The School of Greatness - A Decade of Greatness: Lessons Learned & A HUGE Announcement EP 1276

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

I've been chasing my dream of building a media company for almost a decade. I wanted to share the lessons I've learned along the way at Greatness Media and I also have a special announcement that I'm incredibly excited to share with you.https://lewishowes.com/greatness22 - Join 200+ million on the journey to Greatness. The mission of Greatness.com is to help Conscious Achievers who desire to inspire, grow and heal in their business, wellness and relationships.In this episode, you will learn:What goes into building a media companyThe lessons I've learned from building Greatness MediaHow to lead with a mission for your companyWhere we're headed in the futureFor more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1276Visit our new website: https://lewishowes.com/greatness22Get your Summit of Greatness tickets: https://www.summitofgreatness.com

Our mission when we launched the show was to reach 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. As we build and innovate and evolve, it had to evolve beyond me. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, 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 back everyone to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about this episode. It's a special episode because I'm going to talk about the journey to building the School of Greatness

and Greatness Media. I want to share a few things that have happened over the last 10 years of the School of Greatness. It's been crazy to think that we are now in our 10th year getting into our 10-year anniversary coming up soon and all the evolutions and changes and things we've tried that have worked in incredible ways ways things that we've tried that haven't worked out I'm going to share the journey of building a media business what it's been like the evolution the vision from where it started where it's at now where it's headed and I just want to share some stories with you because we have so many new people that have subscribed over the last six months

The channel keeps exploding. It's one of the top, you know, podcasts in the world of all categories. We've got one of the biggest YouTube shows in the world of inspirational interview shows with most viewed channels monthly in the world on this topic. And we just keep growing in a big way. Our team has, I think four X in size in the last two years, and we have so many amazing things happening now and coming in the future. So I want to share some stories about how we got started, the things that worked, the things that didn't work, share some questions from you that were submitted through our site. And also, I want to share about

what we're launching. So we have a big announcement here as well that I'm going to reveal in a little bit about what we are launching and what's happening in the business right now and in the landscape of the School of Greatness and Greatness Media. And what I think about when I'm thinking about mission, when I started School of Greatness 10 years ago, I was at a crossroads in my life. I was really kind of torn. On one side of the coin, I was successful on the outside. I was building a business at the time, an online marketing company that was making a couple million dollars in sales a year. I was playing sports. I had achieved awards. I was speaking on stages. These things were happening.

But for whatever reason, on the other side, I felt this sense of a lack of peace inside. I felt this resentment, anger, frustration, and I didn't really know what it was. I couldn't figure it out. I was just more reactive as a human being 10 years ago. And I really hadn't learned how to express my feelings or how to consciously heal in a healthy way. And I was doing a lot of things out of frustration and resentment and proving people wrong. And it was working. It was helping me accomplish my goals. It was helping me achieve and grow. But it was like this forced pressure. It was like I was driven and it was like hard work. It was like pushing things forward to make them happen. And it was, I was

making them happen, but there was an expense. There was a price that was paying internally. And it left me feeling very frustrated in my intimate relationship at the time. It left me feeling very frustrated with my business partnership at the time. And when I would play sports, I would react and get triggered very easily and want to defend myself with pretty much every scenario in life. And I remember after months of this,

I was just thinking to myself, I just don't feel good in my life. I don't feel like I figured it out. I thought by making money by building this other online marketing business by you know getting seen and acknowledged on stages and speaking in front of thousands of people would make me feel like I'd figured it out but really I was just beginning and I don't think I had any answers at all and so I went on a journey of self-reflection.

I did a lot of different therapies. I did a lot of different emotional intelligence workshops that helped me kind of discover that, man, I've got to let go of certain things that are holding me back if I want to get to the next level. And I started to figure out what my next season's mission was.

And I said, I really want to make an impact. You know, my five years prior to this, I was broke. I was sleeping on my sister's couch and I was trying to figure out how to just provide for myself. How can I make enough money to pay my own way? How can I get an apartment, a car and pay for my own food and not rely on my sister or other people in my life to just kind of support me financially. So that was kind of step one. When I figured that out I realized but this isn't the the true place of fulfillment for me and this isn't my mission in life. This is not what my Creator called me to do to use my talents to be as helpful as possible

with people around me. And so I started to have this process. When I moved to LA, I was stuck in LA traffic. All these things were happening at once in my life. And I was just kind of like, what am I doing? What is the point of all this? How can I best overcome these challenges, these adversities? What can I do? And I remember sitting in LA traffic thinking to myself, I feel stuck right now.

The people around me in the cars were honking and kind of angry because we're all stuck on the highway. There was a traffic jam. And I was just like, man, there's a lot of other people in the world who are also stuck or feeling frustrated or feeling overwhelmed or feeling like they're not happy with where they're at in their life. And they feel stuck literally in traffic they're at in their life and they feel stuck literally in traffic but also in their life. And I said there's got to be a way that I can support myself overcoming this obstacle. And also is there something I could do that could also

help these people in these cars around me who are commuting every day that maybe aren't as fulfilled with what they want to be doing. Or maybe they're just having an off day and they need something to support them. For whatever reason, this was 2012, podcasting was just slightly being talked about. No one really knew what it was, but I was in the online marketing world and so I had a couple of friends who had a podcast and I literally called them when I was stuck in the car

and said, hey, I see you've got this podcast, you've had it out for a few months, how is it? Are you enjoying it, is it fun? And both of these guys said it's like their favorite part of their day when they do it. They love putting the content out there, they love hearing the responses from people that are listening,

and it's impacting the community that they had with their shows. And I was like, I think I could do this. You know, I didn't go to school for broadcast or communications or interviewing or media. I didn't do any of those things. I had no clue how to do it. I didn't have the tools or the microphone or the software or the editing skills. I didn't know which websites to use.

I didn't know how I was going to distribute it. I had no clue how I was going to do any of it. But I just said to myself, I think I could do this. And I was literally in the car talking to my friend, James Wedmore, and I said, you know, I've got this idea for this podcast. This is, again, a long traffic jam. So I'm in the car for like an hour

making these phone calls. And I remember I'm talking to my friend James, and I said, I think I'm in the car for like an hour making these phone calls. And I remember I'm talking to my friend James and I said, I think I want to do this podcast. And he was like, what do you want it to be? And I go, because at the time I'd been known for being kind of like an online marketing expert. And I was doing a lot of webinars and teaching online marketing and strategies like that. But I was like, I want to get beyond online marketing. I want to reinvent myself. I want to do something where I could really reach more people.

And if I stay in the online marketing space, it'll be limited to that space. So I want to go beyond it. And he said, you know, it's going to be a lot harder to grow because you're an expert at one thing, but to take it broader, it's just going to take you time to build up your awareness, your audience, your message to reach more people. I said, I understand that and I'm willing to be patient and I'm willing to try this for one year and go all in once a week for a year and see how it goes. And I don't even need

to make money. I said, I was like, I don't need to make money. I just want to do this once a week for a year and see what I can create with this. And he said, why don't you call it like the Lewis Howe Show or the Entrepreneur Show or something like that. And I was just like, it's got to be bigger than me. It's got to be bigger than my name. I feel like I'll be limited if it's just my name. And I also wasn't like a celebrity or a big personality at the time. So I was like, who's going to listen to the Lewis Howe Show

when no one knows who I am? So I said, it's got to be a symbol of something bigger than one person, you know one person like myself I was extremely flawed at that time Even more so than I am now, but and I'm still flawed, but I was like I've got too much You know messed up inside with me with me to like call it my name And it's also too much pressure. I didn't want like the pressure of having to have the answers, which I didn't have. I was like, this is going to be a show about other people. It's going to be a show about the experts of the world, the world

class athletes. Because what I did have was access to some great athletes from playing professional football, with training with them. And I knew that the mindset of the greatest athletes were so powerful on how they overcame challenges how they had clear goals and visions and accomplished these goals with baby steps every day and how they worked together with teams and how they received coaching from coaches and this process of going from a beginner to intermediate to advanced to greatness in sports was a beautiful journey. And I'd witnessed it by just being on great teams and seeing great coaches. That's where I learned about life lessons.

I didn't learn as much in school, but I learned a lot from sports and the sports arena of practice and games, of watching game film, of getting coaching, of being with athletes on the road, all these different things. And so I'm on the phone to my friend James and saying, I wish school taught me certain skills growing up that I could use now. I'm struggling. I feel stuck. I feel reactive. I don't feel fulfilled inside. And I'm not sure why not.

I'm not sure why I'm feeling this way. And no one taught me how to overcome my fears. No one taught me how to deal with intimacy and relationships that were having some challenges and struggles. No one taught me how to deal with overcoming heartache. No one taught me how to deal with the insecurities inside of my heart. No one taught me how to manage my finances and the mindset of money. No one taught me about truly how to maximize my nutrition and my sleep and my meditation practice.

No one taught me these things in school. And yet here were the things that I needed the most. Here were the skills, the tools that I needed the most for my life right then and really for the rest of my life. And so I said, I'm going to create the thing that I wish I had growing up. I'm going to create the thing that I wish my 10-year-old, 15-year-old, and even 30-year-old self at the time had when I was growing up. And I was like, I wish school was a different platform. I wish it was like the school of greatness.

And it just kind of came to me and he was like, that's your name. And I was like, yeah, school of greatness. That's a school that I would's your name. And I was like, yeah, School of Greatness. That's a school that I would love to attend. Traditional school was not for me. It was just challenging to sit there in long classrooms and read off of big textbooks that weren't as much storytelling, that weren't as much exercises and role playing, all these different things that I learned better with. And that's why I did well in sports because there was a lot of you know playing with other people and using your body and and doing different exercises

so the school of greatness was born with that moment of feeling stuck in a car and kind of feeling stuck in my life and I said to myself okay I'm gonna launch this thing I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm going to figure it out. I reached out to one person who was editing someone else's show, and I said, can you help me post this online? I still don't even know today how to set up a hosting account, how to distribute it on Apple and Spotify and all these other places. I can figure it out, but I have not done that. I just reached out to someone and I said, can you do this for me?

I paid him an hourly rate and he helped me edit it. He helped me post it. And then I would distribute it and market it. And that's how it started. My first episode was actually a webinar that I did. And I reached out to Robert Green. He had a book coming out at that time. And I said, hey, listen, I think I can sell a lot of books for you. Now, again, I learned

online marketing for years and I was doing online marketing at a high level. So I said, can I interview you? I'll do a webinar with you and I'll sell a bunch of your books for you. But can I use that interview as the first episode of my podcast? He said, sure. If you can help me sell books, let's do it. So I went to his house. I was on my laptop. We were literally sitting next to each other in his house here in Los Angeles. And I'm doing this live webinar to an audience from my laptop in his office. And I record the audio, even though we're going live to an audience, kind of also teaching and selling his book at the same time. And that was the first thing.

I remember when the first couple of months, I just had my iPhone and I sat in a gym and interviewed someone in a gym at a table. And there was people working out and dropping weights in the background, but I was just like, I did one on my computer audio. I did one on my iPhone. I didn't have the fancy equipment starting out. I didn't have all the microphones and all the other stuff that we have now, the cameras. It was just like, how can I record this and get a great conversation? How can I

get in front of these people first off, where they give me an hour of their time, ask them some questions, and make it feel like a conversation where others could kind of lean in and listen to? Because I was having these conversations with people, friends already, but I wasn't recording them. And I was like, man, if people could learn these things, it would be mind-blowing. And so that's how it started. I started also, I had an apartment, a little one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles at the time and I started recording

at my kitchen table just a little kind of table like I have here and I would just sit next to people and record in my kitchen. That was all pretty much the first year then I moved into Another apartment nearby that was like a three-bedroom apartment. It was actually a two-bedroom with like a den with an office, right? So I had my bedroom and then I built the podcast studio in the second bedroom. And then I would work with Matt and Sarah, who are still on our team, in the office of my apartment. We did that for like five years. So I didn't have some fancy studio still, but we did have an evolution of the show. Originally,

it was on a table with a couple of mics. Then we got some cameras. Eventually, after a couple of years, I was like, I think we should film this, right? And then we just upgraded the studio every couple of years until we have it now Where we're actually in an office building in Century City in Los Angeles and have kind of our own set and studio built out here With what you see now, but there's been an evolution getting to our tenth year, right? It's been an evolution This all didn't happen overnight it's been a consistent process of learning, of growing, of having some amazing wins,

of making mistakes and having failures and figuring it out along the way. We had a very, very small team at the beginning. Now we have a bigger team and we're still growing. So we had all this from the iPhone to the kitchen table to my apartment room to a studio. And then I remember after a few years thinking to myself, now others are starting to figure out podcasting. Others are getting into this space. There was a big show called Serial that came out that kind of hit the mainstream and got in the

mainstream press and celebrities were talking about. So now more people were starting podcasts maybe three years after I launched. And as others were getting into the game, I said, you know what? If we really want to take this to the next level, we need to maximize social media. And you can't really share audio files on social media. So I was like, we need to film everything. And so we hired our first videographer and editor,

Tiffany Tyler, who is amazing. And she was with us for five years and she recorded everything she filmed it she would edit it and we would post it up on YouTube and share clips on on different platforms on social media to help spread the message it was all about driving people back to the audio it's funny we would post on YouTube I think for five years five years we're posting on YouTube and I didn't monetize it at all. And I missed out. Here's this one mistake. We missed out on making a lot of

money just by pushing a button and saying, turning on AdSense on YouTube. But I learned a lot as well. And we did some good things as well. We just put out content when the audience was growing by just providing free value and not monetizing it and now i think we have over a thousand videos on youtube because we spent those five years investing in tiffany and investing in video uh production and investing in videotaping all of it as opposed to just doing audio which most people were only doing audio at the time. So this is part of the evolution of building the School of Greatness and a media business, is thinking what's the next step beyond one medium. First it was audio, then it was how do we build the social side of things, the social media channels as those platforms were growing. Then it was how do we add video,

as those platforms were growing. Then it was how do we add video, right? It was audio, social, then how do we add video component, and then how do we maximize each one? How do we build processes, create the right teams around them, systems, and really innovate each element along the way? So those were kind of the first three elements that we started with.

And we'll get back to YouTube in a minute, but putting all of our content out there for years laid the foundation for where we're at now. So it was a massive win to film early on and invest. Again, we weren't making money with video for five years, yet I was paying someone and their time and paying for editors to edit all the content, but none of that was making money for five years. Now that was maybe just me being ignorant and not turning on monetization or not thinking about it or really just thinking about having my focus on audio and other areas. We also had a lot of courses at the time and membership sites and things like that. And so we were putting a lot of attention on the products side of our business, the

service and product side of our business, as opposed to the media. And after a few years, things started to shift. We're like, well, how can we start to monetize the audio better? How can we start to monetize the video better and monetize the media side of the business? Because we originally weren't media only. We were more courses, coaching, and masterminds, and that was really the main business model. During this summer, you want to be able to free up as much time as possible to enjoy it and really soak it all in.

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at ziprecruiter.com slash greatness. ZipRecruiter uses its powerful technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job. And get this, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter uses its powerful technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job. And get this, four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter, they get a quality candidate within the first day. So soak up all that summer has to offer and let Zip Recruiter do the work. The URL is ziprecruiter.com slash greatness. That's where you can try it for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash g-r-E-A-T-N-E-S-S.

ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Then I remember about six, seven years ago, a lot of people in the online marketing space that I kind of grew up in years before then were doing events. But in the previous couple of years, a lot of people stopped doing events. They were like, events are so much work. There's so much money. They're so challenging. It's hard to sell tickets. It's hard to do this. So everyone was stopping events. And I remember thinking to myself, if we want to build a media business and build something bigger, we need to think about

community and bringing people together. We can't just bring people together on audio. That doesn't work. And on video and on social. It only works in a limited way. But what about bringing together communities of people that are like-minded, that think similar, that act the same way, that are conscious, that are trying to improve the quality of their life, that want to meet other people like each other to have deeper

relationships and connections and business partnerships. And so the Summit of Greatness was born. And that's been an annual event for the last two years. We had to do it virtually. But before then, we had done four years in a row annually. And now we're bringing it back, Summit of Greatness, in Columbus, Ohio, September 8th through 10th this year. So super excited. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, it is going to be a powerful experience.

We've already announced some of the speakers who are coming. And if you haven't gone to summit of greatness.com yet make sure to go there right now get your ticket check it out it's a life-changing experience and it is so much fun so we said when everyone is stopping events we want to go into them right no one was doing video because it was too hard and i said we're gonna go into it. No one was doing a podcast Because the industry hadn't really developed yet I said we're gonna do a podcast people stopped doing events and I said we're gonna dive into them now We didn't make any money in the first four years of our event. Why we haven't really monetized it because we're not selling Courses or things from stage. We're just creating an experience to bring people together

for a community. So it was more of a brand builder. It's more of a community builder. It's more of how can we add as much value to people as possible. And then I said, okay, what about the books? You know, I'd never done a big book yet. And this was something that was new for me. It was scary for me. And so we, but everyone kept asking for this information. Louis, the podcast is amazing. Louis, every week I'm getting these nuggets. Can you distill it all down to some main principles over the past few years?

And so the School of Greatness book was born there. Hit the New York Times bestsellers list number two for the month and continues to do extremely well which led to the mask of masculinity so we we launched these books again this was the first one school of greatness and then the second one the mask of masculinity and both of these books continue to do extremely well and what it does it's another element of media content that out there, but we had only digital before. So I wanted to create something physical that could get into the home and the hearts

of people that wanted to consume it in a different way. So there are a lot of people that love to listen to content. There are a lot of people that love to watch YouTube. Again, we've got over 2.1 million subscribers. We get over 10 million views a month on YouTube. So a lot of people like to YouTube, so a lot of people like to consume video. A lot of people like social, so they're on short clips over on social.

But we hadn't mastered the physical book yet in packaging and putting together a product that people can consume and learn in a different way. So that's where these books came from. And they've been a powerful asset to elevating the brand. Again, making the brand bigger than just one person is what I've been trying to do from the beginning. It's using personal brands to get a message out there and connect with people. But then how do I elevate the mission and the message and the brand beyond

one person? I never wanted this to be about me. I never wanted it to be, you know, Lewis Howe's show. It's not what it was about. It was about others. It was about the community. It was about the people on the other side of the table. It was about pulling out the information, pulling out the strategies, the skills that I could learn to help improve my life, and then hopefully share that knowledge with as many people as possible. That's what it's always been about. And so we went from the audio to the social to video slash YouTube to physical books, right? Physical books to try to get in the homes of people so they could have this content in a different format. To events, again, creating a intimate in-person experience where

you're building community, you're connecting community. And that's been powerful. And the whole time, I had lewishouse.com still as my personal site. Lewishouse.com is where we're hosting the School of Greatness, writing long-form articles, sharing the show notes, announcing the book launches, announcing the events, announcing our coaching and our products and all these different things. But lewishouse.com was still limited. And I remember thinking to myself five years ago, I remember thinking like, we've got to do something else besides lewishouse.com. It just doesn't feel right to have a my name with all this content on here.

I understand the value of having a personal domain website. I understand the importance of it, building credibility, connecting with a human, all these different things. But I was like, if we truly want to live our mission, which our mission when we launched the show was to reach 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. And I said, if we truly want to reach our mission, it can't be under lewishouse.com. It's just, it's not going to grow at 100 million lives weekly.

It's not. It needs to be something bigger. It needs to be a symbol of inspiration. It needs to be an idea that is bigger than one human being. And I remember thinking about, you know, Ariana Huffington and how she built Huffington Post and how it was like one of the

biggest websites in the world with editorial content and news and all these things to thinking about, you know, I was writing for entrepreneur.com. I was writing for forbes.com at the time. And I was like, man, they have hundreds of writers who are experts, who are providing content for these sites that are getting tens of millions of views to their site every month. And it's not onepersonsname.com. It's a name that's building something bigger than the name. And the podcast is the School of Greatness.

The book was the school of greatness we also created a movie called chasing greatness right we created this movie again when no one was doing documentaries and movies in my space and so I was like I want to do something that people aren't willing to do I want to do the hard things the challenging things where not a lot of people are doing them and try to innovate media in this space. So we went from, again, audio to video to YouTube to social to events to books to movies and did our first documentary and movie. I said, gosh, we've got to do something about the website.

Google is massive and we are not maximizing it by just having one person's name. And in this industry and in this space, there are a lot of personal brands who have their own website. Some incredible writers from Ryan Holiday to James Clear to Mark Manson to some incredible writers. And that's what they do. They're writers. They write and they put it under their personal site and they grow it. And they have massive personal brands and have a lot of success.

I'm not a writer myself. It's not like my thing that I do every day. You know, you see videos of Ryan Holiday and James Clear and Mark Manson and all these great writers. And they're like, I write every morning and I post something every day and that's just what they do. They write tons of books and tons of articles and so it's natural for them to have their personal name and they've been extremely successful with diving all in on that.

That wasn't my main skill and that's not what I'm going to do every day. As we build and innovate and evolve the media business, greatness media, the school of greatness, all these things, I knew it needed to be something greater. It had to evolve beyond me. And so about five years ago, I said, I got to acquire greatness.com. I got to figure out who has this site. I got to own this thing and I don't know what we're going to do with it exactly and how we're going to launch a bigger, you know, content rich site or how we're going to use this, but I got to have it. And so I tracked down the person that had it and it took about almost a year of communicating and work and working with this person until we finally acquired the domain.

And Greatness.com is something we've had for now four years, but we haven't done anything with it. It's kind of been like a landing page that we used when we launched Chasing Greatness. We used Greatness.com. We use it for a landing page for our coaching or different things like that, but we haven't really launched it yet until now. And so for the last year, we brought on an amazing writer on our team, Dakota, and me, Matt, and Dakota sat downstairs at the coffee shop in our office building almost a year ago and said, hey, we've got to do something with this. And I'm a big believer in timing and doing something when the timing is right. For years, we'd had it. We had acquired it, we had it, and did nothing

with it. But we also didn't have the resources, the team, or the time to develop something that we could be really proud of. And today we are launching Greatness.com and something that I am so excited about in a big way. And what we wanted to do is create the go-to site, the hub of inspiration for the internet. And having incredibly powerful long-form articles rich with content on some of the biggest topics on inspiration, mindset, money, health, relationships, and more. And making each article the go-to article for this space. You know, 1,500 to 2,000-word articles, long guides, really thought-out and well-written articles. And it's taken us almost a year to develop the design, to make sure that every article has a unique design

that feels different than a normal blog, than a normal website out there, that is rich, editorial, and driven by data and inspiration at the same time. So we wanted to make the site beautiful. We wanted to make each article its own piece of art, its own experience with design at the top and incredible writing throughout the entire article. And when so many people are doing short articles online, we said we want to go long. When so many people aren't thinking about design. They're just throwing up

Art from online or they're fine. They're finding images online and just kind of repo repurposing those images We said every image needs to be it's custom and unique design. So we wanted to go above and beyond We wanted to invest more in this we wanted to make each piece a piece of art that we were all proud of as a team, that we could all get behind and support and be inspired by. So today, greatness.com is launching. And I'd love for you to go over there. If you're listening, if you're watching, go there right now as we go through the rest of this episode. I'm going to be sharing more in this episode, answering questions and telling more of the story

of where we're going and what's happening. Go there right now to greatness.com. Opt in for our newsletter. And make sure to do that. We're going to be doing a little announcement for a giveaway as well for anyone that opts in to greatness.com. So go over there.

We'll send you an email with instructions after that to be a part of our giveaway. I'm very excited about what we're doing. So go over there. We'll send you an email with instructions after that to be a part of our giveaway. I'm very excited about what we're doing, but check it out. We've launched a bunch of articles today and I want you to see the experience for yourself. Again, go there, subscribe to the newsletter and get ready for something powerful that we're going to be building over the next few months and over the next few years and beyond. It's going to be a powerful place to go and get access to some of the best information and inspiration to help you improve the quality of your life.

So the reason we wanted to do this was because, again, I'm limited if things are just at lewishouse.com. We're limited. And so we wanted to take from the personal site to greatness dot com and build the hub of inspiration, a place where you can go to be proud and excited to share this content and consume it on a daily basis. So make sure again to check that out. And this is just the evolution of the story of building the school of greatness.com. From just one podcast episode to one listener to now where we are now,

over half a billion downloads on our podcast from the audio and YouTube side of things to multiple books to a movie to greatness.com. And we have two other massive things we're gonna be announcing here in the next three to four months and I want to make sure you're on the newsletter at greatness.com so you can stay updated for these announcements if you're curious about the evolution of building media businesses if you're curious about what we're doing behind the scenes if you want want to see how we're doing these things, then again, go to greatness.com right now,

subscribe to our newsletter so you can be up to date and hear more about what we're doing here in the future. I'm really excited about this. So again, just like the School of Greatness was the thing that I wish I had starting out, greatness.com is a site I wish was out there 10 years ago and also right now for myself. Creating this for me, for our team, and our community. So again, check it out. Very excited about that. And we have two big announcements over the next few months about what we're doing that I don't see anyone else in this industry doing. You know, when people shy away from things, when they're scared of things,

we say how do we lean into those things? How do we invest time, team, talent, energy, resources to figuring it out, to trying it? Maybe it fails miserably, but if you want to see something really cool or potentially a big failure, either way, again, sign up at greatness.com because these two things that we're launching are going to either change the industry in a massive way or they'll just be great lessons for us on how to move forward if they don't

work out as planned. But I am so excited about what we're going to be creating for the evolution of a media business. And again, I don't know anyone else doing these two things in this space. And I think there's nothing wrong with this. There's nothing wrong with if people do these things or build an editorial site like greatness.com or not.

Again, I'm all about building personal brand, building personal brand podcasts, YouTube channels, social media, courses, events. I mean, this is what we do. It's using a person and sharing their knowledge and packaging it in the correct way. And again, I've been doing that for a long time. And now in our 10th year, I want to go beyond the personal brand and I want to make it something that could be a tool to reach 100 million lives weekly. So we'll just keep strategizing and thinking about this. How do we serve more people?

How do we create for more people? One of the things has been translating our content into Spanish. Our Spanish channel has 250,000 subscribers, almost 4 million views a month right now, and it's just getting started. So how do we expand that in the Spanish department? How do we expand that in other languages so that we can reach more audiences? So it's thinking about building media in a unique and inspiring way, systematizing the process. So many people that I've learned from in this space that we're getting coached by and getting training up on all these things because each one of these things we do that's new, space that we're getting coached by and getting, you know, training up on, on all of these things, because each one of these things we do that's new, we've never done before.

So we lean on other experts to find this information out as well, and then try our best to create something magical. So these are the things that we've been building over the last 10 years. These have been the things that have worked, the things that haven't worked. And I wanted to go into some of the questions that you guys asked. We put out some posts on social media in our newsletter and some of the questions came back.

I'll say some of the names if I can read them correctly and then I'll try to answer them as best I can. This is from marifer.malambri on Instagram who asks, what's been the most powerful lesson you've learned from all your interviews on the School of Greatness? I think that's about as hard of a question to answer as the one of who's been your favorite guest. You know, when you do over 1 thousand or 1200 now episodes, so many inspiring

guests from around the world, there's been so much content that I've consumed over the last 10 years. But the most powerful lesson I've learned from all my interviews, I think goes back to the first thing that came to mind is acknowledgement. And at the end of every episode, if you guys have been listening consistently, you know that I acknowledge my guests. And one of the things that I've learned through therapy, through emotional intelligence trainings from my own personal life experiences is that one of the greatest things we want in life is to be seen and to be acknowledged. You know, if someone doesn't look at us in the eyes

and they're not paying attention, we can feel it. If they're distracted, if they're looking around to see who else is in the room, if they're on their phone while you're having a conversation with them, whatever it might be, people want to be acknowledged and they want to be seen. And so giving people presence, listening to them, asking them questions about them,

as opposed to talking about yourself. And acknowledgement is one of the most powerful tools that you can develop. The skill of listening to people and acknowledging them. I think that has allowed me to build deeper relationships, which has allowed me to gain trust from people to come on the show Which has allowed me to spread the message and build the audience So the power of listening and acknowledging the people in your life for me is a consistent lesson Over ten years from all these interviews that I've learned This is a question also from the same person.

What do you remember most from your very first interview back in 2013 with Robert Greene? The only thing I remember is being really nervous. You know, Robert Greene at the time, now we're friends. I've had him on a bunch of times and, you know, we support each other in other ways. But 10 years ago, I was a nobody. We support each other in other ways.

But 10 years ago, I was a nobody. And he was like the icon of philosophy writing and this unique style of writing with these books that he had. And he was like the guy. He was like, if I could get Robert Greene, it would be massive. And so I remember being nervous and also just like I have no clue what I'm doing. I've never done a podcast. I've never launched this thing. I have no idea what I'm doing. But I remember him showing me his process of how he researches for books. And he had kind of like this, it was like a note card process and all of his research. And I was just like, this guy is a machine. He was like a

genius. And I was so inspired. And it planted seeds in me. I didn't have a book at that time, so it planted seeds in me. I was like, huh, one day it would be cool to be able to do a book like this. And, you know, obviously I'm not going to be like Robert Greene, but to do my own style of book. And so he inspired me. And just being in his presence and having proximity to brilliant people, starting with Robert Green was a powerful lesson for me. And I was like, if I can get proximity to these types of people every week, man, what is possible? And if I can add value to them, I can build a relationship, a friendship, and it can go much beyond just an interview sitting down with someone.

This is from rolemodel underscore co on Instagram who asked, do you agree with the concept, do what you love? That was one question. There's another question that came through, but do what you love. Do I agree with that? I think we should be love. I think we should be love and create love in what we're doing. There are a lot of things that I didn't enjoy doing or I didn't love doing growing up. I hated going to school for however many, 15 years, 18 years, whatever that was, going to school.

I never really enjoyed it. I was a truck driver. I was a bouncer. I was a paper boy. I did so many odd jobs, transitioning from college to internships to after playing arena football. Again, I was a truck driver for three months. And I wasn't loving truck driving.

I was like, this is not what my skills are meant to be. how can I be inspired and be loved in this process while I'm doing this for six hours a day, driving a truck up and down Ohio, delivering car auto parts. And I made it fun. I was by myself. I couldn't use this. There was no cell phone really at the time. I couldn't really use.

And I made it fun. I remember I had a CD player in there, so I downloaded the greatest salsa songs of all time, kind of the greatest hits. I burned it on a CD, put it in there and I would listen to it and I would imagine myself salsa dancing for six hours a day

because I was trying to learn that skill which is something that I did love. And so I think finding ways to bring joy, to bring fun, to bring love into any environment is going to make it more fulfilling. It's going to make that experience a loving experience. So do you agree with the concept, do what you love? I think yes.

And also your season of life may not put you in the exact place you want to be right now where you're like, I'm doing everything that I love all the time. There are things that I'm not doing that I love right now. But most of it, what I'm doing, I really enjoy and I really love. But I'm also bringing joy, bringing passion, bringing love to things the best to my abilities do I have off moments and get frustrated and have you know down? Down moments as well. Absolutely, but it's trying to remind myself to bring in out and that's why I'm always asking people You know on my team or that come in or just people I meet I'm like, what are you most grateful for? What are you excited about in your life when people talk about what they're grateful for when you talk about what you're excited about?

Even if you're excited about, even if you're not doing it right now, what are you excited about this weekend? People start to light up and the energy shifts and changes to what they're doing right now. So trying to ask these questions, trying to remind myself what I'm grateful for constantly allows me to enjoy the process a lot more. Another question from this person is,

what was the lowest point for you during the past 10 years? Was there a time you thought you made a mistake launching the School of Greatness? I never thought I made a mistake launching the School of Greatness. I never thought I made a mistake during the launch of the School of Greatness. I'm trying to think. It's been 10 years is a long time to think about. I had so many different challenges throughout 10 years. Most of them were due to abandoning myself,

changing who I was to try to make others happy, which caused a lot of turmoil inside of me, specifically in intimate relationships. I was in three different relationships over ten years and I wish all these individuals a lot of happiness, joy, love and success. But I abandoned myself in all of them by changing who I was to try to make them happy. And I chose from a place that wasn't as conscious as it could have been. And so therefore there was conflict because I chose from a place that wasn't as conscious as it could have been. And so therefore there was conflict because I chose from a place that wasn't as conscious as I needed to be. And then I stayed

in relationships based on trying to make someone happy, based on trying to not have someone upset with me and therefore abandoning myself in the process. And that just took a lot of energy and time trying to please one person that would never be happy with no matter what I did for them. And then me trying to stay in these relationships for years. It was just my insecurity, my downfall, my challenge, my struggle of actually loving myself fully to say, you know what? This isn't going to work. I wish you the best. I hope you all the best. And I'm going to go choose something else right now. I was too afraid to hurt people because that was my wound. I didn't want people to be mad at me. I didn't want to upset people. And so I would constantly shift

and change and do whatever I could to try to make them happy. And they were just never happy with who I was. And so I would lose myself in the process over and over and over again to try to please one person. Yet I was never taking care of the inner child inside of my heart. I was abandoning myself over and over again for individuals that just, we weren't in the right alignment for the vision of our lives. And that's okay. But I was too afraid to walk away many times. And so I would say those were the most challenging times for me, was learning those lessons and really doing the healing work over the last year and a half that has given me so much incredible peace since then. This is from Loud In Life on Instagram.

What are the best strategies you've learned over the years to overcome negative thoughts? I'm a big, big fan of having support and asking for support, reaching out to mentors, coaches, and leaning on people when you feel like your thoughts are taking over or putting you down the wrong path. I'm a big fan of having accountability on health and having rituals and routines where my health is a priority. This morning, I got up and I did a workout and I try to be as consistent as possible in the morning. When I do that, the negative thoughts seem to be a lot less. And so I do more of the things that support me in making the negative thoughts less and less. If I sit around and eat pizza all day, I'm going to be like, I'm not proud of myself. I'm getting fatter. I'm not doing anything meaningful. I don't have a purpose. I'm frustrated with my lack of passion right now. And it's going to build those negative thoughts. So I try to do something first thing in the

morning that's going to make me proud of myself. And that's typically a workout or meditation. This is from Matt Westney on Instagram, who says, is it possible to live up to your full potential while being afraid of success? I think if you're afraid of success, it's really challenging because you're coming from a place of insecurity and fear of, when I accomplish success, I'm afraid of it. So how are you going to actually have fearlessness in the face of the challenge coming your way, of launching the project, of creating something new, of asking for a raise, of asking the

person out, whatever it might be. How are you going to be fearless in that process if you're afraid of actually receiving the success you want to receive? And I think this is why a lot of people sabotage themselves because they are afraid of success. And I think this is why a lot of people sabotage themselves because they are afraid of success. And the weight of gold, the weight of accomplishment, the weight of money in their account or awards or being on stages or now having the criticism of the world or their communities, judging them more frequently and looking at them under a microscope. And this is what happens as you grow into your own level of accomplishment or success. There is a weight that most people aren't ready for and don't want to have, being judged by their friends and family who feel like they're leaving them now because they're going beyond what their friends and family are comfortable with.

Whatever it might be, your fear of success, it is, I don't think it's possible to live up to your potential if you're afraid of success. And what comes down to healing that is realizing that, accepting yourself, realizing you are enough, because most of the times we don't believe we're enough, but when we can receive and accept that, then we can learn to be okay. We may not like it. We may not like that people are judging us or like some of the pressure, but we can be okay with it and go into our challenge more fearlessly. We asked some of you to share on YouTube some of your biggest aha moments while listening to the show. And I just wanted to reply to a few of these people and share a few of these people. This is from Phil the Fourth Degree who

said an episode back in 2017 with Rob Bell. It's one of the biggest aha moments. He said the surfing pastor Rob Bell, he said his definition of success is leaving a room with more people in it than with you started i thought that was cool tracy said putting a baby picture of me on my lock screen and saying kind loving things to her this is something i've talked about so many times on my lock screen is a photo of myself you may or may not see this if you're on the video on youtube. But there's a photo of myself. And that's on my lock screen where I have a conversation with that part of myself that was wounded or hurt from the past to heal that process. And healing has been the key. And I think that's what allows people to really step into the greatness.

On Facebook, we asked you what's one topic you'd like to see us discuss in a future episode. what's one topic you'd like to see us discuss in a future episode. And at J KPL said, rebuilding trust in relationship and jealousy, specifically where it comes from and why we take it out on our partners. I love hearing your responses of what you want to learn because this allows us to dive into these topics

and find these experts. Eve said, hey, Lewis, your show is so insightful. As a mom of two boys, 120, 115, I'd love to get an advice on how they can find the right partners for relationship. This is powerful. And we've had so many great relationship guests come on and share this. One of the things that I go back to is building a strong relationship with yourself and getting

clear on healing anything that holds you back from your past. Healing those things, getting clear on your values, your vision and lifestyle that you want in your life, and then attracting and building a relationship based on values, vision, and lifestyle. Not based on sexual chemistry, not based on, oh, you know, this partner could be amazing and make me look good. Those are the wrong reasons. Building it based on something spiritually foundational, values, vision, and lifestyle. We also asked you guys your three truths.

Jude Roberts said, gratitude is a must, nothing lasts forever, and the key to success is consistency Jonathan Rincon said number one you learn more about yourself when you're alone we're to every choice you make has a consequence and number three and life you don't get what you want you get what you are I like that one Jonathan Rhonda McMichael said change is the only constant. Love is the most powerful force in the universe and resilience is the

most important talent. And then lastly we asked you your definition of greatness. This is from John Alvarez who said greatness means being able to push through hardships in life even when they seem impossible to overcome. Then after learning from the experience, helping others overcome similar situations." I really like that. This is from Carol Lam. Greatness is having the ability to see around one's ego and see others without judgment and then help them rise higher than they thought possible. And Sandy Leading says, Greatness is going within. It's living the best version of yourself and living out loud.

It's finding your purpose through service to others and living it with peace, serenity, and tranquility. So those are some of the questions, some of the three truths, and some of your definitions of greatness. And I'm so inspired by all of you watching and listening by this community that is a part of this.

Again, if you just found us today, welcome to the community, to the family of greatness. If you've been with us since day one, almost 10 years ago, you're on this journey right now with us. You've seen me cry, break down, break through. You've seen me go through so many challenges on overcoming relationship stuff to financial heartache, to spiritual heartache, to physical heartache,

to deaths in my life, to all these different things. You've seen me in this process continue to be curious, continue to dive in, continue to learn and develop and grow. And I hope through all of my experiences, I hope by me being vulnerable and putting myself out there and revealing myself in all these different ways gives you permission and allows you to do the same for yourself and your life. It's crazy to think we are on this journey together and how far we've come together. Again, if you haven't signed up for greatness.com, please do that right now. Get on the newsletter.

We're going to be announcing some different things in a giveaway with being a part of that newsletter. So make sure you sign up. We're also going to be announcing two massive things coming up in the next few months that we're launching as a business and showing you more behind the scenes of a media business and what this looks like.

And also, if you haven't gotten your tickets to Summit of Greatness, I wanna give you a hug. I wanna give you a high five. I wanna say hello at summitofgreatness.com. Go there, get your ticket, buy a few for your friends. Come to Columbus, Ohio September 8 through 10. It is going to be a game-changer. If you're in the community on Facebook of people that have been in the past, they say it's one of the best events they've ever been to. So make sure

you get your tickets right now. And I'll leave you with this. You know, a lot of times in the last decade, I went through challenges. I went through struggles. And there were a lot of times where I didn't fully love and accept myself. And I wish I had learned the skill 10 years ago of accepting who I was, accepting my flaws, my uniqueness, my challenges, my skill sets, and the things that make me me. I wish I fully accepted those things 10 years ago. It's taken a long time to get to a place of inner peace, a place of having the right tools in place to make sure I don't abandon myself in intimate relationships or friendships or business partnerships, and to make sure I don't abandon myself in intimate relationships or friendships or business partnerships and to make sure I'm willing to walk away from things that maybe in the past in business or relationships I would do just to try to please other people. All those

things cause more pain on the inside. And one of the greatest gifts I've given myself is emotional accountability, is being here with you, going to therapy consistently, supporting my own inner emotions so that I'm not as triggered by the outside world. Now, listen, I'm still going to be triggered. There's things that are going to happen. I'm going to be frustrated. I'm going to have bad days.

All that stuff's going to happen. But having the emotional accountability to stay on top of it, to be aware of it when my ego comes out, to make sure that I'm able to be more accountable and responsible for my own inner emotions has been a powerful tool for myself. And I want to remind you, if you're listening right now or you're watching on YouTube, if for whatever reason you don't feel like you're in a good place with self-love, I just want to remind you I see you. I acknowledge you you are loved you're worthy you matter and That's the game. That's the game is remembering who we are remembering that we are loved. We are worthy and we matter

It's taking me a long time to figure that out. It's taking me a while and it's still a process It's an ongoing journey in a process. I haven't arrived I'm still committed to learning to asking the right questions to bring me on people way smarter than me in these areas And helping me develop because as I grow in life new challenges arise with every new season new opportunities for growth and potential challenges I'll be faced with. And that's what it's about.

So I'm so grateful that you're here on this journey. The School of Greatness, greatness.com and Greatness Media journey continues. Thank you guys so much for being here. I love you and we'll see you next time on the School of Greatness. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description

for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out there and do something great.