How to Live an Extraordinary Life You Love with Jimmy Rex

Welcome to True Grit and Grace, a podcast designed to empower you to claim your resilience and thrive through life's challenges. I am Amberly Lago, a mindset coach, fitness expert and bestselling author. Each week, I'll dive deep with the world's brightest thought leaders and elite performers to share tangible tools and practical advice to inspire you to keep your eyes on the prize and forge ahead. So get ready to conquer your fears, heal any trauma, lead with your heart, and elevate your life with grit and grace. Hey, I'm Amberly Lago, and I just want to say thank you so much for tuning in to the show today. I have my friend Jimmy Rex with us, and he's probably most known for his top-rated podcast he has called The Jimmy Rex Show and his bestselling book, You End Up Where You're Headed. But he is so much more than that. I mean, he's a real estate expert, he's an angel investor in over a dozen businesses. He's an entrepreneur, an adventurer, a family man, and he is an adrenaline junkie. But he also loves to give back. So whether he's giving back to his community or to people, you can check him out and see his stories that bring me to tears sometimes of all he does to give back. And quite the adrenaline junkie. I'm telling y'all, whether it's swimming with tiger sharks, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, Wow. Running with the bulls or working undercover to help rescue kids that are being sex trafficked, Jimmy's never bored, and he makes sure that we never get bored during this episode for sure. He just returned back from his 70th country that he visited, and he's on a mission to share love with all and show everyone around him how to live an extraordinary life. So I know you'll enjoy this episode as much as I enjoy. getting to talk to this legend himself. So let's get on with the show. Jimmy! Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for being on the True Grit and Grace Podcast. I swear, I— the more I get to know you, I think I'm just going to nickname you the most interesting man in the world because you never cease to amaze me with everything that you do. I mean, the adventures you go on, The entrepreneur that you are, the real estate god that you are. You make me want to buy a house in Utah, by the way.

I love that.

And I love your book. I'm a big fan of your book. I've been listening on Audible, and we'll talk about that. Y'all check out mrjimmirex.com right now while you're just starting to listen. All the links will be in the show notes. But I'm just so happy to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

Well, thank you so much. It's funny you say that. I get introduced a lot when I speak to real estate groups as the most interesting man in real estate. So you're not the only one that's thought that.

Are you serious? That's so— like, I just had that, the commercial that's like the most interesting man in the world.

You know, when I was a kid, I saw miserable adults and it was like everything I wanted to be in life was not one of them. You know, when you'd go to your buddy's house and his dad was just miserable and I always said above all else, I want to be a fun adult. I want to be, uh, somebody that people are excited when he shows up. You know, I just— I— to the idea of being miserable is so awful that I just— I reject it with everything I have. And so that fortunately has helped me create an interesting life.

Yeah. Well, let's just talk about some of the things you've done. I want to talk about how you grew up too, because it sounds like we grew up a lot alike. But you really follow your heart and you have such a big heart. You have built successful businesses. You've liberated child slaves from their captors. You've swam with sharks. You've run with the bulls, jumped off cliffs. You've constantly pushed limits in every direction of your life. But I also want to talk about you always want to like do more, but you always know there's pizza in the trunk. Now I want to talk about that. What exactly does that mean?

Yeah, so it's a line from my book. And so growing up, me and my friends, you know, there's 8 of us that to this day are best friends. It's really cool. In fact, we're going next week to Central America. We're gonna go bounce to a few countries, uh, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. And, um, and what it was is we would always— we loved Chris Farley. We were just in love with his movies and everything. There's a line in the movie when he's kind of just going for it, right? He's trying to get these chicken wings from the waitress and And David Spade's character is like, what was that? Why don't you just do that when we're trying to sell? And he's like, well, I don't really care if we got the wings or not. We still got that meat lover's pizza in the trunk. And so, that movie line has always stuck with me. So, it's like, you know, people— and the whole premise of my book kind of talks about this, but on their deathbed, nobody regrets the things they did. They regret the things they never did, the dreams that died within them, the risks they never took. And so, I've kind of always looked at that. And said, you know, like, for me, I don't care if this fails. Like, if I go and try something that doesn't work, I've always got the Meat Lover's Pizza and the drink. I can always go back to what I had. I already have a great thing going. So, I don't look at these risks as like this giant failure, you know. I look at it as just another fun adventure, a thing that I want or that I want to try out. And so, to live life that way, it really liberates you and frees you from this You know, people have this expectation of what their life's supposed to look like sometimes, or if something goes wrong, they feel devastated. And for me, that's not it. The only failure is in not trying or being bored or something. And so, for me, the journey really is all about just going for it and knowing that your worst-case scenario, you still can fall back on what you already have.

I love that outlook on failure too. And I think that during this time where people have been locked down, I mean, I know in Utah, it's not It doesn't seem to be as locked down as it has been here in California. But my gosh, it has just really shifted my perspective on a lot of things about just the time is now to go for it and to go after your dreams. And I love your perspective on that about failure. At least, yeah, I'm going to remember that saying. At least you've got the pizza in the trunk and you can always do that. And I think some of my biggest lessons I've ever learned have been from my failures. How old were you when you started into real estate?

So I got into real estate when I was 23. So I was pretty young. I'd tried a couple other business things and had always been intrigued by real estate. But I figured if nothing else, for my own investments, I wanted to give that a shot. And so got into real estate and been doing that since.

Yeah. You've always been driven even from being a kid. You know, I read in your book about how you had to sell t-shirts or something for sports. And you were like, I'm not going to just sell 10 t-shirts, I'm going to sell over 100. Where do you think that drive comes from in you?

Well, that particular story, so I'll give you an example of, you know, I think we all have these moments if we dig into our lives and we try to figure out, you know, how come I'm wired this way? What is it that makes me, where does this drive come from? Because then you get to look at it and say, okay, am I coming out of love or am I coming out of fear? And when I'll tell a quick story, when I was 14 years old, so baseball was my life growing up. My brother Matt was the 2-time state MVP. Saw how, you know what, that affected our family and my dad, how much joy and pride and everything he took in that. And when I was 13 years old, 12 years old, we moved across town. I'd always been one of the best baseball players my age, but when I was 14, a lot of people had grown and I was a late puber kid. And so, I had not grown much. And long story short, I didn't practice enough. And I ended up having an experience when I was 14 years old. At the end of the year, there's this like amphitheater at the stadium. and they would announce the all-star team. And I'm sitting there with all my buddies, 14 of us, we're all best friends, 15 of us, whatever. And everybody's parents are there, their grandparents are there, and they start announcing the all-stars. And one by one, as they announce them, my buddies would get up. We're all sitting there together, you know, and they'd get up and they'd go get their trophy and their hat and everything. And all of a sudden, I looked down the line, there's about 6 of us left, 5 or 6 of us left, and there's one fewer trophies than there is of us.

Hmm.

And it kind of hits me. I'm like, oh no. Because I knew who else was sitting by me. They were all going to be on the team. And sure enough, they called up one by one until I was the only one sitting there by myself. All my friends, all my world's out there on the field together as the team. And I had this moment and I didn't know what to do. I was just so sad. I was like, I felt embarrassed. I could feel the shame of like my parents are there. All my buddies' parents are seeing that I'm the only one that didn't get called. And I'm sitting there by myself and I just started bawling.

Hmm.

And it was just this loneliest, worst feeling I'd ever had in my life. But in that moment, I had so much grace. I had this moment where, as I'm feeling this worst pain I'd ever felt, this abandonment basically of friends and everything else, I had this thought and it said, Jimmy, you didn't work hard enough, and that's why you're sitting here feeling this right now.

Wow.

And so, I said to myself, literally, in that moment, in that pain, I said to myself, I said, you will never feel like this again because you didn't work hard enough. Nobody will ever outwork you again. And that was the day I became an achiever, right? And from that day forward, I would never let anyone outwork me from that day going on. Yeah, that's kind of where that comes from. So, like, the t-shirt thing was 2 years later. I was on the high school team. I finally made the team and the coach was like, all right, we have to sell 10 t-shirts each. Whoever sells the most is going to get a pair of batting gloves. And I wanted to prove to coach that I was all in on this. So, this was part of just outworking everybody else. And, you know, we all came back and the coach, he said, all right, who sold more than 10? There's only a couple of us. And he's like, who sold more than 15? There was like 3 of us. And he had us count. The one kid had 15. The other kid sold like 18 t-shirts. He's like, Jimmy, how many did you sell? And I'd gone around the entire city for 3 days canvassing every house and it was like 168 or something, some crazy number.

Wow.

You know, and it was fun because I ended up starting my last 2 years on the baseball team, on the high school team, had an amazing time with it. And the coach gave me every opportunity because I worked and I proved that I wanted it more than anybody else. And so, I just kind of learned young, you know, doors will open for you if you outwork the competition. And so, that is why I have this insane work drive that I'm willing to outwork Wow.

Well, you know, such great lessons there. First of all, that you took accountability, that you weren't trying to—

As a 14-year-old, a lot of people would have blamed the coach or blamed the— and it was me. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't. And I didn't work hard enough. And I knew it. And that was the gift, was that I took the personal responsibility.

I mean, that is where it starts right there is the accountability. And that so much— so often people do want to put the blame. on the coach, or the parents even will want to put the blame on the coach or whatever. But you, I like how you said you had that moment of grace. And what a learning lesson for you. And exactly what you described is grit.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, you, your hard work and your perseverance, as Angela Duckworth says, that outweighs talent a lot of times. I know for me, it sure did. You know, moving to California from this small town. I most definitely wasn't the best dancer, but I took more classes than anybody on the dance company. I worked my butt off. I showed up and I proved that I was a hard worker. And that gets you so far. And just knowing, people knowing that they can count on you for things. Yeah.

I mean, I saw something the other day. The average worker that ends up getting promoted usually works about 10% harder than the competition. But that 10%, and they end up earning 40% to 80% more. But that 10% is when every day the boss comes in, you're the person that's in there working, right? Or you're a few minutes later than everybody else if they're in the office or whatever that looks like. But it's interesting because so many people nowadays, they give up their own power. And what I mean by that is, yeah, the gift of that story was that I took that responsibility and I realized that I was the problem. And you see today, people want to be victims. They want to fall in love with this story. Well, because of this, I can't succeed, or because of this, I can't do that thing, or I'm being screwed this way. But all that victim mentality, and unfortunately Tony Robbins says this better than anybody, he says, look, you're not wrong, you are a victim, it just doesn't serve you. And when you fall into that victim, you know, mentality, you give up your very power to change your circumstance. And you see it a lot with politicians trying to gain power is they'll tell people that they have become victims and they'll tell them that they can't control their own destiny. They need the government to bail them out. They need the government to do this for them. Or, you know, like, these people don't care about you, we do, we're gonna bail you out. But in reality, usually the other people just realize that you don't do anybody any favors by giving them these handouts and these bailouts and all these things. In some cases, absolutely, it's needed. But for the majority of the time, you really handicap somebody when you give them a cheap bailout. Popular one right now is college tuition, all that. And I get that that system is broken. But, you know, like, to give somebody this mentality of like, we can just excuse this responsibility you took on It's just at their own detriment. I had a meat business that I ended up having to fold up when I was 22 years old. I took on $125,000 debt, and my partner at the time, he had $40,000 debt, and he actually BK'd out of it. He was so distraught over it, he bankrupted himself. I worked off that debt for the next 2, 2 and a half years until it was down to zero because I borrowed that money, and so I had to pay that off. I, you know, had some houses that I had to sell and pay off some huge debts on. of houses I didn't even own. But the bottom line is, is like, when somebody's willing to take responsibility, what it does, what it did for me, is it gave me a confidence to be able to go for it in life because I knew my worst-case scenario, I could dig out of these massive holes. I could dig myself out of a financial hole or a business hole or whatever that might be. And so, I'm not afraid now to take risks because I know my worst-case scenario is I can work myself out of that and get back to a good place. And I think that's the true tragedy of what's coming out of you know, COVID and all this other stuff is people thinking that they can't help themselves, thinking they need the government to bail them out and, um, or somebody else to come rescue them. When in reality, you have everything you need to save yourself. You just have to own that. You step into that power that's yours.

Yeah. And I think that it's being creative to ways of doing that. And it's definitely getting out of that victim mindset though. Like, For me, I think it's so powerful, the stories we tell ourselves, the way we speak about ourselves. And even from something as small, you know, like for me, you know, I've got this nerve disease and I was told that I would never work again, that I needed to just get back in my wheelchair and put my leg up. And a lot of people would have been like, okay, well, great. I'll just be on disability forever. And I'm like, Yeah. No, there's got to be a way for me to work and figure things out. I'm meant for more. I want to do more with my life. I want to make impact. And so I started changing that story right away of I'm the victor of my life. And if I can't do this over here, well, then maybe I can do something over here. And it's just kind of figuring out different ways of doing it. And so I love the message that you say, just be the victor of your life. And there's always a way to dig yourself out.

Mm-hmm.

But you don't just dig yourself out. You dig other people out too. I mean, you have this giving heart. I watch your stories. And now I have to say, I'm a fan on TikTok. You're blowing it up on TikTok. Hello. I just discovered your TikTok this morning. And I'm like, oh, I got to get off his TikTok because I'm bingeing every one. You're like playing basketball. With Dennis Rodman. You do crazy stuff on TikTok. But the thing that touches me the most is you have this thing called the $100 Dinner Club. And I literally cry when I watch these videos that you share. You're giving back so much. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What inspired you to create this club and what's next with it?

Yeah. So, you know, the restaurant industry has been hit as hard as anybody by COVID and all that kind of stuff, and mostly from the shutdowns of the government. So I have been thinking of ways to kind of give back to that community. Me and some buddies own a taco restaurant in Las Vegas called Mas Por Favor, and so I'm familiar with the industry and kind of how hard it's been for a lot of people. But I— and so what I did is I saw a video actually that another realtor did where a couple went out to breakfast and they all left a $100 tip and they, you know, gave it to the waitress and And she was just bawling and I was like, oh my gosh, it like got me all choked up just like you said, you know. And I, I was like, well, I want to do that. I'm going to do that this week. And then I was like, wait, I'm going to do that every week. Like, why not? And I started doing the math.

Excuse me.

I was like, if I do that every single week for a year, we're only talking about $5,000. It's really not very much money. And so, I said, you know, I'm gonna get my friends together every single week and whoever wants to come, it's gonna be a great way to network. We're gonna meet like-minded people and we're gonna do this. And so, we've had, I think we've done it 15 or 16 weeks in a row now. And so, once a week, we all get together and we have dinner at a restaurant. Last week, we did it at Denny's. This week, we're doing it at the Wingnuts, the chicken wing place. And we just all get together, we have a meal, it's a cool little networking thing, you meet some great people. And then, at the end of it, everybody brings $100 cash and we give this giant tip to the waitress or waiter. And then, we film it so that we can create a movement around it. So, we've wanted to share videos of this. So that other people get involved. And what's been really cool is, like I said, we've been doing about 3, 4 months now, and we've had— I think there's over 40 groups that have done it in different states across the country now. People that, you know, saw it on mine and decided to go with it. And so we just encourage everybody, anybody that wants to, to do this. And you're talking about, you know, it's, it's funny because we— I do these things like the $100 Dinner Club, and people are like, how are you— like, why do you, why do you, like, why do you go out of your way to do these kinds of things? And the honest truth is, is it's just a really fun way to live. Like, it feels good. It's great. You go out, you have these experiences. It's hard to have a bad day when you're doing so much for somebody else. And so selfishly, it's a really cool way for me to give back and to feel good every single day when I'm doing this. I've really enjoyed being able to give back to other people. And what's cool is you meet the most amazing people. And just in this networking group alone, I've met new friends. I've sold houses from it. I've connected people that are working together now, all these different things that are really cool that come out of these things. So, that's what the whole premise of it has been, but we're gonna keep doing it. I said I'm gonna do it every week this year. And so, yeah, you know, every single week we find a day and anywhere from 12 to, we've had as many as 100 of us have gone out to dinner and it's just been a really fun way to kind of give back during the pandemic.

Well, I'm gonna be in Utah in May and I wanna go to one of those dinners with you.

Absolutely. You let me know and we'll make it happen.

Yeah. I mean, I know, you know, You know, when I first moved to LA, I worked 4 jobs. I got 4 jobs in the first 2 weeks that I moved out here. And 2 of them were waitressing jobs. And I remember I worked in this one area that was a really rough area. And these Hells Angels came in and they left me a $100 tip. And I cried just at $100 that they left me. And I was just like, that That can really make or break. Like, there were so many times when I didn't know how I was going to pay my rent or put gas in my car or didn't even know how I was going to buy. I was glad I worked at a restaurant and I could eat meals for free sometimes. But so I just love what you're doing. And especially, you know, me being a waitress for so many years when I was younger, that just really touched me. So yeah, I would love to meet y'all for dinner at your $100 Dinner Club. Like I said, y'all check Check out his videos either on Instagram at Mr. Jimmy Rex, or you can check out his TikTok, which is exploding. I have to ask you: This is kind of getting some off topic a little bit, but I wanted to ask you about social media a little bit and how you are promoting your business and and just all the fun that you do. So this morning, when I looked at your TikTok, I'm like. Dang, you just started your TikTok in like February and you've got over 80,000, like 86,000 followers. It'll probably be over 100,000 by the end of the day. But is it like, are you seeing business opportunities come from TikTok or is it mostly exposure?

I follow trends in social media. I follow a lot of smart people. that, you know, are kind of talking about social media and what's next and all those different types of things. And so I'm trying to just stay on top of it all the time. And so I built up my Instagram before anybody else was really doing that in the real estate industry. And I get about 40% of my deals from Instagram now. In fact, in January, there was a new development that went up for sale here in Utah. And all I did was posted a couple things on my Instagram. I ended up selling 31 houses in one day to like 28 different clients.

Wow.

And so I know the power of social media for business. I use it really well for my Instagram For TikTok, I'd never really felt there was any need to do it. Then, I started meeting some people, part of this group called the 100 Million Mastermind.

Oh, with Dan Fleischman?

It is. Yeah. Dan's a close friend of mine.

I spoke at one of his masterminds a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah. So, I was at the one in Arizona and I'm part of this group called the Avengers Group and I'm an instructor for them. It's basically a bunch of real estate experts that help train people how to invest in real estate. I was talking to people that were killing it with TikTok. And so, I knew I needed to build it up and I had a, you know, I know which of my videos have been very popular in the past. And so, I had this kid that's helping me, this kid Roger, and I said, hey, I need to build up my TikTok. I sent him like 50 of my videos of just cool things that I've done. And one of them is I sunk a houseboat one time at Lake Powell. And when that video originally went out, I put the Titanic music behind it and you got this video and the water's coming in and it's And it's just a fun little video. And so, we put that on my TikTok. And that's, if I'm being honest, that's kind of how it blew up. And so, we broke that out into like 4 or 5 parts. And through that, it kind of, my TikTok in just less than a month went to over 2 million likes and 80,000 followers and stuff. And so, I just, I had some viral videos already. And so, I haven't really started using TikTok as a business vehicle yet. I'm just building it still. But within the next month to month and a half, we're going to start pivoting and kind of using it for that.

I'm still trying to figure out TikTok. The reason I got on is because my daughter was like, Mom, you are too old to be on TikTok. So I was like, oh, I'm definitely getting on TikTok. I did a video and for some reason it had hundreds of thousands of views and, and my daughter pulled it up. She goes, Mama, they took the sound off your TikTok. And I was like, what? I was like, that's my original sound. I'm talking. So, I don't know why that kind of stuff happens.

No, I have no idea either. And it's, it's one of those things I'll never understand the algorithms. I just try to pivot and I'm, I'm very aware that I don't own any of these platforms. I'm just using them. And so, you know, you got to build your own thing on the side always, but there is opportunity in all this. And, uh, it's kind of funny, like I'd never even bothered to go on TikTok and I went on and I'm like, I see why people like this. Like, everything—

I can see why it's addictive.

Yeah, it's funny or it's inspirational or people dancing all the time and It's very easy to get sucked into it. So, what I decided, and this is kind of my theory in life, Amberly, and this is one of the reasons I bring this up, is you're either a consumer or a creator. And another word for consume is destroy. And the most godlike quality a person can have is to create, the great creator. And so, for me, I always tell people, if you want to make sure you're not wasting your time on these platforms, be a creator, not a consumer. So, be putting content out, be putting things out there, help people with what you do. So be a creator, not so much a consumer. That's the way that you can use these as a tool for the good.

Yeah, that's so important. And I actually really catch myself first thing in the morning. I never pick up my phone even though I want to, but I have my day where I can decide what my intentions are and what I'm going to create. Because, and even with my daughter, I'm like, okay, enough of the, you know, watching, scrolling through, time to go outside or time to make something, whether it's horse treats or whatever she's doing. But yeah, I love that. I think we originally met on Clubhouse. Did we meet on Clubhouse? Is that—

Clubhouse or Instagram, one of them.

Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to ask you, how are you feeling about Clubhouse? Is that driving business your way? Do you feel like it's a way that you can be creative? Or do you feel like you're consuming? Are you getting in there and making some deals?

So when it had its first— when it first launched, there was like a golden era of Clubhouse very early on where it seemed like it was kind of a really smaller community. Now you go on, you kind of just get lost. And if I'm being honest with you, I haven't been on in over a month unless I get called back to Clubhouse to use it as a business tool. I probably— it's just another social media that I don't have as much time for right now. And so I haven't been using it much. And that's why I say, you know, I have somebody running my TikTok. I'm not on there very often either, to be honest. I don't even know what's been posted for the last few weeks. I try to let other people do what I could do the same way because they're just, you know, and so I'm not using Clubhouse right now. I'm frankly, besides Instagram, I don't use much social media at all. Instagram is the one tool that is really perfect for me to be able to show what I do, to get clients, to share what I'm doing on a daily basis to help people with real estate. And so for me, Instagram is the tool that I've been using the most.

And I think it's important to find what works for you and stick to that. For me, it's Instagram as well, especially You know, with my book, I sold out at every book signing across the country because of Instagram and the connections that I made. I wanted to ask you about your book. I— what, what was like your inspiration for writing this book? And was it hard doing the Audible? Because that was a little more challenging for me.

Yeah.

And you sound so good in your Audible book. I'm not kidding.

Well, I went out and did a studio in LA. It's a studio that does a lot of the main audiobooks. I paid quite a bit of money to do that because I knew the power of having the book in Audible form. So I spent 2 full days reading that, you know, 8-hour days.

And what studio did you use?

I'd have to look it up. I don't remember. My publisher kind of helped me find them, but I took 16 hours to do 5 hours of audio. And so it definitely—

I hear you. I had no idea it'd be that long. Yeah.

You miss one word, they stop you and everything. The book itself, you know, I always wanted to write a book. It was on my list of things to do and I want to have a bestselling book and I'd done a real estate book that was fine but it wasn't like my book, you know. It was just I interviewed a bunch of other people and put the information out. But this book, I'd had all these amazing stories. I had all these amazing people that I'd been interviewing on my podcast that I knew in life and I wanted to kind of tell that story. But I was like, well, I'm not going to put a biography out. That doesn't make any sense. And so, I have a buddy, he's my best friend since we were 12 years old. He works at Google and he basically had retired and moved to Costa Rica. And he was like, dude, I love everything you're doing. Like, can I help in any way? I'm kind of bored down here. And I'm like, well, I've had this idea to do this book. And he's just a genius. He really is. And so, long story short, I recorded all my stories, I sent it all to him, and then he kind of put it all together in book form. And basically, we show in the book, we follow the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell, how he talks about that, and we relate it to everybody can be the hero of their own story. And then, I use examples of my life and other people that have inspired me. And yeah, it's just amazing how it all came together, but I really wanted to get a book out there. The tagline of my book is really the most powerful part. It says, the hidden dangers of living a safe life. And that's what I wanted to emphasize again was that back in the day, the settlers, the people that settled in and they built the community were the ones that felt safe. While the explorers were the ones that kept dying off or whatever else. But it's truly the opposite now is, you know, settling in is death to me. Like to settle in life, anything that settles ends up being, you know, like if you leave anything stale long enough, it corrupts, right? Whether it gets moldy or, you know, whatever it might be. And so I truly believe that like if I can inspire people to go and do things, that's the greatest gift I can give to humanity is to help them see what an extraordinary life looks like and help inspire them to do that for themselves.

Wow. Well, it's beautifully written. I mean, from the moment that it starts, it's an adventure. And so, I'm just amazed at all you do with— you teach others how to invest, you do speaking, you have a podcast, and your podcast is wildly successful. I had the honor of being on your podcast, and when I was on your podcast that day, I had so many people reach out to me and say, oh my gosh, I just heard you on Jimmy Rex's podcast. And I was like, what? Because, you know, sometimes you do a podcast and people don't ever hear it, or they don't have many downloads, but yours is wildly successful. Tell us the name of your podcast and where people can listen, and what inspired you to do your podcast. Yeah.

So, it's called The Jimmy Rex Show and I try to interview exceptional people living extraordinary lives. And so, there's a lot of people that, you know, maybe you've never heard of them or whatever, but in their field, they're the best of the best, or a lot of people you have heard of in the book. I've interviewed, you know, Prince Ea and Grant Cardone and Mitt Romney and a lot of politicians, athletes, influencers, and people like that. But each person has this extraordinary story. And so, I wanted to be able to Really, I get the opportunity to be around a lot of these people a lot. And so, I want to be able to expose them, to be able to, you know, expose these relationships to people in my life, people that maybe don't have an opportunity to spend a weekend with somebody like a Prince Ea or, you know, Robin Sharma or some of these people that I've had on my show. And so, through the podcast, I wanted to be able to share their stories and it was really fun. I mean, it's just kind of taken off and— And once you kind of get a name for yourself, you get a lot of people. We have a really big following now. Excuse me, I'm a little bit under the weather, but then we're able to, when I reach out to people, they want to be on the podcast. So, that's how we've been able to get so many amazing guests. And it's been really cool. It's been fun. And what's amazing is, I'll be somewhere where I've never met somebody before and they stop me and they're like, hey, your podcast that you did with so-and-so, that made me want to go back to school, or that changed this for me, or me and my wife listened to that and then, you know, this, or whatever that might have been. So, it's been really fun to be able to do that. And, you know, I say everybody should have a podcast these days or should have a reason to reach out to people that influence you. Have a reason to reach out to people that inspire you because all I do is I reach out to these people and they wanna talk, they wanna be on the podcast because it has value for them. And so, you wanna have a reason to be able to reach out to people and that's kind of what the podcast has done for me. It's like the reason why you and I have been able to connect, you know, several times. If we didn't have our podcast, we would have connected and then we probably wouldn't have had that opportunity to really get to know each other. So, that's the cool part is, We've been able to create a friendship because we both had a podcast and we're able to, you know, spend a couple hours together.

Yeah, it's, it's actually been the best thing about the podcast is just been able to, to connect with so many interesting people. That's my favorite thing is the conversations and the friendships that have been developed from, you know, some amazing people. And that is one of the reasons I started mine too, is so I could share these stories of struggles to success and success secrets of people like you, the most interesting man in the world. I mean, you've got billboards of you out there. And before we head out, there's one last thing. You've even got people tattooing their faces, your face on them. I was like, oh my gosh. So I want to know about that.

So are people across the Oh, what happened, it was kind of a joke at first. Joe Rogan always has people tattoo his face on them, and I saw that, you know, the other day, and I was just joking around, and I said, I was like, man, if anyone ever wants to tattoo my face on their leg, I'll pay you $2,500. Just kind of like a joke, just threw a number out there, and I had like 3 people respond to me. They're like, hey, I would totally do that for $2,500. And I kind of was like, well, I don't, you know, but there's one kid He's like, yo, he's like, this would mean a lot to me. Like, he's like, you already inspire me and I honestly could really use the money, man. Solar's been really difficult. He sells solar. And I could tell it was just different with him. And I was like, you know what, dude, if you want to do it, go ahead. And the next day, sure enough, he's like getting this tattoo of me on his leg. He picked a picture of mine from the Super Bowl that I was at. And, and he was in Dallas and I happened to be down there for the sports card show. I mean, some buddies are opening a sports shop here, a sports card shop here in Utah. And so, we were down in Dallas and so, we met up and got a little quick little picture and video with this kid. And it was really cool because he's 19 years old and he wanted, more than he wanted the money or anything, I could tell he wanted to have a connection to be able to kind of have a mentor.

Aww.

And so, this kid, I already, the guy I was down there with runs one of the largest sales teams in the country, literally. And he's the VP of sales of a huge company and I connected him with that guy. And kind of help him with some things there. And like, I know this story is going to end with that kid's life becoming substantially better because he did that tattoo. I'm going to make sure of it. But it was just kind of cool because this is a young kid that like, I mean, geez, he put a tattoo of my face on his leg. Like, it was so funny but like ridiculous all at the same time. But it's kind of cool because he took a chance on something and I'm going to make sure it pays off. And so that's the part of the story that I really appreciated or that I really loved was that like, okay, That kid would not have been able to meet us otherwise, and because he took that risk, he did. And anyway, something will come out of it eventually, I know. And I'm excited to actually follow the kid and see kind of where his life goes the next few years. But the whole thing was just kind of funny and kind of ridiculous all at the same time. And then once I posted that video of it, I had like 6 more people like, hey, I'll do that. And I was like, no, that was a one-time deal.

Yeah, I'm sure they're like, yep. And now, well, uh, there's like Like Mel Robbins had all of a sudden, you know, her 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 book and saying, uh, people are getting that tattooed all over them. You know, it's like been this huge trend. So I don't know, Jimmy, you might have a ton of people with big full-on, you know, backlit tattoos of your face.

Well, the beauty of this life is like, I feel like I'm just getting started. You know, it's not like I don't know. I don't know what comes next. And I like to say that life is a beautiful mess. My life doesn't need to be anything, but I've got a lot of direction of where I want it to go. And so, I'm just getting started. So, I guess we'll see. But it's fun. It's been a fun ride so far.

Yeah. You definitely keep it fun. I mean, and I always like to see what's coming up next for you. And I hope I get to see you in Salt Lake soon. Yeah. So, y'all check him out, his website. Tell us where they— the best place for people to find you and what you're up to.

Yeah. I post everything on my Instagram. And so, that's probably the best place to follow me is Mr. Jimmy Rex on Instagram. I do a lot of swipe-up stories or whatever, show people whatever, you know, if I'm speaking or having events coming up or any of the podcasts I release, stuff like that. So, the best place to find me is on Mr. Jimmy Rex. That's my Instagram.

Okay. Yeah. And there's his website. Y'all check out his podcast. Definitely check out the TikTok too, because I was like laughing at some of your videos. And, uh, anyway, I just appreciate you and sharing so much of your wisdom and your inspiration and your joy for life. You're so good to people and it shows your beautiful heart and all that you do. So So thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to finally getting to meet you in person someday soon.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Keep doing great things, and truly thank you for being on my podcast and for the friendship, and look forward to many more fun times ahead.

Me too.

Thanks, Amberly.

Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us this week on True Grit. Thank you for listening to the Unwritten Grace podcast. If you like it, please rate it or share it with your friends. That would help too. If you're not yet on the newsletter list, come over to amberlylago.com and jump on it. While you're there, you can grab a free downloadable gratitude journal, and you might just want to check out my book or even check out my monthly motivational membership. Thanks again for tuning in.

Thank you.

And we'll see you next week.

Bye.