The Vault Unlocked - The Dark Side of Entrepreneurial Success Nobody Warns You About

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

From Navy uniform to nine figures, and nearly losing it all. In this episode of The Vault Unlocked, Kayvon Kay talks with Douglas James, a Navy veteran turned digital entrepreneur who built a $100M coaching business and now leads LeadFi.ai, a data-driven SaaS company transforming how businesses qualify leads. Douglas shares his rise, crash, and comeback, from early SEO experiments and Google penalties to mastering Facebook ads and scaling systems that change lives. He opens up about the trauma that fueled his drive, the failures that shaped his mindset, and the philosophy that keeps him winning: Choose the hard door. If you've ever felt stuck between stability and growth, this episode will remind you that real success starts where comfort ends.

You're listening to The Vault Unlock, where the real secrets of success are revealed. Every episode, one founder, one confession, one strategy that created income scale and unstoppable growth. Forget the hype. This is unlocking the code. They swore they would never release. The playbook is revealed. The Volt is unlocked.

And we're back on another episode. And today we have the myth to legend, the one Mr. Douglas James. So happy to have you here. I know that we've crossed past a couple of things. times to get to the show. You were telling me before the show you just came back from L.A. so I want to say appreciate you early morning being here with us. How are we doing today, Doug? I'm excellent Kavon. Thank you so much for having me, brother. Yeah, I really, really appreciate it. Can't wait to get in because I know you have so much to share and give here. Just for those that are

listening, tell us who is Douglas James? Yeah, man. So I just, you know, I'm married two beautiful daughters. Got to start with that, a man of faith, and, you know, served 10 years active duty, you know, in the Navy, United States Navy. I eventually found digital marketing, realized I didn't want to be in the Navy for 20, 30 years. And it started to make a lot of money, right? I started to work with a lot of local businesses, help them generate leads. Got really good at running ads. You know, after about six months, I was making my annual salary that the military was paying me on the monthly basis. So I that got the attention of a lot of active duty, you know, guys that I was working with. So they were coming up to me, hey, how do you do this? How do you make money? And so I just

got into coaching, you know, and I end up helping over 10,000 active duty members transition into the online space. We scaled that company up to over 100 million in revenue. Helped a lot of people, did a lot of good. And now I, you know, am building a company called Lead 5, which is a software that helps business owners identify real-time buying power when somebody like opts into your funnel, your marketing, you basically know their exact credit score, their income, how much they can spend on the credit cards, all that stuff. So we're focused on that now. But I just love disruptive technology.

So anything with, you know, AI, blockchain even, you know, all this stuff that people are like scared of that don't know how to use. And, you know, that's inevitable that's going to be around for the next 50, 100 years. that's going to really transform how we work and shop and eat and like everything, you know, find, you know, find spouses or whatever the case is. I love that stuff. So, you know, I consult equity for a number of companies. So I'm doing a lot of stuff.

But at the end of the day, for me, it's just always been about, you know, helping other people get to where they're trying to go. I remember early in my journey from when I got out the military, I was reading, you know, Zig Ziglar and Tony Robin. I just remember the quote, man. It's help other people get what they want and you'll have all you want in life. And that always resonated with me because I was hyper successful in the military because I was focused on my sailors. And I just transitioned that energy to people in the outside in the civilian world and entrepreneurial world. And I was able to find success. So I'm a big believer in giving.

If only it was all that easy though. So I want to really deep dive in here. Yeah. And, and you know, if we go back, you're in the Navy again, obviously, thank you for that service. Let me ask you this. What was it? You said that you found digital marketing. How did you find digital marketing? Yeah, good question. I mean, I legitimately was just, well, let me tell you this story. So I, it was 2014, 2015, somewhere around there. You know, the data, it's probably late 2014. I get back from a deployment. I was in Papua New Guinea,

Fiji, and the Philippines. It was a humanitarian mission. We were literally building schools for kids out there, And it's still to this day, it's some of the best work that I've ever experienced or done as a human being, right? You know, over there, it's very rural. Like you go there, people don't have clothes, shoes or just the, you know, kind of like modern things that we're used to. So I remember the last day we were, I think it was Rojas City. We're in a super rural part of Philippines. And, you know, I was a Corman or was a Corman and I work with the CBs. the C-Bs or the construction battalion.

So if they, you know, anything that needs to be built, they build it. And I go to make sure they don't hurt themselves or take care of them if they hurt themselves. So I remember we're going up this hill, this really high hill, and we're carrying boxes of crayons, coloring books, you know, stuff for the kids. And we get up to the top and we didn't see a kid the whole like few weeks we were there. And we get up there doing there's literally hundreds of kids.

And he just ran up to us, hugged our legs saying, thank you, thank you. USA, USA. Like it was, I remember. it like clear as day is yesterday and I just remember just feeling this super euphoric feeling of like what it feels like to do amazing for someone else and I've had validation and feedback from people over the years but to actually see it in the eyes of kids I was like holy crap you know so it made me it really shifted my way of thinking at that point because I was in the Navy at that point for only five years and I had just made E6. So if for those that aren't familiar, E6 is like a high level

supervisory position in the in the US military. Like I can be in charge of hundreds of people. And I made E6 in five years when it takes the average person 12 years. So that goes to show you like how much of a like go getter I was. Right. Yeah. We keep it short. But you know, I felt like I did all I wanted to do in the militaries. And then having this experience with the kids, I was like, man, how do I do more cool shit like this, but not just with my time, but monetarily so I can have a bigger impact. So those kinds of like shifts were happening in my mind. And I, you know, I wanted to have a family too. I wanted to have kids.

Yeah. Right. So I get back from that deployment. My girlfriend, Sonia, was waiting for me, which is my wife now. We solidified our relationship. Eventually got married, had two beautiful daughters. But when I got back, I immediately started to. Google and search things. I'm like, dude, how do I, you know, make money online? How do I fire my

boss? How to kill my job. Dude, so I was like searching things that a lot of people search that when they're lost and tired of their job and like, you know, sick of the rat race, right? I was doing all of that. And that kind of landed me on finding search engine optimization, SEO, right? You would go to Google. You see the ads at the top of the search. You're like, why are these businesses here, right? And why do I want to click them before anything? else because they're at the top. Yeah. So I found a guy on YouTube talking about SEO and how he's making all this money.

And so I started just to learn from him. And this is back in, this is back in 2014. Yeah. Like just like that I call it the second wave. Like there was that first, well, there was like the three waves, but like the first, you know, the first wave like the early 2000s when, you know, it was what it was. And then I find like the 2008 was a wave. And then 2013 to about 16 was another wave.

So you got in like. early and you saw what was going on. I want to just go, I think it's super important because what I'm hearing from the story, like something really changed on that trip. Like something really changed in you perspective. It was almost like you had like an internal external transformation. Can we talk about that? Because I believe your business is a direct reflection of who you are on the inside.

And if you're confused and scared and lost in the inside, your business is going to be confused, lost on the outside. side. So for you, it seems like something really clicked. Yeah, man. It's an interesting point to point out there. So, you know, this kind of dates back probably a lot further than even that short story. You know, I'm not going to go too deep on this, but, you know, I came from a childhood that was pretty chaotic. You know, I kind of experienced things that really no children should ever experience. And I have two beautiful daughters. So, you know, if you're, you're a parent, you have kids, right? Yeah, I got two girls myself. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude. So you know your

kids, like, you're, they're sponges, you know, their daddy's Superman. Like anything he does or mommy does, it's like gold. They take it as truth, you know, and, you know, I saw things growing up that, you know, I should, I should never see. So I now have like an example of what not to be of a parent, you know, so I want to pour the best I can into. And, you know, into my kids. But what I found, you know, through that experience of, you know, trauma, going to bed, not knowing if I'm going to eat, you know, physical verbal abuse. It was just all the things you can probably imagine, to be honest with you. But I ran away from home at like 16 years old, you know, because I was fed up with that lifestyle, you know,

and that eventually got me into military because it was either that, go to college when I was like a 1.4 GPA high school student or or, or yeah, yeah, actually, yeah. I got caught shoplifting that target at a young age too. So, you know, and I did go to jail for, for a night, you know, and it was horrible. It was either that jail or like homeless, you know, so go to the military, you know. So I found what I was doing, though, is I was like burying my head in the ground like an ostrich and just focusing on success. Like that's all that matter to me. Like be great, do good and everything else will figure itself out.

And that worked for a good amount of time. And a lot of entrepreneurs do do that, but what I found, at least from my experience and a lot of people that I talk to, they're usually running from something. Like, what is it you're running from? Right. And for me, I was like running from dealing with those memories and that trauma that cooped up over all those years, you know? And, you know, I hit the high rank in the military. I made a bunch of money. Helped a lot of people, did a lot of good.

Married my beautiful wife. Had two daughters. create a non-figure company on my way to my second nine-figure company, you know, doing all these things. But what I realize is success doesn't silence your soul, right? You have to address those internal things that are that are haunting you. So I had to at one step, on point, turn around and look back and say, hey, I'm not going to allow this to live rent-free in my brain anymore. You know, I'm going to forgive and let it go and move on so I can have growth and sustainability for my own family, for my own kids, because it was showing up on how I led, how I might have

shortly reacted to my wife, you know, all of these things, making bad decisions at times with money. Like, I'm not perfect. I've made, you know, bad decisions in business life in general. You know, so I had to let a lot of that go, you know, so that transition was like paramount for me because I was whole, it was holding me back, like, you know, like a ball chain wrapped around my ankle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see a lot of entrepreneurs and I mean I think a lot of people go into entrepreneurship with that type of I would say past trauma you know it's just prove something that you know they're to prove them to prove their story wrong and prove and to prove everyone else

you know right or whatever it might be but um let's get in because you said in a hundred million dollar company that's you know that's not that's not small business there that you know that takes a lot of work and takes to me it takes finding or cracking that code like what was that? So you've said you found SEO and then you started getting an SEO. How did you going from SEO turn into like a hundred million dollar business? Yeah. I so SEO allowed me in within about five months to replace my annual salary in the military on the monthly basis. I was making around 50 grand a month. Okay about doing what? Because I want to be very, you know, for people who are listening? Like what does that even mean like so what i would do i was helping local uh businesses get ranked high on on google but

specifically what i was doing so that's like the overarching but what i would do is i would create these micro websites like in the small cities so like i live in san diego in san diego there's these subcities you know escondito chula vista yeah insinitas and they all have maybe a hundred to three hundred thousand people population so instead of ranking for san diego I want to rank for Escondido. There's only 200,000 people there. So I can get a site ranked super quick for a carpet cleaning company or a dentist or something because nobody's going after that. Everyone wants San Diego, right?

They're forgetting about the micro city. So I would get a site ranked, my own site ranked within like 30 days, sometimes a week. Number one for dental, carpet cleaning, auto detail, limousine company. and then I would just basically get, I would find the, I would target a business owner. I would get their personal contact information. A lot of it lived online on Google. A lot of these mom and pop businesses, like they'll put their personal contact like on the website. Back in 2015, it was super easy.

Or you can use a tool like sales genie and pay 50 cents and get their phone number anyway, their cell phone. So I would do that. And then boom, bring the site number one. All of a sudden, boom, it's blowing up with leads. People are calling the phone number. texting, emailing, and I would just redirect that traffic instantly over to that business's cell phone number. Now, they're getting called like crazy. Like, what the fuck? Why? I'm getting all these leads to my phone. This is amazing, but what the heck's going on? So I would let that run for a day

or two. And then I would call them up. And I would say, hey, this is the door here. Okay. Yeah. This is, wow. Wow. Not cutting you off, but wow. You're telling me, see, this is so gold. This is, this is what most people don't do. They don't, you were actually building the site, ranking the site, getting people to call, like, let's call this. This is a dry cleaner in a small town in San Diego. All of a sudden, his phone's going off the hook going, I don't understand why, but this is amazing. And then a couple days, let's call it, let's call it what it is, maybe a couple weeks, a couple days, maybe even a month later, you call them and say, oh, by the way, have you noticed that you've gotten some more calls and traffic? Yeah, that's me.

And what? I love it. I love it. Keep going. I just wanted to make sure I was hearing this correctly. You got it. Yeah, I would call him and say, hey. And I would, every single lead, when they got a call, they would hear a whisper message, new lead from Douglas James.

And then the person started talking, right? So they kept hearing Douglas James when they picked up the phone. So what? Yeah. I do that. It's through the call software that I was using. You can do a whisper message. Hey, new lead from Douglas James, press one to receive.

Right. So they would click one and then instantly be connected to the person that was calling my website or limousine party bus or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I would say, hey, this is Douglas James. How's those leads been working out the last couple days? And it'd be like, dude, this is amazing. We got to sign up. Like, I don't know you, but I love you.

Like, let's get it done. And then what were your packages going for? Yeah, I would just basically sell them like $20 a lead, you know? Okay, so you were selling leads. Awesome. Okay, you were selling leads. Yeah. I was selling leads.

So every time someone called, every time they received a phone number in their CRM, I would just charge them $20. That's it. And you could control that because you were, you knew how many calls were coming in because you were building it. That's it. That's it. Wow.

So you controlled that whole kind of supply chain. You weren't relying on them to tell you how many leads they were. giving you. Not all. I own the website. I had the tracking. I knew how many leads and calls it was generating. I had all the calls recorded, literally everything.

So if they didn't want to do business with me or they want to try to screw me over and say, hey, do you want to pay you? I would just turn it off. And then I would immediately send it to another business owner. Okay. So I've tried myself. I've created a lot of businesses. I've seen a lot of people come up with ideas that's just going nowhere.

There must have been something before. there's a greatness that that that that that that that that that that that that that that you knew that clicked like what was it that thing that everyone because I everyone can go try this and it's not going to work but something changed for you something worked for you where you're like I got this what was that like what if you can recall what was the thing that just turned everything on for you yeah I had super fast success with that um and I mean what really what clicked and solidified it in my brain was the first dollar I ever received. I remember getting a check for like seven grand because my first deal was actually, um, it was a big deal and they, and they actually negotiated. I eventually settled in

on like 20 or 30 dollars a lead, but they wanted to do performance. And it was actually better for me because they gave me a third of their net margin, right? And I remember my first check that they ever cut me was for like seven grand. And I was like, holy crap. this works you know and i took my wife or my girlfriend at the time which is my wife now out of dinner we celebrated and we did it up the wine everything yeah yeah yeah you know and uh yeah man and that's when i'm loo this this is it that because my i have a mentor um his name's dr jeff spencer he was uh he was an olympian and he trained like 40 gold olympians as well and he was with Lance Armstrong through like not all nine tour de frances wow yeah he's a he's like a old g he's a Yoda he's

78 years old. But anyway, he talks, he talks about how there's a, there's a roadmap to success. And it starts with a daily grind period where you do work, but you don't necessarily expect a certain result in the short term. You just put your head down, you do the work, and you trust the process. That's it. You just trust the process and you do the thing until something happens. And that's what I did. And it's not until you get a result that belief is established because you're basically riding on hope the whole time. So until you get a result, that's when you're like, oh, this does work.

I have a result. I've proved it to myself. Now it's even easier just to keep going through that daily grind phase because you're always, you know there's a belief at the end of that tunnel. So I just put my head down, dude, for two or three months learning this. And all that money really came in in the back half of that five or six months. So I almost made no money for about three months to four months, actually. And I just kept building and doing my process. So that's really what like, you know, solidified it for me.

But here's the kicker with this, dude. The way I was ranking sites and the way I was learning to do this turned out to not be so great. So what happened was one day and I had about 20 something clients paying me somewhere between a thousand to $2,500 a month back then. Okay, yeah. They were all ranked number one on Google for all their perspective, carpet cleaning, auto detail, whatever. And I wake up one day and all my sites disappeared from page one of Google for their prospective search. And I'm like, what the F?

My clients are calling me. Yeah, yeah. What's going on with the leads? You know, I'm like, I don't know. And then I get an email from Google that says Google released a new algorithm update. It was called the Penguin. And I'm like, what the is this? So basically it was it was flagging people that were using black hat

processes to ranks websites. I don't know what the, I don't know what black hat was. I was just following what the YouTube guy was saying or what the guy was learning from. Turns out the way I was doing it wasn't, it wasn't like they didn't like that. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about that because it's, it's very important what you just said there. Some people don't know that. I know that a little bit because I, I've dabbled in the Google space, right? There's like the idea,

this concept of Black Hat, which is nowadays, I could be wrong. Like, not many people dabble in that because it's just like it's not a long-term play. Yeah. How would you, how do you explain Black Hat? It's probably, I would probably just say it's ways of loopholes or are gamifying systems and manipulating systems to get the result. Maybe, you know, in some ways, maybe not compliantly what I would say. It's just going around their policy, finding loopholes, right?

And Black Hat could be considered for a lot of ways. There's white hat ways to do things and black hat things. And then there's the gray area, right? Then people will say the gray area, right? And you know, honestly, when I think back, a lot of it was gray zone because Google's policy has actually changed many, many, many times. Because of these things, yeah. Now you got things like AI. So now they're right in terms and conditions about all kinds of things that were even relevant 10 years ago.

So this is always a navigating, a transforming landscape that we're having to deal with. But it's basically saying like there's kind of the right way to do things and kind of the wrong way to do things. Right. Yeah. And I was doing it, I guess the wrong way. But you had no idea because you were just following this guy on YouTube and you were like, this is working. So going back to that story, because we're leaving this on the cliffhanger, like, so what happened? So now you're getting success.

You're feeling good. you know, fast forward, you're taking the life out on dinners and you're looking at this going, okay, I'm making more money than I ever made in my life in a month than I would make in a year. And it seems like you were, you know, well, obviously 100 million, I'd call it wildly successful. But before it became 100 million, you're, you know, doing X amount of dollars a month. And then boom, you wake up one day and it's like, it's over. It's like someone shut off the taps. What do you do?

Yeah. Well, at that point, most of my clients were like, this is a scam like screw you basically like they had a very negative reaction unfortunately you know and i you know i was like what i'm sorry like what you want me to do but i did have a small handful of clients that were like willing to hang out and like yeah they trusted you that knew that you were not doing this on purpose yeah yeah and it wasn't everyone was like you know but some people you know they're short temper yeah absolutely i had a thing that goes wrong they bail out whatever um i had like five or so clients that were like sticking around

So I was like, look, I'm going to learn Google ads and Facebook ads like because I would go on Facebook and I would see the little, you know, sponsored ad. And I'm like, okay, that's something there. Okay, I'll go on Google. I see the sites rank at the top. Let me figure out how to do that. So now I started looking at that. And of course, I sucked at it. I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning.

Lost like almost all those clients. After two weeks, 30 days, they were gone. I had one client that stuck around. It was my first client, the limousine party bus company. And they were like, dude, let's just figure this out. Let's go back to a performance model. I'm like, okay. So I really put my head down, learn Facebook ads, learn Google ads.

And yeah, and after 30 days, they cut me another check for like almost eight grand, you know. Okay. So right. There's so much. I wish we had so much time. There's so much things I love to talk about from the entrepreneur perspective of that kind of moment where you're at the high and then you'll lose it. And when you do, I believe, when you have good relationships and you do good things, good people will stay around because you just said they can see the long distance versus just

a short distance. You as an entrepreneur, you're sitting there in that even that first 30 days. You went from making all this money to no money, learning something so uncomfortable, back to the drawing board. What's going on with you in that moment? Like how are you staying in the game? How are you keeping it above water and not, you know, losing your hair and freaking out.

All I got to say is I had the belief. I knew this world was legit, the online marketing world in general. I just, but I was smart enough to realize that SEO is not the play. I need a pivot, right? And that's when I noticed ads, right? And I would find people online talking about making $4 with $1, you know, on paid ads. because it's literally like an ATM machine that gives you instant returns. You know, so I was at that moment, I was just extremely, extremely determined.

And yes, I was very, very frustrated because I basically lost my $50,000 a month business overnight. Yeah. Instantly. Like, you know, it was devastating. It truly was. I showed. And I had to show up to work the next morning in uniform, right? So this happened at like 6 a.m.

I got to be at work at 7 a.m. in uniform, at attention, checking in. Right. So, yeah, dude. Oh, you're talking, but you're still in the military at this point? I'm active duty. Yes. Oh, I had no idea. Sorry. I thought, okay, so I thought you're, I assumed, see, don't ever assume. I assumed you were already done. So you're in the middle. I'm not laughing. I'm, I'm, I'm not. I can't this. If anybody who's an entrepreneur can understand this stress, you're, you're trying to sit there. an active duty while this is going on behind the scenes my god like again the strength the resilience the determination to stay in the game there's no joke there and i'm going to assume back then you didn't deal with your shit either at that point you hadn't dealt with that stuff we were talking about earlier so you got all that trauma coming up in which ways yeah man you were you must have been a wrecking ball inside. I was, but here's the thing. The success and drive to figure out business buried the trauma. So yeah, oh yeah, the thing, it capped it. Um, so that was good. But I was very

much like, dude, yeah, I was, I was, I was a wreck. I was a wreck. I was at lunch. I was taking two hour lunches. I was going to meet clients during lunch, changing out of uniform, getting into street clothes. Yeah, yeah. You know, sometimes showing up. up late to work and leaving early. You know, like I was doing I, you know, I, my superiors in the military didn't make my life transition easy either, right? And I did not give them a good reason to take it easy on me either. So, but I, yeah, I was still active duty for four years doing this before I got actually got out, you know, so I was making like by the time I got, I was making already a couple hundred grand a month when I got out the military. Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's not going to

make those superiors happy either, right? There's going to be a little jealousy there. And then you're not also doing the rule, you know, going against the rules. That must have been very challenging. So, so what happened going back? This is wild. I love it. What a great story. So going back, everything falls apart. You then figure out, you look at, again, being forward sight, seeing the future, you see ads, you see the Google ads, you start learning it, you start growing it. And you're telling me it was only 30 days. Literally it was only 30 days later. You're right back at your first $8,000 check again. Yep, 30 days.

And then only about two, two and a half months, I was back at 50K. Pretty quick. Wow. So I just, once I figured out for them, dude, I just took that same case study. And I took that money and I did my same strategy. But instead of waiting two to four weeks to rank a website, I could turn on a Facebook ad or Google ad and immediately get leads that day. So I just took the same websites that I made, which were just, just,

were just basically one page funnels, right? Yeah. And I would just run traffic to them and start getting calls again instantly. To the same pages that you had. To the same pages that were already on Google. They were just on page 20 of Google. Exactly. So instead of relying on Google to send you the traffic, you're just paying the traffic to go there anyways. That's it. You know, phone numbers started bringing again. And then all the clients came back. Some didn't, but all of, most of them came back and then I got even more clients back. So I got the 50K within like two months and then that grew to six figures pretty, pretty quickly after that.

And then how did that company, because that's kind of an agency service company, right? How does that company grow to $100 million? So that company didn't. It's the coaching consulting that got me up to those numbers, right? So basically, you know, I was not quiet about making money when I was in the military. I was telling my colleagues and friends that I was, you know, serving with. I bought like a $200,000 Mercedes. Well, how can you not?

Really? Yeah. You know, I got to say it, like even me, like, how do you not when you're surrounded with that type of mindset, and I'm not saying it in a rude way, but there is a certain type of mindset of someone who's making 80, 100, 120K. versus someone who's making million dollars a year. And you know that. There comes a different mindset there. How do you not want every and a person like you who wants to help people and you're seeing them struggle and you're seeing them in this mindset that doesn't serve them?

How do you not flaunt it in a way and tell them that you can help them and show them? I mean, that's what I do with my agency too. I try to help all my friends that are stuck at that six figures and like, hey, like come over here and you'll make a couple six figures from working from home. What are you doing? What are you doing struggling? and working for the man, right? So I get that. So I love it. All right. So you're, you're, I'm just, I'm just picturing it right now. You're the captain in the military driving in a $200,000 Mercedes. And everyone's going, what is going on? I mean, if you wanted to, if you wanted to target on your back, I don't think

there was any more bigger one the money. Any military base you drive on, you got to stop at the check station and show your ID. Every time I would roll up the guys that were on duty to check the ID, they thought they were getting like, oh, like, this is about to be an officer. We have to salute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm, and I'm like an E6 active duty guy, which is a good high position in active duty, but I'm not an officer. Yeah, not an officer. And they look at the, they're the double take. Like, what's going on here? Because at E6 in San Diego with housing is probably about $6,000 a month. Yeah, well, there you go. So yeah. Yeah.

Your car payment was $6,000. Yeah. Or at least a third that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's awesome. Okay. So then you said then you turn into a coaching business.

So because you were so loud and because people eventually people like, what do you do? I want to teach you. I want to learn what you do. Instead of doing the thing you're doing, you started teaching people the thing you were doing. And you ended up making more money. Now, this comes up for a really.

big discussion because I see so many people market against that or so many people say, oh, they didn't do the job. They're just teaching people how to do the job. And what people don't realize, I think you and I agree on this is because we're in the same space, there actually is more money teaching people how to do the job than it is doing the job itself. But you've got to become a master of that job if you're ever going to actually teach it properly and be able to have the impact.

Yeah. Like, so do you find that that's like that statement to be true? Do you find that people confuse those two things? 100% dude. Michael Jordan, Tony Robbins, Taylor Swift, Beyonce. They all have coaches. They all have coaches, right? And people, you know, if there's somebody, somewhere you want to be,

you have to go find people that have done it. Yeah. And you can eventually outshine and outmaster them, right? the point of being a good apprentice to be to out to eventually do better right so um i had a uh i've had many mentors and coaches over my life i've spent multiple at least a couple million at this point over the over a decade you know for different coaches and mentors i've you know networking and some of the biggest people that you probably know that we've been in similar rooms with yeah yeah yeah and uh even work with them done business deals ran their ads all the things you know so

huge, huge believer in that, you know, because I've experienced it firsthand. When I first started, I was learning from some guy. I didn't know who the heck he was on the internet, right? That was technically a mentor. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I think what people, like, if I didn't have the story I had for you the last 30 minutes and I just came here and I said I did 100 million in coaching, you'd be like, you know, oh, you're one of those guys that that coach people to do the thing that you didn't actually do. It's like, you actually did the thing. You did it. Yeah. I actually did the thing. And now I legitimately taught people, right? So that's the difference. And what happens is in our industry, internet marketing space coaching industry, there's a lot of bad actors, fly by marketers.

I've been around for 10, 11 years. You've been around for a long time. You've probably seen a lot of these kids that come in and make it a couple million and you never see them again or you might see them pop up a few years later and they got the next thing that you're trying to sell. Yeah. Right. But, you know, the market has been hit for over a decade now hard with Facebook ads. Yeah. Right. So buyers are way more sophisticated. They know what's going on. They know what an ad is, you know.

So you really need to build trust rapport fast. And you better be genuine because if not, you're going to have a high cost per lead. High cost per goal, right? Yeah, it's going to be. I mean, I think we live in this world, too, where people just don't. trust anymore. So not only is it being genuine is the amount of trust. They're very aware and they have to, and there's so much trust and credibility that goes into it and authority that goes into it to be successful. Again, you and I would both agree. This isn't 2017, 2018, 2017, 18, we, we blew up a company

at 38 million 18 months. You're not doing that today the way we did it back then. It's just not going to happen, right? Yeah. So I get, I totally get that. So then now you have the coaching company. So you figured out, man, there's so much nuance in the story, which I absolutely just love. And the fact that you did the job before you got paid, I just want everybody to understand that. You did the work without even knowing you were going to get paid. But you did the work and you did it well, that it got you paid more than you could ever expect. And then when things went to shit, it's part of my language, instead of quitting, instead of sucking your thumb, you put, you dug deeper, rolled up your sleeves, and asked the biggest question, now what?

What do I do? Where do I go? You sound like you figure that out pretty quickly. 30 days later, not only are you doing more than you were when the thing blew up, you're double that. And then you turn this into a coaching business where now you're coaching people to do the thing that you mastered. And from there, that coaching business goes to 100 million. Yep. What was it in the coaching business? Because a lot of people have coaching businesses that can't even get it to, you know, six figures a year, let alone 100 million, you know. What was it that changed for you there or connected or just the thing that Turk took it off that you said, I finally found the formula. Yeah, what I'll say is I have another mentor's name,

Randy Massengale, and he says there's two tyrants of leadership. So there's scrutiny and expectations. So whenever you do or succeed or better yourself, you create space between you and other people, right? They're here. You were here and now you're here. They get uncomfortable with that. So they're either going to scrutinize you or expect things from you. So number one, scrutiny. I told you my superiors did not make it easy for me. They actually tried to get me kicked out the military, had my rank and money taken from

me thrown in the brig. All the things, dude, they were not happy. But it got kicked up to the CEO of the command. He's like, hey, you didn't break any rules here. You can have a nice day. And I was in there with my superiors and I about face and left. And I could see the steam coming off their head. They were so pissed.

So I had to, I cruised out the remaining three and a half years in the military making six figures a month and nobody could F with me basically. And I just did my time honorably. You know, I got an honorable discharge. I did my time. I did my job and I built my business. That's a scrutiny. The expectation part is a beautiful part. You know, I had a master chief come up to me.

E9. It's the highest rank you can go active duty. Hey man, I'm 45 years old, been in Navy for 25 years. I'm getting out next month and I don't want to sit in a classroom full of 19 year olds. Will you teach me what you do? Because that's what you do. You have to go back to college and get your degree and all that. Whatever, E, D, all that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I went home, created a course, gave it to him. Worst course you've ever seen, uploaded a Dropbox in the next week. And he landed a client making $1,000 a month. Wow. He came back, gave me $900. And I joke and I'm like, dude, where's the other hundred? Thought you made $1,000.

It's only $900, you know, but, no, I was very great. grateful, but that's when I realized people are willing to pay you for what you know. Yeah. Right. So I just doubled down on that. I realize there's a lot of that whole system, active duty to even get finding a job. There's a class you go through called Taps. It's like a week long.

And the system's broken, bro. It's like horrible. I went through it. The best they do is show you how to set up a LinkedIn profile and do a resume. Like that's it. You know. Well, that's the typical. I don't want to go too deep in there.

But that is the typical person teaching the class who's never done it themselves. They haven't done anything. They don't know anything. And they're just teaching it scholastically. And scholastic does not work in the real world. Not at all. Not at all. So I realize there's a massive opportunity here to help military transition online.

So I doubled down on it, created official course, all the things. I created programs that went from do it yourself to done with you, to done for you. then I started having masterminds and in-person experiences and all the things. Sold packages up to $55,000, you know, and we got to the point where we were actually building marketing agencies, running ads for them, and closing their first client for them. And then giving them a franchise in a box is basically a lot of work at the end of it. And that was my top tier program. And we did all that in about two or three days at my penthouse in San Diego.

Wow. Okay. So that's kind of like the journey. I've been in that penthouse, actually. Many years ago, I might have been in that penthouse. Yeah, it was a while back, right? But yeah, so, and then I didn't just help veterans, dude. Obviously, it turns out a lot of people want to know how to make money, right?

And if you have something real that works, you know, a lot of people be willing to invest with that. So we work with, I work with surgeons, nurse practitioners, the bartender at TGI Friday is like all over the board, dude. And it's been highly, highly successful. But what I found that worked best for me, because lead quality. is always an issue. So the way we solved it back then is we would, um, we would actually target higher sophisticated type of investor people or net worth people. So I would speak to the nurse practitioner that was running around the hospital floors for 20, 30 years, servicing patients. And she's tired, you know, she wants to be at home with the kids or the grandkids. And she wants

to turn her, her career experience into an online business. So I say, well, what a, What if you're a lead provider for medical, private medical practices all over the country? You have 20 years a nurse practitioner. You know and speak the lingo. Now you can be the go-to lead provider to provide new patients to their clinic. So I would do that for them, the guy that's been roofing for 20 years, right? The guy that owns the restaurant that's tired of the restaurant but has 20 years of running a restaurant experience. You know, so now he's going out helping restaurants all over the country generate leads.

So that's how I would get them to transition out of the career and get into the online lead generation space. And those people were willing to spend 25 to even 50K to come learn. They would. They got the money and B, they have the experience and they know what their experiences worth. They're not fakers. They actually, they've done it. So for sure, that makes sense. Yeah.

I love that. And then what, so while the transition, you went from this $100 million coaching business and now I know we go into the SaaS product. We're going to do a part two on that one because this is just so fascinating. But just to leave us on the hook there, what was the transition to change from the coaching to a software? So when you're, I spent 30 million on ads. We were spending at peak about a million a month on ads, right? And I, because we're selling high ticket, I couldn't look at my P&L month to month.

I have to look at it over a quarter because I knew two months we're going to be red, one green, one month was going to be green, but it was going to be like, boom, like this, and make the quarter look good. I had two quarters back to back in the red, and I lost over $11 million. That's ad spend, payroll, tech, legal, all the things you can think of, right? Lost a whole lot of money. Conversions drop. We didn't know what the heck was going on. I hired the best of the best, couldn't figure it out. Maybe it was ad fatigue, right? You know, lead quality was an issue. Marketing team said the leads were great, because the applicant. applications had high income, but the sales teams got guys are like, dude, they're broke.

Like they're lying on the application. So I basically got introduced at that point. I was at my lowest in business trying to figure it out. Got introduced to my partner, Eric, who's been in the financial world for the last 20 years. He was working on some technology, but had no idea how to put it into digital marketing. And I came and I'm like, dude, let's partner. I can, I know I can fix this for you. So we came together and I created.

leadfi.AI and basically what it does, right when somebody gives you their name, email, phone number, I'll get you their exact credit score, how much money they can spend on their cards, their annual income, debt to income ratio, even pre-approvals for additional funding. And I can also get like all their assets. So 401k IRA, real estate, stocks, bonds, CDs, ETS, like everything, dude. So now without a shadow of a doubt, you know if they're financially capable or not, you can inject it into your sales process, how you run your ads online. It's beautiful now.

guys it is and i and i and i know a little bit about it because we discussed it but i definitely want to go deeper into it for you uh on part two if if if we if we may uh i'll ask you this one last question as we come to an end because i just the the resilience uh the determination you had the just i even i love the entrepreneurship of like getting the job done before they even pay you someone is sitting there and they're listening right now and maybe their business isn't working or they're on the cusp if you remember the cusp of giving up what is comfortable to go in the abyss of the unknown for a better life what would you say to them man um so what comes to mind is this quote um from virginia satire she's like a legendary author and the quote is most people choose

the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty so yeah that hits every i get goosebumps every time I hear it. So picture this. There's two doors, right? Door number one, the life as you know it, same job, same career, same business, whatever it is. You're not happy. You're not fulfilled, right? The same car, you know, all the same stuff, right? 99% of people will go through door number one because they're certain of what they're going to get, but they're miserable there or unhappy or not fulfilled, right? And that's very unfortunate. Door number two, it's all your goals, dreams, aspirations are behind that door, everything that you want. a better, you know, a better business, multiple locations, you know, scaled, the white picket fence,

the new house, you know, the better education system for your kids. All the things are there. But it's hard to step through that door because you're not 100% sure, like, well, that's going to play out. It seems super high risky and it's a miserable feeling to go through that and take that risk. But I got to tell you, man, every single multimillionaire billionaire that I ever met, I always ask him, hey, Dornermon, Dornham, two. They're door number two all day. Yeah. And I even Damon John, you know, had a conversation with him. And Damon John said, hey, door number one for me was driving a taxi in the streets of New York

wherein if I was going to get stabbed in the neck, right? Door number two got him Fubu, which is a multi, multi-billion dollar brand. So, you know, choose your hard. They're both tough, right? Which one is going to bring you more success fulfillment opportunity for you and your family? So I as entrepreneurs and myself definitely, I have to choose your number two daily because it's a daily discernment. It's hard every day, right? I get up. There's days I don't want to do shit. I don't want to take calls, do all the things.

But I got to think about why did I start this? Why am I here? And my kids, my family, my faith, those are the things that really push me forward. and when I see the impact that I have on other people's lives, and I know what I know is going to change their life, I feel it's my moral duty, my moral obligation to show up every day for them. Right. Yeah.

Door number two is where it's at, man. Always choose. I love it. So in life, you get your options. Door number one, it's comfortable. A way of saying it was like this, if you go through door number one, your life will be easy. What is it?

Your life will be easy and that's why you'll live a hard life. If you go number two, your life will be hard, but that is why you'll live an easy life. So I love it. And again, Douglas, thank you so much. This story's incredible. I appreciate you. People that want to get to know you, they want to find you where they come in. Yeah, go.

I mean, Instagram is probably the easiest place. Just go there. Douglas James should be the first one to Blue Check, but I think the handles at the underscore Douglas James. My main website is lead by. com. You can check that off if you like as well. Awesome.

All right, Douglas. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Kewan. And that was another episode with The Vault Unlocked, where proven builders, real strategies, and unstoppable growth happens. Subscribe now because the next Unlock could be the one that rewires your business forever. This is where the playbook is revealed and the Vault is unlocked.