Joel Marion - How BioTrust did $100,000,000+ during year one in business

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What's going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have Joel Marion on the show. He is the co founder of BioTrust and the host of the Born to Impact podcast. And it's funny because we've been talking for months now. We have a lot of mutual friends and we've been back and forth on Instagram for months now. And we're here at your beautiful house here in Tampa on Clearwater and super excited to have you on the show, man.

Yeah, pleasure to be here. Thanks for making the trip in and excited to flip the script here in a minute and interview you. So. But yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for, thanks for having me on the show for sure.

So, I mean, first things first, A lot of the listeners on this show, it's got rise d young. It's 18 to 25 year olds who are getting started in business on social media and really people that just want more. And I know, I've heard your story and it's, we will get into it. But to really kick things off, what would you say at 18 years old, what were you doing? I like to give people a sense of, okay, this person who's massively successful, right? Like, who were, who was Joel at 18 to start with?

Well, I just graduated high school. I was second in my class. I always did well in school, which is different. You hear people, entrepreneurial background all over the map, right? You have the ones who are probably like me, who were super type A really tried hard in school and got good grades. And then you have other ones that are like they just could not excel in the academic environment because they were too creative and all. But I always kind of knew that there was something more that I wanted to do. But I went the traditional route to go to college. I was still trying to figure things out. I didn't even really know what I was going to major in. I just. I was coming off from being an athlete and I decided not to continue. I played basketball all my life. Had a really good team or nationally ranked team. Ranked very high in the state of New Jersey. And New Jersey is a big basketball state. St. Patrick's and St. Anthony's which. Which are two usually ranked in the top 10 nationally. Basketball, we're a small private school, but it allows you to recruit. And yeah, for sure. We, you know, we had really awesome facilities and everything. But I was good. But I knew I wasn't good enough to. I wasn't like going D1 on scholarship or anything. So I said had some schools that I had academic scholarships available but not, not sports scholarship. So I decided to go to school for free for academics and kind of hang up my. My basketball shoes at that time. So I was looking for a way to kind of transition from being an athlete, still being active and stuff. So I kind of got. That's when I really got into fitness. Got it was back in college and I started doing everything wrong. You know, working out, working out two hours a day, starving myself, eating fruit. Yeah. Like not knowing anything about fitness at the time. But that's where it all started. Yeah. It was.

So with fitness and Obviously your company BioTrust. Can you give us some more context on that? Because I know I've heard in different interviews you guys did over $100 million in your first year of business. And obviously it's a. It's a fitness nutrition company. Can you give us some context on that for those who may not know what that is?

Yeah. So it's as you know, I guess it's considered nutritional supplements really. We're not sports nutrition like the muscle milks out there or anything.

Yeah.

We're more health and wellness. Our demographic actually skews way older than your audience. Still quality products that they can use. But our marketing tends to resonate more with the 45 year old plus mom and dad, even the grandmas and the grandpas. So who are. Who are looking to just be healthier, be more fit. They're not people who are grinding out in the gym. Although we have protein products and stuff that would be awesome for the gym demographic and young guys like us. But the demographic tends to be a little bit older and that's, and that's just kind of the way that we market. It's intentional. And those people have more money as well.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

From the 25 year old kids mostly. Unless they're like you. But most people aren't. Yeah. So it's nutritional supplements at protein, fish oil, probiotics, all the general health and wellness stuff. We're getting into anti aging now. We just launched a skin care line which has become really popular with our audience. So that's cool. I didn't really know that when we started this thing.

Yeah, yeah.

When we started this think seven years ago I, I thought or demo was going to be like the readers of of Men's Fitness and Oxygen magazine, you know like the maybe the 25 to 35.

Yep.

Jim Goer. But then you find out who your customer is, you know and you realize that it's not who you think it is. And then I never thought I'd be doing the skincare line, that's for sure. But you just kind of, you know, the market determines which directions you go sometimes and you want to serve your client base and give them high quality all natural products. So we, we saw this opportunity with skin care because so many skincare companies out there and especially just just the mainstream stuff, it's so it's like just full of all the wrong stuff like for, for anti aging. It's like hey, this stuff is may temporarily make you look a little better but it's actually going to age you a lot faster. So we filled that gap.

Yeah, for sure. So, so you started that seven years ago. What was the inspiration to start that in terms of like were you doing any business before when it comes to starting your own nutrition company? Like what was your past prior to the start of this Quick recap.

Go back to 19 years old. When I was in college I got into health and fitness. I got introduced to a book called Body for Life by a guy named Bill Phillips. Bill Phillips was the founder of. Of a another supplement company called EAS Experimental Applied Sciences. They have the Myoplex shakes and all that in the. It's probably a little bit before your time. I don't recall that. Yeah. And the, I mean they were, they were the biggest supplement company in the late 90s and early 2000s. Bill really just changed the landscape of nutritional supplements. He's a unique guy. He's kind of like the Instagram influencer. Before that it was even a thing obviously. But, but Bill had this magazine called Muscle Media 2000. He's very edgy. It's funny because he transitioned to way mainstream later in his career, but very edgy. Talked very openly, talked about steroid use, interviewing top bodybuilders and stuff like that. And, and, but he was very science driven as well. And then he was also very flashy and showy. So he would have, every week he would have like one or two Lambos that would come off of, you know, a truck, would deliver it to the offices and stuff, you know, and he was photo shoots and all kinds of stuff that would go on the magazine. But that was like the huge magazine in that of that era. And at the time he started going mainstream with a book, Body for Life, which was like a New York Times bestseller for like three years in a row. It was on a new New York Times bestseller list for like almost 200 weeks. I got introduced to that book. It kind of taught me the nuts and bolts of body transformation and, and like how to actually, yeah. Do it right because I was wasting my time. Spent a lot of time working out, trying to eat right, doing everything wrong, not getting a lot of results. And then somebody while I was away at college turned me on to this book and then that's like, things start to click, you know. So then I really realized my passion was, was health and fitness and I, I made my own body transformation. I, I lost some body fat first and then I was, I was a really skinny, lanky guy. I was 6 foot 3, 175 pounds.

Wow.

Weight to 40 now. So I, I lost the weight, got really skinny and then I put on a bunch of muscle. I entered the contest. They had an annual transformation contest called the Body for Life challenge. And I won that. It was a huge national. Hundreds of thousand people enter this contest and I won that for my category, male, 18 to 25 years old. So time was kind of a big deal for me. I won $25,000, 19 year old kid, like all expenses, trip paid to Maui and all this other stuff. It was fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I started writing for Muscle Media through my relationship with Body for Life and Supplements then. So I just got really kind of drawn, involved health, fitness. Yeah. And then, I mean, I had a lot of experiences where, you know, I don't know how deep you want to go into the story where I, I wanted to be a fitness author. I had a bunch of failures there, running for magazines. I kind of had it in with muscle Media because I won the competition.

Did you do a lot of those or was it more? So that's something that you prepared to, to do for years?

Yeah, it's just the, just the one. And then it was kind of just more like a lifestyle after that and then running through the magazines. I wanted to write for other magazines, but when I would submit to other magazines, everything I was submitting was getting rejected. You know, it was like I didn't have the friendly editor who was, I had to end with, you know, so I, but I. This is a good lesson for people who are listening because you're going to need perseverance in anything that you want to do, that you want to accomplish, that you want to excel at, that you want to build mastery in. And I was one of the only people who would actually go back to the editors and ask for feedback on why it got, why the article got rejected. What can I do to improve? How can I, you know, better position an article to be more what you're looking for? Because I always get in response like, ah, not what we're looking for right now. Well, you know, like, can I get some direction on what you're looking for? So before long got another article published and it was on some online publications. I started writing for another popular bodybuilding website called Testosterone Magazine is now Teenage. And then I was in Men's Fitness, became on the training advisory board to Men's Fitness. I started building a little platform writing for all these magazines. Men's Health, Women's Health, Muscle Fitness, Hers Muscle Fitness Magazine, pretty much all the bodybuilding and fitness magazines and then even some really mainstream like GQ and stuff like that. And even I had like a lifestyle section. Yeah, yeah, I published some, some watered down content but you know, you know, you're not gon put bodybuilding lingo and gq, but I became a little platform and then I had a print book that came out where I was, had this. It was a book all about how to use your favorite foods to lose weight faster. It was about hormone manipulation and how to avoid weight loss plateaus and starvation mode and all that stuff. And it was implementing cheat meals and cheat days into a dietary program. And really strong concept. I thought people want to, hey, well, who wouldn't want to eat pizza on a diet? So I actually got a really great book deal with a, with a big publisher, Random House out of New York city and got $100,000 advance that was, I was 24 years old. Okay, back up a little Bit you're.

Writing a book about fitness and nutrition and dieting.

I was a teacher. I was actually a high school teacher at the time.

Yeah, I want to touch on that because I know I've heard that in different podcasts because you, you say that as like a touch point of like you come from this humble background and you're a teacher to now having this massive audience and having this massive company. Bring us back to that because I think a lot of people that are young, you know, they could be 24 listening, whether they're a gym teacher or working at a restaurant and they're in this crossroads with like, where do they go next? Like at 24 years old as a gym teacher, like what, what were you expecting your life to be at that moment?

You know, it was always a temporary thing for me. You know, when I was in college, it was actually my dad, I was a, I was a health and exercise science major. And then my dad was like, I, I remember very clearly he was some newspaper article that came out where it had like, it's a bunch of different photos of different people in different professions. And then it had underneath like what the annual average salary was for for these people, you know, doctors, lawyers and then the business people and all those sales reps. And then it had personal trainer there. And my dad knew that I was like getting into this health and fitness thing and I wanted to help people. I was thinking about getting into maybe personal training or whatever. I didn't really know. I just wanted to help people with health and fitness. And then he looks at it, he's like, look at this. You got a personal trainers make on average $12,000 a year. Is this really what you're signing up for? He's like, you better, you know, try at least get the teaching your teaching degree as well. So I ended up double majoring and health, exercise science and then physical education. And it took me an extra year, but it actually, it was a good, it was a wise thing for me to do at the time. While, while I was getting this other stuff off the ground, I could kind of get established in the workforce, become independent, move out of my parents place, you know, so it's making $42,000 a year or something as a teacher, doing this writing stuff on the side, knowing that like I'm not going to be doing this teaching thing forever, but it's a way to pay the bills and kind of get my life started professionally while I'm doing, getting this other stuff off the ground. So then the articles and then the book. And then the book came, I want.

To say, was the book something because you're making $42,000 a year as a teacher, then you get a hundred thousand dollar advance for a book deal.

That was changing for me at the time. Yeah, I thought my whole dream and vision was any of your dreams change. Right. So my, my whole dream and vision was that I was going to be a best selling author. I was, I wanted to work my way up into the magazines, which I did successfully over time and then have a, a book that would hit be New York Times bestseller and then have more books, book after book after book and just be like, you know, all these other popular fitness authors that are out there, like Jillian Michaels or Hori Cruz or somebody like that. South Beach Diet was really popular at the time and that had been on the bestseller list for so long. And I was like, man, I'm just going to be the next South Beach.

Okay.

We, we launched the book and it just didn't get the traction that we hoped that it would get. And I, and I very quickly realized the biggest problem was that I didn't know how to sell the books directly. I was like, okay, if I can get on, on, on Dr. Oz or one of these other big shows and like a bunch of books will start flying off the shelf. But I didn't have like my own email list. I didn't have like any, any people or could really go out into and directly market the book to. I could publish an article or something like that and then have a mention of it in there. But like that. Yeah, you're very naive and thinking like that was what was going to really cause books to move off the shelf.

Yeah.

So instead of saying, because in reality the publishers, when they think they have something that could work, they'll tell you everything you want to hear. Right. So in the meetings they're talking about, oh, we see this being the next franchise and all this stuff and we're going to put a lot of marketing muscle behind this. And because they're trying to get you to publish the book with them and they ultimately did very little. You know, on the marketing side of it. The PR didn't come through the way that we had hoped. It was a first time author as a young guy. I don't think I was really being taken seriously at the time in, in traditional media and TV shows and stuff like that. So a couple local news things, local media got on a bunch of syndicated radio shows and stuff. Books end up selling like 5,6000 copies or something. But it was not enough for them to back out the hundred thousand dollar advance even. And yeah, yeah, that's when I kind of knew I was, I needed to figure something else out.

Build your own list, your own audience. Was that like when you started to focus on then building your own platform?

I took the year off from teaching in hopes that I would never be going back. But I kind of left it open. I'm like, I'm on sabbatical this year. I'm promoting my book, right. And then I was like, as long as this does well, then I'm out. But it was like kind of the. My fallback. Like if things didn't work out, I could go back to teaching.

Yeah, yeah.

So I was coming to the end of the year and money was kind of running out from the events because, you know, you pay taxes on that and yeah, yeah, then I'm not getting a salary that year, so money is. And I was also spending, like, I was thinking more money was coming in, right. But money was running out and I've realized I was have to go back to teaching. And I just love the idea of doing that, you know, I felt like, man, it was almost. I got to a point where everyone heard about this book, everyone, this big advance that I got, all my friends and family. I was almost just really embarrassed to talk about it because I felt like, like, crap. This, this whole thing that I was like, had everything riding on has ended up becoming a failure. Now I'm gonna have to go back to teaching physical education to middle school kids. And well, that's what I did. At the same time, I said, all right, I know a couple guys who are writing, who are writing for other magazines, friends of mine. And they were on the side, they had like their own personal trading, training athletes and stuff like that. But on the side they were doing these info products where they would have DVDs or ebooks and stuff like that. And they were doing moderately well with them. Guys were talking, they're like, oh yeah, it pays my mortgage. And it's like, yep, it's just on the side, I just like pays for my car, My car and my house. And then like the studio stuff is like all extra money. And I'm like, well, if you're paying, if you're making a few grand a month, paying your mortgage with this, if I really went full time on this and try to figure this out and crack the code, like, I. I could probably do even better. So, yep, went back to teaching. Got obsessed with direct response marketing. Learned all about Info Products was a guy, his name was Ryan Lee, he was teaching like personal trainers how to.

Got it. What year is this by the way? Because I know people and eight. Okay. Because for people listening, I know like you're an OG in this space, right? And there's a lot of young people, you know, they're just getting into it and they see this space. But we're talking, this is 2008, 11 years ago. 11 years ago. And you're already looking at the direct, like direct to consumer saying, all right, how can I build a list and actually like sell products to people? Because I think there's a lot of saturation right now. And I'm sure you would agree with like everyone's selling everything about anything, right? So it's like for you looking back to 2008, like where was the lane landscape there? You know, social media wasn't where it is today. Like what was the you going into it? Like, what were you expecting from that? Was it to hey, build this email list and sell the fitness products or the ebooks or what was your game plan? Moving, moving into that journey?

So my plan was to write an ebook and start to sell digital products on my own. I learned copywriting as a, probably the best skill set that you could ever learn if you want to sell online. On copywriting from some of the greats, guy named Yannick Silver, total OG and direct response marketing. And then Frank Hearn Kern was a big influence on me. I learned some things about product launch through him. Another guy Kern kind of worked with, they had their little circle at the time. Jeff Walker, he had this thing called the product launch formula. So I, I studied product launch formula, I studied Frank Kern stuff. I learned copywriting from Yannick Silver and like just to, I invested a lot into education because I'm like, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. I'm gonna have to learn it. So I end up. But I found like bootstrap ways to, to do it. So I, I actually split product launch formula with a friend. He, but he got the digital course and then we split it and we paid half and half and we just kind of shared it. You're not really supposed to do that, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, but you don't have the money. And then Yannick Silver had this two thousand dollar course called the Ultimate Copywriting Workshop. And it was like 10 binders and 10 DVDs or something. And again it's 2008.

Yeah, I got that one.

And I Was like, man, I can't afford this $2,000, but let me look online and see if I can find this, like used or something. Yep. So I ended up finding it on ebay for like 250 bucks. So somebody had used it and they were selling this physical product. Right. Wasn't like an online online membership, but people were reselling their binders and their DVDs. So I bought, I bought that course for 250 bucks and ended up investing in a coach a little while later. But I spent a bunch, you know, I probably spent five or six grand that year on educating myself and then hiring a, hiring, hiring a coach with the, with the intent that I was going to launch this ebook later in the year. But I didn't even wait to, to do the ebook. I'm just, here's, here's how that year 2008 went. Start learning, start implementing as quickly as possible. I knew some other guys who were doing online personal training, so there's like doing like virtual coaching, you know, where they would give people a nutrition plan and exercise plan and they would deliver just via email. So I wrote my first sales letter again, modeling all Yannick stuff. And he had like a high ticket coach, you know, different types of products that he had and how to orchestrate funnels for those and all that. So I wrote my, you know, high ticket for the fitness industry. It was like 200 bucks a month. That's a lot of money for the end user. So 200 bucks a month. Wrote the sales letter, positioned myself as an expert and stacking the value, all this stuff. I had like a really small email list of people who just kind of found my website over all the years that I was writing for articles. 2000 people on this list. I never mailed the list once, you know, so you just had it. I just had all these people. It's a like free newsletter at the top. But I had no news, you know, there was no news. They just signed up for updates. But I never sent out any updates. I know what to do with it, you know, so. But I launched it to these 2,000 people. I ended up getting 50 people who signed up for this 200amonth program. And it was a, it was a four month minimum, you know. And it said very clearly, you know, we want committed people. Yeah, you're not going to change your body in 30 days. So we want people who understand this is a four month commitment minimum, stay on as long as you want, but at least four months. So immediately I had like ninety six hundred dollars A month that was coming in.

Yeah, yeah. For four months, guaranteed. Yeah.

And I'm like, wow, this, this stuff actually works. Like in the next, in the next four months, I'm going to make the equivalent of what you'd make, what I make as a teacher. And I just, I got to get more people signed up for this program, you know. So then at the same time, I went to basically just network my way with. I said, okay, what do I want to do next? I want to write this ebook. And what I did was I said, I know this concept of using cheat meals and cheat days to lose weight faster is an interesting one. Unfortunately, it didn't work out on the print book, but I'm going to. I don't think it's a concept. I just think it was the way that played out. So I'm going to take the same concept, I'm going to rewrite it, I'm going to package it up as a digital course. I had PDF manuals, audio, video, some screen capture, PowerPoint stuff. Then we sold it as an E course. I launched that in April. All in the interim from like August, when I went back to teaching until April, I was networking my way with all the top guys who were doing fitness eBooks. ClickBank was the platform that everyone was selling on.

Yep.

So I went to the ClickBank Marketplace with the health fitness category and I just printed off the first two pages, which was the top 20 vendors. Right. Best selling products. And I said, I'm gonna make it. My goal is to, before I launch this ebook in April, I'm gonna become friends with all these top 20 people and then they're gonna promote my, my launch. And I didn't get all 20 of them, but I had 18, 18 who I form real relationships with. And then when it came time to launch my ebook, everyone supported it. I had all my ducks in a row, marketing wise. Everything converted really, really well and ended up being the biggest launch and fitness ebook history at the time. We did $461,000 in three days.

Wow.

And that's when I knew, like, that was good.

Let's go.

Yeah. Now, now I control my own.

So that was the turning point, you'd say, just when it comes to like, that was finally something that you, you saw and actually got real results with. Yeah.

Well, the coaching program was nice, you know, 10 grand a month, like.

Yeah.

But I didn't know where I was going to get more emails from. Right. Because I already went to that list of 2000 and I don't really understand like list building or anything at the time. And.

Yep.

So I'm like, after this four months, what's going to happen? I need do something else. And then we did. We launched the, the E course. It was a 97. People didn't buy the book. That was like $21. And yeah, Barnes and Noble, but they bought a 97E course.

Yeah.

What's the difference? All marketing. Right. All marketing and, and getting in front of the right people and affiliate partners with all these people that I created relationships with over the years. And I mean, we could talk forever on how did I become friends with these, all these guys when I was a relative, nobody. But, you know, it's just all about, you know, you know, it's all about adding value.

And I want to touch on now too, because at the time you said you had 2,000 people on your list. Nowadays, what I know in your Instagram BIO it says 20 million plus email subscribers, right?

Yeah, I have 17 million in the main supplement company and I have another 3 million plus.

Got it.

And another, like, side business that I started just a couple years ago.

So, I mean, number one, that's just massive. And for people listening that are. That are now hearing this, what would you say if someone's looking to build a list? Because I love the podcast you did with Andy, Andy Vosella, by the way, and you guys talked about the importance of building an email list and why it's so important in this social media world today of like, actually owning that. So if someone is starting a business today that's either they have a list or they're starting to build it, what would you say from a tactical piece of advice is like a foundation that you'd like to give to someone just based off of your experience in this, in this game, I'd say as far.

As, like building a list. Yeah.

What do you think in 2019, going in 2020.

So most people start with social media, right. And they build these social media followings and they realize, oh, the algorithm keeps getting harder and harder. I'm getting less and less reach. How do I, you know, it seems like in, in five to 10 years, like, Instagram's going to turn into Facebook, where, like, you get in front of almost no, none of your audience. Right. And it probably is heading that direction because unfortunately, everyone gravitates towards the most popular platform and then there's way too many users and it's like, oh, you're following 5,000 people. Like, you know, it's just, it's very difficult to. There's no other other ways for these platforms to do it but the. To decrease your reach, right? And, and then they're in the power position because they say, hey, if I decrease your reach, then you got to pay to boost posts and all this stuff. But anyway, you, the fact is right now you. Most people who are listening to this probably have a social media, some sort of so social media following, especially if they're planning on getting entrepreneurship or whatever and they're looking to build the email list. So the first place to start would be to use your social media following to populate your email list. And that's free to do. You can post a giveaway, what we call a lead magnet, which we use just like free ebooks or free reports and, and whatever it is that, you know, the niche that you're entering into. Whatever you want to teach people, if it's health and fitness, like for us we have like one of our popular free reports is 14. 14 Foods to Boost your thyroid, right? Everyone's oh, I'm a slow thyroid. Slow thyroid. You hear it all the time. So we have 14 foods to boost your thyroid. If, if I just wanted free traffic, I would go directly to my Instagram and do a post that says, hey, I'm giving away this new free report. It's a free eBooks, 23 pages, about 14 foods to boost your thyroid. You know, Lincoln bio or whatever, right? And you direct people there and then you can start to generate an email list. If you have a YouTube channel, you could, at the end of the video, you could give something away. Whatever social channel, Twitter, you know, if whatever social channels you're on, you can use those to then populate. I met a guy who literally has millions and millions and millions of views on every single video he puts out on, on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, huge following on Facebook. And you know, I asked him like, well, are you, are you collecting any of these names or anything? Like, she's like, oh, no, I'm not. Not really. You know. And I'm like, man, you're. He's making like good money from. I say good money, but like what other people would consider good money. He's making, you know, five figures a month from like Adsense revenue from all these video plays. But I'm like, dude, if you just collected these emails and then just. You don't even have to have product just like promote other people's stuff. Affiliate commission, he could be making six to seven figures a month, you know. So I just gave him one tip. I said, look, the next One of these videos that you put out, one of the major videos you put out, just I said, I saw on your website you have this like, you know, this free little mini course that, but you're not directing anybody there. Just tell people to go sign up for your seven day challenge on your website. So he did that and it was really soft at the very end of an eight minute video and he got like tens of thousands of people to sign up for his email list right then. So you may not be in a position where you're getting millions of views on a video, but whatever it is, slow and steady, you can begin to build the list. And then once you build the list and you start to sell them products and service, you're gonna get some cash flow and then you can reinvest that back into doing some, you know, paid advertising or something to push paid traffic to the same, the same page. The other question that most people have is, well, I don't really know what to give away. You know, that's a good question. And if you are, you know what's going to be a hit? Do I just think of like, okay, I'm in health and fitness, let me just give away like my, my 30 day workout or whatever. Well, you could pick a lot of things in health and fitness and granted if you test them all, some are going to work really, really well and some are going to be at the bottom and some are going to just be mediocre. So how do you go out there with a winning concept for me nowadays because I have an email list and we do send so much email. I just, anytime I want to create a new lead magnet, I'll just export my last 60 days of, of emails that we've sent and I sort by open rate and clicks and then whatever one has the most engagement, I say, all right, that's a really strong topic. I'm going to create a free report around that. Let's say I post something on protein bars. Yeah. Or dangerous ingredients and protein bars or something and that got loads of engagement, then I'd say, okay, my next free report may be called like seven worst ingredients in your hiding in your protein bar, you know?

Yep.

And that I already know that, that got super high engagement. So when I go and I put this out there as a, as a free download for a lead lead magnet and I get in front of new users who are interested in health and this is probably going to resonate well. Yep. So if you don't have an email list where you can look at your you know, your past sense. Look at your social media posts. Go on your Instagram insights. Look, the ones that had the most reach, the. The most comments, the most engagement, the most likes, whatever views and say. All right, well, that topic seemed to really resonate. And. And every time I post about this, it does really well. And to create some sort of free report or lead magnet or a free video or something that you're giving away that is on the same topic that you already know is a winner.

Got it.

You know, that way you're not guessing. It's like, I'm always. I'm a big data guy. I'm like a data nerd, honestly. Like, I'm. I look at spreadsheets and like that. That's what, like, gets me going.

Yep.

But I just go back to that because the data never lies. You know, it's like, oh, if. If I look at, you know, posts in the last six months and I see that every time I talk about a certain topic, it goes bananas, then. Yeah. They're like, I'm gonna create a product service or a lead magnet one. I'm gonna create a lead magnet around that, and then I'm gonna backend it into a paid. Expanded. Paid product on the same topic. Right. Because I already know my audience wants this. So pay attention what people are telling you, because the best thing about social media is that you get that feedback directly. Yep.

Instantly, too. So I want to sort of change topics real quick. I know obviously people are listening to this podcast, and I'm sure they've heard of your podcast, Born to Impact, and you started that about last October. You said 2018. I'd love for you to go move into this lane, because I know that's something that obviously we're recording today. I'm going to be on your show, but what was your goal with starting the podcast? I know I listened to the first and the second episode, and you talk about, like, your purpose with it, but I'd love for you to just give us insight into just Born to Impact, the show, the reason behind it, and then overall more so why you're doing it to. To begin with.

Yeah. So kind of, kind of goes quick, you know, I'll try to be as quick as I can with this story. About two years ago, I went through a really challenging year, both professionally and personally. Me and my business partner kind of had a bit of a falling out. We're like, super, super good now. Closer than ever. Yep. God. Just uses difficult year to really tune us both up, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

But I was, business was going through some challenges. We had a really, a really big deal on the table where someone's going to acquire a company that fell through very last minute. And then everyone was kind of blaming each other on why things went, went wrong. And next thing you know, you know, I'm, it's, it snowballed into a very, very tentious relationship with my partner. And then that lead to my personal life and my family that year. And I just, I had a really dark year at the same time. It's kind of when I kind of recommitted my life to, to God. And I said Lord, I don't, I don't. I said man, I, I think I'm successful, but here I am. I have this amazing home that I live in and, and I'm struggling. You know, I was, I was pretty depressed. I was for, for a couple month period. I was like sleeping until noon every day. You know, I just didn't want to get up and deal with the stress of dealing with the business. My partner that obviously this all affected my dynamic, my family, my kids, my wife. And through kind of surrendering this whole situation of God, I just, my relationship with God got way closer. He started to just work a bunch of stuff out and the business ended in my family. And then I felt led to start sharing more than just health, fitness and entrepreneurship stuff. I, I wanted, you know, because I do speaking and other things, I wanted to empower people and the things in life that really matter, you know, which, which lasts beyond this lifetime. It's not just the stuff like this house. When I go, this house will be here, will be passed on to somebody else. But like, I'm not taking it with me. Right?

Yeah.

So I felt that God was saying, hey, I gave you all these skills just to back up. At a very young age I was, had people tell me like, you know, God's hands on your life is going to use you to impact people and all this. And I thought at the time like, all right, well I'm going to be a pastor, a missionary or, or an evangelist. You know, it's one of those three things, you know, like how else am I going to impact people unless I'm one of those things? So that's always in the back of my head. And then it didn't go that route. So I'm like, ah, maybe those guys are wrong because I didn't really feel like led to do that. But then God was like, you know, I gave you all these gifts. How are you impacting People beyond this lifetime. So you know, it's a difficult question for me because I wasn't, I was like, I help people get healthy and help people get fit, but you know, at some point we're all going to expire and then what's next? You know. So I restarted my ebook business. This was two years ago. I had a remnant list of like 20,000 subscribers. And you know, that sounds like a big list but it's, you know, for me that's very small list. 20,000 subscribers who like we would send like content like once or twice a month just to my old ebook list just to see who would stay active and stay engaged. It dwindled from like almost 300,000 people when we started BioTrust down to like 20,000 people who were still active on the list. And then I started building that list again and we published health content six days a week. And then on, on every Friday we would publish something inspirational where I would talk about some big topics, share my faith a bit. And the first one I published, and I never published anything like this before, it was always health fitness content. But I had like a faith message, it was about miracles. And I just kind of talked about how God was doing, you know, a modern day miracle in my own life, in my personal life and my family and my business. And I was coming off of a really dark year and I just spoke to people who maybe going through a really dark time in their own life. You know, maybe terminal diagnosis, maybe maybe just struggling with their health. You know, people have chronic disease that, you know, they, they wake up, they don't know how they're going to feel one day to the next. Broken relationships, divorce, all these types of things that people could be dealing with. And, and I, and I just said, you know, from maybe it's not turn water into wine or parting the Red Sea, but, but God can still do miracle in your life. And how do you give God room to do a miracle? So I had like this three step process on. One was just, I have this tattoo is freedom and surrender. I like to live by this. That why am I worrying? Why do I have anxiety? Like I'm, I can do what I can do, but I can't control everything, you know, so sometimes I, I just need to say, God, this is bigger than me. I'm going to trust you that you're bringing me through this season for some reason what I'm going to learn from it. And it took me a while to learn this concept because I'll be worry, anxiety, try to handle on my own, get burned out. Loads of, you know, fall into depression. And then finally I'm like, God, can't deal with this anymore. I need some help. And then it's like, oh, thanks. Thanks for recognizing that I'm here. Been waiting here for you. And then, like, very quickly, it starts to turn around, you know, So I just. Now, when things don't go as planned, I just have peace. And knowing that, like, because I look back at some of those really challenging situations and I'm like, man, if that didn't go exactly how it went or I didn't go through that season, then it wouldn't have led me here or I wouldn't have made this connection or, you know, I just look back so many times as situations I did not want to be in, that if that thing didn't happen and I learned from what I learned from it, then I wouldn't have been ready for the next thing, you know. So we, at the end of the email, we said, you know, we kind of went over all those kind of really dark potential situations that people are dealing with and said, if you're in need for a miracle, just, just. And whatever your faith is background is if you're open to somebody just believing with you and praying with you, share as much or as little about the situation as you want. But if you'd like somebody to just think about you, pray for you today, hit reply. And. And, you know, someone from my team will, will be there. We had like 10 to 20 times the response to that that we did anything. Health and fitness.

Wow.

So I'm like, wow, there's a hurting world out there. You know, people are dealing with real stuff. It's not just sure I can tell you the foods that are going to boost your thyroid, but like, if you're in the middle of a divorce, that, that's like. Or you're depressed or you're dealing with major anxiety or some health scare, or you're waking up and you can't even. You don't even know if you don't have the energy to go to the gym or not. You know, that sometimes you got to really address, like, the big issues before you can help people with the smaller issues. Right. So I was very encouraged to see that. And I felt like God said, yeah, like this. You've been supposed to be doing this for a long time now, but do more.

Right?

Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I just had this conversation with God or I was like, man, I'm like, I'm feel like I've been Missing the boat for the last eight years of my career on what's really important.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's like, you know, stop crying. Just start today. You know, you can't change the past. Start today. So every week we would publish one of these newsletters and the response came pouring in and we tackle big topics like forgiveness and fear and anxiety. Your thought life and you know, just things that people really struggle with in life. Had I had a guy, I sent a newsletter on depression and I think we got like 1200 responses to that on the email. You know one responds to emails. You know what I mean? Like you get a newsletter, no one's. It's not social media. It's not like leaving a comment below. You know, it's like to actually physically hit reply to an email and someone say wow, that really impacted me. It's. It's like a way above and beyond what you would expect. Yeah. Sending an email. So we had 1200 responses repression thing. And, and one of them was really simple. It was from like a young guy in his early 20s and, and he just said thank you bro. God bless you, bro. I was sitting here honestly thinking about taking my life and your email came through and I don't know what the future holds, but I decided it wasn't a good move today. Wow, you know, that's insane. And then we reached back out to him and encouraged him and actually got him plugged in with some people who could help him. So like literally saved a life, right?

Yeah, that's wild.

Insane. When that type of stuff's happening, you see that type of feedback. I just felt like man, I need to be doing more, you know then. And that's, that's. I said this email thing is great but like no one sees these 1200 responses. And yeah and if this was on social media and we got 1200 replies to a post, at least people could read and be encouraged see that like other people are, you know, are going through some similar things and here hear people's stories and whatever. So that's when I got on Instagram last April. I decided like I wanted to move away. Not away from email, but in addition to email. I wanted to a public right that has that, you know, this social media, it's social right. The social proof of, of it's. It's public public facing versus.

Were you doing nothing of that prior? Like I like a low key guy.

That I did not Instagram. Yeah. I did not even have a, a.

Facebook no way prior to last April.

Yeah, I didn't Have a Facebook account, like a personal one. Like, like, you know, like people to follow.

Why was that? It just never. You never wanted to be this.

Talking about as a distraction.

Okay.

You know, I, I, obviously you can leverage it for some really, really good things, but I just kind of stayed in my lane with email, direct response, marketing and building funnels. Yeah, you knew.

You knew your lane.

Yeah. And I was like, and I'm doing really well with this. Let me just double down on this. So I was, that's what I did. That's why I have 20 million email subscribers. But yeah, at the time I didn't even have a personal Facebook page. Nothing. And I was just behind the scenes guy running a nine figure company, you know, and building funnels and, and buying traffic and all this stuff. And we use the social platforms for traffic. Like we're running Facebook ads forever. But like, it's funny, we, we had an account that we used because you have to have an account to, in order to run ads, but had like seven followers or something. And, and we were spending like 3 million a month on ads. Yeah, the account would have had no followers. So it's interesting. But yeah, last April, that's when I started that. And then I said my goal is to get to a million followers as fast as I can on social media. I called my buddy Lewis Howes and I said Lewis was really the only one that I knew who was on social media at the time. Like I was. Yeah. So I called Louis. I know Lewis for 10 years. Okay. Funny. Louis, my business partner, threw an event called Internet Marketing Fit Festivals in Austin, Texas on Lake Travis. And Jamie Eason, who is a really popular fitness model, she's actually on the COVID of Oxygen magazine this month again, like probably what, 50 times cover. She was attending the event and she said, I have this, my friend Lewis, he's kind of trying to figure out what he's doing with his life. You know, it just came off of being a professional athlete, got injured.

This is 10 years ago, you're saying?

Yeah, yeah. Wow. And he, and he, and she said he cannot afford to come to the event, but I think he has a lot of potential. Would, would it be okay if I brought him as like a guest?

That's insane because I'm sure everyone listening knows Louis now.

Right, right. And my partner said, yeah, just bring him. And we got this like pre day on a private yacht. We're doing a mastermind on private yacht. And it's just like 15 of us on day one. Then we have like, like 100 and some people just coming at this really private fitness event and like, yeah, bring him, invite him into. Even to the pre day mastermind, if he wants. And that's when I met Lewis. That was. That was 10 years ago. Wow.

That's insane.

Yeah. When. When Lewis. I was like, maybe two years into. Into business, but, like, I, I. When I took off, I took off pretty fast.

Yeah.

I was, like, known as a launch guy in my industry, and I was actually speaking at that event. But yeah, that's when I met Louis. And we just kind of. I think that was the first. That was the first big event where, like, Lois really exposed entrepreneurship, opened up.

His eyes to what he's now doing.

Right?

Exactly ten years or so.

Yeah. So I called Louis, I said, louis, you're crushing on social media. I know nothing about social media. I was so naive to social media. I. I called him, I said, I got some questions, some really basic stuff. You're probably gonna laugh at me. I said, I'm on. I'm just browsing on Instagram. I noticed that some people have this ring around their profile picture, and some people don't. I'm like, what? It's like one, like an elite profile. One's not. No, it's Instagram story. Right. It's like another part of your profile. And. And if there's a new post, then they have the ring. I'm like, oh, I'm like, it looks way cooler. I thought they were like, better, you know, better profiles. And then he told me, like, the blue check mark and stuff like that, which I didn't even know anything about that.

Yeah, Yeah.

I said, listen, I need you to hook me up with somebody who can help me, who knows what they're doing with Instagram. I got a budget to put behind this. I want to grow Instagram quickly, the right way, real followers, all that stuff. But I said, I'm happy to advertise, do giveaways, whatever. So he hooked me up with Dan Fleischman. Yep.

Shout out to Dan. I've been like, three years now. He's been a mentor to me for sure.

Yeah. And then Dan and I actually partner in this new mastermind that we're doing. It's. It's crazy how things work out, you know?

So you met Dan through Lewis? Just last year. You met Dan?

Yeah.

Really?

Last April.

Okay. Wow.

He was the first guy that helped me with growing my account.

Okay. Yeah. He's the right guy to go to. Well, and now you have for people listening at one and a half Million followers. And last year, you didn't even know really what Instagram was or how to use it or what.

Yeah. That's not difficult for other people to replicate without, like, putting some money behind it, you know?

Totally.

And. And even again, I didn't know what I was doing. I still, you know, I. I would say I'm definitely not the most experienced person when it comes to Instagram. I try to post good content, but. But, yeah, so I said I'm gonna get to a million followers as quickly as possible. And then I. I made myself a promise. As soon as I hit a million, then I'm starting a podcast.

Okay.

It's called We're Gonna be Born to Impact. And I'm gonna. It's gonna be all about helping people live the life they were born to live and not settling for mediocrity or some average life lesser than, like, so many people living out there who are just tolerating what they do, especially professionally. Right. You. Most people are in either one or two buckets. They're. They loathe what they do every day. It's just to pay the bills and get them to the weekend, or they tolerate it. They don't love it. They don't hate it. They had some cool friends at work, but they don't really love their job. Not fulfilled by it. Right. So I want to help people live the life that they were born to live. Life purpose. The life that's fulfilling. A life where they're making an impact.

Yep.

On. On. In. In their relationships and then in their career, in their family lives. You know, all these different areas that you want to have fulfillment in. But I think a lot of people are falling. Falling short. And I'm still working on living the life that I was born to live. Right. I'm. I've accomplished some things, but there's other areas where I need to tighten up for sure. And continue to. It's a. It's a constant evolution, so.

Got it. So Born to Impact.

Yeah.

Podcast itself. Just for the people listening. When you hear the word impact, like, what would you say now for you? Like, where is your focus on, like, where do you want to leave impact? Right. You're doing all this stuff on social. You're impacting people. But, like, when you hear the word impact and legacy, like, what does that. What do you think about when you hear those words to you, like, what does it mean? What do you want to do? And how do you want to be remembered for your impact, your legacy?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think I Believe God. God's call on my life is really over those last year, I've really felt like, yes, I want to influence the end user, the person who's on the other side of the podcast listening. Right. That's a super important audience. But I think even more than that, my calling is to influence the influencer. I've been able to network with so many people through the podcast, and just like I've always been a networker, I've all the business relationships that I've had. I mean, I have so many people who join this hundred thousand dollar mastermind that no one even knows who the heck they are. They're just running big business in the background. Like I was. You know, it's guys who I worked with for years who have 300 friends on Facebook and they're just like friends and family, business contacts. And, you know, they're not, they're not really on social media. Like, I wasn't at a time, but I've always been networking, but I've just networked with other business owners now. Like with Lewis, for example. I've known Lewis for 10 years. I always kind of planted seeds with him about faith. And I was never really one to connect all the dots that need to be connected for Lewis to say, like, oh, I'm gonna make a life change or I'm gonna give my life to the Lord or whatever. I introduced him to my buddy Irwin McManus, who's a pastor in Hollywood, has a big church in Hollywood, came out with a book called the Way of the Warrior. And I was like, well, Louis, use. Part of your brand is Peaceful Warriors. I think you guys would really jam out on a podcast. This new book is awesome. It's all about inner peace. And so I connected them and they became really good friends. Erwin was able to connect spiritually with Lewis in a way that I wasn't able to, but it was just my job to make the connection, you know. And now Louis goes to church at Mosaic in Hollywood, you know, and I see the transformation that's happening in Lewis's life over this last year. And part of that was getting out of one relationship and getting into a really fulfilling one. And. And I think Lewis is even more living his best life than he was before. And he's opened himself up to spirituality in a way that I don't, I don't think that he was before. And I look at now that I was able to connect some dots for Lewis, who then has 100 million downloads on his podcast, who then has, you know, A million person Instagram following plus has these live events and all that. How many more people can he reach with, with the, with the bigger messages, the, the deeper messages, the, the, the stuff that really matters. So for me it's, I think my biggest thing is I want to impact the people who are impacting, you know, impact the.

You said influence.

Influence the influencer. Influencers. Yeah, got it.

I like that.

Yeah. I've, I'm in a special place where I'm surrounded and being able to connect with a lot of powerful people, you know, and I can just rub off a little bit, shed some light, plant some seeds. You know, I really, I really think at the end of this life, you know, if, if you, if you believe that this is not it, right, this flash of an eye that we're here is, is not it. I want to make sure that I'm preparing people for eternity eternal impact. Right. You know, kingdom, legacy. I don't, I don't. If I'm thinking about just the legacy I'm going to build is, is leaving wealth to my kids, which I hope to do, but like that's all still very temporal. Like if I don't prepare my kids with the right morals, values and instill ethics in them so they can go on to be productive people and impact people for what's next, you know, so it's for sure legacy is. My legacy is. I don't want it to be earthly legacy, I want it to be far, far, you know, long lasting. Beyond that.

Yeah, got it. No, just, just a couple more questions too. So with kids and having like having kids, was that something that business wise and just how did that affect you? Because I think I sit down with a lot of people and some of them say it was the, the turning point where it changed everything. How they look at business, how they look at life. So for you, what was that transition like having kids and just having these new beings that you have to instill morals into and actually build into these people that if you, you know, if you, you hand in the keys to your kingdom, whether that's wealth or whatever it is, you have to prepare them. So what's that, what was that? What's that been like?

Well, the kids are, are honestly, I mean my wife and my kids are the most important people in my entire life. You know, that's my squad, that's my, my people, other close friendships and dear friends. But like that's, that's my unit, you know, my wife and my two children and there's.

How old are they?

Six and eight.

Six and eight.

Two girls. Yeah, I've, I wake up every day and I take them to school, you know, fortunately, I'm in a position where I work from home and I just make it a priority to like, hey, I'm gonna still be involved. As busy as I am, I'm gonna still be involved with my kids. I spend time with them every evening. We do activities and reading and stuff like that. Before bedtime, we put them to bed. We say prayers with them every night. And then on Saturdays is, I, I might work a couple hours in the very early morning before, while the kids are still getting going. But then like all late morning, afternoon, evening is all family time, you know.

Okay.

So I really try to, I could work all day every day, you know, like, there's always more to do. There's always more to do. But if it's at the expense of losing connection with the people who are most important to me, who I say are most important to me. And I have lived that life as well. And over these last two years, there's been a lot of personal development in my own life. I have lived the life in the early days of BioTrust, where I was working probably 100 plus hours a week. You know, I was working 14 hour days, seven days a week, taking a break here and there to spend time with the family. But it was always like, I'm on my phone the whole time, you know, like it was, they never got the best of Joel, you know, and I made that mistake for a long time. And over these last two years, it's something that I've really shifted that, hey, I, I, if somebody asked me, who's the most important, what's the most important thing in your life? Who are the most important people? I would always have said my wife and my children. Right. Or what Number one, my relationship with God. And then my wife and my children. And then work third, maybe, you know, or friends and relationships third and then work fourth. Right? Yep. But then you, if I, if I examine my life and I was truthful, it was always work first and then maybe based on everything else was like a distant fifth, you know, it was like what work was like the first four spots, you know. Okay, so it's, and I think some people, sometimes people need to do that exercise and say, hey, if someone asked you what's the most important thing to you? You know, what's the most important thing and most important people in your life? List them out and then look at how you live your life right around.

Those answers do they match up?

Does it match up? Are you are. Is the way you. You live in alignment with what you say? Maybe that's even in your heart. Like, yes, they're the most important. But then you lose sight. You take the. Take it for granted that like, oh, they're always going to be there. Right. And. Yep. And then you're just so focused on building this thing or whatever's going on with your career that you end up losing connection. I've seen a lot of people make that mistake for too long and not correct it. And super successful entrepreneurs dealing with divorce see their kids Wednesdays and every other weekend. You know, that's not ever a position that I wanted to be in, but I could see that if I didn't make. And when I, when I said like in 2016, was. Was really affecting me both professionally and personally, I had to come to grips with the fact, like, if I don't make some real changes here, then I may end up losing my family. You know, like, I'm, I'm not prioritizing them and giving them the time that I need to cultivate relationship. There's disconnection between me and my wife. Yep. There's. My kids love me, but like, how often do they actually get to interact and spend time with me and see me? Like, am I going to be somebody who said, oh, yeah, I love my dad, but he's never there. You know, he's always busy with, for sure, with the work stuff.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. So it is the most important and it's really, really important to take, you know, to do that exercise and to just audit yourself what you say or what you would say or what's in your heart lining up with how you're living your life and what you're doing, in a sense.

Got it. And I want to touch on two. So coming out of that two years ago, that, like, dark year you had, and for the people listening, maybe that's them, right? They're going through anxiety or depression. And there's always this conversation on mental health out there, right, of just how does someone go from having so much anxiety about the little things or even the big things, whether that's a divorce or loss of a family member or whatever it is. What would you say? What would you say just being so successful now, right. I'm sure there's people listening. It's like, wow, if only I had Joel's life. Right? Whether that's the. How they perceive it. But people like yourself, you know, you have struggles, you have Anxiety and depressions that you have to face. Well, what got you through that? Like, what was. Was it the communication with your business partners that fixed that? Was it the communication with your. Your wife or whatever it was that brought you guys closer over these last two years? Or what would you say to that person that's more so listening now, and they're going through that currently? Like, what would be the one thing you pinpoint as, hey, start here, like, make this your step one, Whether that's their relationship with God or whatever it is. What would you say that would be to you, and what would you want to tell that person? Listening.

Yeah. So first I would say, one, try to identify what the cause is. And then when I really identify the cause, I realized it was myself. A lot. The cause of a lot of the issues that I had was myself. So why were things not the way that I wanted them to be? Well, I neglected my wife. I was in disconnection with my wife because I neglected that relationship for work, which ended up, you know, it was kind of where it was blowing up in my face, the work stuff. Right. And so I had to say, identify what's the cause. Now, for some people, the cause may be somebody else. It may be a toxic relationship that you're in or something. And you have to realize that, okay, this is unhealthy for me, so I need to remove that thing or put distance there. Right. Or separate myself from that. Generally speaking, if somebody's sure, there's mental health, you know, where it's truly a mental health thing, where, like, yes, see a doctor, talk to somebody. Maybe it's chemical imbalance, we need medications. But I'm just talking about more like when life beats you up and you're in a down place because of life. Well, you have to be honest and examine why are you at where you're at. Right. Because that stuff just doesn't happen on accident. Right. Your current position in life is the sum of all the actions you've taken to get here. And usually when you're going through a tough or a rough time, there's some outside circumstance or something, some of it's out of control. Maybe you just lost somebody who you loved and you're going through a grieving process, all those things. The best thing I could say is one, try to identify if it's something that you can remove from your life and then try and separate and distance yourself from it as quickly as possible, and then focus on the things that are really going to be positive. For me, that meant I Had to step away from the business a little bit. And my business partner at the time. And there was a period of time where. And I just. I just share this. Not to, like, air dirty laundry or whatever, but to just give people hope that, like, broken relationships can be repaired. There's a time where, like, I didn't. Me and my business partner, for five years, we spoke every single day. You know, we. We would get on a call almost every day. Something was going on, the business. He called me. It was just constant communication. He lives in Austin, Texas, and I live in Florida, but we still talked every day, super, super close. Then there was a time in 2016 where I did not talk to him outside of company calls, conference calls that we were both on probably for nine months.

Okay.

You know, now he and I have an even better friendship than we ever did before that. What did it take in order to do that one? I had to recognize my role that I played in all this. I had to separate myself from that because it was. It was very. The tension was just killing me. So I had to back off a little bit and then separate from whatever it is that's the tension that's causing it, and then start filling that separation with positive things. So what did I do? I want to focus on relationship with God. I surrender the situation and said, lord, I can't handle this on my own. I don't know how this is going to end up working out. It may mean that I need to separate permanently from this. Hopefully not. We built this amazing thing together, but. But right now, it's not something I can be in this level of tension every single day. But I said, let me just surrender it. I'm gonna let you work with Josh just like you're working on me. And I'll focus on my wife and my kids. And I plugged in with more quality time with my wife, my kids, just serving my family, and then tightening up my relationship with God. All those things were all the positive things that got me through while I had to separate myself from things that were negative and kind of rebuild other things that were probably broken a bit because of my neglect that happened over the last five years. And, you know, if you listen to the podcast Born Impact, I interviewed my partner a few months back, back in April, and it's called the Other, the Other Hundred Million Dollar Man. And it goes through his story and then also his life transformation over the last two years. And you see how God was at work in his life when all this was going on just as he was. I Had to. I think God had to get both of our attention. He came into relationship with God for these. He's in his 40s. He came in a relationship with God for the first time his entire life. And now he'll tell you, as he says on the podcast, like, he's like, I thought I. I knew, you know, I thought I was good. I thought I lived a good life. I thought I was success, successful. And he's like this. He's like, I'm in my 40s, and for the first time in my life, I'm actually living.

Wow.

You know? Yeah. And. And that was. Wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for what we both mutually went through. He was pissed at me, I was pissed at him. And.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, there's a, There's a dark time there. And the business obviously suffered when the two, the two owners are like, you know, not even. Not talking and just. Just going through the motions. But he ended up. He had some. And he shared us all this openly on the podcast. He had trust issues just with everybody because of some. Some experiences that he had in his childhood and all that. And he was with the Same girl for 14 years. Never married.

Wow.

He just had. Was deathly afraid of like, committing and saying like, okay, we're married legally. He's like, they're living like they're married. They live together like they do everything.

14 years.

14 years. Right. You know, he, he wasn't looking for anything else. He just was like, definitely afraid of making the commitment to. He's married now. Love loving being married. None of this stuff would have happened. I think, I think if it's interesting, because we had this huge deal on the table to, to buy the company. I think if it went through at the time, I may have end up losing my family. He probably would end up losing Kim, his now. His now wife. We would have been two really wealthy, miserable people.

Wow.

You know, and it was. And it was through that experience that God got over our attention in different ways. And, and it was like just stuff that you cannot script, you know, like just how things happened and, and, and how he experiences that he had that you could, you could not. You could. You couldn't script it. That brought him into relationship with God for the first time in his life. Now he's like. He taught. It's funny because he's so independent, you know, such an independent person, even from being a kid. Right. Which is, I think, part of why he was shying away from getting married and all that. He's like, I don't. It's like just the fear of commitment. Me, I. I'll handle it. Even when he was a kid, he like eight years old, he was cooking his own meals, doing his own laundry, all this stuff. You know, he's. He's very independent. And then, you know, fast forward now he's in his 40s for the first time in his life, comes into relationship with God. And, and he will, he will tell you, like on the podcast, he's just constantly going back to saying like, you know, he said. And he's like. And then I. And then he's like, no, he's like, it's partnership, me and God. We. He's like, we. He's like, he's realizing that, like, hey, it's like, it's a blessing to be here on this planet. You know, we were put here for a purpose and, and there's a creator who, who created us and put us here to, to do some magical stuff here. But we're in partnership with him, right? He's breathing air into our lungs. Every breath that we take, we have the opportunity to be alive. And I think a lot of people end up learning lessons the hard way. When they shut themselves off and it becomes all about them. They get humbled. You know, at some point in life, they get humbled because we can't do any of this without the opportunity to even be here. Right?

For sure. No, absolutely. And I have two more questions to wrap it up. Just. Just going back throughout your journey, you say networking. And I know that something that from the early stages of, you looked at those top 20 people to have, you've always been a great networker. And that's something that I believe to myself, just being in certain rooms and meeting certain people and making sure you focusing on the value first, that's something I believe as I've studied and I try to maintain and continue to do that. So for you, what has been the importance of networking? Because I make sure to tell young people, like, everything that's happened in my life wasn't from me. Right. It's from the association of others. It's from the opportunities that others have put upon me. Right. And I'd love for you to just give a brief summary on just nowadays with social media, with the access to everything and the ability to network quickly with. I tell people, you're only one DM away. Right. That's how we connect. That's how I've connected with everybody. So for you, like, the importance of networking and spending time with Quality people on a consistent basis. How has that completely changed your life? Because I come from a small town in Virginia. There's not too many people that I considered mentors. But I looked online, you know, I saw people like yourself that are putting out content, whether that's Andy Frisella and my letter or anyone in between. So what would you say to that young person listening before we wrap this up, the importance of networking and spending time with quality people. Because I know you do masterminds. You and dan have that $100 million mastermind that we can touch on before we wrap it up. But yeah, I'd love to just hear your thoughts on that of just how your network truly changed your life.

Yeah, it's everything. I mean, honestly, it's literally everything. I think some, some you can only get so far by yourself. Can you be successful without, you know, really building relationships and friendships? I mean, to a degree, I guess on a small scale, not never a big scale. I don't know anybody who has really built something on a big scale who is not very well connected because you need to lean on other people at times. How do you create those relationships? You show up, you add value. You. You make it about them, not about you. You know, and for me, I talk about the Goodwill bank account. Like any. Every time I open, anytime I have a new relationship, I open up a Goodwill bank account with that person. Right. It's a new connection. And then we mutually were co owners of this Goodwill bank account. Right. And I want to make. I want to make loads of deposits into that Goodwill bank account that I just opened up with this person before I ever take a withdrawal. Because.

Yep.

I don't want to be overdrawn. Right. I don't want to. Oh, I'm. I'm going to come to you. We. We open up this account. No. No one's put any deposits into it. Yeah. There's no, nothing in there. And then I'm asking you for something.

Yeah.

Right. But no money in the account. Right. Nobody account. Guess what? There's no money coming out either. There's no money in there. It's generally not going to work. Right. And unless. Unless somebody some way just liked you so much that they're going to make the first deposit and then you can take it out immediately. Like it doesn't happen. You have to invest in people and relationships first before you can expect to have some sort of return. Right. And when you lead with value first, and this gets lost on so many people. But just think about it. If you show Up. You're a good dude. You add value. How can I help you? Or even, you know, I don't even love it when people say, how can I help you? Because it's just like such a. I don't know, how can you help me? I mean, what are you good at? Right? I don't know anything about you. Just let me know if I can do anything for you. I'm like, when I say flight of yeah, I need somebody to pick up dinner tonight. You want to fly to Tampa and pick up takeout for me and my wife? You know, like, I don't know what, what somebody can do. So offer something that you have a value. I've had people who said, hey, love what you do. Just the podcast is amazing. I know that you do a lot of online work. I'm a graphic designer. Here's my portfolio. I would do work for you for free. I'd be honored to just have the opportunity to create a small relationship with you. And I'll lead with the fact this is my skill set. And if your next graphic design project or website or something, if I can help or lend a hand, I'll do a pro bono. Right. That's a great way to approach somebody. Because even if I don't need graphic design help right then and there, like, oh, I recognize that that person came to me offering versus hey, can I pick your brain or you know, I, I love your podcast. It was great. I have a couple questions about, you know, XYZ on the podcast and that's like, sure, I want to help but like, you know, DMS I get, you know, like I can't possibly. It's the ones that stand out. Like, oh, somebody sent me a video message versus just a regular message and they, I love that I tell people.

To do that video audio.

Right? The videos in the audio stand out. You know, it's kind of double edged sword because sometimes people, you're not in a place where they can actually watch the video, then it gets buried. Yeah. And people forget about it. But that's when it comes. Follow up. Right? Here's a little trick for on dm. Okay. If you see somebody has not responded to something or especially if they haven't seen it yet, just hold whatever it is that you sent. Hit copy. Okay. Then hold it again. Hit unsend and then resend it right back up to the top. Right.

I love that. That feature on Instagram is so cool.

You can't do it on text mess. Like the best. It's the best thing ever. On if they don't see it, doesn't.

Harm them, you know.

Exactly. They didn't see it the first time. So you know, obviously if they saw it every time and they didn't respond to different story. Maybe you should rethink your approach with, with the reach out. But, but yeah, networking. I mean, I can't. Your network, you hear it all the time. Your network is your net worth. And, and just honestly, like I'm excited about this mastermind that we're putting together. We're going so big with this. There's. There's literally like for every person who comes in and $100,000, there's like $80,000 in expenses then plus we're donating another 10 grand per person to charity. So it's 90 grand off the top at 10 grand left, split between me and Dan pay taxes. Like I'm walking away with, with three grand per member. You know, it's. That in and of itself directly is not a motivator for me. You know, I'm, I have loads of businesses running autopilot while we're recording today and spend, you know, a good portion of the day with you. There's lots of money that's coming in and I'm not even, you know, that's, that's just on passive income that's coming in. Right. So that working really, really hard to get a new member to, for me to make three grand is, is. It's. Hey, I want to get all the right people there so that we can all share resources and our, our skill sets. What we're, what we're all experts at a lot of expertise in the room. If somebody needs my expertise, great, I can be of value. But if I need somebody else's expertise or in some other area where I'm not expert, it's already represented in the group. So I'm really excited about. Masterminds are great if they're facilitated the right way. I think, you know, what we're doing is really special to get all the right people together so that any problem that needs to be solved, there's somebody in the group that can, that can help with it.

Got it.

It's all about speed, right? Relationships accelerate growth. Any, anything that you want to do. If I said like, hey, I want to open up a business I don't really like. Classic example, me getting started on Instagram. What do I do? I call Lewis Howes. It's my, my buddy I'd known for 10 years, right? I call Lewis, he takes my phone call. He hops on the phone with me for an hour, we catch up and then he helps me with this getting this Instagram thing off the ground. Why? Because I don't know anything about Instagram at the time. Right. So I, I call him up. Then he says, hell, by the way, he said is, I told him I was, I was going to be in his area in January. And I said, I'm speaking at a few events, I'll be out there. I would love to get together with you while I'm out there. And he said, yeah, let's do it. He said, I actually have my mastermind right around the same time. Would you be willing to pop in and speak? So I came and I spoke to his audience on email marketing. Right. So, and it's again, because that's the way that my relationship is with Louis. I know that I can call him and he's there. He can lean on my expertise, I can lean on his expertise. If I don't have that relationship, then I'm probably googling articles about Instagram and wasting my time and doing it the wrong way versus somebody who's like been there, done that at the time, had like 700,000 followers, could probably tell me a lot quicker, tell me the things to avoid, tell me the things to not get roped up in than I could ever do trying to research myself and getting, you know, going through the whole, the whole web of Google results, you know, so it's a shortcut to the right answers and the help that you need.

So, and one thing too. So the $100 million mastermind that you're talking on, give us some more context on that. So for the people that may not know what that is because I know you guys are doing the three back to back events in California. Correct?

Yeah, that's, I don't know when this is airing. That's Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that, that is happening, happening very quickly. But, but yeah, that was. And here's just another lesson just about entrepreneurship. You have to be agile. We have to be willing to adapt. Right. So we have some more spots available. We're to cap it at 100 people. That was, that's the goal, to get to 100. And I'm just looking forward to getting to 100 so I can stop getting on calls about getting people in the group. I just want to focus on the members in the events and adding value to the people who are in. Right. And now it's full and can get past the, the enrollment stage. Right. But we have some More spots that are left. About 65 people in. So we have 30 some odd spots left to fill. So. And again, I got connected with another guy. His name's Pete Vargas. He's. He's. He has a business. It's all about. It's called why Stages? And it's all about getting people on in front of the right people. Right. And whether that be on podcasts as a stage like this is, or whether it be on live event stage, or whether it be at, like a really intimate D with all the right people, that's. That's a form of a stage. So I got connected through my friend David Gonzalez to Pete Vargas. And why did I get connected to him? Because David Gonzalez is a networker. He knows loads of people. He knew me. He knew that I was looking for somebody to help me fill this mastermind. He knew Pete. He knew Pete was looking for somebody to help him with some email stuff for a launch that he was coming up with with. So he Connect us to. We both have mutual value to one another. We get on a phone call, end up hitting off really well, and then next, you know, these. These seats that we're sitting in right now, have a meeting with Fleischman, my partner, Dan Fleischman, Pete Vargas, on September 2nd. Right.

Got it.

And he says, here's what I think that you should do. We can organize some dinners in Southern California. Look at your schedule, let us know. We think you can do it. And, you know, I can lean on some. Some guys that I know to help fill them up. And. And you guys can push your network to get the right people at these dinners. And we just had this, like, half day, little brainstorm on how to do it. September 2nd, okay. Literally a week later, we had all the venues booked. We had every, like.

Like, yeah, adaptive.

Right, right. Immediately, that's. You got to be able to move quick. Right. And. And again, if I wasn't able to move quick, let's just say it was. I'm trying to fill this thing all by myself. I have no relationships. One, I wouldn't be sitting across the table from Pete. Right. That was a whole networking thing. And then how do I fill it? I'm going out to all my. 1. To all the members who I've never. They're members because they're close to me. I network my way. We have relationships with them. I'm going out to all the members and saying, hey, can you refer somebody to one of these dinners? And then to all of our instructors, which, again, are. Have become friends of Mine, good friends of Dan's, can you refer some people to these dinners? And next thing you know, we're hosting. We got like 50 some people come to a dinner on Monday in Hollywood. All seven figure business owners, all the right people. And I think the events will end up being really successful. So it's, it's, you just have to be willing to do the work, right? And when, when I stand in front of the audience on November 1st and the room is full or close to full, I can look and say there's not many other people who could have pulled this off, you know, because I know how much work it's taken just, just to get to that point. But then once it's full, we deliver value, people renew. It'll be full for life, right? Just people having a great experience of referral, refer others, and it will never ever not be full moving forward. So just got to do the hard work once, right? So the premise of the mastermind, if people want to learn more, you can go to the website. The short version of the website is 100 the letter M, the letter M, the letter E. So 100mme stands for 100 million mastermind experience 100mme.com and there's a. It's password protected, but you can use a password elevator.

Got it.

We have 24 CO instructors for the year, which is one of the most unique things that any mastermind. Most masterminds are run by one or two guys, and those are the guys. Then they bring in kind of like guest speakers who are kind of in and out. They're there, they'll give a presentation and then they're on their way. They're not really, they're a guest speaker for the day or the afternoon. What we're doing is we have 24 other nine figure guys who are there at every event from start to finish. They're co instructing on their leading zoom calls and stuff in between the events. So we literally have a faculty, you know, 24 people, 24 rock star, nine figure guys, plus Fleischmann and myself, 26 of us who are leading the group, who are going to be accessible. We're going to be at all the events. And then that's amazing. We're going real big with the events. We're not meeting in hotel rooms, we're meeting in like mega mansions, private estates, inspirational venues. We're going to have some really cool entertainment and experiences. That's part of it. So it's all kind of outlined on the website. Something I'm really, really excited about it's kind of the mastermind of kudos to Dan. It was, it was his initial vision. He came to me about partnering with him on it and I helped fine tune it a bit. But you know, it's, it's a, it's an amazing opportunity for the right person. You have to be at a plane at a certain level. Right. It's a hundred thousand dollars to invest in it. But if you have a seven figure business, and this sounds intriguing to you, check out the website. There's a little form to express interest at the bottom of the page. Yep.

And I'll make sure to put that in the description so people can check it out for sure. And last thing just to, to bring it all full circle, man. I mean just to someone listening, the one thing to leave with an 18 year old, if you could go back to in that moment of hey, you're just getting started in your journey, you're 18 years old. With the current landscape of social media and where it is today in 2019, what would you tell that 18 year old that's literally listening to this podcast today, hearing nine figure entrepreneurs and $100,000 to get in, but they're just getting started. What would you say to that young 18 year old kid or male, female, wherever they are in their life, what would you say to them just to really wrap it up?

Go listen to Born Impact episode one.

Love it.

Yeah, it's truly though, it's, it outlines the five pillars of impact and that's the foundation, right? Like if you're, you're 18 years old, you're, you're primo to just like you, you're, you don't. Fortunately, you're not 45 years old saying how many mistakes did I make to get myself here? And now I have to kind of correct course correct. Right. You're at the start of your adult life and you have an opportunity for podcasts like these and like mine who can actually give you a really strong foundation. You can plug into things like this and you can get education. But in that episode we go over the five pillars of, of impact and we elaborate on them, but they, they are. The first one is passion and you need to think about what is it that I really am passionate about. Because if you chasing the money, you know, like, oh, this is a good industry to be in, like you, you're gonna get burnout real quick and you're much more likely to end up not following through because guess what? A financial opportunity or business opportunity, if it even were to work out you know, it's gonna end one of being unfulfilling. You're not gonna be motivated to. Because, because business, let me tell you this right now, business is hard work. It's, it's not for the faint of heart. You're going. The last two P's are patience and perseverance. And there's a reason why they're included, right? Because even when you identify what your passion is, and then the second one is pure motives or authenticity, you got to be real. You gotta have pure motives about what it is that you're entering into. If again, if you're entering into it for, because it's a money grab, like, guess what? You're not gonna go very far. Think about what am I really passionate about? What, what is gonna get me up? And when the times get tough and, and it's a difficult time, I can always anchor into the fact that I'm really passionate about this. So it's going to keep me going, right? So passion one, pure motives, authenticity is number two. The third one is super important. It ties back into your passion. So it's proficiency. Proficiency means you can be really passionate about something, but unless you master your craft, you're not really going to be able to get that far. Somebody says, I'm passionate about soccer, but never practice, right? You're not a very good player, then your passion is only going to take you so far, right? Your passion should fuel your desire to become proficient in it, right? If I love guitar and I'm really passionate about music, then even though the fact that I bust out my guitar and I suck the first time, the fact that I'm passionate about it, I want to learn is what's going to keep me going, right? And same thing with me with health and fitness online. Want to impact people with health and fitness information. Failed failure on articles, hundreds of rejections. Failure on the, on the big book that I thought was going to be the turning point for my life and then it led me into what I'm doing today. But not everything that I do in, in my current business is, is an instant success. You know, I've had failures over the last seven years, many of them fortunately more wins than failures. And when the failures happen and when the losses happen, then you say, why didn't that work? What do I need to change? What do I need to do? I've actually had product launches where I had a bunch of people promoting and the launch did not perform that well. And because I wanted to protect those relationships, I just came out of pocket And I paid everybody extra commission because they had an expectation on how it was going to perform. It didn't. Was disappointing for me, but like, now it's not just disappointing for me in the fact that it didn't do that well, but now I'm like, like coming out of pocket six figures just to make good with everybody who promoted it. And I got hundreds of partners promoting, you know. Yeah, that was a big lesson learned and that, that taught me, like, don't release it until it's tested. Don't Release it to 50 people to promote it until you've actually determined that the numbers are there. You know, so. And everything you're going to learn. So you have passion, you have pure motives, authenticity, you have proficiency. And then you have patience. And perseverance is. You're going to have to have patience. I did not get to where I am today. Overnight. I had a really good first year, but that came off of probably five or six years of just trying to get anything to work, you know. And then my friend James Clear, he wrote the book Atomic Habits, he talks about, it's called the plateau of latent potential. And it basically means like, like, you expect progress to be linear when you get, you get started on something and you're working really hard and you expect it to just be very gradual, linear path to success. Right. Like I start, I start climbing the stairs and then I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then I'm going to reach, you know, the, the top of the staircase or the top of the mountain in time. Right?

Yeah.

Well, it's not how it works. It's like you're basically just walking in a straight line for a while. You're not getting anywhere at all. And then boom, like something happens and then you take off like a rocket, you know. So it's the stone cutter who's, who's slamming that mount down 20, 30, 40, 50 times. And then on the 78th time, stone breaks. Yep. Did he do something magical on number 78? No, he just didn't give up. And he plowed through 77 to get there and then boom, he had his breakthrough. Right.

For sure.

It's, it's, it's, not that, that magical 78th blow. It's. It's the lead up of all the work that got put into it. Yep. To get you there. All the lessons learned along the way, all the things you figured out didn't work. God, thank God for the, for the things that you figure out don't work, so you stop doing them.

Yeah, Right.

And then you pivot and you learn what not to do, and you learn. Yeah. So all those things I just tell people, if. Especially if you're 18 years old and you're getting ready, I. I'd highly encourage you to just listen to those first two episodes, the Five Pillars. It's foundational for anybody who wants to achieve anything and live a life of impact.

I got it. Well, Joe, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. Just to wrap it up. So Born to Impact, the podcast, it's on every, what, itunes, Spotify, all the different platforms that you can check it out. So any last thing, where should people go to follow you? Instagram podcast? Where's the best place?

Yeah, I'm just at Joel Marion. M A R I O N at Joel Marion on Instagram. I'm not at Active on Facebook. I have a verified account on Facebook.

But Instagram's the place.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

So Instagram will be the place. The podcast would love. Love for people to tune into the podcast. We get a lot of amazing guests. Casey will. Will. Will be recording here in a minute, and you'll get a chance to. To hear him on the podcast. So maybe listen to that one first and. And then go back and listen to episode one and two, and then you can pick. We have many, many amazing guests. You know, Grant Cardone, Tim Grover, my good friend Beatrice, Colin Cr. Ed Mylett, Lewis Howes, all these guys. Trent Shelton, all these guys have been guests on the show. So I think you'll be. You'll get a lot of value out of it. It will inspire you. It'll help you along your path of living the life that you were born to live. And hopefully that's the life you're trying to live. Right. And not anything else, but because you were put here for a very specific reason and a purpose. Life is really about discovering what that is and then operating in that lane instead of, hey, if you. If. If you're trying to emulate or live somebody else's life, you're always going to be unfulfilled.

Yeah.

You know, you have to figure out why. What's special about me? Why am I here? And I think podcasts like these that we do can help encourage people and put people on the right path. So I'm grateful to have the opportunity to talk to your audience today.

I appreciate it, Joel. And that being said, everyone make sure you tune in to Born Impact as well as follow Joel on Instagram. Everything will be linked down below. And that being said, make sure you subscribe to the Rise of the Young podcast. I will talk to you guys soon. In.

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