Let Certainty Lead to Success with Jeff Lerner

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. Hello and welcome to True Grit and Grace. I'm Amberly Lago. And today on the show, I have a good friend of mine. He went from being a broke jazz musician to $50 million in online sales. He is the definition of resilience and grit and integrity. I have Jeff Lerner, and his story is inspiring millions around the world. And I know it's going to leave you feeling like anything is possible for your own life. He's constantly featured in news media. He's all over the world traveling, speaking. He's got 2 books. One of his books is A Hacker's Guide to an Awesome Life. And he's also got Millionaire Secrets: Things Rich People Know But Don't Tell You. He is the CEO of ENTRE Institute. And today, I'm hoping he's going to tell us some secrets about how he became so successful. So Jeff, thank you so much for being here.

I am thrilled and honored and flattered to be here, Amberly, and so excited to reconnect with you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Well, you know, I recently was a guest on your podcast. And the more I got to know you, I was like, oh, we're going to be friends for life. But I have to say, I totally got hooked on your YouTube videos. I love your YouTube channel. Y'all go check his YouTube out right now because you're going to learn a lot and you're going to see that he can play the piano. So I really wanted to ask you about your piano playing days. And I used to work in a jazz club, and that's how I met my ex-husband. My ex-father-in-law was a famous pianist. He played with Elvis and the Beach Boys and Frank Sinatra. Have you ever heard of Don Randy?

No, I haven't.

He's old school.

No, there were so many greats too. I'm sorry I haven't heard of him. I'll look him up though. I love Love me a good old piano player.

Well, you are incredible at playing the piano. And I feel like our stories, although they're so different, they're familiar as well. Because like I broke my leg, you actually broke your hand. And that must have been devastating being a piano player and breaking your hand.

Yeah.

So what happened?

Yeah. And it was arthritis actually. It wasn't like a you know, whatever you call it, a severe injury. It was—

Oh, it was arthritis?

Cumulative. Yeah. And it was, that's undiagnosed. It was basically in my late 20s. It started to hurt. And what I did have carpal tunnel syndrome ruled out. And so what was left was either tendonitis or arthritis. And it didn't respond to the way that tendonitis would have. So I just was ultimately left thinking it was arthritis, which is degenerative. And it was a function of overuse. I didn't start playing until I was 16. And so my, you know, sort of what some people would call work ethic, I would call my probably slightly Asperger's-esque obsessive qualities. I pushed so hard. You know, I decided at 16, I want to be a piano player because I don't want to have to get a job someday. And of anything I can think to do that I could possibly make a living at and that I, you doesn't make me miserable. Well, I like music. I might as well learn an instrument. And the piano seemed to be the one that paid the best. So it was just, it was very tactical. It was like, oh, I should do that the way some people are like, oh, I should learn to fix a car engine. But it's hard and it's competitive. And there's thousands of people, millions of people that would love to do that for a living and very few that do. So I actually dropped out of high school and started practicing 8, 10 hours a day my junior year, what would've been my junior year of high school. And frankly, by my mid-20s, I had probably played 20,000 hours of piano in 8 years.

Wow.

And there's a phenomenon, you know, biomechanically that I learned about, you know, once I started to have problems. Essentially, there's a huge difference. And this is true in really all physical performance, you know, athletics as well as the arts, the performance arts. There's a huge difference between starting before puberty and starting after puberty. If you start something after your body has grown and matured and kind of hardened in a way, you just, you haven't baked in certain movement patterns that, so starting at 16, there was, it was really an inevitability that my body was going to break down trying to push as hard as I did to play at an elite level.

Yeah.

You know, if I'd started 10 years earlier, I probably—

That makes sense. It's kind of like conditioning. It's conditioning. And I know that once you have a skill like that, it always, it stays with you. Kind of like riding a bike. You might feel a little rusty at it. But I hadn't danced, tap danced in like 10 years. And I put my tap shoes on and I was able to do a couple of moves.

Yeah. To the average person, you're probably still a pro.

Well, I don't know about that, but thank you. Yeah. Well, you, I think that your combination of your really super high IQ, okay, I can just tell you're smart, and your grit. You know, when I was growing up, my dad used to always say, you know, well, I'd rather you have street smarts than book smarts. And I'm like, well, I would rather have both. But I think a combination of all of those things and you being really good with people is like a superpower for you. I mean you've done incredible work. But I wanted to ask you, where do you think that you have this grit or this passion in you? Because you are a really hard worker. Where do you think that comes from? Is that something that you grew up and was instilled in you? Did it come from something that happened to you as a kid? Where do you think that came from?

So do you want the feel-good answer or do you want the painful answer?

Well, I think behind every highly successful person that there is some sort of pain point that pushed them to where they are today. So I want to, we get real raw and gritty here. So lay it on me.

All right. So you want true grit and grace. I'll talk about the grit. Hopefully, your audience will cut me some grace. So here's the thing. I think that hard work as a strategy was modeled for me by my parents. My mom was one of, I think she was the second female partner at one of the biggest law firms in the country. My dad was a self-made businessman, became a money manager, managed money for high net worth people. I mean he managed multi, you know, $10 million, $100 million accounts. He managed money for billionaires despite the fact that he was dyslexic. And he never finished graduate school. You know, he didn't have an MBA in a world where everyone he competed with did. He was just very, very good at the emotional and psychological side of investing. And he understood people. But regardless, they worked really hard. That happened. I grew up watching it. And I thought, okay, when you work hard, sustained over long periods of time, good things can happen. But where I think I took it to another level, and I'm honest enough to say I do believe I have a gear that I operate in that most people don't in my experience came out of a lot of bona fide pain. I was born with a genetic condition. And I was told about, I mean look, people have genetic conditions, right? Some people have hemophilia. Some people have craniofacial. Some people have Down syndrome. It's like shit happens in your chromosomes, right?

Yeah.

Sometimes it's inherited. Sometimes it's a mutation. But I think there's a way to let children understand what's going on with themselves depending on where they are. And I think in my case, I probably understood at an earlier age than was really healthy that I was genetically different because that made it possible for me to take a lot of experiences that happened to me at an early age and convert them instead of just having them be experiences that I observed, I converted them into an identity that I lived because I said, oh, that must be happening because I'm fundamentally different. And so I got bullied a lot as a kid, but I was never able to make it, oh, I'm getting bullied because they're bullies. It was I'm getting bullied because I'm genetically defective.

Oh, wow. So it just reinforced that belief that you were defective. Something was wrong with you, that it must be you.

Exactly. And so I grew up thinking, okay, I don't feel attractive. I feel ugly. I feel, and you can, I mean I think we could talk about this. I felt disfigured. Right? I mean I know you have an injury that we've talked about some of those same types of emotions. And I felt like the only way that I was going to be loved or even respected or even just treated well was that I was going to have to outperform people and I was going to have to earn it.

Yeah.

And frankly, I was going to have to impress people. And so I took that strategy of hard work coupled with a reasonable, what I recognized was an intellectual capacity, which was kind of the first thing that I felt validated. You know, nobody was saying, oh, he's such a good-looking kid or oh, he's so good at sports. But they were saying, oh, he did finish his math test before the other kids.

Yeah.

So I'm like, oh, I get recognized for that. If I work really hard, and I focus on, you know, cognitive and intellectual pursuits and ultimately artistic pursuits because I wasn't an athlete and I hated school, then I can earn my way. I can work my way into feeling okay in this world, which is a really hard way to live, frankly.

It is. And you know what? I did the same thing. I became an overachiever. So everything that you're sharing really resonates. I get that on like a deep A deep level. And it is a really hard way to live. It's a lot. And it's a lot for a young— when you're young. I mean, it's a lot at any age. But when you're young and you're going through puberty and you're getting bullied as well, that's a really tough thing to go through. Did you have anybody to talk to about this? Or did you confide in anybody about how you were feeling?

I was an only child, which I, again, at a relatively early age, I found out that the reason I was an only child was because my parents had essentially only wanted to gamble one time on having a kid based on my genetic makeup which only reinforced, you know, the identity challenge. It's like, oh, I'm so defective they could only take the chance of making one of me basically. And so I didn't have any siblings. And I went, you know, in terms of people to talk to, I mean I talked to my parents. But, you know, it was just a different time. Like there weren't strategies. And my parents were deeply loving people. But as I came to learn later through counseling and therapy and parenting classes, wanting to be a good parent for my own children, you know, you reach an age pretty early in life, and I think this age gets younger and younger in the modern world where your parents are not the primary influence in your life. Like the average 12 to 14-year-old kid, his parent, his or her parents are not the primary influence no matter how good and proactive of parents they are because social media especially, but even, you know, even younger, they just, their friends and their peers have so much more access to them than their parents do.

Yeah. And I know my mom and dad, I spent more time with my track coach and my dance teacher. And they were incredible role models for me. And, you know, think about the kids now. I see, oh my goodness, I can't believe what my 13-year-old knows. And I'm like, where did you learn that? And she's not even, thank goodness, she's mostly on the back of a horse. She's a horseback rider. So mostly she's outside riding a horse all day for hours at a time. But she watches TikTok. She watches YouTube. And she learns. She learns a lot of good stuff. But then there's some things I'm like, oh my goodness, how did you learn that? You know? She learned, she knows so much more than I did at her age about worldly things that I knew nothing about. And I think that's a lot of social media. When you dropped out of school, were your parents supportive of that?

Yeah. So the first time I realized I was pretty good at sales was when I got my parents on board with the idea of me dropping out of high school.

Wow.

I mean I sold, and bear in mind, this is—

And did you drop, wait, did you drop out because of the bullying or because you just hated school and you wanted to take piano?

I dropped out because I hated school. At that point, I wouldn't say I was getting bullied a lot because I was so withdrawn. And I had some really good friends at the old school. So my sophomore year, I actually got kicked out of that high school because I was just such a problem disciplinary problem because I just hated, I just resented. To be honest, I've just had a problem with authority my whole life. I'm like, you are not qualified to tell me what to do. And I'm better at chemistry than you are. I speak Spanish better than you do. So I don't respect you. And so I'm not, I'm just not going to follow your dumb rules. It's just kind of, I mean I'm a lot more normalized now. But as a kid, that's how I was. So I got booted out of that school. Then my junior year, I was sick the first semester. I had mono. And I was like, screw this. I can't go to class. I can't make a friend. I can't, I was at a new school, but I couldn't, I literally couldn't make a friend because I was sick and I was contagious. So I found this old music building that had a piano in it. And they had built a new music building on this campus. And so I just started going to the old music building every day where there was a piano and just in an empty room. And I started teaching myself to play by ear.

Wow.

And then to read music. And I realized like, oh my gosh, I don't ever want to go back to class. Like I'm actually happy doing this. And I know there's people that make a living at it. Whether I end up being Elton John or not, you know, I'm more interested in could I do, you know, could I patch together a dueling pianos gig here and a cocktail party there and a wedding gig over here and a club gig over there and actually just survive and not have to report to a boss or a job every day? And as soon as it clicked that I might have the talent to be able to pull that off, I worked really hard. Like I was done with school. But I just went to my parents and I was like, listen, what do you want from me? Like you only had one kid. You put all your eggs in one basket. When you're old and you're looking back on your life, what's going to have made this a really successful endeavor for you having a kid? And they're like, we just want you to be happy. We want you to— and I said, okay, well, let me tell you what happy Jeff looks like. And it was not staying in school and it was not going to college and it was not getting a job and it was not working 40 years to try to build up a 401 and get punked around by bosses while I tried to climb the ladder. That just, that wasn't going to be the picture of my happiness. So they were on, they kind of had nowhere to go. They're like, all right, well, you're going to make your bed. You're going to sleep in it. You want to be a high school dropout. You know, let's hope the music thing works out because if not, you're going to start on the French fryer at McDonald's. But my mom marched me up to school and actually signed the papers to withdraw me.

Wow. You are, I just can picture you talking to your parents and you're like, ooh, I got my way. I am good at sales. Like you had that entrepreneurial mindset from the beginning. And I think that too, like it's so important. I'm the same. Like I have to love what I do or I know I won't stick to it. If I don't love it, I know how I am and I know that I won't stick to it. And so I think that you recognized from a young age like, hmm, what could I do that I love that I could make money at? And that's kind of how I felt about dance. I was like, I can get paid to do what I love. And so I, I love that. But then when you started, you're a jazz musician, you're doing great at that. When you had, you know, started having issues with your hands and you couldn't play anymore, did you feel like the rug was like ripped out from underneath you? Like what am I going to do now? Am I going to have to go to the fryer at McDonald's? What the heck?

I did. But it was a mixed blessing. And I was able to make peace with it because I had realized by that point that I probably had the natural ability to be a world-class piano player. Like if I had actually started and taken it seriously at 5 or 6 years old, I could have been a Carnegie Hall piano player. Like I could have been one of the really great piano players, you know, at a high level. I'm not saying the best in the world or anything. But like whatever the piano equivalent of like playing in the NBA is, I probably could have if I had started younger.

I wish we were, I wish you were, we were at your house because Or you know what? They can just go to YouTube. If you're listening to this, I was blown away when I heard you play piano. I was just, I stopped like everything I was doing. I was clear, like in the moment, just listening to how beautiful it was. If we, you're, he's traveling right now and he's taken time out of his travels to be on the show. So y'all check out his piano playing and his tips for being a millionaire and a very successful entrepreneur too. But I have to say, your piano playing is—

Thank you.

Is beautiful. But I think that everything, it seems, has kind of taught you and built you for— led you for exactly where you are today. Because I know that when you were playing piano, you were playing piano at some people's homes that were, you know, successful entrepreneurs and stuff. So you had made friends with people who could kind of guide you in some ways. Did that help when you were going through this hard time? Or how did you start to begin to shift?

Yeah, it did. So through my 20s, as I started to realize I was never going to be as good as I could have been if things had gone differently, what it did was it planted a seed of maybe this isn't actually the thing that I'm meant to do my whole life. Right? Maybe there's some way I can, because, and I started looking at why am I doing this? I'm doing this because I want to have impact. But I'm terrified of connection. So like I don't, I would get, I had really bad social anxiety. I'm painfully introverted which you might not guess seeing all my content. But I've had to work really hard to develop that muscle. And I thought, okay, so I like to, but I'm not a misanthrope. It's not that I don't like people. It's just that I get exhausted. And I feel, and I've been told that I'm slightly like Asperger's spectrum. So I don't totally understand human action, human interaction in a way that makes it feel natural. So it's like exhausting for me to like schmooze. Right?

Mm-hmm.

And so, but music gave me a way to deeply connect with people and be felt and be, you know, people would crowd around and they would sing and they would like kind of love on me. And I got all the benefits of social interaction without actually having to know what I was doing because I could play music. So I'm like, okay. But But if that's why I'm doing this, that's different from like, oh, I'm just born with a song to sing. It doesn't even have anything to do with relevance. And maybe fix some other things about my life because I don't really love being poor. Like I mean jazz pianists don't make a great living typically. And I realized I could start a business. And that became so blindingly obvious to me because I was playing in the homes of, like you mentioned, CEOs and I mean I played solo piano for small dinner events with less than 50 or even sometimes less than 20, even sometimes less than 10 people in the homes of half a dozen billionaires and probably 50 deca or centimillionaires back in the '90s and early 2000s. Right? So I mean I'm playing piano for like the guy that owns the Houston Astros and the guy that owns the Houston Rockets and the guy that owns the Houston Texans. Like all the sports teams. I'm playing in the owner's homes. And to a person, every single person who's got this life that, you know, anybody would go, oh my gosh, I would love to have that life, they're all entrepreneurs. They're people that started businesses. And I started looking at them going, okay, they have all the things that I love and some things that I'd love that I don't have. And they don't have to, they get to call their shots. They don't have to go like schmooze and work the ladder and play some dumb game they think is beneath them. And I was just so, so I started nighttime, I was a piano player. Daytime, I was an entrepreneur starting businesses. And all through my 20s, one after the other after the other, I failed. I failed at 10. Finally, in my late 20s, you know, what I have found in this life is that if you will just keep going, you know, one of my favorite quotes is from St. Augustine. It says, understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou may believe. Seek to believe that thou may understand.

Hmm.

And for me, the belief that I had chosen the road less traveled and that it was headed somewhere good, somehow, some way. And if nothing else, I was going to enjoy the journey a lot more. You know, at least I was, you know, what's that quote about, you know, don't be one of the cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Like I was on the field and I was living that life and it was going to head somewhere. And wherever it was headed was more desirable than the other place where I'm just Following society's plan and taking orders. Once I committed to that, there's only one way to commit to that. If you're not all in on that, you're all dead on that. And so I was all in. And so I started business after business after business after business. And sure enough, right at the time when 3 things converged, my hand, my arthritis got so bad I couldn't play anymore. My last business failure was so big that I was at what I would call rock bottom. You know, I was $495,000 in debt. I had 2 franchise restaurants that I defaulted on SBA loans. And I was just And I got divorced. My wife left me and it was like total rock bottom. But I also discovered the world of online marketing, particularly affiliate marketing at the time, which is a set of skills, direct response copywriting, the art of persuasion, the art of building online funnels, a little bit of technology, how to sell affiliate products, how to find good affiliate products, understanding the difference between a product and an offer and how to construct offers and how to do sales presentations. This whole world of digital marketing that was still in its relative early formation. What year was this? 2008. This was 2008.

Wow. Okay.

And that all converged at the same time, right? Okay. My wrist is toast. My business is toast. And I found online marketing. So what was I going to do? Well, I know that I'm good at a keyboard. So I just replaced the keyboard with a computer keyboard and I went to town and I did what I did when I was 16 and I wanted to learn piano. 8, 10, 12, 14 hours a day, pecking away at the keyboard, hunched over, giving myself a neck problem from bad posture. And 18 months later, I paid off half a million dollars in debt with affiliate marketing.

That's incredible. I was actually telling a client of mine this morning, I said, yeah, I'm really excited. I'm going to get to talk to Jeff Lerner today. He's just really, I was telling her about your story and how you got started. with affiliate marketing. And a lot of people don't even know what affiliate marketing is. And then just after learning how much, watching your videos and stalking you basically and learning about affiliate marketing more, I was like, oh man, I think I need to ask Jeff to explain affiliate marketing a little bit. And on all those times, people have reached out to me, would you like to be an affiliate marketer? Would you want to do this, be an affiliate for our company? This and that. I've done it once because I didn't want to push a bunch of different brands on people and stuff like that. But the one brand that I really liked that I did affiliate marketing for, gosh, seeing that money deposited right into my bank with me literally doing nothing for, to really promote it, I did one post for that thing, was nice. It was really nice.

Yeah.

But can you explain first of all, to others who might not know what affiliate marketing is, what that is exactly. And then tell me if you think I should be saying yes more to it.

For sure. So affiliate marketing is just a fancy term for technology applied to the age-old business of referrals. Right? A referral is just, oh my gosh, I have this friend, Amberly. She wrote a great book. You should go buy it. And, and I, my referral sends somebody to buy your book, right? But what if you had a program where I could, I could say, hey, have you heard my friend Amberly? She's got a great book. And they go, oh, that looks so cool. And I go, oh, you want to buy it? Here, here's a link. Go buy it. And that because they use that link, you know that I'm the one that sent the referral because it was a link that was unique to me. And so you're gonna go, oh hey, they bought a book. Here's a few bucks. That's it, right? It's just, it's just a kickback on a referral only because it's tracked through links. you can do it thousands or millions or really an unlimited number of times. And you can have an unlimited number of people doing it. And all the tracking is automated which makes all the money flow automated which makes it a super simple way to have a fairly complex marketing organism. So affiliate, it's just a marketing strategy. Right? And so I just did it a whole lot of times in a very strategic and intentional way. And there's a million ways. I mean again, you watch my videos on YouTube. I think I have, There's several different videos. It's, it's a bigger subject than you can fit into any one video. But, you know, I cover the gamut pretty well of like the different types of affiliate networks and different types of offers and where you can go and how it works and, and what all is involved. But to kind of glide into your second question, what I'll say is it's, it's not just about, oh, let me go find products and get links and push my links all over the internet with spam or social media or email blasts or whatever. Right? Because that's just a really good way to do it.

Because you see a lot of influencers, that's what they do. They've like, you look in their profile and it's all affiliate links for about 20 different products.

Yeah. And listen, if you've done the hard work to build a really loyal, large audience and you've built up so much goodwill and you've delivered so much value and you've built so much affinity with that audience that they can tolerate you posting 20 consecutive affiliate links, And go, oh my gosh, I'm so glad that Gary Vaynerchuk is telling me about what organizer he uses, then like great. You should do that. But you'll wear out that goodwill pretty fast if you go out there and—

See, that's why I don't do it. I don't want to, I don't even do, I don't even like promoting any products on my page. Or in fact, I will, you know, I've had the show for a year and a half. And I thought, I don't want to promote a bunch of commercials and ads and this and that because I really want to work on just delivering quality, like value, value, value, and then build my audience and then reassess and see what I can do.

I think there's a way, and this is what I got right pretty early on. There's a way that you can enroll your audience in the essence or the essentialness of the promotion. And I think there's kind of just generally a few rules. One is don't promote something that you don't genuinely use even if you didn't promote it. You know, for example, if somebody said, Jeff, you're in an Airbnb right now. How is it that you're like, what gear are you using that allows you to pipe into Amberly's podcast when you're on the road? I would go, oh man, I've got this trusty Blue Snowball microphone. I shouldn't turn it because then you can't hear me as well. Blue Snowball microphone that, you know, folds up real small. And, you know, I got this little stand and I travel with it in my backpack. And, you know, I've gotten it through security enough times. I know they're not going to confiscate it at the airport and whatnot. And oh, if you'd like to get one, here's a link, here's an Amazon link to grab one. If, you know, like nobody's going to get mad at me for that. Right?

Yeah. As long, yeah. I like that.

It's something I use. But let me say this. It's also You can enroll the audience in the idea that, you know, hey, listen, I work really hard to deliver you great content, bring you a ton of value. You know, this is a business for me. I don't have a job. This is my job, which means I don't have a paycheck. And so if you— I appreciate you as my audience member. And if you appreciate me, help me continue to do what I do where, you know, don't buy something because I told you to buy it. But if you're gonna buy something, You can help me by buying it through me. And that helps me continue to do what I do for you. Like nobody, I mean anybody that's offended by that conversation, you don't want them in your audience anyway because they're not a serious person. They're just looking for a reason to be annoyed.

Yes. That is true. Good points on that. And I'm asking the audience to subscribe and download right now.

By the way— Here's the thing. I'll say it for Amberly. Amberly works her butt off to do what she does. And Amberly, do you have some side job that we don't know about that pays you 6 figures for just showing up every day? Or is this your livelihood?

No, nope. This is it. This is it, y'all. Speaking, I'm going to start that again. It was a rough year through COVID. And I was like, oh my goodness. The speaking was all virtual. And Unlike you, y'all, he's like a vlogger. He's— Jeff is a really incredible vlogger. And he's got these very entertaining vlogs that he does. I really, it's something that my 13-year-old has like given me the nudge to do more. But it's really harder for me to sit there and look at myself and talk to myself on the camera. And doing virtual events and looking at myself in the In the, um, he's got a vlog camera.

So for those of you that are watching, I'm showing you my vlog camera. So here's, here's how you do affiliate marketing. You say, so I have this Sony, what is it? Sony Zeiss Vario-Sonar. See, I'm such a bad, I don't even know what the model number is. Oh, it's a Z, you know what? It's a Sony ZV-1.

I use a Sony ZV-1 vlog camera. Okay. Sony ZV-1. And you've got fancy little Is that the—

here's what Amberly's going to do. Yeah. Here's what Amberly's going to do. She's going to go on Amazon and she's going to search in Sony ZV-1. And she's going to sign up for the Amazon Associates program. And it's going to give her a link that she can use to send people to buy Jeff's vlog camera. And she's going to put it in the description or the show notes of this episode, wherever it appears. And now she's officially an affiliate marketer.

Oh, right. And then I'm going to just turn into a vlogger And who knows where that'll lead? Then I'll be some famous YouTuber. You never know where that will go. But you are—

I will say this. I love the vlog. It's a lot of work. But when your life is being documented, it pushes you like to live the life that you would actually want to live if people were watching.

Yeah. You know what? It's so true. I have to say the other day, so where my daughter rides horses, the trainer has set up like a little gym area in the back, in the dusty area. And I'm like, I didn't get a gym workout today and I like to work out every day. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go dust off that equipment and do what I can. I wanted to hold myself accountable. So I was sharing it with my audience. And as soon as I set up the camera to share that with them, I was like, ooh, I'm lifting a little more. I'm doing a few more reps. So you're right. It does hold you accountable. But we got off topic because I got a lot more questions about sales and stuff. Cool.

All right.

So I want to know some sales hacks. So the reason I'm asking is because I think that we are all selling. Kids, they're either, like you did when you were young, you were selling your parents on the fact that you wanted to drop out of school and you wanted to play piano. Whether we like it or not, sometimes, you know, sales gets a bad rap, but we all do it. Whether we're trying to sell an idea to our partner or we're trying to do an MLM company or whatever it is we're selling. Can you give us some secrets to how you can be good in sales or how you've become such a great sales leader in your company?

Yeah. I would, I mean I can tell you what's worked for me. I'm not a, I've never actually had a sales job like where I got paid for sales commissions. My first commission that I ever earned was as an affiliate marketer. And when I was trying to pay off $495,000 in debt. And by the way, it was federally guaranteed SBA loans, which means when you default on them, you're not dealing with the bank. The bank actually calls in its insurance policy with the federal government. And now you're dealing with the U.S. Treasury. Oh my gosh. So it's the same as owing half a— I was in the same situation I would've been if I'd owed $500,000 in back taxes. So like There's nowhere to hide. The government's going to come find you and they are going to get everything you have. And they're going to hound you for years and you're never going to be able to hide, squirrel money away until it's paid. I mean it's just, it's brutal. So that was the situation I was in. But I was a piano player. I'd never made more than $40,000 a year. So what does a guy that's never made more than $40,000, maybe $50,000 in a year as a piano player do when he owes $500,000? you know, to the government. He hustles, he improvises, right? He adapts. And so for me, what I started doing that was different than what a lot of affiliate marketers do is I put a phone number on my opt-in page. So everybody goes, oh, I want to build a big email list. And, you know, then I just want to send emails to my big list and make, you know, I'll sell a $5 product 1,000 times and make $5,000 or whatever. Right? I put a phone number on every opt-in page. So it was like your name, Your email address, and I would say for VIP access, give me your phone number. Who the hell knows what VIP access even means, right? But let's say a third of the people wanted VIP access, and they gave me their phone number. I would just call them up. Hey, this is Jeff Lerner. You just opted into my page, and I would, and I set up an alert system, so I would get fast notifications. Remember, I'm half a million dollars in debt. I don't have a whole lot of good stuff going on in my life. I'm sitting there waiting, and every opt-in notification that comes via email, I'm looking, and if there's a phone number, I'm calling them like right away. And I'm like, hey.

That is key is getting on that opportunity right away. That is key I think.

Yeah. And let me say this. I was in a community. So I started learning affiliate marketing inside of a community that had about 40,000 members in almost 200 countries. So it was a big community, worldwide community. Within 6 months, I was in the top 3 in this program as far as the amount of commissions I was earning. And consistently for the next year after that, I was 1, 2, or 3 every month. So I immediately put myself in an elite category of less than 1 out of every 10,000 people simply because I was aggressively looking to get on the phone and have conversations with people when everybody else wanted to hide behind technology and take the easy way.

Hmm.

So I was making 20, 30, 50, 100, at one point 100 calls a day because I was able to get up to 300 or 400 leads a day. And let's say a third of them gave me phone numbers. I'm calling every single one and introducing myself. Hey, I'll bet you never thought you'd hear from the guy on the internet whose page you opted into, right? And, and everybody would tell me, oh my gosh, I've opted into 1,000 things on the internet. Nobody's ever called me. I can't believe I'm talking to the guy in the video. And I would just ask them like, what are you looking for? How can I serve you? How can I help you? If I don't have a service that can help you with what you're looking for, can you hang on the line? Give me 10 minutes or 5 minutes to do a Google search. I am going to find a solution to your problem while you're on the phone with me. And I would go find something and as quick as I could, if it had an affiliate program, I would sign up for it right then, put in my bank information. And I would say, now I've got your email. I'm going to email you the solution to your problem that you just told me over the phone. And I would get paid if they bought it. Like I would do whatever it takes. And— Wow.

I am blown away right now. You did that that fast? How many hours a day did you spend on the phone?

10 or 12 when I started. I mean I worked 14, but you can't call at midnight. You know? And I even started running ads in the UK and Australia and New Zealand so that I had places I could call at weird hours in the U.S., middle of the night, 3 o'clock in the morning. I wanted to be able to call Australia where it was 7 o'clock at night or whatever. Or 6 o'clock at night.

Yeah. So you're always thinking about, there's not, everything is like, everything is, as Marie Forleo says, everything is figureoutable. Like how much, well, who can't, I can't call because it's midnight, but there's got to be somebody. It's kind of like that saying, it's 5 o'clock somewhere. There's somewhere in the world that you would be able to call.

And to be clear, I would call them on Skype. You could buy international calling minutes even back in 2008, 2009 on Skype very cheap. And I would call, and I had a Skype number set up as a U.S. calling number. And I would just call them on Skype with headphones.

And I still have a Skype account. I never use it. And they're still taking $6.50 out of my account every— I got to cancel that. So thanks for that reminder. I mean, does anybody still use Skype?

Internet, yeah. It's actually in the digital marketing community, it's not uncommon for people to reach out to you on Skype just because it's such an international— I think WhatsApp Has probably displaced a lot of Skype. So Slack has replaced Skype for actual business, internal business communications. And then WhatsApp has largely displaced Skype, I would say, for international chat and message. And then, you know, there's a variety of, and Zoom probably for video conferencing or Hangouts or whatever.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you shared how hard you worked for so long because a lot of people will look at you and they look at your life and they see how successful you are and they'll go, oh, must be nice. And they're like, they don't realize how you worked your butt off for a long time.

It's really nice. It's really nice to know that you've earned and you deserve everything that you have.

That is nice, isn't it? When you appreciate it. So, but you started your company, ENTRE Institute, and you had a webinar, you had, you know, a few subscribers. And now you have how many subscribers to your— well, first of all, tell us a little bit about your business.

Sure. So the really fast version is from 2008 when I started to 2018 when I started planting the seeds of what would become ENTRE, I had a couple different businesses online that were pretty successful. I was an affiliate marketer for about 5 years. And then I had a digital agency where I used a lot of the same skills that I had used as an affiliate marketer, only I started selling them as a service to businesses to say, hey, I know how to generate leads. I know how to convert customers online. I can help you do the same. And I started helping businesses with online lead generation and online reputation management and so forth. And I started an agency. And that agency was actually more successful. I mean I was a good affiliate marketer and I paid off all my debt and I, you know, did multiple 7, close to 8 figures. But the agency is really when I learned how to build a real business, a quote real business. You know, affiliate marketing, it was me plus maybe a couple virtual assistants. But like I could never sell an affiliate marketing business. Right? Nobody's going to buy that from me. An agency, that's like, that's a company. And in fact, I did end up selling it.

Yeah.

It took almost 6 years and I built it up to, I did about $35 million in sales over a 6-year period. I was the sole owner, you know, roughly 20% profit margin. So I had a great life in 6 years. And then I sold it for a couple million bucks to a software company that just wanted the customer list. And I started looking at my life and I go, okay, over the last 10 years, and I had another, a few other businesses here and there online and they were all reasonably successful. So I'm like, oh my gosh, 10 years ago, I was a broke, delinquent jazz musician, divorced, depressed, yada, yada, yada. And now I'm 30, I guess at that time I was like 38, 39 years old. And I'm basically, I can retire if I want. What happened? Like, you know, and then I started looking. I go, it's about the digital economy. There's this whole set of skills now and opportunities that are freely available for everyone, a lot of which don't cost any money or hardly any money to do. But they're not talked about in school. Kids that want to become entrepreneurs or freelancers or side hustlers or creators or influencers or just passion followers, they're just as marginalized as ever. School makes them feel just as ridiculous as ever. School still fails half the kids in the learning system that don't learn the way that school emphasizes through, you know, whatever modalities of learning. And like there's still all these problems that a different approach to education and a different emphasis on skills and opportunities in the market could be a really, really positive force in this world. But nobody in education is talking about it. So I started putting out all these content videos telling people, look, if you feel like you don't have the life that you want because of the choices that you made based on what you were told was the safe option in the world we live in, I'm going to tell you that there's a different set of possibilities. Here's my story. Here's what I've done. And here's some free information on how you can do it too. And I just started giving that away. And for almost a year, I was just making hundreds of videos to tell people how I'd done what I'd done. And after almost a year, by summer of 2019, I had had about 2 million people that had seen my videos on Facebook. And I realized, okay, and I was getting, people were like, okay, that's great, but can you teach me more? You know, they all want me to be their mentor or their coach. Jeff, will you mentor me? Will you coach me? Will you teach me?

Yeah.

Like I don't have, I mean I'm getting like 50 inquiries a day to be their mentor.

Yeah.

So I talked to a buddy of mine. I'm like, listen, man, I think there's something here. I think we could have like a new kind of school. I'm going to go hole up in a hotel room and make a course. And let's just see if we can sell it because I got a 2 million person audience that's been watching my videos. And that course was called the ENTRE Blueprint. And we sold our first ENTRE Blueprint I believe on July 22nd, 2019. So it's been just over 2 years. And we've sold, I don't have, I can't say this is an absolute fact, but I'm pretty sure it's the best-selling online business course ever. It's sold over 160,000 copies now in 2 years.

Wow.

And we've built just a whole ecosystem on top of it that has additional courses. We have a coaching program. We have live event, live personal development events. We have, we built a software company. So we have our own funnel builder software that you know, I think is better than ClickFunnels and the other things on the market. Like we've built a whole world now that's, I believe, the world's first all-encompassing school for entrepreneurs called ENTRE Institute. And it's absolutely blown up. We just made the Inc. 5000 and it's only been 2 years of product sales. So like we don't even have data. They're grading us from like zero to whatever. So by next year, my goal is to actually be the number one company on the Inc. 5000. Oh my goodness. Which statistically I don't think we'll have a hard time with. I mean we grew 4,500% last year from small to big. And we're just—

I know you will be. I just know you will be. I really do. I mean—

Well, here's what I'll say. All we do is what we teach. That's it. We build, we use digital tools to scale a business in a way that was inconceivable 20 years ago. And we teach other people how to do it with any business they want. And that's why we're good at what we do.

I think the first time I met you, you were just, you had just launched your software or another part of your software. I think you had just launched it.

Yeah. So we rolled out software in the first quarter of this year. And I think that's right around when you and I connected is maybe we were just getting ready to roll it out. But, you know, we took a year to build it. So again, you know, takeaways here, like, I mean you call it grit and grace. I'll call it grit and faith. Grace for yourself. But the faith, and I think faith and grace go together. Like you have to, you will forgive yourself your mistakes and your stumbles along the way. And you will stay the course if you have the grace on the basis of the faith that you are meant for something great. And I believe that every single person on this earth, you know, Oscar Wilde said, be yourself. Everyone else is taken. There's no one who lacks a unique selling proposition. There's no one who lacks a differentiating, you know, proposal in the market. There's no one who doesn't have a unique voice and a unique message. But what we have, and you asked about tips or hacks for sales. Sales, get rid of the word sales and simply replace it with certainty. Whoever is the most certain wins always. Period.

Oh, I love that. I love that. I love that.

And when you can start to see yourself as a certain bet and you'll bet on yourself and you'll bet big, you don't have to worry about the laws of probability anymore because the laws of probability are an aggregate data set of humans who generally don't believe in themselves. And so it's an irrelevant basis for comparison as soon as you believe in yourself.

Yeah. It's so true. When I launched my very first big ticket item. I believed in it so much that every single— and I got, at first I thought, well, I'll have my VA get in and talk, make a call and talk to them. And I was like, no, I want to talk to them about this because I want to see if they're a good fit for it, not if I'm a good fit for them. I like that. I know that it could change their life, but I want to see if they're a good fit. You know? And so I went in with like total belief in it, total. I knew that it could transform their life. And you know what? It sold out like in the first week. So that really is, it does take believing in yourself. And you do that by just showing up and doing, you know, practicing what you preach every day.

Yeah.

And so I've said at the beginning of this that I really think that you are the definition of resilience. But what is your definition of resilience?

Honestly, I think that resilience, if it's a word that you have to stop and think about or you have to try for, you've probably already missed the boat. You know, we don't talk about, oh, so-and-so is resilient because they just, they kept beating their heart. Or, oh, he didn't stop breathing. He could have stopped breathing anytime. But instead, he chose to keep breathing. Man, that guy is resilient. That's not what we say. You're human. You breathe. You're human. You strive. You're human. You believe. You're human. You aspire. You're human. You work. To me, even this, I don't know, it's how we got to a place where grit is not the norm. Look, most people in the world we live in wouldn't have lasted 21 days in the Old West.

Yeah.

That's true. They just would've got their asses tossed out of the saloon in like shot in the street. Like we've just, to me, it's just about what influences are you allowing to determine how you think? If you limit your influences to the set of resilient, gritty people and ideas that exist in the world and let that be what forms you, then it won't be this special magical thing you have to aspire to to be resilient. You just won't be like most of the world because you're not allowing most of the world to influence That is powerful.

And that's why I hang out with you. That's like I want to spend time, more time with you. You're awesome. I know we're running out of time, but I have one more question, 2 more questions if you have time. Sure.

I do.

So I know you have an ultimate millionaire morning routine. I would like to know what your morning routine is. I mean I know you, and you look like it. If y'all are just listening to this on the podcast, if you see Jeff, you'll know what I'm saying. He's a fit dude. He's very, he works out. But what's your morning routine?

So, it's interesting you ask that because I actually changed it 2 months ago. So, when I started ENTRE, which was roughly September 2018 is when I started putting this content out, one of the things I was really committed to was I don't ever want anybody to say, oh, well, you were able to be successful with this ENTRE thing. And again, it wasn't called ENTRE at first. But as the idea evolved and like I'm going to create a school and I'm going to sell courses and we're going to build an institute here, I don't want anybody able to say, oh, well, that doesn't really count as a startup because, you know, you were rich to begin with or you had a bunch of friends and you just called your friends and like you had all these advantages. So A, I wasn't that rich, first of all. A lot of people think $1 million is like so much money. Like You know, not when you're like 38 and you're like, well, should I retire? Well, no, I'm just going to be in like lower middle class for the rest of my life. No.

Like— Or if you live in LA, you can't even hardly buy a house for that.

Yeah. You still need a roommate or something. And so I gave myself a $20,000 budget to start ENTRE. And the other thing I did is I said, I'm going to be a living example. I'm going to be a daily testimony. This is why I put out so much content. This is why I started a vlog and all this other stuff. of what it really takes for the average person who has no advantages just like me when I started to be successful in this world. And I put myself on a routine that was like full-on Navy SEAL, David Goggins level intensity. And I did it and I ran it and I didn't miss a day for almost 3 years until beginning of June of this year when I finally reached a point. I said, you know what? I have 200, you know, close to 200 employees. I'll probably do $100 million in sales this year. I think I can sleep in a little bit if I want to because I've proven my point and it doesn't actually have to be this hard. So the routine you're asking about is what I did for almost 3 years straight when I was building ENTRE from nothing to the largest non-venture-backed private education company in the world in less than 3 years on a $20,000 startup budget that I put on a credit card.

Yeah.

And just coupled with a whole lot of hard work. Right? And that was I got up at 3:30.

3:30?

I got up at 3:30. I was at the gym by 4:30.

What time did you go to bed?

10:30. So I'd get up at 3:30. I was at the gym by 4:30. I was, I worked out for an hour. So by 5:40, the gym, my office is pretty close to the gym. I'd be at the office by 5:40. I'd practice piano for an hour till 6:40. Then I'd be home by 7. Then I'd shower. My kids would be up by 7:20, 7:30. I'd spend 30 minutes to an hour with them. I always take my daughter, one daughter to school. Then I'd be at the office by about 8 or sometimes 8:30 if I didn't have a call till 9. Then I'd work till 5 or 6. Then I'd go home, eat dinner. And I had all my meals preplanned and I'd cook all my, I'd prepare all my food on Sundays and Thursdays for the, like I lived like a machine.

Yeah.

for 3 years because I just wanted to prove to people what's possible. And the reason I think this is significant, it's interesting we're having this conversation. I just, just right before our conversation, I interviewed a guy named Chris Voss on my show who has a book called Never Split the Difference. And he was the lead hostage negotiator for the FBI for over a 24-year career with the FBI. And it was interesting because talking to him, he had that same experience of 3 years. where he got, he went into law enforcement at 23 and he was in the FBI negotiating hostage crises or training to by 26.

Wow.

And he just said, for those 3 years, I was relentlessly excellent and better than my peers. And it only took him 3 years to go from being rookie Kansas City beat cop to the best on the SWAT team in the Kansas City police force applying to the New York City office or applying to Quantico and ultimately working in the New York City Department of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 3 years.

Well, you know what?

Because he was relentlessly excellent for 3 years. And so was I.

And that's why. 3 years it's been since I launched my book and just nonstop, like saying yes to everything, like not sleeping in ever. And just recently in the past 2 weeks, I was like, you know, I think I can just take my foot off the accelerator a little bit. And I even have a sticky note, find joy in the journey. Not that I haven't found joy in the journey, but to really like, ah, I think I've proved it. Like you can go far when you really put the work into it. Your hard work puts you where your blessings can find you. But I tell you, me getting up at 4:45 in the morning, I feel like a loser now compared to 3:30 in the morning.

Well, now I get up, when I'm in town, I get up at 4. And the reason I picked, I knew that for June and July, I was going to be traveling for about 2/3 of those 2 months. And it's, I mean just traveling is hard. I've been taking red eyes and flying all over the country. So I finally gave myself permission in the beginning of June this year to say, okay, I made my point. And then, you know, I'm kind of taking the summer off. I think when September hits and the kids go back to school, I'm going to recalibrate around a 4:30 wake-up time. But I'm still going to go to the gym. I'm still going to play piano. I'm still going to work my butt off. I might knock off at 5 instead of 6. I might get 6 or 7 hours of sleep instead of 5. But I just, people want it to be easy and it just ain't. But like—

Yeah.

But it is easy because what's the alternative? Like 40 years of a job you don't love? Yeah.

I would much rather, I would rather work hard at something I love because to me, it doesn't feel like work when it's something that I love. Yes, sometimes do. Like there are sometimes, like for me, the amount of time you spent building your software and your systems. And when you talk about ClickFunnels and I'm like, oh, because I think I've told you, I didn't even own a computer 4 years ago. So it's all overwhelming. But to be able to learn as much as I've learned in the past just 4 years.

But let somebody take note of that. Amberly, you didn't own a computer 4 years ago. Now you're a world-class professional speaker and social media influencer and podcaster.

Yeah. And you know what? The podcast just hit top 1% globally on Apple. So There you go. You just approach it with curiosity and put in the hard work and have good friends like Jeff to give you advice about affiliate links and you're set. But no, I really do want people to check out the institute because, you know, my youngest daughter is a little entrepreneur and I think she's got more of, probably will go down a path where she would really you know, it would, it would really do her some good to learn from something like that. Everybody's different. You know, my, my oldest daughter wants to be a doctor and wants to go to school. So definitely tell people where they can find your books because I know you even have a free download if you guys want to check out his website. Tell people where they can find your books and where they can find you.

So I appreciate that. And actually, I need to update that bio So the book Millionaire Secrets, that's actually not published yet.

It's not? Oh.

No. And that's my bad. We need to make sure that's clear in the bio. But we have a publishing deal.

Because you know what? I did click to download it.

Okay. No. So we have a free book, a free download called The Millionaire Shortcut.

Oh, okay.

And that's an ebook. That's a short ebook. It's like 20 pages long. It gives you the highlights of my story and the specifics of what I did and what you can still do in the modern world to start to convert this energy into income. And, you know, essentially how the digital business model works. That's a free download. And if you go to my Instagram or my YouTube, my name is Jeff Lerner Official on all the major platforms. And if you go to, let's say, Instagram, there's a link in the bio. You can get that book. But my longer book or my, I have a book actually with a major publisher. We're actually changing the name. It's not going to be called Millionaire Secrets. But we do have a book deal. It'll be out in the spring. It's the same publisher, not the company, but the actual person that signed, that did the publishing deal for The 10X Rule. Cardone is our publisher. So it should be a really, you know, good big book coming out in the spring. I'll let you know. I'll let your audience know or you know when it happens.

That is awesome.

That's such a good deal. Let me just say that that was like the worst call to action ever for like here's how to come find me. I should've just said, go to YouTube and search for Jeff Lerner.

No, but I want everybody to find you. I think they will search for you on YouTube. But yeah, Instagram as well. He's on Facebook. He's on LinkedIn too. The only place I don't know if you're on is are you on TikTok?

I am. To be honest, I just, it's just so hard for me to, it's kind of like being an affiliate. I said, don't promote products that you don't believe in and use. It's hard for me to promote on platforms that I don't believe in and use. And to be honest, I just hate TikTok. I just, I shouldn't say that. I know I'm supposed to be a, you know, egalitarian social media expert, but I just don't like TikTok. So I don't, my team does some stuff with it.

Well, that actually is totally better. That actually makes me feel a little bit better. I just can't seem to get the hang of it. I mean I haven't posted or uploaded a TikTok video in 6 months.

Like I said, you asked me, remember how you asked me about resilience and I said you have to limit your influences? Inclusive in that statement for me is I don't go on TikTok. Like there's no content that I'm going to consume on TikTok in those tiny little 15-second bites that are wiring my brain to not have follow-through and not have discipline and not have long-term focus and not be able to you know, and only being able to process information in tiny little bits, that would rewire my brain to be less effective and productive. So I won't go on the platform. So it's really hard for me to utilize the platform.

Oh, that makes sense. To me, it seems like just a big distraction.

Exactly. If it competes with productivity, not only do I not want to do it, I don't really want to encourage other people to do it.

Yeah. I'm happy to hear you say that. Well, I will let you get back to your travels. Thank you for being here. I always love talking to you. I'm fascinated with your story. And I know that it's going to inspire a lot of people. They're going to be like, oh gosh, I have no excuses now. I better get to work and just get her done. So thank you so much for being on the show. And I look forward to one of these days getting to actually see you in person.

Oh, I know. Well, now that the world is somewhat normal again, I'm sure I'll bump into you at an event. But really, thank you. This has been an event. I'm so glad that I got to come back on Or come on your show and reconnect with you, Amberly. I love what you're doing. The fandom here is reciprocal. I'm, I'm a big fan of your posts and your content. I'm just grateful I got to be here to share with your audience.

Thanks so much for joining us this week on True Grit and 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, and we'll see you next week.