The School of Greatness - 739 My Biggest Wins and Losses of the Year

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

CREATE GOLD OUT OF DIRT. It’s the end of another year. You have to take time to reflect. Celebrate your wins. Embrace your losses. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on an amazing opportunity. You have the power to mold your ideas into reality every single moment of your life. Growing up, I never wanted to lose. But it wasn’t until I learned to reframe the loss as a lesson that I was able to really get to the next level. You alone are responsible for your life. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk with you about my wins and losses from the last year. I share how, this year, I chose to invest in myself. I partnered with people of the highest level to help my social media, my voice, my nutrition and more. The results were incredible. I also talk about struggling with saying “no” in the past year and how I failed to be upfront in my partnerships and relationships. Everything I’ve done has lead me here. And I couldn’t have done it without you. So learn how to celebrate your wins and reframe your losses on Episode 739. In This Episode You Will Learn: The healthiest way to look at your mistakes (2:00) My wins from 2018 (7:00) The things I’ve had to say “no” to in 2018 (21:00) Why it’s important to partner with people at the highest level (23:00) The proudest moment of my life (30:00) The lessons I learned this year (34:00) Follow me on instagram: @lewishowes

This is episode number 739 on my biggest wins and losses of 2018. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome, everyone. This is the final episode of 2018, and I hope you had a great year.

I hope you was filled with tons of lessons, tons of wins, lots of incredible memories because that's what we're here for. We're here to experience life, to live a life that's meaningful for us. And there was a quote I read from a little mini pocket book that my friend in queue, who's been on the show a couple of times, he it to me the other day. The book is called Heart of a Buddha. It's like a little quote book, and I thought it was really cool. And I opened it up this morning, and I read this quote that says, everything that happens to us is the result of what we ourselves have thought, said, or done. We alone are responsible for our lives. So everything that's happened to us this last year, we are responsible for. It's happening because of what we've thought, what we've said,

and what we've done, what we think in our mind, how we speak things into existence, and the actions we take that reflect our experience and our outcomes. the actions we take that reflect our experience and our outcomes. And I realized earlier in my life that I didn't celebrate enough of my wins. I was always the one who was never happy when I would achieve something big because I wasn't pleased with myself. I was unhappy with myself in general. And when I achieved something, I was expecting myself to feel something. And maybe I did for a few minutes and then it was gone and I was angry and mad. And so I just started chasing more and more things. I just said, I need to go something bigger and go for the next thing.

And just automatically focused on the next thing. Now I really focus on celebrating my wins. And I think it's important for us to write down our wins, to talk about them on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. When we really think about the hard work we put into, the energy we put into, how we thought something, we spoke it into existence, we made it happen through our actions, and we manifest these things, we get to celebrate them. That is incredible. We are like modern day alchemists that just create gold out of dirt. And that's what life is really all about.

We have a blank canvas and we get to mold our ideas into reality every single moment of our lives. No matter what we're going through, where we're from, what experiences we've had happen to us in the past, how set back we are than other people, we have an opportunity to shift the way we think

and act and do. And that's what this life's all about. You know, celebrate your wins. I just want to emphasize this enough. Make sure you celebrate your wins and reflect on your losses. For me, losing is something that I focused on a lot. I never wanted to lose, right?

I was so competitive growing up. I had to win at everything, and I was the worst loser. I don't even use the word losses anymore. Even though I put it in this title and I mentioned my biggest wins and losses of 2018, it is lessons. It's all lessons. Everything in your life is a lesson. If you learn to reframe the loss as a lesson, you tell yourself a different story because the stories we tell ourselves dictate our life. And it's our interpretation of everything that shapes us. You think about the stories that you tell yourself that things that you did or happened to you or

that didn't happen when you were a kid, you hold onto that story, that interpretation. So start telling yourself a different story. Start reshaping your story and your identity. And I was talking with NQ about this as we were hanging out for dinner. I said, I'm going through some actually challenges right now in my personal life. I'm going through some challenges. I made some mistakes. I'm owning up to those mistakes and shouldn't have done these things. And I said, I'm focusing on right now because I've done so much of this work and I've had so many different coaches and done a lot of different just exercises and training. And I've been through a lot of these experiences in life now that I said, anytime you go through a hardship in life or it seems like there's no way out or anytime you go through an experience that is painful, you've got to have hindsight now. So we always talk about hindsight

is 20-20. Looking back, I can see that mistake and how it unfolded and what I could have done differently and actually how it benefited me by making that mistake or by going through that pain. That experience has actually benefited my life in such a significant way that I wouldn't have had these other opportunities or this wouldn't have happened to me. I wouldn't have been able to do this without going through that challenge. So as much as I'm going through a challenging moment right now because of the mistakes that I made and because of the actions that I took or didn't take, I am telling myself, this is challenging. This is hard. This is painful. I'm experiencing it. I'm owning it. And I need to have hindsight now. In six months from now, I'm going to be able to look back. It's not going to

be as painful. I'm going to be able to reflect back and learn. I'm going to be able to look back. It's not going to be as painful. I'm going to be able to reflect back and learn. I'm going to be able to continue to learn. And I'm going to say, you know what? This needed to happen for this, this, and this, for me to learn, for me to grow, for me to change and evolve, for all these things to happen. And so whenever you're going through a challenging time, whether it be a breakup in your life, a business partnership breakup, an injury, you get fired, something happens. You get sick. You need to have hindsight now. Look out into the future, 6 to 12 months of your life from where you're at in that moment and have hindsight. Start reflecting back.

How can I be better? How can I change? Why am I in this situation? What are the actions I'm going to take differently to get out of this situation? And that's what you got to ask yourself. If something goes wrong, embrace that the universe has your back or God has your back or whoever has your back, there is someone out there that has your back and that you're exactly where you need to be right now.

Being where you need to be is much better than beating yourself up for your mistakes. Don't be a person that beats yourself up as nothing good comes for that. Nothing good comes for you, for your health, for your family, or for those around you. Instead, own your lessons, own your pain, recommit to your intention and actions moving forward,

and try not to make the same mistakes again. We're human beings living a human experience. I think Oprah said that one time. Be aware and continue to move forward in your life. That's the best you can do. Do your best. Now, I want to talk about my wins. Man, this was crazy because, you know, we forget sometimes all the things we do and all the things we created over a year's time. And although I'm celebrating them on a daily and weekly basis, you know, when you look back over a 12-month period, you can really see the full picture of the years of your life, everything you've learned, all your experiences now come into fruition for this year. And you get to reflect and see what you've created.

So I'm just going to list off some of these things to share the wins and then kind of go through a bunch of other wins that I want to talk about briefly. But the biggest win for me this year was launching the first talk show on Facebook Watch. Facebook has a platform where they have original content now. And I wanted to continue to elevate and grow myself and push myself on my comfort zone. Every year I do this. And it took about a year to put this together,

to sell the show to Facebook, to find a production company, to produce the show, to write the show, to shoot the show, to edit the show, to shoot the show, to edit the show, to launch the show, to promote the show. It took a lot of my time and energy. And millions of people watched it every week. And it impacted a lot of lives. It was called Inspiring Life with Lewis Howes. And it was their first talk show.

For me, that was a great victory. It was a great win. It was a great experience. It was everything. Yes, there were challenges that came with it. And yes, there were lessons and all these other things. But it was a great win to continue to manifest my vision and our vision as a brand, which is to impact and serve people and to help people overcome the challenges in their life.

And we got to do that with one of the biggest companies in the world and partner with them, which was a really cool experience. Another win, we had our best summit of greatness ever. Year three, huge venue, brand new venue that is at the Ohio Theater in Columbus, Ohio. Over 1,500 people came, incredibly mind-blowing speakers, performers. Lindsey Stirling performed. We had Wyclef jumping on balconies in the closing party going for three and a half, four hours, and just epic dance parties, experiences, connection, community. It was a game changer, and I had so much fun. Our team loves doing this. It's our way to give back to our community and create an experience that people have never had, and we do this at the Summit of Greatness.

Make sure to get your tickets for next year. Go to summitofgreatness.com. You can learn more about it. But it was such a powerful experience. We're looking to blow this up in a huge way next year. We're already planning for next year in September. It's going to be a game changer. Next thing, we had our documentary that complete.

Every year, I'm trying to do bigger, better, and scarier things. And we made a movie. We made a freaking movie. And I've never done that before. We screened it at the Summit of Greatness this year for our community. And it got a standing ovation. Half the room was in tears. It was a powerful experience. And so for me, that was a big win. And now we're taking meetings with Netflix and looking to sell it to them or find the right partner to distribute it to if it's not right for Netflix. So stay tuned for the launch publicly of our documentary, Chasing Greatness. Super excited about this and a huge win and a lot of fun because it's allowing me to be more creative and tap into a bigger media creation space,

which I'll talk about here in a second. Another win, The Greatness Mastermind. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Greatness Mastermind year two was a massive success. These are the leaders of the School of Greatness and entrepreneur community around the world. We had 40 members this year, people making multiple seven figures, eight figures, people launching best-selling books, huge podcasts, big followings,

big million-dollar course launches, all these different things. And gosh, we just did our final weekend retreat, and almost everyone went around and shared their three biggest wins, and almost everyone said that they had tripled their business. And these are already people that are making millions when they came in. So for me, it's just so cool to see the growth of everyone, the success of everyone, not only in business, but also in their personal lives, the freedom that they have because of their success in their business. And so for us to be able to continue to elevate this experience, the greatness mastermind is a blessing for me. It's a lot of fun. I love curating these individuals. I love bringing them together and creating experiences to help them see beyond what they even think is possible for themselves each year. And we're going into year three with this, with an incredible lineup. Got a couple spots left if anyone's interested at greatnessmastermind.com.

if anyone's interested at greatnessmastermind.com. Next thing, podcast growth. Boom. Man, we almost, I was hoping for this. This is what I wanted. We almost doubled in downloads from last year to this year. So last year, we had 22 million downloads for the year. This year, we just hit 40 million downloads on the year and over 90 million total downloads.

For me, we are going into, in a few weeks, it'll be our six-year anniversary. Gosh, is that right? Six years? I believe it's going to be six years in a few weeks. So I'm going to do a whole episode about our recap of six years of the School of Greatness podcast. But we are growing, guys, almost 100 million downloads total. And we also decided this year to go all in as a media business. And as a media business, we want to make sure we bring in the right sponsorships that are smart, that are smart,

that fit the brand and everything else. And these sponsorships on the podcast, we only need a couple sponsors. They help us use that money to reinvest in video team. We've got multiple video editors now that are editing content to help distribute more content with audio, with production, with everything. So we've just been going all in on creating the best podcast ever. And we had some of the massive big names this year. We had so many great people. We had Kobe Bryant, which was a huge, huge win for us. And we're always looking

to bring in the most talented individuals in the world and share their stories that they don't typically open up about. And that's been a big success and win for us. Branding and vision. Every year and all the time, I'm meeting with experts and people that know a lot more than me and that are just talented at what they do. And I met with my good friend, Rory Vaden,

who some of you probably heard on the podcast we had a while back that was just amazing. And we'll link that up in the show notes if you want to check out that full interview where I went down to Rory's spot in a few months back, maybe six months ago, five, six months ago, and just did a full day and a half brain dump of the branding, of the vision, getting clear on my yeses and nos. As my business and brand and opportunities continue to grow,

we're getting hundreds of opportunities every week. People are messaging me constantly, asking me to partner on things, asking me to hire me for things, that people wanted me to speak, launch new projects together, all these things. And I didn't know. I was just so excited all the time. I was like, yes, yes, yes. And too many yeses took me away from my core vision. So getting clearer on the vision and creating a list of yeses and nos, what I will say yes to and what I say no to. And these are non-negotiables. I will say yes to things that support my vision, that elevate me, that help my health, that serve more people, but no to the things that are distractions. Maybe they're a big revenue generator, but they don't make sense for my brand. And I have turned down millions of

dollars, guys, this year alone, millions of dollars that I could have made doing these other projects, doing these other partnerships. And it sucks to think, oh, I'm not making these other millions that I could be making, but I'm also thinking long-term over short-term. Life is a marathon of many sprints, but you don't want to burn out. And I am willing to not take a lot of money up front to make sure I'm being an integrity for my vision and my mission and for bigger upside later down the line. So that was a really powerful one. If you guys want to listen to that episode I did with Rory kind of recapping this, you can just go to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 739. Check that out. And from that,

three, nine. Check that out. And from that, everything has changed because we had a bigger team internally, right? And I was always trying to hire people and build a team and kind of build this culture and grow, grow, grow. As more projects and opportunities came, we needed more people. And from this kind of couple days of training with Rory, I realized that I wanted to have a lean core team members that are just rock stars. And they support with different agencies and experts that we hire. Now, we pay a premium for that expertise as opposed to hiring in-house, training, developing, all those things. But that's the price that I'm willing to invest in to create the longer term and faster growth. So we've got a full-time podcast agency that supports us with the School of Greatness podcast. We've got a full media buying agency, an ad buying agency that supports us with all of our ads.

We've got a PR firm that we use from time to time that is very expensive, but quality, and they add value. We've got a social media management and growth agency. I also brought on an agent, this rock star agent that I'm super excited about, and their whole team over at WME, and my entertainment lawyer. Todd Weinstein is my entertainment lawyer who's really got my back in the last year and a half with so many things. So having these experts who are on the top of their field and hiring them to be on the team has been a game changer.

As opposed to just trying to build and manage a team myself and scale internally, I am not. That takes me personally away from executing a big vision. And instead I'm hiring experts who can just be partners with me on building impact in the world. That's been a game changer. Inner Circle, we have transitioned a lot of our business

from a launch model to a recurring revenue model. And that has changed everything. It's given me freedom. It's given me time. It's given me energy. And the inner circle is a big component of our recurring revenue model. We've got almost 3,000 members, entrepreneurs from around the world who are growing tremendously in their online business. And we're able to teach them by curating the top experts in the world to teach them how to get more leads, more sales, build their following, do Facebook ads, write books.

We've had lots of people write books. We're just teaching all the things we know and allowing people to have that information at a fraction of the cost to be able to do these things on their own. And it's allowed me to take more strategic risks on media buying. When you have recurring revenue, when you know there's revenue coming in, you can say, okay, I know how much money has coming in. I know the cost of to acquire

a new customer. I know the lifetime value of a customer. So you can start investing more in your brand. You can start investing more in ads to grow and scale. And I was, again, bound by the one launch at a time, launch every week, launch every month, every quarter. And now this recurring model, I can create and add more value in other places in my business and life. So that's a big win. You can check that out at lewishouse.com slash inner circle. If you are an entrepreneur or you have a side hustle or you're an author or coach, or you're looking to grow a business, then go to lewishouse.com slash inner circle for that. Speaking business, I got very clear on

my yeses and nos. And I used to just be like, oh, these are cool events. Let me just go speak. And it feeds my ego. And I'm on stage with thousands of people and yada, yada. And now that I've been speaking for nine, 10 years now, it was a big piece for me early on to build credibility in the different industries that I was working in. And that was powerful. Now that I don't need that as much, I'm getting credibility. I'm getting press all the time. I have a lot of things that as much. I'm getting credibility. I'm getting press all the time. I have a lot of things that support me. I don't need to be on stages because it's a lot of time and energy.

It is a lot of time and energy to travel. And so I did a number of speeches this year and I was charging 50 grand a speech. And we got clear on that this year. When I was with Rory, I was just like, I won't speak unless it's 50 grand. Or it's less, it's like a really close friend of mine and it's something strategic and it's local and I want to do it because it'll be fun, but it's like Q&A and I don't have to stress. There's either pay me at the highest or I'll just come and do it because I'm a friend of someone. And now my price is going up to 75 grand next year and we've already booked a speech at that And it just continues to elevate as the brand grows and as the value continues to grow. So speaking business has been great. And that's just a fun thing that we get to do. And I get to continue to elevate my skills there.

Now, the next big win is a social media growth. Man, we have exploded this year. I mean, not as much as my friend Jay Shetty, who is just like on another planet, but we have exploded and we've done the biggest year ever in growth. We were at 400,000 followers on Facebook last year, and now we're just about to hit 2 million. We're at a million on Instagram, and I'm not even sure where we were last year, probably not even half a million. I don't know, but we've probably doubled on Instagram. And a lot of that is because of our viral video explosion in the last four months. I brought on an agency to help with growth and we talked about it. He was like, the quickest way to grow is through viral videos. That's the quickest way. And for years, I've been slowly growing. I've been growing very slowly, one post, creating tons of content over 8, 9, 10 years.

And it wasn't until I said, I'm going all in as a creator now, not as just a marketer, but a creator that is just going to add value and not trying to sell anything, just create amazing content that is designed to be viral. It's worked. Every week, we put out a video over the last three and a half, four months. and just create amazing content that is designed to be viral. It's worked. Every week we put out a video over the last three and a half, four months, and the minimum they do is a million views, but some have 10, 15, 20 million views,

and they all take off in some way or fashion. And so hiring the social media and growth agency has been a game changer for us. We brought in another video editor. Tiffany Tyler is our core video editor for the School of Greatness podcast and other projects we have. She brought in a core group of other editors that she manages. Then we brought in another video director and producer, Sarah Snow, who's helping me come up and craft and create these inspirational viral messages.

And that's been a lot of fun to work with her on some of that. It's a whole new challenge and learning thing for me, but it's been a lot of fun. Bringing on so many different things. We brought on an agency, a WME and their whole team. And I'm very excited about just partnering with people who are doing things at the highest level. As opposed to thinking of hiring something from the ground and building them up, it's starting from the top and working with people at the top. And that's what I'm focused on moving forward with that. Another big win, USA Handball. I hadn't played in a year and a half with the USA team. And I got

called up to go to Puerto Rico recently and got to play with them. And now I'm going to Israel and Germany here this week. It's coming up. I'm going to Germany with the USA team to play against some German pro teams and then play against the Israeli national team in Tel Aviv for a handful of days in early January. So if you're out there, send me a message on Instagram and come watch a game. I'll be with the USA team. It'll be a lot of fun. And I'm just excited to continue as one of the oldest guys on the team to continue to excel and succeed and thrive. And it gives me a focus to work on my health even more. So that's been a good thing. And every time I get to wear USA across my chest,

I feel like one of the luckiest guys in the world. So I'm very grateful for that. Another big win is I am constantly reinvesting in myself, in my skills, in my mastery of life. And I hired a vocal coach. So I speak a lot. I'm always on the mic. I'm speaking on the podcast. I'm speaking and doing workshops, mastermind, inner circle lessons, Facebook lives, all this stuff, speaking on stage. And sometimes I lose my voice. And I said, I need to master my voice. I need to learn the skills on how to breathe better, on how to project better, on how to do everything. So I hired one of the top singing coaches in the world who works with the biggest artists, any name you can think of she's worked with. And I've taken some lessons. And man,

am I learning a ton. And I'm loving it. It is terrifying. I'm literally sweating in these lessons because she's having me sing these scales and I am not that good. I'm like, my voice is cracking and I just feel insecure and nervous. And like, I'm not this amazing singer, at least yet. That's my goal is to become a better singer. And so that's been powerful is taking lessons, investing in myself and doing these things to push myself to get better and improve. I hired a personal trainer full-time and I work with different trainers to continue to push me. I hired a nutritionist that is not just like, here's some food plans. Like, here, go do this. We are dissecting every part of my cells.

We're doing all the testing. And he is telling me exactly what I need to do. And I'll tell you what, I jumped on the scale yesterday. And I was 219.6 pounds. and I was 219.6 pounds. I have been trying for 13 years since college to get under 220 pounds. Nothing has been able to work. Nothing. I try everything, guys. I diet. I fast. I intermittent fast. I work out twice a day. I do all these things. I sleep 10 hours a day. Whatever it is, I've tried it all. And for whatever reason, I always kind of hover around like 225 at my best. Like when I was in shape, I'd be like 225. But for years, at one point, I was 255. 255. This was like six, seven years ago. And I usually hover around 230, 235.

And this nutritionist has been getting me on a, I mean, this guy's a wizard. He has told me things. And I've interviewed every top health nutritionist doctor in the world, right? I've interviewed the most credible people. And this guy has told me things that I haven't heard yet. And I'm implementing them. I'm implementing them. And this guy has told me things that I haven't heard yet. And I'm implementing them. I'm implementing them and I'm seeing the results. And it's pretty crazy. So we're working on that. And I'm constantly reinvesting in my growth. I take my growth

seriously. I take my mindset and my growth mentality seriously. And that's why I continue to empower and plead with you to invest in your growth. Whatever is lacking right now, whatever you're not happy with, you need to invest in it. Maybe you don't have the money right now or certain things, but you've got to invest your time in it. You've got to invest your time researching and diving in. You've got to invest in yourself. If you want to grow, you need to invest in you. And that's something I do all the time. And I'm doubling down on that. I'm paying for more people to support my nutrition and my training and my voice lessons. And I'm going to do on-camera lessons. Just continue to develop myself.

Even though I could get away with certain things without it, I know I can get better. And when I improve and invest in myself, I gain more confidence. And that's what you will do as well. So that's been some of the big wins. I'm just going to list off a couple of other things because I feel like I'm going to be rambling on all these things now. But I just want to continue to remind you that it's important to reflect

on all the big moments of your year. It is so important. Here's some other cool moments from this year. I did the Blue Angels. I went up in this Navy jet and I threw up twice. But it was like top gun. But it was a cool experience. And I have video of it.

And that was a lot of fun. I got on Ridiculousness with Rob Dyrdek. He invited me to come on his show, and I'm a huge fan of the show already, so that was fun to be on MTV's Ridiculousness. I was on Good Morning America again for the second time this year. I got the John Wayne Award for the year, which was pretty cool. His family's nonprofit annual awards. I contributed big donations to Pence's A Promise, continue to build schools for kids around the world. My book was published in several different languages, The Mask of Masculinity, which has been a big hit. I did Business on Bikes show with the CEO of Sam's Club. I interviewed Kobe Bryant,

which was a lot of fun for me. My friend Jesse Itzler had his 50th birthday party, and I got a front row concert with Run DMC and some of the legends of the rap world, which was just a fun, cool moment. I did his 29029, which is the equivalent of Mount Everest. We climbed this, me and Cesar, climbed this with Jesse Itzler. And what an experience.

It was just a crazy moment. If you guys haven't signed up for this for next year, the most challenging physical thing I've ever done. 29029, just type that in, put in Jesse Itzler into Google, and it'll pop up. But make sure you do this. It was 17 times up a mountain of a mile and a half

up, the equivalent of 22 miles or something crazy. But one of the most proud moments of my life was finishing this. I'm not kidding. I felt so proud of myself when I finished that I was able to complete this in 33 hours. Crazy. And I got inducted into my college hall of fame. So Principia College, I went alumni of. It's one of the smallest colleges in the country, but they inducted me into the sports hall of fame. And most of you know that I was an all-American in football, an all-American in decathlon, and broke a world record for the most receiving yards in a single game. And that was at Principia College when I did that. So man, yeah, that was just some fun, cool moments. Also speaking, I did 13 speaking gigs all around the world. That was a blast. I went to a prison this year a couple of times and led a workshop for inmates who had all read

The Mask of Masculinity. Yeah, I mean, I went on Brendan Burchard's stage, did lots of different things. All these different, MDRT, I mean, all these other cool places that I got to speak at. I went to 33 cities this year. I looked at all my travel schedule and my flights, 33 different cities. What is it five countries went to guatemala greece london toronto tulum and then puerto rico we went there as well for the islands with the usa handball team and a bunch of other cities all over the country from ohio to vegas to california to, to Maui, New York, Tennessee, Philadelphia. I went to Arkansas. I mean, I was like Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Seattle, Washington, Phoenix. I was in Connecticut, Vermont, St. Louis, Missouri, Salt Lake City, Boston, Charlotte, everything. I mean, just a great year overall.

A great year overall with so many things. And going into the lessons, going into the lessons. So for me, again, important to reflect on all these things. All the wins. It's important to just let it sink in and realize that from an idea, this was created. From a thought, from an imagination that wasn't a reality, reality was created by you.

Everything happens to us is the result of what ourselves have thought, said, or done. We alone are responsible for our lives. That's the quote from the heart of a Buddha. All from a thought. Now, lessons. I said losses in the title, but I really look at the losses as a lesson. When you reframe your loss, everything starts to make sense.

And one of the lessons I learned is that I can't try to do everything. Instead of trying to say yes to everything, focus on doing a few things at the best level. Before, I was just doing too much. I was doing too much because it was fun, and because I could do it, and because there were great opportunities, and because I didn't want to let people down, and because I didn't want to say no and hurt people. And instead, a lesson is focus on being great at a few core things that you're working on as opposed to trying to do too much. And that's a big lesson for me.

Another lesson, not enough delegation in systems. This kind of ties into it. There's only so much of me that goes around that I can personally do. There's only so much time in a day that I can do. I spent way too much time on my phone and on social media this year. That's a huge lesson. Way too much time and creating non-negotiables, schedules, and systems in place, and delegation

in place for me to not be on my phone and social media as much. Now, my life is about building relationships and about connecting people and about facilitating those experiences with people. So I am going to be in communication often with people, whether it's texting, emailing, on phone call, FaceTime, or face-to-face. That's the type of person I am. That is the business that I'm in. It's connecting people to ideas, FaceTime, or face-to-face. That's the type of person I am. That is the business that I'm in. It's connecting people to ideas, to people, to solutions, to things to help them improve their life. So it's just getting better at it.

It's just getting better at it. And not just mindlessly being on social media, but really being better at it. And since I brought on on social media, but really being better at it. And since I brought on a social media team, I've done a great job of saving so much time on every platform except for one, which is Instagram, which I'm still controlling and responding to people and commenting and posting. And it's trying to figure out what's the better system where I'm still involved and there's still me in there, but I'm just not doing all of it. And so I'm trying to figure out what's the better system where I'm still involved and there's still me in there, but I'm just not doing all of it. And so I'm trying to figure out that system. And that's

my big lesson moving forward is making sure there's more delegation and systems so that I can have time to level up. I don't want to break down and I don't want you guys to break down. So I want to level up. Another lesson, I lost consistency with my meditation. I do it, but not as consistently as I know I need to. And I'm going back to India, to One World Academy. Big shout out to Krishnaji and Preeta Ji, who I had on the podcast a couple of years back. I went to One World Academy in India and this is about two years ago and it was a game changer for me.

And I became certified in meditation and all this stuff and I was practicing it consistently for a long time. And then I allowed myself to get out of it. And every time I do it, I'm like, man, I feel better and I feel peaceful and I feel calm. And staying in a beautiful state is key because when we are in a beautiful state, we create from a place of beauty as opposed to a place of stress and anxiety. And it's hard to create something beautiful from a place of stress and overwhelm. It's hard to get into flow if you are overwhelmed. And not allowing

my emotions to get too low at times. So that's been a big lesson is like really making sure that I stay consistent with that and focusing on meditation. And it's one of the keys. Meditation for me, it's about 15, 20 minutes a day, but you can just meditate by being peaceful in nature, you know, by not being connected at all times and disconnecting so you can connect to your heart. And I think that's the key. Another lesson is not being clear on expectations with partnerships

or certain people up front. Sometimes in the past, I've just gotten excited to do something, but I forget to be clear about something, but I forget to be clear about my partnerships. I forget to be clear about everything that is going on. And that's the key, is being clear on partnerships. Another lesson is we doubled our ad spend in our business, and it worked.

It worked in a big way as we doubled our net profit. And not only did our business double overall, it doubled our net profit, which was something I was concerned about. And as someone who's always been doing things organically for many, many years in my online business, we decided over the last few years to start spending more money on ads and diving in deeper. And this year, we went more into that. We realized that organic growth is only

one way of growing. But if you want to really scale faster than you need to at some point, start spending money on media and buying traffic and putting yourself in front of people so they're aware of your product and service more. Sometimes people don't buy what you have just from the first time you offering it and saying, here's my book or here's my program or my coaching. Some people will buy right away and other people, it takes them months, years to buy or for their timing to be right. So in order to really grow and build a brand and a business, that was something we did. And I don't like to promote organically on my social media

channels and on my email list. I like to offer value, value, value, public facing and behind the scenes, do more marketing with ads. And that was a powerful thing to get more people into our products and services and get massive results. So we doubled our ad spend and it worked in a big way. And this was, I would say, is the biggest lesson. And I kind of talked about this in the wins already, but this is the biggest lesson was we lost a bunch of team members this year. And I talked about this briefly where there's a lot of ups and downs when you hire people or bring people onto your team because you've got to train people.

If they're not a certain level, you bring them on. You've got to onboard them. That takes many, many months of them to learn your business, to learn processes, to learn your communication style, to learn what you guys do, what you're a part of, what your mission is. Then they've got to learn the actual skill sets. They've got to learn the applications, the softwares, the systems that are in place already. And if they're not a good fit or if after six months to a year or two years, they learn everything and decide, well, I want to go now, then you've just built this. You put a lot of energy into people who mastered certain skills by you paying them to master their skills. And then it was time for them to go for whatever

reason. So a lot of people transition off of our team this year, and I don't look at it as a loss. I look at it as like, okay, this is a great learning experience. I realize I'm not trying to build the biggest team internally. I'm trying to build the right team internally and hire expertise through agencies who can support our current team. And we used to have a lot of people on our team calls. Every single Monday, we'd do a team call, and there was a lot of people on.

And now there's just a few people. And as we move on and as we get clearer and clearer on our vision and the impact we are making on the world, we figure out what works for us. And there's no right or wrong. There's no good or bad here. It's just what is working for the mission of your business, of your health, of your relationship, or your life. And that's the way I look at these things is, is this working for the mission that I'm on, for the mission that we're on? And it might work for a while. It might work for a few years, and then there might be a transition. And being okay with that and realizing that not everyone

is going to be around forever, that people have different dreams and passions, and allowing that to move forward. But we want to continue to build the best brand we can around the school of greatness, around impacting people in a positive way. And we make mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes. I've never claimed to be perfect in my life. And it's all learning, lessons, and growth. And that's what we're here to do. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. This was kind of a deep dive on the wins and the lessons. If you enjoyed it, please let me know what you enjoyed most about this. Maybe you heard something you didn't think you'd hear from me.

Maybe you're expecting something else you wish I would have shared. Feel free to let me know. You can send me an email, a message on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. I'm at lewishouse everywhere online. The link for this is lewishouse.com slash 739. And get ready for an incredible 2019.

It's going to be a big year if you choose for it to be one. And no matter what happens, you get to decide on the story you tell yourself around your experiences, on the wins, the losses, the ups, the downs, the mistakes you make, the challenges, the things you missed out on. They're all lessons. And if you look at life that way, you can stop being a victim to the things that you did or that other people did to you that didn't work out in your favor. And you can be responsibly in power to move forward in a positive, powerful way. And that's the best we can do is give our best, take ownership for the things that we've done well,

the things that we haven't done well, and try to do better the next time. I love you guys so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.