you know, a top classical violinist when he was in high school in the country it was like one of the top how's that happen like since he was five my parents put him in violin lessons and were like so strict with him every day for two hours and he just had a gift and he picked it up very quickly but he trained really hard

and he was uh he was a machine and then he actually went to very quickly, but he trained really hard. And he was a machine. And then he actually went to prison in 19 because he sold drugs to an undercover cop. Oh, wow. Was sentenced for seven to 25 years prison for selling a couple sheets of LSD because they wanted to make an example out of him. He was 19 at Ohio State. And he only was there for four years. He got out on good behavior. He only was there for four years.

He got out on good behavior. But when he was there, I mean, this shows his character. When he was there, he took every opportunity to go to school there. He was boxing every day, learned chess, reading all the time. And he joined the prison band. And it was an all-black band. So they're playing mostly rap and hip-hop and gospel and soul and blues. So he went from learning classical violin to like playing these, all these different genres.

And then after he got out on good behavior, he just became a jazz violinist and kind of took it over by storm, transformed his life. And now is opening up for Elton John played for Les Paul for 10 years in New York city. And that isn't, that's an insane story. Yeah.

Oh my God. And he's playing Lincoln center and play center in a couple of weeks. Right. Yeah. Yeah. A whole for like five days. Yeah. That's an insane story. Oh my God. And he's playing Lincoln Center in New York in a couple weeks, right? For like five days, yeah. That's amazing. He's a younger brother? Older, 11 years older. And then you have two other siblings.

Two older sisters, yeah. So my dad always wanted us to be very well-rounded and pushed us in all these different areas. We all played sports. We all did music. We had to. And he always gave us the mindset of like anything is possible. And that's why I think it allowed me to be like, okay, I can do whatever I want because that's just what I was told by my dad, you know? Wow. That's cool. I mean, that's amazing support, you know? I mean, and to have that, you know, your older, I mean, I can't imagine what your parents going through when your brother was in jail. It was rough, man.

I mean, every week. How old were you? So you were in high school. Oh, you were, yeah, that's right. You were young, yeah. Eight years old. And for me, it was even more of an angry time because I couldn't have friends then because all my friends' parents knew that my brother was, and we're in a small town in Ohio. So having a relative go to prison is like, no one is in one is in prison that we know, you know, it's like we're in the suburbs.

So it was just like, I wasn't able to have friends. I wasn't, you know, when he got out, I couldn't have my friends come around. If he was there, it was like, you know. So as a kid, were you pissed at him? I wasn't pissed at him. I was just like upset that people didn't understand it. Cause I was like, this doesn't represent me, you know, whatever. I mean, I love my brother. I still love him.

It's not like it ever affected me. We went to go visit him every week in the visitor's room at the prison and it was the best time of the week for me to hang out with my brother. I wasn't mad at him ever. We were happy when he got out. He made a mistake. Scary though. He made a mistake.

Isn't there a movie out right now with The Rock where his his kid it's a similar situation his kid makes a bad decision but it's like uh you know he gets some insane you know 25 year sentence and so the rock goes on a journey to like he's got to provide names to the district attorney to get his kid out crazy it's crazy yeah wow so it is what it is but uh it's all builds character you know yeah interesting and now he's at lincoln center that's quite that's quite an arc it's amazing he plays all over the world and you know the top places in the world so wow and so just getting back to your kind of you have this lifestyle now as an as an entrepreneur which frees you up and you have you know time on your hands

to pursue other things that you're interested in. And you found yourself, I know you're an avid CrossFit guy, I don't want to talk about that, but also what I'm really interested in is hearing about handball. So you're on the US national handball team. Yeah, and handball, for people listening,

there's two different handballs. There's a handball where you hit a ball against a wall, like the New York style. Right. And then there's the one- Team handball. Team handball, which I play, which is two different handballs. There's a handball where you hit a ball against a wall, like the New York style. Team handball, which is I play, which is very popular in Europe, not popular at all here in the US. Sometimes you play it in middle school for gym class. It's an

Olympic sport. It's basically water polo on a basketball court, if you can visualize that. It's a team sport. How does that happen? How does this how does this come into your life so i'm depressed on the couch on my sister's place in 2008 when the olympics are happening the summer olympics i'd just gotten off my my cast was off me so i was like kind of rehabbing my wrist and i was like i want to go i was like thinking am i gonna go play football or

not like can i do this i want to do something but I don't I want to do something at a high level not just like play flag football or like pick up basketball for fun my dream really was always to make the Olympics I wanted to be a pro athlete but I was always like the most inspired every four years during the two week summer Olympics

and that was like it would like get me through the next four years it was just like there's nothing like it I mean maybe it's just the production value that nbc does it like just makes you want to cry like all the stories and just like the hard work just like oh my god this is inspiring and so i remember watching it like late at night it came on and it was the first time i'd ever seen team handball i'd never seen the sport before i was excited and mad at the same time excited that i found this sport that I felt like was perfect from who I was as an athlete.

You had to jump. It's like part of basketball, kind of football. Exactly. And I was like, I had a great arm strength. I could throw a football 60 yards and 85 mile an hour fastball in high school. So I was like, this is what I can do. And you got to jump, run, be tall. This is my sport.

I was like, how did I never find this? Well, how would anyone find it in the US? Who even plays it? Like, where do you even go? No one. It's an amateur level in the US. So there are club teams in pretty much every major city. But I was in Columbus, Ohio.

There was not a team there. So I tried to do research to find information about it. There was nothing in Ohio. It was like I had to be in New York City or LA or something. And even then, it was so hard to find information about it. Like in the USA National Team site, there was like no information. I called people. I emailed people.

No one would get back to me until eventually, a few years later, I moved to New York to learn handball. My whole goal was to like- That was why you moved to New York? For literally, yeah. So for like three years, basically, I was just like, always come back. In my mind, it would always come back to handball. I'm like, I don't want to learn handball.

I want to learn this. Like a month would go by, but I'd just be like, I'm missing something in my life, which is like this competitive drive. And I'd think handball. Because it's like, okay, what can I do competitively at a high level here in the U.S.? And I was just like, I'm going to regret it if I don't go and learn this sport and see if I

at least have the potential to be on the U.S. national team because I heard that the team wasn't that good because we just don't have a pro league here. So it's just like... I mean, do they get their ass handed to them at the Olympics? They don't make the Olympics. What is the selection process for don't even make the,

they don't, they make, what is the selection process for? So every four years, right before the Olympics is the Pan American games, which is North and South America for all the different Olympic sports you compete. And for handball, they only take one country in North and South America.

Whoever wins the Pan American games, they go. So I think there's only 12 or 16 countries total. It's so stupid. The Olympics is about having, even in swimming, you have the guy from some obscure country who can barely swim.

Who's the best high school player. That's the thing that really frustrates me. I think it's something about the International Federation of Handball that chooses we're only going to have this many teams or whatever. So I don't know if that's going to change in the future, but for now it's, it's not. And so that means only one country. And right now Argentina and Brazil have professional leagues.

So they're playing all year round together. They're playing international competition. They've got the funding, they've got a you know, youth programs with people who are trained. So they know what they're doing. So the challenge is how are we going to beat one of these teams? We could get to the top there, but unless we're playing together every day

and playing against top competition internationally, it's going to be really tough. So they take one from North America and one from South America or just one from the whole continent? One from the whole continent. Oh, wow.

But they'll take two, I believe, in Rio in 2016 because the home country gets an automatic bid. So they'll take one more. So it gives us a better chance, but we've got to really practice and come together. And right now, it's like the Olympic Committee

for the USA handball. We don't get any funding. We don't have any structure. It's just so much in the air. And it's just kind of like we've got to make it on our own. But how does it – so tell me how it happened, though. So you just decided you were going to learn this sport. And how did you seek out, you know, how did it all come to be that you actually did learn

and ended up on the national team? So I moved to New York City and I, which is a whole nother podcast about how this happened, but to keep it short, I moved to New York City. The guys kind of laughed at me. I'm the only American who comes to this practice and it was the last practice of the year. They kind of laughed at me because I was like,

here, I'm learning. I just moved here from Ohio, learned to learn handball. And I want to make the U S national team. They all laughed because they're all like European. We're like, you don't know what you're talking about.

So they say, come back. They're all doing it for, for fun. They're like expats or whatever. Just living in New York. They all live in New York. They've moved there.

They're all, you know, they all used to play professionally. Some guys on the national team in different countries. So these are the top players from five, seven years ago. A little out of shape, but they're still really good. And they're like, come back in a few months if you want to learn and you can practice with us.

Where do you guys play in New York? It's like a high school gym. So it's not even a regulation court. It's like a smaller court, but it's like something. And so I come back in a few months, and I show up. Long story short, I practice twice a week. We only practice twice a week, but I practice twice a week with them for the whole year. And in less than a year, the U.S. national team emailed me and said,

you're selected to go compete with the USA team. So do they send you to tournaments around? How does that work? We've only had one tournament in the last six months, and that was in Argentina. They sent us there, but it's like, basically, we sleep in... There's no money.

It's like you're sleeping in an outdoor tent, basically, is how bad it is. I mean, it's no money. It's like... When's Pan Am Games? It's like four months, I think, before the Olympics. And where is it? I'm not sure where this one's going to be.

It might be in Canada. I mean, that's a cool event. You'll get to go and compete internationally. It's like a mini Olympics. It's huge, yeah. It's pretty cool. Is there a club that you can play with here in LA? There's a club here that I practice with every now and then, but again, it's like an hour and a half away, mean, I, you know, and is there a club that you can play with here in LA? There's a club here that I practice with every now and then,

but again, it's like an hour and a half away and it's only Sunday nights. And it's like, if I'm out of town, then you miss, you know, right. One practice a week. So that's why I picked up CrossFit.

There's just like train every day or something. Yeah. And just try to be in great shape. So at least I can run up and down the court and have the energy as opposed to like having the skills. So I'm learning more of the skills now and just trying to stay in great shape and be prepared whenever we're, we're going, but the national championships is coming up in May. So I'm practicing with the New York team, flying out there to practice with them and, and just getting

ready for the national championship, trying to win. It's cool. It seems like a natural kind of, you know, place for somebody, you know, who's been, who was a great kind of multi-sport athlete, you know, in the traditional sports to go, you know, it seems like ripe for, it's kind of like Lolo Jones doing the, doing the bobsled, you know, there's a, there's a definite crossover skillset there that, that, uh, that would seem to work. Right. Exactly. And it's cool to watch. I mean, I've, I've watched it during the Olympics, you know, and I thought, who does this? You know, I don't know how you do it, but I, I, the other thing it's cool to watch i mean i've watched it during the olympics you know and i thought who does this you know i don't know how you do it but i the other thing that's cool about it is that you know when you pick an obscure sport like that you have this enhanced ability

to distinguish yourself i mean the fact that you just kind of picked it up and then you're on the national team i mean obviously you're a great athlete and and and disciplined and all of that but to go you know to be able to do that so quickly. And, and I, and there's something that I relate to with that. Like I remember when I was, when I was swimming, I wasn't the most gifted swimmer as a kid, but I knew how to work really hard and I would pick the events that no one else would swim in. I picked the 200 fly. No one wanted to swim the 200 fly. So I was like, ah, if I do the 200 fly and I really focus on that, like I'm in a better position to like get, you know, get a metal or get a blue ribbon or whatever. That's what I've done.

That became my event. Then when I was doing triathlon, I was like, well, I can go to... If I go to Ironman, there'll be 2,500 people racing, but I can do this Ultraman thing. There's only 35 people doing it. It's really long and hard, and that's why no one wants to do it, but I have a better chance of

doing well by picking the thing that other people aren't doing. Exactly. And that's, that's why I was like, I can't play any of the major sports like baseball, basketball. I'm not, you know, I'm a good athlete,

but it's like, I'm not at that level. I will never be able to make that. But, uh, I was like, yeah, what obscure sport that no one plays.

Can I be the best at in the U S and that's handball seem to be a good fit. Yeah. It's cool, man. So handball and then, uh, and then CrossFit, man, be a good fit. Yeah, it's cool, man. So handball and then CrossFit, man, which I've had a couple of CrossFitters on the podcast. I've never done it myself.

I've no, like, I think it's, you know, people have this weird, like at least on Twitter or whatever, they think I'm anti-CrossFit or something, but I'm not at all. Like, I'm curious, you know, I think it's, I think strength and conditioning training is great. But what interests me is how it's become like this religion, you know, it's become a sport in and of itself. It's a B it's not a, it's not a pursuit to make you better for, to make you a better handball player. Or it's, it's like, no, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're there to

be a better CrossFitter. And there's an allegiance to that. And they've created this whole industry around it, which I think is fascinating. Right, exactly. I mean, what is this whole thing? Like I see tweets and stuff online, 13.2 today. And I'm like, I don't even know what that means. I just, you know.

Right. I assume that's sort of, there's a hierarchy or a scale of workouts that you work your way up. This is like, right now it's called the open workout. So for five weeks, they have the same workout that everyone does all around the world. And you try to like...

Every CrossFit gym is doing it. Every CrossFit gym is doing it. And you see where you rank in the world for that specific workout in this specific week. And this is leading up into the regionals, which you would get, if you're in a certain category in your region, you'll go to the regionals. And then regionals, they pick people to go to the nationals, like the CrossFit Games.

And that's why this is like the beginning of the CrossFit Games journey, which will happen this summer, which is where they coin the fittest man on earth or fittest woman on earth, whoever wins. Yeah, it's cool. So how long have you been doing it? We've been doing it almost two years now. That's a long time. Yeah, I'm not that good at it. There's some event, there's some workouts that I'm really good at,

but this is really built, it's built for like a 5'8", 175 pound, 180 pound guy. Like a guy who can just do pull-ups all day long. Pull-ups all day long, just like, you know like or do snatches or squat cleans. It's like, I've got too long to go for these lifts

with my knees and jumping so much. It's like, I've got more distance to cover. You think it's helped with your power and your speed? I mean, what is the impact of that program been on your overall athleticism or your handball playing? You know, it's helped in a lot of ways. I think maybe if I did a specific strength training program

and had a coach who was just helping me in lifting and stuff, I might be a little stronger. But to be flexible, to have endurance, to keep up my agility, my quickness when jumping, everything, this is the best thing for me with my lifestyle as well where I can just go show up

and I know for an hour I'm going to get a great workout i don't have to think so for my lifestyle to like keep me in shape for handball and everything else i'm doing it's been great i feel i still can you know dunk a basketball i can still jump pretty high like maybe i'd be a little bit stronger if i was working on specific lifts and have like a program you know I'm sure I could get my lifts up a little bit, but to be flexible and an athlete and not like be stuck in the gym all day and be, you know, doing all that, this is a, it's really great for me. And you get to go and have Bob Harper yell at you. Exactly. Yeah.

Bob's in our gym and he's awesome. He's, you know, he's always there. And Bob Harper, for those who don't know, the biggest loser, a trainer, uh, does CrossFit at, at Lewis's gym. You're always posting pictures and yeah yeah i try to we have a running competition to see who beats each other in the in the workout of the day so you how does he how does he measure out 50 50 he's actually a like a beast in the gym like right super endurance and he's strong he's almost like 50 he's like 48 i know and he's it's an interesting story too because he was always kind of an endurance guy, but he's really embraced this CrossFit thing.

Because he was a spinning coach. He's probably getting a K to be, I mean, I don't know what that is. But yeah, he's super fit. Right. He inspires a lot of people. Super fit. He was vegan for a while, for a year.

I know. I don't know what happened there, but maybe I'll get him on the podcast and sort that out with him. It's funny, I've told this story. I don't think I've told it on the podcast though, but Bob, I think when he was vegan, at some point along the way,

I don't know how it happened, but he started following me on Twitter like a long time ago, like maybe in 2009 or something like that. It's been a while. And the last time I checked, I think he still does. But I'd never met him. I don't know him.

Even though actually the biggest loser ranch where they film the TV show is just down the street from my house. And I always see them filming there. And on occasion, I'd see him at the Starbucks that's closest by there. I'm sure he's on his way to shoot or whatever. And so one day I saw him there and I was like, God, it's Bob Hart.

You know, I should just say hi. Like, you know, he follows me on Twitter. He only follows 280 people or something like that. Like he obviously, like he must know who I am, I guess. You know, so I was like, hey, Bob, I'm Rich. And he just looked at me with a blank stare. Like no idea who I was. And I just moped away, feeling sorry for myself.

Oh, well. But anyway. So what do you think it is about CrossFit, though, that makes people so passionate about it? Like, is it the community of it? Like the sort of mutual support of people doing it together? Like as this experience? That's definitely part of it because like whenever I'm out of town, I miss like just going to the gym gym and just seeing friendly faces of people that have gone through the same pain that I've gone through. So I think it's other people who have the similar mindset as you.

You're building a cool community of people who are going through this type of pain and experience. You're also seeing tremendous gains for yourself. So every week or two, you see a PR for something. You're excited to try it again and get better. So it gives you that addictive feel of hitting results and getting stronger and you can see it and feel it.

It's just a combination of all those things. And also it's like it's one of the hardest workouts where you just have to show up and for an hour you're in and out. So you're not at the gym just for a couple hours. You don't know what to do. It's like you've got coaches who are coaching you. Some of the gyms are better than others obviously so you've got to show up and for an hour you're in and out so you're not at the gym just like for a couple hours you don't know what to do it's like you've got coaches who are coaching you some of the gyms are better than others obviously so you got to be aware of that but um i don't know it's just a combination of everything it's just it's never the same workout it's like always interesting

and different yeah on your toes all that stuff i'd be terrible at it you never know i think you're endurance wise you'd crush yeah but i crush. I don't have that. I need to get a little bit more stable overall body fitness before I hit the gym. I haven't been in the gym in a while. Maybe I'll check it out. I'm open-minded about it. I don't have an opinion. I can't have an opinion on it. I've never done it. Some of the workouts

are like, okay, go run three miles and then do a mile row. You would crush some of those probably. We'll see. I don't know. One of like you would crush some of those probably. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. One of these days I'll get over there. Exactly. Well, cool.

Well, we've been going for a while, so I want to wrap this up pretty soon. But I wanted to be able to, I always want to leave the listener with some good kind of takeaways that they could implement into their life and just kind of looking at your experience and the decisions that you've made in your life to

kind of build what you've, you've built. I mean, what are some of the things that, that somebody who's out there listening, who's struggling, you know, maybe career wise or, you know, feeling adrift with their, with their life, you know, maybe fitness oriented, but not necessarily just, just in general, like not knowing where to turn next to get things back on track and engage life more passionately. What are some things you could share?

I think first is, even if you don't know what you want to do, is hanging out with positive people who you really admire. So I think we can all relate to people that we respect and we admire and if at least you want to be like them because you respect them then start spending time with those type of people a lot of people are intimidated by that I know that you're like you got over that you're just like I'm reaching out to these

people man I need this in my life and I'm gonna if they say no whatever but I'm gonna ask I had nothing to lose though so maybe that's why I had that to my advantage people have more to lose I was already at that's why I had that to my advantage. People have more to lose. I was already at the bottom and I was like, you can't make me feel worse.

I don't know. Maybe start baby steps. Maybe don't go for the biggest person that you admire, but someone who you like respect in your community or like in your family or whatever it may be and start spending more quality time with someone that you really respect their like judgments and their decisions, their actions and start decisions and their actions, and start just asking for advice from them first. But for me, it was always like I knew I wanted to be like certain people,

so I just started following what they were doing and kind of reverse engineering how they were doing it and applying it to how I wanted to do it. And listening to their messages, if it was someone I couldn't connect with, if it was like Tim Ferris or whatever, I'd just watch all of his videos and read all his articles and be like, okay, I understand it and I feel better about

what I'm working on and I just need to keep working on it. Those people I could talk to, then just trying to meet with people. I would try to meet, I would do breakfast with so many different people in Columbus, Ohio that I respected. Every week I was just trying to meet new people that I really respected and admired. Successful millionaires and lifestyle people

and athletes, just like anyone that I really respected, I would just hang out with them. And I think just building that community of an inner circle of your personal advisory board, I guess if you want to call it, is step one. Because I don't know what people say, or this is in a book somewhere,

that your net worth, you basically are who your five closest friends are, like your value, your finances, your everything you're doing. It's about like what they are. So if you're hanging out with negative people and negative thoughts, then you're probably going to be negative. Yeah. So that's the first thing. Um, and after that, you know, a lot of it is just taking a leap, I think, and just saying, I'm going to do it, and making the decision. I mean, the willingness to sacrifice something. Because you have to give up something to get something. And if you're sick and tired of the stuff you're doing,

then you just got to get to the point where you say, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, and just take action doing something. Yeah, I mean, I say this all the time, but pain is the ultimate motivator. take action doing something. Yeah, I mean, it's, I say this all the time, but pain is the ultimate motivator. And in my life, that's really been really the only thing that's gotten me to change my errant ways.

Like my eating was a health crisis and hitting a bottom with drugs and alcohol, precipitated sobriety. But it's like, it wasn't because everything was going great that I decided to change things. Things were lousy and you know, and I was suffering and I made that change. And you were depressed on the couch

and that motivated you to make a change. But I also, you know, you don't have to suffer in order to change your life. Everybody has the power within them at any given moment to implement change. You don't have to suffer or be in pain to do that. It's just that as human beings, we're kind of wired to not, you know, people say people don implement change. You don't have to suffer or be in pain to do that. It's just that as human beings, we're kind of wired to not, you know, people say people don't change. Well, I believe people do change.

People change when they're in pain, but you don't have to be in pain to change. So it's just harder, I guess. It's harder when you're not in pain. And yeah, the bigger the pain, the easier the change for sure. But again, if you get to the point where you're just like, I'm going to give yourself a deadline. If you're like, if I'm not happy within a year. That's huge.

It's like, then make a change after that. It's like, okay, I'm going to see how I feel in six months or a month or a year. It's like, nothing changes. And accountability. Use that circle of friends that you create to hold you accountable. And tell them what it is that you're working on.

And then you know that these people that you respect to hold you accountable and, you know, tell them what it is that you're working on. And, and, and then you know that these people that you respect are watching you. Yeah. And that's kind of a negative reinforcement. Like I don't want to fail because I don't want to look bad to these people that I respect, but that's, that motive, that is motivating.

And also have some other stakes for yourself. Like if that's not motivating enough, like put money on the table. Like if I do not achieve this by a certain time, then I'm going to donate $1,000 to the opposite political campaign or something that you... That's another Tim Ferris thing, I think. I heard him talking about that.

Doll Killers Association of America or whatever, you know, like supporting whatever, you know. Or to the meat eaters, you should support to the meat eaters of America, you know, the Bacon Association. The Bacon Association.

Oh, God. Don't get me in trouble here. No, I think that's wise advice. You want the positive reinforcement of your community, but you also want that kind of looming negative pressure, too, to keep you on track and honest. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

What else? Anything else? That's pretty much what I got, I think. Yeah. I think, you know, again, it goes back to nobody can tell you what you should or you shouldn't do, man.

It's got to come from inside. You've got to have the willingness. And you can't make somebody be willing. No. Willingness is self-driven. It is. And you've got to have it within you. And you can't manufacture itdriven. You've got to have it within you. You can't manufacture it either.

You've got to want it. Change isn't for people that need it. It's for people that want it. You have to gut check and figure out whether you really do want to change. If you do, what are you willing to sacrifice for it? A lot of people that say, I want to have a million dollars or whatever.

I want to get a raise or I want to do this. If you're not willing to do something to get it, then you're never going to get it. Right. So you've got to be willing to make some sacrifice somewhere. Absolutely. All right. Well, I know that you end your podcast with a particular question, and I don't have anything as cool as that. But I'm going to throw your question at you.

Oh, snap. Which is, what is your definition of greatness? Hey, man, I had to answer it for you. I never think about it. Your podcast is called School of Greatness. I know. I think my definition, it probably evolves all the time, but I think right now

my definition is going after exactly what you want in life with full engagement and positive intentions for it, whether or not you've achieved that does not matter. But I think going after it with full engagement and working on becoming the best version of yourself constantly. Of course, we're going to make mistakes and fail at that, but working on it constantly while serving and being a good Samaritan to others. I think that's my current definition of greatness. I like that.

That's pretty good. Yeah. Cool. All right, man. Thanks for being on the show. So, Lewis Howes, you're an inspiration. Thanks, man. Thanks for being here.

Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. People that want to hook up with Lewis and get down with his program and learn more about what he's up to, they should go to lewishouse.com, L-E-W-I-S-H-O-W-E-S.

Yep. And where else do you want people to find you? There, you can go to schoolofgreatness.com for the podcast and Twitter. It's all my name online, so at Lewis House. At Lewis House on Instagram and on Twitter. Facebook. Facebook and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. I'm a promotional whore, so. Yeah, you are. Self-branding. It's good though, man. It's good stuff. I'm digging your podcast. Everyone should definitely check out School of Greatness.

Thank you. It's blowing up. Thank you. It's blowing up iTunes. It's blowing up the world, baby. And that's it, man. Awesome. How do you feel? I feel great. You know what? I really like these mics, man. They're good, baby. And that's it, man. Awesome. How do you feel?

I feel great. You know what? I really like these mics, man. They're good, right? Listening to it on the headphone. I don't want you getting any more shit about your production value. I know. I hope it's better now.

You got it dialed in. Listening with the headset is great, though. Do you like it? Some people don't like it. I like it now. I like this format, just like looking across the table from you. Yeah, you got to move it off the desk. Yeah, move it over here.

No, it's good because when you're hosting yours, you want to know whether someone's too far away from the mic or whatever. Because you're like leaning forward sometimes. Yeah, these mics, people don't realize we're actually like chewing on them. You got to be right up on top of it. So nobody cares about this stuff. We're done. Thanks, brother.

Cool. I appreciate it. All right. Peace. Right on. Appreciate it. All right. Peace. Peace. Peace. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you