Abused And Left For Dead, Wesley Chapman Succeeded Anyway

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Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. Ryan Daniel Moran here. And welcome back to your Freedom Fast Lane Live Binge. Today you're going to hear the talk from Wesley Chapman. Now we featured Wesley not only because he's doing an incredible amount of good in the world by traveling to high schools around the country and mentoring kids who don't have a shot, who are neglected, who are being abused. Did feature him for that, but not only for that. We really wanted to highlight someone who didn't have a shot themselves. Everyone had counted Wesley out. Everybody thought that Wesley was really going to be unintelligent and amount to nothing in life. He was told that as a kid he was abused, as a child he was neglected and basically bounced around from home to home. No one expected Wesley to become a successful entrepreneur, to be a high paid networker or someone who had enough in him to mentor young kids. But Wesley did all of those things. He is engaged to a wonderful woman and the father of two great kids. He runs a successful non profit and has been a part of several incredible companies. We wanted to feature somebody who overcame unbelievable obstacles to show you that you have no excuses, you have no problems, you have no reason to worry, you have no reason to complain. You can create whatever it is that you set your mind to creating. Now we tried to highlight that among all of our speakers. Meet Gary Vaynerchuk. He's a pretty good example of that too. But Wesley overcame the obstacles unlike most people have to face. So if Wesley can do it, what's our excuse for not living a life that we're truly proud of? For not building businesses that really make a difference, for not leaving a legacy in the world. You will feel inspired as a result of this talk from Wesley Chapman and you will want to be there for Freedom Fast Lane Live 2016. We're highlighting a different charity this year and it's one that is making an incredible impact all over the world. And the story is just as inspiring. It alone will be worth the trip to Austin. But for now, enjoy the presentation from Wesley Chapman.

Now let me ask you guys something. Have you ever felt like there was something you couldn't do?

Has anybody ever doubted themselves?

Oh, okay, cool. It's not just me then.

Has anybody ever caught themselves, been self aware enough to catch themselves in a story, a disempowering story about why you weren't enough, about how you couldn't do it, about how your dreams were too big, about how you didn't have the programming. And there is some internal story about limiting you from Going to where you want to go? Yes or yes.

Our next guest has every reason to believe that story in his head.

Has every reason to have given up, to have quit, and to have never amounted to anything. In fact, he was told many times growing up that he would indeed never amount to anything. He was basically classified as a nobody. And instead of believing that story, he's become an incredibly successful entrepreneur. Clap that up.

When you hear his story. When he delves into his story, you'll see why that needs to be clapped up. Because he literally had every reason to be a nobody. And beyond that, after achieving success.

He now spends almost all of his time helping those who don't have a shot or have given up and giving him a different story. Now, I believe in entrepreneurship. I believe in capitalism. I can't stand government. I think it's the worst way to get things done and solve problems in the world. And because of that, I have a responsibility. Entrepreneurs, successful people, I believe, have an increased responsibility to take care of those who don't have a shot. Because successful entrepreneurship assumes that everybody had a fair shot. And let's be real, not everybody had a fair shot. And Wesley focuses his time on working with those who either lost their shot or have given up. And he gives them hope, and he helps them get back, and he inspires them to take their life in a direction that nobody else has told them has ever been possible. I've asked him to come share with us his story. Please give a Warm welcome to Mr. Wesley Chapman.

Well, I should just be done. That was a cool intro. Appreciate that, Ryan. So everybody think this event's pretty cool so far.

Wow. Let's try that again. Everybody think this event's been pretty cool so far. There we go. There we go. I know. The burrito coma, all that fun stuff. So just for fun, I probably know the answer. But how many of you have ever heard me on a podcast or heard me speak or anything like that? Cool. Fresh meat. Love it. So I've only done 400 plus interviews, so it's not a big deal, but I'm going to talk to you guys. How many of you? Before I get started, though, I want to do a little exercise. How many of you want to be a speaker or do speak or anything like that? Raise your hand. All right, how many of you are competitive? Raise your hand. If you don't raise your hand, you should probably leave. Okay, so I'm going to have everybody stand up, right? So everybody stand up. I know I won't do this a lot. Just every Three or four minutes. So everybody stand up. Okay. Yeah. She's already got to do a little stretching, right? Get the digestive system working. Everybody just kind of put your arms out, do a little stretch. I'm going to have you guys do a little exercise for me. I'm a very competitive person. I love to speak, and I have a few little competitions actually going with some of the speakers. So I want you guys to just stretch and just start putting your hands together and clapping. All right? Yeah, that's right. Did you get that? Yeah. Clap it up. All right, you can sit down now. So I'm done. I got my standing ovation.

It's perfect. We need to send that to Gary Vaynerchuk. He and I do a lot of speaking together, and we always compete. You guys didn't give him a standing ovation, so I will be emailing that to him in about 15 minutes after I get off stage. So my name's Wes Chapman. As Ryan said, I've been an entrepreneur for a while. I'm going to share a story with you guys, and we're going to do another little exercise and have some fun. So some of the stuff that I'm going to share today, I have never shared on a stage ever. And to put that in perspective, in October, I spoke 31 times. In November, it's a slower month. I only spoke about. I think it was 22 times. And then December has only been 14. So this is some content I've never shared, never shared, even on podcasts or anything. So I'm excited. And if it fails, it's your fault, not mine. So go through a little bit before I get into a lot of the pieces. I've been watching all of you. It's kind of fun to not be known, because I get to see what you guys are seeing. I've been in the Facebook group, reading the comments. I've been listening to all the speakers. I've been backstage with all of them, just kind of watching everything. And I've been thinking, what exactly do I want my message to be? Do I want to give them the secret to life? Do I want to give you the secret to making a million dollars in one day? Do I want to give you the secret to having more sex in your relationship? And I decided I'm going to give you the secret to all of it. Right? Isn't that awesome? And again, if you can't implement it, it's your fault, not mine. So I'm going to take you guys on a little journey as I was Going through life.

I found myself on a beach. And this was actually 5 years ago this weekend, which is kind of cool. Serendipity. And I was on a beach, a private beach. Spent a lot of money to get there. And I remember it as it was yesterday. And as I was on this beach, I was thinking about my life. I was thinking about everything that I had, everything that I had accomplished, everything that had happened to me. And I had this overwhelming feeling of boredom and being unfulfilled. Literally feeling like I hadn't done anything and that everything that I was sold was a complete lie. You see, I had everything that everybody wants. I had the big house. I had. I mean, the house was. I don't know the exact square footage, but it had bedrooms that I never went into. We had a movie theater and I think I watched like a nine minute movie in it. I had all that kind of thing. I had nine cars, I had a business. This is one of our locations. This is our 3D animation location. Almost 42 people are in here, if you count the imacs. I was one of the top buyers of imacs. It was really fun. I was competing with some schools, universities on buying computers. And even at that level, just so you guys know, you don't get awesome discounts with Apple. It really annoyed me, but I had it all. I mean, I was literally a bad. A. Right? So. Oh yeah, that is not me. But it should have been. But I had the cars, I had all the fun stuff. But being on this beach and thinking about my life, it didn't matter. Like something was off. I didn't know what it was. And so I did something really crazy. I started thinking at that beach about all the aspects of my life and. And I started thinking about my childhood and I started thinking about what I had gone through. That is one sexy little boy. So I grew up to be even hotter. But I started thinking about my life and I started thinking about. I had done everything that everyone said, if you do this, you will be happy. I had also done everything that they said I would never be able to do at one. Well, actually I was three months old. I was given a diagnosis of failure to thrive. Now I figured everybody knew what this meant. So I've given a lot of keynotes and presentations and people have come up and like, I didn't know what failure to thrive meant. I'm like, oh, crap, that's on me. So let me tell you what it means. Failure to thrive in an infant means two things. Number one, nutritional. You're not eating enough. Okay. That's pretty basic. The other part of it is you're not being loved. You're not getting attention. You're crying in your crib and nobody's coming to you. At three months old, I was diagnosed with failure to thrive.

At one year old, my biological father took off. So it was just my mother and I and my little brother who was handicapped. And I'll talk about my siblings here in a little bit. But that was it. He left. I didn't see him again for a while. And it was just my mom and I and she.

She was a teen runaway. My dad was an ex con drug addict. They both suffered with some different things. And so I started going into the hospital a lot. About every three to four months I was going into the hospital, diagnosed with something even at a young infant age. And every time I'd go in, they'd say, he's not going to make it. My brother before me that isn't here on this earth was the smallest baby ever born to live past 15 days. He lived 30 days. For any of you that follow the media and live in Denver, you may have heard of the story. He was famous. He was on the news all the time and actually kind of sparked my dad's itch to be on tv. So all the time I was in different facilities and every time I was told I was never going to make it. And my mom remarried, she moved out of Colorado, she moved to Utah and she remarried and she married a very dark individual. This individual was a pro at abusing children. And abuse is a word that I use because it just kind of encapsulates everything. To get real with you guys, it was torture. We were chained up to chain link fence fences in the middle of the summer as punishment, left out for hours at a time. We were forced to stay in dog houses with dog collars around our necks and eat out of dog food. And when I say we, at this point in my life, I had my biological little brother and then I had two step siblings.

At four years old, there was a situation where my mom and him took off for an extended period of time. Different reports say different things, but the memory and the reality of it is that they were gone long enough that I was changing diapers and feeding my siblings. So I grew up really, really fast. It was something that I didn't want, but it's something that was happening. I was also sexually abused. This always sounds weird, and I say it even though I've said it a thousand times. Your stereotypical Hollywood sexual abuse. You know, bunk beds, guy comes in shadow. That happened. But also he would use public forms of sexual abuse. His brothers would stand in circles around my brother and I and see how he could get us drunk, how he could arouse us with pornography, all sorts of different things. It was a horrific childhood. And because of this, I started acting out and I got a visit. This is one of about three photos on the planet of my father and I. And this is my father and my three stepbrothers. Current count, I believe I have 16 or 17 siblings, of which half of them are no longer on the planet. And my father came for one weekend in this photo. I am almost four years old. He came for one weekend and that was it. I didn't see him again until I was 26, when I reached out to him. That's another story. But after this weekend, I did something that nobody understood except for me. And that was I was crying out for help. And that help was I. I attempted suicide for the first time, which would. By my 16th birthday, if you guys follow my bio, I had attempted suicide over 12 documented times. Now it's documented. There were many more that were undocumented. But at four and a half years old was my first documented suicide attempt. Now, this started getting your systems wondering what the heck's going on, Right? The Child Protective Services, all this fun stuff. So they stepped in, they saw a dysfunctional family, they saw a dysfunctional genealogy, and they said, oh, drug baby. And they started drugging me. What I mean by drug baby is, you look at my biological parents. The problem is, it's in his head. Something's going on. We're going to diagnose him with xyz. So they did. And at four and a half years old, I started taking drugs. And I started taking a lot of different drugs, and they started doing a lot of different experiments. If you guys ever seen any of the Frankenstein movies, a lot of that stuff was used sleep testing, all kinds of fun stuff stuff. And again, every single time I would go through one of these tests, they would say things like, he'll never be an asset to society. He'll never accomplish anything. He'll never be anyone. Your only hope is this. Your only hope is that. So one of these hospital visits went in. It was a normal day, six and a half years old. They were messing with my meds, doing all that fun stuff. And this is a picture of me actually outside the hospital.

And one of those hospital visits, my mom didn't come back. I was abandoned at a hospital. And she was gone. And this moment, again, like I said, I grew up very, very quickly. And at this moment I started realizing, man, adults just suck. They just do not have anything figured out. And I've got to do something. So for a year, I lived in an inpatient facility where they tested me. They were trying to figure things out. They were trying to figure out what, what's wrong, what's going on, who is this kid? What are we going to do with him? There's a lot of different things. If you follow any stats about foster facilities and all this stuff, there's a certain age that you get to where you're just not going to get adopted. And I was getting very close to that age. Every year it gets worse and worse and worse, right? People don't want to adopt troubled little boys. They want to adopt little cute babies. And so they were trying to figure out what to do with me. So they had to have a diagnosis. So for a year they tested me in a hospital and I went through everything. Ink block, test this, that IQ test, all this stuff. My Q was below average, like almost non functioning. The ink blots basically said that I was like a serial killer.

You can laugh, it's fine.

The little things. They did my sleep testing, they said my brain was just too anxious. They diagnosed me with post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar. Then it was manic depression, then it was back to bipolar, schizophrenia, the whole nine yards. And I was basically told that I was gone. And at seven and a half years old, they gave me a diagnosis which again read failure to thrive. And the treatment was to put me in a boy's home to forget about me. Hopefully, through some aggressive treatment, I would come out on the other end and I would not kill somebody and I could possibly get a job. In fact, they went as detailed as saying I would never have a job, I would never drive a car, and I would never have a normal life, AKA a family relationship, anything like that. So I'm on this beach and I'm thinking about all this stuff. I'm thinking about my life.

There was one bright glimmer. I've never talked about her on stage like this. And I don't cry, except for two things. My kids, my fiance, and who I call Mom. This woman found me at seven and a half years old and did not believe the diagnosis. One person, one person out of everybody. Doctors, family, everything. She didn't believe the diagnosis. She was an older lady. She's 75 in this picture. So she's hot and she's Single, if anyone's interested. I told her I'd try to help set her up. So you've got to at least be making a million a year, otherwise don't apply.

But there you go, mom. So the.

Reality of her believing me was amazing. And so she fought very hard. She was single, this was in the 80s, early 80s, and she was a administrator at one of the largest hospitals in the United States. She had worked herself from the kitchen all the way up to the administration office. Women in the room, you know, we're always talking about equal rights, all this fun stuff. It's a lot better now than when it was. She is a beast, right? To me, there's nobody that's a bigger fighter. And she fought hard to get me and she got me on what was called a two week temporary guardianship. Ended up lasting for a long time. And there's tons of stories in that. But in that moment, she believed in me and she took me into her home. And I was literally living in doghouses. I was literally living in the slums. I was living this very, very, very crappy life. And first moving in with her, we lived in a private gated subdivision. Then we moved into a hundred year old mansion with velvet wallpaper. Like, I was in heaven. I was like, this is life. Like, this is amazing. I can do this the rest of my life. This is easy. Six months after she brought me into her home, two things happened. Number one, she got married. And then number two, she became permanently disabled. She could not use her arms or her legs. And it took her 20 years to be where she is now, where she can use her arms and her legs. But in this part of her life, she could not. And the man that she married was incredibly verbally abusive and physically abusive. And we spent the next 10 years of our lives living with that nightmare, not being able to tell anyone what was going on because he would literally choke her to death in front of me and say, if you tell anyone, I will kill her. So my life went from being like velvet wallpaper. This is awesome. To are you effing kidding me? Like that. And there was one morning that I'll never forget.

Breakfast became something in my life that was huge because I never had it growing up as a little kid moved in with her and she's like a phenomenal cook, still is. And she would make these amazing breakfasts with waffles and pancakes and toast and all this fun stuff. None of that even mattered because the best thing on the plate was the bacon. And I was in heaven. I down a pound of that every morning. No problem. Still can. Doesn't add weight. I've tried, but I was in love with bacon. I was in love with breakfast. And one morning I went down and there was no breakfast. And I was a little bit of a troublemaker. Even at this point. There are many things that I did that I'm not proud of. Some that I look back and think, wow, that was pretty ingenious how I pulled that off. When I'm in schools, I don't give a lot of things because I don't want to give a lot of ideas to kids. But I've done just about everything. I've stolen gobs of money, thousands of dollars, Learned how to pickpocket. I learned how to steal very well. I learned how to also almost burn down a 711 because I lost at Street Fighter. So I was really upset at 7:11. It was obviously their fault. Again, it's not my problem. That was my attitude. So, no breakfast. I was ready to yell at somebody, so I went running down the hallway, touching the velvet wallpaper. It was awesome. And I get to her door, and like any good kid, I listen before, you know, I go in and she's bawling. And I couldn't really hear every single thing that she was crying about, but I knew that she was crying and she was talking about, we're going to lose the house, we're going to lose the car. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have to send Wesley back, the whole thing. And I was irritated. I was incredibly upset. I was hurt. And I went outside and I sat down on a tire swing. And again, this was a mansion. It was an amazing property. And I remember sitting on this tire swing and just thinking about my life and also about how stupid adults were. And here again, they failed me. This was supposed to be amazing. It was supposed to be awesome. And in less than six months, it all sucked again. And I'm sitting on this tire swing and this insane idea comes into my head. Money solves everything. That's it, right? Mom supposedly dropped me off because she didn't have enough money. Dad took off because he was trying to make money. New mom can't take care of us because there is no money. Well, all you gotta do is get money. That's a simple solution, you dumb adults. So I'm go out and make money. So I'm sitting on this tire swing, and I start looking around at this property, and we have an insane property full of roses and peonies and lilacs and tulips and daisies and all this stuff. We used to have brides come and take their bridals in our property. It was amazing. And I thought to myself, every time we go grocery shopping.

There'S these flowers. And every time my mom buys a thing of these flowers, puts them on the kitchen table. And I was always incredibly frustrated because I was like, why are we buying flowers? We have tons of flowers at our house. Just go outside, pick the stupid flowers, put them on the table, we're done. Because the real important thing when we're at a grocery store is that we need to make sure to buy more bacon. And I literally had these conversations. And as I'm sitting on this tire swing, I'm thinking, you know what? I can solve a problem. Because if my mom will buy flowers every single time we go to the grocery store, what about everybody else down the block who won't buy flowers? What about all these poor suckers who come by our house and slow down if we'll spend money on them? Well, they're going to spend more money on flowers, right? That was my mentality. So I got on my BMX bike. For those of you that understand what that is, this was not my BMX bike. I don't have a picture of it. This is an awesome BMX bike. I would have a way better childhood if I had this BMX bike. But I got on my BMX bike and actually first I ran into the house, grabbed some scissors that freaked her out, went outside and started whacking her flowers. She was yelling at me because it was basically the last thing that she had left. Cut all these flowers, got on my BMX bikes. It was about 8:30 in the morning, and I started going from door to door to door and I started selling flowers. And I get home after a long day. Mom is sitting on the edge of her bed crying. She had just gotten off another phone call. Her arms are in slings like this. And I remember sitting down next to her, and as any good little kid, I had money shoved in every crevice that you could possibly put money. And I just started pulling it out and she started crying even harder. And now we've had conversations later, and I'm like, why did you cry? She's like, well, I was not in a mental place that if I had to go apologize to somebody for something else that you had done, I wasn't ready for that. And so now looking back on it, I know why I had to spend 15 minutes, convincing her that I didn't do anything wrong. And after spending that 15 minutes, we started counting the money. And it was $20 and $50 and $100 and $150. 200. $250. I'm not done. 300, 350, 400, 450, $500 I had made in one day selling flowers.

Right?

Well, that changed my life, because in that moment, I realized something really cool. I knew how to sell.

And I still think I could outsell Grant, but that's fine. So.

I learned how to sell. And I learned not just how to sell, but I learned all kinds of lessons. I learned very quickly that I could sell to women all day long as a little nine year old boy and be like, hey, want to buy some flowers? Flowers? Because your husband hasn't. You know, I'm just saying this is a way to tell him. You can say you got it from another guy. I mean, I really literally knew how to do it, right? But then I learned I couldn't do the same thing to men. But guess who could? Little Sally, who's a cute little blonde girl. So I started hiring my neighborhood kids, and I started employing them. Then I realized, wait a minute, Flowers have a limited supply. And there's some crazy stories. I had Memorial Day sales on flowers. We were making them in the living room. We were doing bundles, we were doing upsells. We were doing all kinds of stuff. You want to talk about direct response? Man, I had that nailed down. I knew what these people wanted. But I realized the flowers are going away. Then I realized I have a customer base. What can I do with that customer base? I can sell them something else. I already have trust. So then I started seeing that there's two cars. I lived in a fairly nice neighborhood, right? So there was two cars. And one car would always be gone, and one car would be in the driveway, and it would have little handprints on it, and there'd be like, suckers stuck to the outside of it and be all this stuff. And I'd go and be like, what? Your car looks like crap. Suzy, what are you doing? Oh, I just don't have time. You know, between ballet and this and that, I don't have time to wash it. And I was like, I got an idea. I will charge you $25 and I will come to your house and wash your car inside and out. So I did. And it's pretty funny because about two summers into doing this, we actually got a cease and desist order from the city because the Front yard of our home had too many cars coming through it on the weekends because I figured out that there was that other car, right. So the time that we washed, that was on the weekends. And we made the guys drive the car to us. So we were just. Everything was great. I was making money. And the story just continues on and on and on. Started a landscape company. And then I realized I hate to do heavy lifting. I also stopped growing thanks to some awesome pharmaceutical companies. And so I said, I don't want to keep doing manual labor. I want to get into sales. So I did, and I got into sales and marketing and I had the opportunity to do some campaigns for some of the largest companies in the world. I have patents on some of the coolest things that have ever happened. I've been a part of several firsts, both in the medical community, the technology community, the online community. You know that potpourri commercial that you guys watched earlier? Yeah. Those are some of my ex employees that worked on that. Got to do some really cool stuff, and my life was going amazing. This is a real picture of me. This is actually from a photo shoot from a magazine spread that I did. But you can look at this guy, right? It's not this guy. We're going to get into that. That was a $4,000 suit. That was my life. I was at the top.

But I was incredibly miserable.

And as I sat on this beach and I was thinking about all of this, everything I just shared with you, and a lot more. Tons more stories in there. As I sitting on this beach, I was just thinking, this can't be it. I've proven everybody wrong, which was a mission that I went on. I've proven that I can become something.

I've also done everything that you're supposed to do to be rich, famous, successful, all that fun stuff. And I could have kept going, been richer, all that fun stuff. But it wasn't making me happy. And as I started looking inside, I thought, why? And the first thing that I thought about were my siblings.

I got out.

My actions, my temper tantrums, they got me out. We don't know where two of my. Layla and Derek, we don't know where they really are in the world right now. Jimmy. We finally found about four. Well, I guess it's been about 10 years ago. He came and lived with us for a while.

But they didn't get out. Their torture continued until I was about 17 years old and I could find them. We do the court stuff. The dark individual that I talked to you guys about we were able to finally get some information and some proof. He had molested over 70 kids.

But the system failed that. He got out on a technicality and got probation and therapy. They ran away. I could not help them.

And as I sat on this beach, I thought, I now have power. I have something. But I'm not complete myself. So what the hell do I have to do to complete myself and have the power to go out and save individuals like my brothers and sisters? And so in that moment, I made a really stupid and awesome decision to leave the entrepreneurial world instantly and to go on this journey of finding happiness. Right? Grant says money can buy happiness. Yeah, it's true. Money can buy Lamborghinis and Lamborghinis can make you smile. But most people who buy Lamborghinis put them in a garage and say, wow, look at that really cool car, right?

It can make your life nicer, but it cannot provide happiness. And I don't care what anyone tries to tell you, it can't. But. But it can make life nice. That's fine. So I went on this journey and I started meeting everyone I possibly could. Every world leader, every inspirational person. I'd never been to a business conference in my life. I'd never been to a self help conference. In fact, I made lots of jokes about how stupid they were. I thought it was dumb. I was like the Gary Vee being like, you guys are all idiots for being at conferences. I'd never go, right. Even though he's speaking in them.

So love you, Gary. So the whole thing was that's how I felt. So I was like, well, I haven't been there. I'll go check it out. And I met some individuals and they said, you should be a motivational speaker. And I was like, sweet, yeah, I'd love to do that. That sounds great. And then I started doing that. I'm like, this is horrible. Only 4% of the room is actually going to do anything. No wonder you can offer 100% money back guarantee. It's mathematically brilliant. Like 4% of a $25,000 upsell and 60% of the audience buys it. And you only have to refund 4%. Sign me up. Right? That makes. That wasn't what I was into. I wanted to make a change. So I started giving my time away to children, to foster facilities, to youth detentional facilities. Even went and spoke in some prisons and thought, this is really cool. These places I was going to speak in, I didn't have to be politically correct. I didn't have to say certain things. I could say anything I wanted. And I had some really amazing conversations with youth. And then one day I spoke on a beach in San Diego, California, to a group of foster youth who had never really been to the beach first, and they were learning how to surf, which was just a really cool thing, right? And I gave a presentation, and in the audience was an individual who was connected with Jason Mraz and another up and coming star. And they said, hey, we're going on this high school tour. We're going to be speaking in all these high schools. You would be an amazing speaker in a high school. And I thought.

Probably not amazing speaker in high school, because I say things like, God and sex. I don't know if that's gonna fly. And they're like, it's okay, you know, we'll talk about it. It'll work. And so I said, yes. And the next morning, he calls me and says, hey, in two days we're gonna be at this high school. Do you want to come? And I'm like, well, where is it? He's like, oh, it's like an hour away from you in Southern California. And I was like, sweet, I'll do it. And like any good speaker, you want to know your audience, so. So I said, can you connect me with the principal or whoever does this? I've never spoken at a school. I'd like to just know what's going on. And so they do. The principal calls me and we have a conversation, and he tells me that 72 of the kids in his school that school year, this was in April, had tried to commit suicide. Three of them were successful. They had bullying that was going on so horrific that one incident was a child lighting another child on fire. Another incident was a child getting his face beaten in by a razor scooter. This is in southern beautiful California. Before the principal called, I was looking at, like, the medium income, the houses and all this stuff, and I'm like, wow. Like, the average house is $550,000. This and this. This will be pretty good. Like, yeah, this will be easy. So I get to the school with all this information, and it was a sixth, seventh, and eighth grade presentation. And at first it was supposed to be about 150, 200 kids. The principal went online and read my bio, and he said, hey, do you mind if we put some more kids in here? There's a couple things going on. First and foremost, I was terrified of, as I said, like, is Sally's mom gonna sue me? Because I'm gonna Say some things that maybe Sally's not supposed to hear. Are these kids, like, I've never spoken to this young of children in a kind of mixed thing. Like, they even gonna care about my story. Like, all these things are going through my head. So when he came up and was like, can we put more kids in the audience? I'm like, dude, I have two kids. Entertaining them's hard enough. Like, you have 150 in there. We're good. And so I thought of a really witty thing. I'm like, well, you know, that's between you and the fire marshal. And I think I saw a sign that said like 125 or something, so we're probably good. And he's like, oh, okay. Yeah, then we'll put more kids in.

I'm like, dang it.

So as I get on stage, and I'm telling you, the room was not even half this size as I get on stage. They told Me There were 750 kids in this room. And the stage was supposed to be something like this. And kids were like, right here, right?

And it was only maybe a foot high stage. So I decided to ditch the stage and get down with the kids and start talking. And they were sitting on each other's laps. And I start going in my spiel. And I'm trying to be funny. Like the night before, I'm googling like, jokes for seventh graders, you know? I'm like, what? It was supposed. What's funny to them? I'm calling my daughter. I'm like, hey, is this a funny joke? She's like, dad, that's so stupid. And I was like, dang it. So I'm totally nervous. I'm freaking out. And I start speaking and not kidding you. Two minutes into the presentation, I start getting heckled. Oh, you poor thing. Like, we all don't have fathers. F you, you stupid cracker. Like, everything you can imagine, right? I'm just like, where am I? And I brought my fiance, thinking that would be smart. And she was sitting in the front row, so I'm like, looking at her in her eyes. We have totally different childhoods, right? She comes from a picket fence life. Her father's amazing. Actually. Love the man. And I consider him my father now. So we fight over whose father it really is. Amazing family. And she's grabbing her hair and she's trying to make sure because I don't even know if someone's gonna throw gum in her hair, cut her hair off. It was crazy. You had, like, the mall cop guys watching the Side doors. You had teachers saying, sit the f down. I'm like, where am I? What is going on? And I'm a man of faith. And in that moment, I had this cool conversation with him upstairs. And I'm like, listen, bro, we got a problem here. We have two options. You cut the power or help me out here. And in that moment, I'll never forget it. And I say it a lot. I had this overwhelming feeling that said, this is not about you, it's about them. And to me, I translated that as f your fears. Stop worrying about everything. Stop trying to be funny because you're not, and say what you came here to say. And so I did. And for the next 18 minutes, you could hear a pin drop in this auditorium. Kids didn't move.

And I got done, and I was pretty exhausted. It was an exhausting experience. And I go backstage, and we're getting ready to leave, and we wanted to get going before Southern California traffic started. And so I'm backstage and I'm like, all right, honey, let's go. And the principal comes up to me and he says, wes, wait. And I was like, oh, yeah, you're welcome. You know, thank you, whatever. And he's like, no. And he parts the curtain and there's a line of kids lining the front of the stage and wrapping around. And he says, they all want to talk to you. And I was like, about what?

And for five hours, I stayed at that school, and I talked to every one of those children, and they told me stuff that. I won't ruin your guys experience here, but it was rough.

And Jody actually had to step away. And those that were a part of the event that had been doing this for years, right? This was like, I was just part of this circus of this nonprofit speaking thing. They told me afterwards they actually had to take three days off. I've never had a hangover, so I don't know. But they explained to me it was like an emotional hangover from hearing these stories and seeing what happened. For me, it was like, this is awesome. Like, I just am packed with energy. I could do this all day and story after story after story. But there was a common thread where I was finding that these kids had passion, they had something that they wanted to do, but somebody was standing in their way of making that happen. So I was like, hey, I'll give you one example. A girl and her friend wrote screamo music, right? Which to me isn't music. It's basically somebody screaming into a microphone and banging on instruments. And she wrote These songs about her life. And I said, hey, I'll make you a deal. I will get you into a professional recording studio if you make a song that's a little more Taylor Swifty. Okay? No. One better dog Taylor, we're done. So.

She was like, okay, I'll do that. Cool. And I started making all these promises. A girl wanted to sing with the Phantom of the Opera. I happen to know one of the Phantoms. Like all these things. And I'm just like. And Jody's like pulling on my shirt, which she still does to this day, and being like, what are you doing? You can't promise these kids this. And I'm like, honey, I got this. Don't worry about this now. These kids are going to do it. You know, four or five hours of doing this, I meet one little girl named Alex. If you go to our website, you can see her story. Talked to her. She'd never been to the beach, ever. Southern California. She was two hours, actually an hour and 15 minutes away from a beach. She'd never been her whole life. She's 14 years old. She had just gotten out of a 72 hour hold for suicide. She just tried to commit suicide. Suicide. About 85 hours before this presentation. She wasn't going to be in the presentation.

Again. The principal was only supposed to be 150. He made it mandatory. She had to go. She wasn't going to. That's important. I'll tell you why in a minute. So all these kids were start driving home after this experience. And I'd given them my email, right, do this, do this, then email me. And we're in the car and Jody's, I can't believe you did that. Like, all these kids. I'm like, honey, listen, I know how it is to live in this kind of a world. Most of these kids, we just gave them a little sliver. They're probably not going to do anything.

It was probably like, you know, 40 minutes into the drive when she got to say, I told you so, which she loves. And my inbox started flooding with people who these kids who were doing exactly what we said. Going back to that story of that little girl. She wrote a song. She sent me. Her playing it, you know, like recorded on her phone. She sent that to me and I was like, oh, crap, I have a lot of promises. Alex made some deals with her. She started doing those and I was like, wow, we got to go to the beach with some kids. We got to get the Phantom. We got to get this. We got to get this and that night, I started figuring out how I was going to do it. I guess to grant thing like over commit and figure it out. Yeah, I did that. But this wasn't about money. This was about kids and lives. And so in that moment, this was on April 8th. In that moment, I started racking my brain. Who do I know? How can I make this happen? Okay, we're going to do this. We'll figure it out. And at 9 o' clock that night, Alex started texting me. And she started telling me about her experience of going outside and seeing a bird for the first time and being happy and all these different things. A bunch of stuff that we had talked about her doing. The very last text, it was a 1 of 19, I believe, maybe 1 of 17. And the 17th text came in and she said, you saved my life. Can I tell you something? And she wrote out this entire plan that she had to kill herself that day. She wasn't going to go to the assembly, her mom was at work. She was going to go home, the whole thing. And she decided not to. And Alex and I now have an amazing relationship because at that moment. Thank you.

At that moment, I made a decision.

That if I wasn't going to share my story, we have this thing, if not now, then when? And that was my not now, then, when moment. And I hit my knees. I cried for about an hour. I'll never forget. Jody was making us a late dinner. We'd just gotten home from all the amazing Southern California traffic, and I had a few clients left because, like I said, I was dabbling, trying to figure out what I was going to do. Some private contracts. And that night, I wrote everyone and said, I'm out. It's official, I'm not doing anymore. This is what I'm doing. On April 11, we formed the company, came up with the name. There's a whole fun story of how that happened, too. But Alex started this. And now I get to go all over the United States and now internationally. I'll be. We're working out a tour to go into Australia for a month. I'm going into some very crazy places in Mexico where the average girl is pregnant by 12. I go into the places that a lot of people don't want to go into. And I also go into the places that everybody think are awesome. And what's happened is the same thing over and over and over again. I go in, I do my spiel 45 minutes. We laugh, we joke, we have fun. And then I do a whole thing where I invite the children to talk. And so on average, a thousand children, 200 will come forward with something. And I'm not like, oh, they've got, you know, finals suck. No, this is real stuff. And about 60 to 70% of those children come forward for the very first time about some form of abuse. And it doesn't matter where I go, it's real every minute. In the United States, a child which is defined between eight and 18 in this study tries to commit suicide every 13 minutes. They're successful. One in 12 girls are cutters. That number is actually increasing. Cutting is becoming one of the number one problems.

We have a website that we're running that has access to almost a million kids a day. And we do surveys and all kinds of fun stuff. One out of three girls have massive body image. Not like, oh, I think I'm fat. Oh, I wish I could cut this off or I could do this. I would do anything for this, this or that. It's a real problem. And as I go into these schools, I make two demands. Number one, I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm not there for 15 minutes to rile them up. Number two, you need to have child protective services, sheriffs, all your counselors, everybody on call. When I first started making these things, they were like, oh, we don't have any problems. Now I go into school and I have a reputation. You know, people start listening. But these children get help. And there used to be this time in my life when I would get super excited for big contracts and I've signed some really cool contracts and it was really exciting, but it also wore off. Now I get super excited that every day I get emails from kids who say amazing things about themselves. And this is one that I just got the other day. I'm so grateful that I got a chance to talk to you. It was ultimately thanks to you that I got the help and I'm seeing a counselor. You are the first adult that I truly opened up to about all these dark feelings. I have to say that I don't regret it one bit. I feel that you genuinely care and understand what people like me are going through. You are making a difference. It was amazing talking to you and I never really expressed how thankful I was for your time. That was exactly what I needed. Please keep doing what you're doing. I still have those dark thoughts and I still. But I have not self harmed since the day we talked.

And I want you to always be out there. Doing what? Doing this on a daily basis and helping others. I just don't know how to thank you enough for taking the time for me that day and doing such amazing things. I will follow you forever. I cannot express in words how much it means to me.

Hustle is an amazing thing, and I love it. And there's a really cool video that Jody actually shot of what a tour looks like. Because a lot of people ask, what does it look like? What does it look like going into a school? It's called A Day on the Road. You can go to our website, it's on our blog. But I literally start at 6 o' clock in the morning and I go until we're done. And most times it's one or two in the morning. There's a joke. I don't eat, I don't sleep. I'm an alien. I'm fine with that. You'll see in the video. Jody will make me eat. There's a whole part of that. It's kind of funny. But I've never been more energized to do what I do.

Never in my life have I had more energy. And we're always looking for more energy, more time. This has been something that has personally fulfilled me more than anything.

I was told that I would never be anything, that I would never amount to anything. I debunked that I learned something in this journey, and I teach this to the children, is that I was proving everybody wrong that was wrong on my part. The only thing I needed to worry about is proving myself right. The switch that happens in the brain is amazing. I've always been because of everything I went through. And like I said, there's tons of stories. I almost died when I was 16 from drugs, the prescription drugs, and there's all kinds of stories that happen in my life. So I took a huge interest in the brain. And Since I was 16, I've never taken an antidepressant. I've debunked all the things they've said. I went back and had. Thank you. I went back and had all the same tests done, my iq, all that stuff. Right. Right before they took me off of government assistance, they needed to put me in a box again. Love to do that. I'm with Ryan. Government sucks. But they put me in a box. They were thinking again so I could get disability and all this fun stuff. And something crazy happened again. I'll just give you the quick thing. At 16, I almost died. My liver failed. There's a whole crazy story I told the doctors to F off. And I went on my own journey of figuring out the body, the brain, the mind, all this stuff. And to date, I've invested about $2 million of my own money into figuring out the body. And so I do a lot with this, with the kids. And we have some really cool things that we're working on. And I've committed to eradicating mental illness by 2025. Like, I have a lot of passion for this, and they retested me and everything, and my IQ test came to genius level. I wasn't a serial killer anymore. It was crazy.

But what was really the most amazing thing for me is that I was told I would never be normal. I would never have a family. I have a pretty awesome family. I have a beautiful two beautiful, beautiful children. I have an amazing fiance. I call her wife, but we're not legally married. But whatever. She gets mad at me. We're going to get married in August, right, honey? Still, the plan. Just got to make sure every day she says yes. Right? That's the sales thing.

But what's amazing is what I've learned. And I want to do a little exercise with you guys. And I've never tried this before with adults, so, like I said, adults usually suck. So we'll see how you guys do. But I told you I was going to give you the secret. Told you I was going to give you this foundation for making a million dollars. And as Grant says, a million is not that much.

But it still feels pretty cool, so let's not kid ourselves. And I told you I was going to give you the secret to having ultimate sex and all that fun stuff. And that secret is truly something. I wear it every day upside down on my wrist because, again, that was one of the many suicide attempts. And it says be you. And you've heard this. We've had some amazing speakers here. It's been really fun to see the. The different personalities. And you can see, for one thing that success looks like a lot of different things, right? You can be a hustler and want to kill your kids for a Super bowl, or you can wear socks that say sell or be sold. We've seen this huge dichotomy of success, but there has been one common thread, and that's bu. What does that mean? I'm guessing the average age, if we did a poll in here, is probably about 33.

So you have all this history. So we're going to try something. I want you guys to think, close your eyes. I'm not going to take your wallets. It's cool. You'll give me your Money one way or the other, but that won't be the way. But close your eyes and I want you to think of that childhood memory, that memory that sticks out to you. I don't care what age it is. You could be 12, you could be 8, you could be whatever. I just want you to connect with that memory.

Remember the smells, remember who was there, remember how you felt.

Remember how amazing it was.

All right, who wants to share? Do I have the mic runners ready?

Get a mic. If not, we'll just yell loudly. Who wants to share that memory? I want to hear one memory.

Who's got that memory they want to share?

Go ahead.

I want to get the mic for the live stream, guys.

Sorry.

Eric. Huntsville, Alabama.

Memory. I've got eldest of six at this point, but me and my little sister sitting up in a two story laundry chute as my parents walked back and forth on Christmas Eve between their bedroom and where the Christmas tree was.

You mean Santa. But that's okay, Keep going.

Well, as an adult now, but I would sit there and watch my, you know, and watch. And the only thing we could see was the feet.

Right.

But my sister and I had done this for five or six years growing up in this house. And it was just. There's that point in my memory. That's that childhood. That's before the parents divorced, before we got the rest of the kids. But you know, there's just that piece of that house at that moment.

Yeah. And you were six. It's amazing. We can geek out, but by the time you're six years old, your subconscious has developed all this fun stuff. One more. Who else wants to share one more memory? Go ahead.

Hi there. Hi, guys. I'm Karina. I live here in Austin, Texas. My memory is about my little sister and I. We as a family would always go to Blanco State park here in town. And there was one of those water holes that would suck you under. But it was an area where lots of families would go and they'd swim in the water and, and people would kayak. And it was just a very family oriented place. But I guess at some point after a storm, there was a water hole and me and my little sister just kind of bouncing around the water happened to get sucked in. And so I'm pushing her down, gasping for air. She's pushing me down, gasping for air. We're drowning and we're both in competition, trying to gasp for air. And my father, as a superhero that he is, he runs in and he pulls my little sister out. And then it's just me and him gasping for air. And then he pulls me out.

And my sister and I are saved. And my father just. He's going around in a circle. No one is there to pull him out, but somehow he comes out. And me and my little sister are just crying. And we're so thankful that someone loved us enough to risk their life and save us. And it was a very happy moment for me because all of us lived.

Thank you.

So the reason that I do that is because I want all of you to connect with that child. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Just say it. I wanted to be a mechanic. Okay. What do you want to be?

An adventurer.

What do you want to be? Police officer. What do you want to be? Police officer. I don't like you guys. What did you want to be? Just a business owner. Business owner. What'd you want to be? Garbage truck driver. Oh, that's cool. What do you want to be? You'd be surprised how many I get at that. What do you want?

Sprinter.

Sprinter. All right, so here's a common theme.

What are you? I'm a mechanic. Good. What are you not a garbage truck driver?

No.

No. What are you? Scientist. Okay, how many of you are what you wanted to be when you were eight? Raise your hand. Good. Majority of you? Not actually. It was like, seven. What happens? I'll tell you what happens. Same thing I see in schools all the time. I asked the sixth graders what they want to be. Hands are up in the air. I want to be this. I want to do this. You know, super excited. The eighth graders are like, I want to be this. I want to do this. Tenth graders are like, I don't know. Seniors, right? The ones that were like, okay, you're going out in the world. Make a difference. They're like, I have no effing idea what I want to do with my life. My life sucks. I hate everything. Doesn't matter what school I go to. Life does this weird thing where we get beaten down and then we come to conferences and we try to figure stuff out. We try to figure out the techniques. I'm going to tell you guys flat out right now, if you haven't figured it out right now, some strategy between Pat and Jeff and Ryan Dice, all this stuff that's happened, guys get a job, all right? Like, they have dropped some insane bombs on us of how to do things. But there's one fatal flawed all of it. If you're not connected with who you are and what you want to be, then Just stop. It was funny when Grant was talking about things and he was talking about money and, you know, da, da, da, da. Money made him happy. No, it didn't. You know, what made him Happy is the $400,000 that he's invested in himself this year. I don't know how many of you caught that, but that was huge, right?

Be you. Every single person in this room right now has the potential to be great, to do whatever the hell you want to do, to be whatever you want to be. There's no secret formula. There's no one thing that's going to make it all work, right? It doesn't. It's not there. These are ideas or strategies or concepts. The reality is you. You want a perfect marriage, Fix yourself. Stop worrying about the spouse. Right? A lot of people get into business partnerships because they're like, well, I just, you know, if I have somebody who know, be you. Be a hundred percent.

You get in relationships and you're like, well, I'm 50% awesome. If I get somebody else who's the other 50%, then we'll be 100% awesome. No, you'll be 100% FA. Like, it's just the way it works.

So we're leaving. We got Robert coming up. He's amazing. I've spoken with him as well. He's going to give you guys some more knowledge, some more awesome stuff. I tell my story because it's real, it's raw, and anyone can do it. I'm not a superhero. There's not some magical thing. I had one person that believed in me, and it changed my life forever. And I say this to the kids, and I'll say this to you. If you don't have that one person that believes in you, I do.

I believe in every single human being on this planet that if they can connect with who they really are and live their true passion.

They can be anything they want to be. And passion isn't something that you find. Guys, passion's already inside of you. You were born with it. You've just lost the connection to it. And you get wrapped up in Mercedes and Lamborghinis and bigger homes and, you know, making the nut and more employees and bigger business and all this other crap.

There are a lot of happy people living in tents in Africa.

That's not the secret. The secret is yourself. Now, I've got some of these BU bracelets with me. If anyone wants them, I give them away at schools. It's a constant reminder, looking down and remember every decision that you make. The only key to success that matters is be you. And as you leave this conference and you wrap up this year and you're looking at how to make 2016 better, just look inward. Be honest with yourself. Implement strategies that make sense to you. Do all that fun business crap, but focus first and foremost on being yourself. Success is inside of each and every one of you. You can do it. Thank you guys so much.

What excuses do you have? We've all got them. We've all got an excuse for something. Wesley could have used any number of excuses to not get married, not have kids, to not be successful, to not give back, to not be dialed into one more kid who needs his help. But he didn't listen to any of those excuses. Our excuses are stories that are in our head, and they're not true or untrue. They're just in our head. We get to define that story as long as we're aware of them, which I suppose is probably half the battle. One of the things that I have learned is to change that story in our head, we must surround ourselves with people who are living in an empowering state that we can create a story around. And by that I mean it is normal to become.

Certain trait or like a certain person. If it's normal to be successful or fit or happy, the story that naturally goes into your head is that this is normal. So this is what I'm gonna do because I have no story to the contrary, I am impressed with Wesley and his ability to be happy and successful and have a.

Position of contribution in spite of the fact that he grew up with very little and had so many challenges. I don't know what you've dealt with in your life. I don't know what excuses you use to not achieve the things that you want. But if you want to be in an environment where going big and being limitless and saying f you to excuses and to things that hold us back, there is no better place for you than Freedom Fast Lane Live. Our lineup this year includes JP Sears, who I can't wait to hang out with, Peter Diamandis. Alicia Silverstone, founder of Whole Foods. You know the lineup by now. I mean, you've heard me talk about it. Tickets go on sale at the end of September. If you're on the Freedom Fast Lane newsletter, you already got an early bird link that closes at the end of August, so we can do our public release to the rest of the world at its normal price. You can go to freedomfastlane. Com, Sign up for the newsletter and you'll get a link if you want to get your ticket now and save a few bucks as well. I hope you're enjoying this binge of freedom fastlane live. And there is plenty more coming, so enjoy. Thanks for listening.