Susan Sly - Homeless to Millionaire by 24

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You need to do a check to see if your validation you're getting is, you know, your likes and comments, which a lot of people, it doesn't matter how old they are. That's what's going on for them. That's a problem.

What's going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Susan Sly here with us today and I'm very excited to chat with her about a lot of things. So first things first, thanks so much for coming on the show, Susan.

Well, thanks, Casey, for having me. And I love all of the work you're doing. Your show is incredible. I've listened to so many episodes and I really appreciate how you're bringing like people with such diverse backgrounds to just inspire people all over the world.

That's awesome. Absolutely appreciate it. Well, first things first, for people that may not know who you are and what you do, I want to bring them to the current state because for a lot of podcasts I listen to, you know, they go into the story for 25 minutes and you're like, wait, wait, who am I listening to? What are they doing now? So I'd love to give them some sense into what you're currently working on to really bridge the gap between the conversation we'll have today.

Yeah, absolutely. So currently I am the co CEO of an artificial intelligence company. And so I'm always about like, you know, what's next in my life and just getting better, doing more, never stopping learning. So last year I serendipitous, serendipitously ended up helping this startup raise money. And then they said, will you be the vice president? Will you be the president? And then they said, will you be the co CEO? So I just finished a course At MIT in AI and machine learning. I'm doing that now, of course, I have my show speaking. I own a digital agency. Five kids.

Absolutely. So what is AI? For everyone that may have heard that and they're like, okay, but what is AI? Maybe you've heard it and you know what it is on the bare level, but give us some sense into what that is. To start off the episode, the real.

World explanation is just every time you log into social media, whatever is recommended for you or even like on Facebook, someone it's. You're getting the suggestions. Oh, here's some friends suggestions. That's all artificial intelligence. So Google, Facebook, Amazon, they have some of the best artificial intelligence on the planet. And essentially it's a machine attempting to solve problems that a human would solve.

Okay, what made you get into this company with artificial intelligence?

That's a, that's an amazing question. So, like, I, you know, going back in time a bit, I was raised by a single dad, and my dad was an engineer. And he always said, you know, when I was about 10, 12 years old, oh, someday you're going to go to MIT. Someday you're going to be like a famous engineer. And the thing was, I sucked at math. Like, so those two things don't go together. Engineer, algebra, advanced calculus, you're not going to do it. So I ended up loving coding, though. And when I was back in the 80s, I really wanted video games. I was like, dad, can you get me some video games? And he's like, no, code them yourself. And when you want something like, this would be the first thing I'll say. When you want something bad enough, achievers always find a way. So I'm like, okay, so I coded some early video games. Then when I was in university, I was doing early algorithms and facial recognition quantification, which, you know, I didn't end up using. That's a whole other story. But I just came back into it because I think along the way and it doesn't matter if you're like 14 years old, it doesn't matter if you're, you know, 84 years old. When you lose who you are in your soul, you're never gonna feel right in anything you do in your life. So there was that part of me that was the tech geek. So I love being back in the world.

Absolutely. That's super cool. And so let's bring it back. So I'm 19 now. A lot of you people that are young right now, they're listening to this podcast. What was your life at 18, 19 years old. Where was your head at? Where were your focus? What was your situation? Just bring us back to the 19 year old, Susan Sly.

Yeah, sure. I, I left home when I was 15. I was a kid. Like, I'm sure you know, some people listening. My parents got divided divorced when I was three years old. And I kind of bounced back and forth between my mom and my dad. And when I was 15, I was like, enough of this. And I leased an apartment. And at 15, I got a fake ID. I worked three jobs, I skipped two grades in high school. I started just hanging out on this university campus and I get like university kids to help me with my homework. And then I applied for and got into university when I was 16, and I started right in the summer semester and did a four year science degree in three years. So by the time I was 19, I had lived on my own for four years. I had worked all these different jobs. I took an internship at a stock brokerage and I used to do like manual calculations for stock trading. And, you know, from there I ended up being a prison guard. A men's maximum security prison guard.

Where did that drive from an early age of 15 come from? Like, it's not like every day you hear 15 year olds moving out on their own. They have a fake ID so they could get the apartment. Like, where did that mentality come from?

It's, you know, I really believe that we're all capable of so much more than we ever live into. And I don't believe hustle is something you're born with. I think that circumstance makes the hustle. And so my mom, God rest her soul, she just passed this summer. You know, she was an addict and I just wanted out of that situation. I didn't see a future for myself and I didn't want to end up like her.

Yeah.

And I knew if I worked as hard as I could and whatever I was doing, whether I was a server in a restaurant, underage bartending, or, you know, working in a clothing store, whatever it is I was doing, I was just gonna be the very best that I could at it. And just that decision really paid off. And so I ended up becoming a millionaire when I was 24 years old and lost it all.

But so from 15 to 24, you go to college, you graduated 19, right? From, was it from MIT? No, was that after.

Yeah, I just finished MIT.

Okay, got it, got it. So when you graduated college in 19, what was your trajectory? Like, what was the plan? Because I think a lot of people, you know, they may Be listening to this today. And they want more. They. They're hungry, but they don't have a plan. They don't know what to do. They don't have a roadmap. So what was your roadmap when you're graduating college at 19?

I. I thought that I wanted to go work at Quantico, so I. I went to work in corrections because I was fascinated with catching serial killers and serial sex offenders. And we were using math algorithms to be able to do that. And so I thought, well, I'll take your off school. I'll go work in prison, because where are you going to see criminals up close. Right. And because I was bilingual and, you know, I'm not afraid to say it, like visible minority woman. And I fit into a certain archetype of what they wanted. So they immediately put me into the. The men's maximum security. And I thought, I'll work here for a year or two years. I'll go work in the psych testing unit, I'll hone my skills, and I'll go back and do a master's degree, and then I'll go apply at Quantico.

Okay.

I became so disenchanted with the whole system, and I just kept seeing that, you know, people were going back in prison over and over for young people. It did them a complete disservice. Like, once you enter the system, system, if you commit a crime in your teens, it's over, especially if you end up in federal. So I just. I did a massive career pivot. I became a personal trainer. I raised the money to buy a health club, and that's what I did. So there I was at 24, millionaire on paper, health club. I had over 50 staff. I was pregnant for my first daughter. While I was. I needed like 20,000 more dollars to buy the club. And I was in labor with this pay as you go Nokia cell phone with my daughter Avery, negotiating, just calling people and prospecting in between contractions. Oh, my last 20,000 from this guy named Greg, whose wife was one of my clients. And then that happened at around 5 in the afternoon. And I had Avery at 9 that night, and a week later, took possession of the club, was teaching classes, running the team, bringing my baby to work.

Yeah, that's insane. At 24.

At 24.

So maximum security prison. What would you say you learned from that experience there? Cause a lot of people don't get to see the insides of that. And I'm sure you've taken something from that experience. But what was like, the biggest Takeaway or learning experience you got from working there?

That's a great question. One of the things I'll say to everyone is that, you know, you hear the saying, like, if you keep on doing the same things over and over, you're going to get the same results. Right. And one of the things I learned is that there is a path. You talk about a plan. So there's a path. When someone is a federal offender and they come out, they have their parole officer, there's certain places they can apply to work, certain things they can do, a lot of those places that will take them also have other offenders. And some of those offenders are still hustling, selling drugs, doing all this stuff. And there was this one guy, I went from working as a guard to working at the psych intake. So I would sit in small rooms with murderers, rapists, and I administer Roche tests, like the implant test and the like psychological test. Then I went to become a parole officer. And there was this one guy and he, both his parents had master's degrees. He started out like some smoking marijuana, then he went to hash, then he went to coke, then he went to crack. So he was first arrested 18. And I just said to him, you know, what do you want to do with your life? And he's like, whatever direction everyone's going, I don't want to go there, I want to go to college. And so I helped him get a job that wasn't with all those offenders. Long story short, he ended up becoming an award winning journalist and sadly, a few years he just died. But I still have the letter he sent me.

Thank me, really.

And so the biggest thing I learned in my career too is that the best results are not going to come just by following what everyone else is doing. Right. And you know, tell your listeners it's the same thing. Like, I don't care what age you are, if you want a different result, you're going to have to put yourself out there. It's scary. You're going to have to dare to be different.

Yep. Yeah, that makes so much sense. So, so what would you say? Having kids in business, how did that change your life? You know, you're 24, you're. It was, you said a spa, what was it exactly? The health club.

Yeah.

You're running this health club. Number one. What got you into that? What was the opportunity that sort of bridged that gap there? Before we get into.

Yeah, when I was, when I was 10 years old, I was a women's size 14x. So I was the kid who always got beaten up and started school. You called the names. I was really, really heavy. And there was one day and I was in grade five, and we had to run up this hill. And I will never forget this moment because I was last. Like, it wasn't even a big hill, Casey. I was, like, out of breath, and I just resolved at the top of the hill, and the kids were, like, making fun of me and calling me. They used to call me Bubba sue and other names. And I just was like, never again. And that summer, the Olympics was on, and I saw the runners, and I was like, that's how I want to look. So I got up the next day at 5am I couldn't even run a mile. But I just kept on running, kept on running, kept on running. So by the time I went back to school after that summer, I lost a bunch of weight. I wasn't getting picked last for the teams anymore. And so health has always been that thing that I fell back on. I became a professional triathlete. And then I. You know, I really had a passion for helping people get healthy, and I wanted anything but the prison. Right? Like, anything but that toxic environment. And so there I was. I was on television. I was on radio. Every week. I had celebrity clients. I'd be putting them through workouts, but it was a grind. So I was, like, doing my own workouts, working seven days a week. I was in the club by 5am, out by 11 almost every night. And just bringing Avery with me.

Yeah, yeah.

She can sleep through anything after the sun, because I put her in my office, and the music would be pumping, and she was, like, out.

Yeah. That's amazing. And so where was all this happening in terms of what state, what city? Just to give some reference to the people.

So I am originally from Canada. Okay, so, yeah, just outside of Toronto.

Okay, so this is in Toronto.

Yeah.

And now we're in Arizona doing this podcast, and you have a place here. Was your plan growing up to move to the U.S. like, as someone that grew up in Canada, like, what was that mental, like, shift? Like, was that a plan? Did you want to make that happen or what did that look like?

I grew up on the Canada U.S. border, and we got one station, and so it's like, every night we watched, like, Walter Cronkite, and then it was like, 60 minutes on Sunday. Football bought our groceries in the U.S. i always wanted to live in America. And so literally, when we got to come and I. I cried. And it's where I wanted to raise my kids. Like, I really feel this is the greatest country on earth. Like, we have every opportunity here, and it doesn't matter. Like, look at your career you're building. There are so many countries out there where that just wouldn't happen. Yeah, right.

Absolutely. No, I'm grateful for sure. So looking back, what. At what age did you find, like, mentors? Did you have mentors early on? Because you have all the success early on. You're going to College, graduating at 19. Did you have someone that you could talk to or get advice from? Because I know I talk a lot about that on this show, and everyone I sit down with their mentors to me in some way. What was that like? Did you have mentors or.

Yeah, I mean, you can't. You can't become a professional athlete or a professional anything without the right coaches and mentors. And so I am. The first time I ever did a duathlon, which is the run, bike run, I came in almost last, and it was humbling because I was a really good runner, and then suddenly I sucked. Right. And so I looked over at the bike rack of all the elite girls, and I said, next year, I'm going to have my bike on that rack. And I went home and I hired a bike coach and I hired a running coach, and next year, I actually won that same race that I had come almost last in.

Okay.

So the reason I answer it that way is whatever I want to achieve in my life, I have mentors in different areas. I don't think there's one person that really knows everything about everything. My, My. I have mentors that now are, like, literally in their early 20s. I have mentors. Harvey McKay is one of my mentors. He's 87 years old.

Yeah.

So my big business decisions, I'll be like, hey, Harvey, you know, should I do this or what have you? But I still always have mentors, and I seek them out, and I think that's so important. The moment we think we know everything, that's our ego. And Wayne Dyer, who's a friend of mine, he's passed now, but he always said ego stands for edging God out.

Got it. Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. So I want to ask, with social media and more, so your show, in a sense, when did you start building a personal brand and putting out content and utilizing these new tools that we have, not only for business, but to just build a brand, to do speaking gigs, to have a podcast. I know you do this as well. When did that open up in your career?

I'm so OG right 1995. So I had my, like, I was like an OG online coach. And so like if you Googled. Well, that wasn't Google back then. What was it? Like Netscape or. I can't even remember. You know, you, you would have found me because. And I was number one because no one else was doing it. And everyone's like, oh, you don't need, you know, this is back in the days where you still spent like 15,000amonth on yellow pages ads, right? And, and I just saw it. One of my friends founded my space. Jason Pfeffer, he sits on my board. He's amazing, outstanding person. I'll introduce you to him. He'd be a great guest. So Jason, you know, he was one of those people too. And he saw the whole thing about Community even before, before Mark Zuckerberg saw it with Facebook and so on. I have some thoughts on where I think social media is going to go based on artificial intelligence. But I saw it very quickly because people are longing for community. I think it's interesting now because there are factions of people, especially my age, like Gen X, they're like, okay, I just took all the social media apps off my phone and they're doing it right now because they're finding like going to the work life balance. It's like, I'm working, I have kids, I have all this stuff like, you know, when am I getting my workout in, when am I doing it? And then there are people who are like non stop. Their validation is just what they see on social media. I think that in the future, I predict the platform of the future isn't like any social media we see now.

Okay.

Because artificial intelligence is learning so much about us. Like, yeah, yeah, I have to riff off on this.

Just talk about AI.

So Amazon has this new thing. It's like, we'll deliver in your garage. Right? So they acquired AI companies. There have been 601 acquisitions of AI companies since 2010 from the big fang companies, right? Facebook, Amazon, you know, so on, and Google and Microsoft. Anyway, look at Amazon, they acquired Ring the Doorbell company and it was doing 100 million a year. They bought it for 1.2 million or 1.2 billion. Sorry, so. So they know what you're ordering, they know what you like, they know you're buying proclivities. They have your POS information, your point of sale. They know who's coming to your house, they know what you're saying in your house. And now you're allowing them in your house, into your garage. So the world is changing so rapidly. There was a McKinsey study that said by 2032, 800 million jobs globally are going to be displaced by AI and machine learning.

What does that mean for the young person listening that's going to college working for this job that could eventually be taken away from AI?

Yeah, and it's some of the jobs you wouldn't expect, like accountants or radiologists or, you know, like, seriously, like, jobs that you might leave and have a 250, $300,000 student loan. All my kids, like, I'm like, yes, you're going to college. Well, obviously, you know, Avery, I'm like, yeah, you're going. But I always say, you know, follow your passion because the job you trul trained for might not exist. But the cool thing is that I'm so excited about there are jobs today. Like, look at your career. This wasn't a career 15 years ago. Or a social media manager. You know, like a community manager, or someone who manages the events at, like, a co workspace. None of this influencer wasn't a job. And look at all of the things we can do. So my advice is education's amazing because it goes back to mentorship. Like, when I enrolled at MIT this year, I was like, that's the best place to go and learn AI. That's where I'm going to go. So, you know, there are so many things, but follow your passion and keep learning. Like, just keep learning as much as you can all the time.

If someone wants to learn about AI, where's the most promising place they can go? Or where do you suggest them going to just learn more about it?

YouTube. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's a bit different because I'm in the C suite of a company, so I have, like a. I have a tech team, I have a board. I have. I answer to investors. So in my generation, that stuff is still important. Like, what certificates do you have? Where's your education from? And so on and so forth. YouTube is ridiculous. Like, in learn. In terms of learning AI. But Facebook also openly shares a lot of their videos on their AI. And it doesn't matter if you're on Facebook or not. I would recommend everyone check those out.

Okay.

It's crazy. Just even how they train the AI to learn. That's a cat in the picture.

Yeah.

Or that's your cat in the picture.

Yep. It's funny because Avery, she. She was doing the Google AI.

Google Vision.

Yeah, Google Vision. And it's just breaking down. You put in the picture and it tells you exactly what it is. So with AI and with what you're working on, if you want to get into it, I'd love for you to just give some sense into where you see the future of AI going with the project you're working on, just to give some reference into what you're building overall.

Yeah. So there are three kinds of AI. So there's just AI so it's kind of like it does one thing. So there was a Chinese game called Go, and it's thousands of years old. And have you heard this?

Go? I don't think so.

Okay, so. So they trained the AI to play against a human in Go. Think of it. Thousands of years, the AI actually developed 35 strategies that no one, no human had developed in thousands of years. Wow. And it eventually beat the human. I believe it was Google. Recently, their AI was able to solve a problem that normally would take, I can't remember, like 52 hours. And it did it in like a second.

Yeah.

So there's general AI or there's AI, which is like one problem. Let's solve it. There's artificial general intelligence, which can solve a multitude of problems. And once it's created, it becomes self training. What all the movies are about is artificial superintelligence. So artificial superintelligence is what people are afraid of. So it will train itself, it will learn. Will it, will it decide that humans aren't valuable? What? You know, and there are a lot of governments out there in China, as an example, social credit score. Do you know about this?

I do not.

Oh, the social credit score. So it, the AI decides what your score is. And depending on how good of a person you are, you get credit or no credit at the bank. You get a job or no job. AI yes, because. Yes. So the AI will track you from camera to camera. It will look at what you're doing, where you're visiting. Yeah. So that kind of artificial super intelligence that everyone's worried, will it wipe out humans? Or like movies like Terminator, there are so many that we're probably still easily about 50 years away from.

Okay.

But I would say that in the next few years, I read a stat that said 70% of all jobs are going to be technological based. So if someone listening is saying, well, you know, I really want to go to school and I want to get a job, Everyone should be coding. Everyone should learn data science. Everyone should have. Even if you want to be an artist, you should have an idea about that. I think in the future, when someone looks back at this show, like maybe 15 years from now, even authors AI will write the books you want to read. Have you ever picked up a book and been like, but what if, what if Amazon's AI looked at all the books Casey Adams bought all the books he reviewed, and in basically under five minutes wrote a 250 page book just for you. And if everyone wants to be freaked out, I'll show it to you after the show. Download Replica. Replica is an interactive free AI and you can get it in the app store, Play store, and it will go back and forth with you.

Really. It's like a conversation.

It train you train it.

Okay.

And so you can be like. It'll say, casey, how are you feeling today? You name it. So whatever you're calling it, and you might be, I'm stressed. It'll say something like, well, Casey, the last time you were really stressed, taking three deep breaths and remembering why you're on this journey really helped you like it.

It. That's interesting.

It's crazy.

Okay, very cool, very cool. So with AI, if people are listening to this and they're still just more so like, okay, what is it? How do I, like, not even learn more about it? But what would you tell someone that wants to educate their parents on this? What is the sentence definition of AI if you had to give it up there?

Yeah.

And obviously there's more to it right now.

If we could just like sum it up in one sense. The current AI is designed to make humans more productive. So like, if someone wants to talk to their parents about it, I'll share a story because I think this is pretty powerful. So I think it was at Mass General in Boston. They had machines read radiology scans and they had an oncologist read the scans. The human oncologist had an error rate of something like 5%, and then the machines had an error rate of 15%. Together, when the human and the machine read the scans, they got the error rate down to less than 1%. So there's a, there's a whole theory out there called Kramer's O Ring theory. If you want to get like super geeky, that, that says that humans and machines working together are going to be better than just humans or machines working so together. That's the immediate future of AI.

Okay.

The biggest problem with the long term future of AI is that AI is created by humans. So if someone's a bad human, they're going to create bad AI. If someone's a good human, they're going to create good AI. And going back to China, the social credit Score. Yeah, there's a prime example.

Yeah, I was going to ask too. Like, is there any massive problems happening now with AI, or do you think it's more so future based when it gets to the super intelligence aspect of it? Is there problems that are occurring right now in AI that could potentially not hurt human beings? But what's the landscapes of the negative side of it? Because obviously we've talked a lot about the positive. Is there negative sides of it right now? Or what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, some governments are weaponizing AI. So imagine the battlefield of the future will be robots battling it out.

Yeah.

Their artificial intelligence is being used, as I said, to decide what humans are worthy and what aren't.

Right.

And so again, once it's created and you're training it to do things, that's a problem. All that stuff is happening now. So we're kind of at the. It's like the Internet. You know, at the very beginning of the Internet, it was the Wild west, and we still have the Internet, we have the dark web AI now there are just starting to be bodies that are sort of coming together and governing AI. Elon Musk has spoken it out a lot about the potential dangers of future AI and people. And I really feel like if Elon's listening to this, just kudos, brother, to you, because I don't think people are having the discussion enough. But it goes back to, again, bad humans create bad AI. Yeah, right. Good humans create good AI. There are bad humans right now creating bad AI.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I sort of want to pivot a little bit. So just with everything that you've learned and throughout your journey, like you're very just, you know, you've always had a mission, you've always had a plan, you're determined. And I think for a lot of young people, they may be listening right now, whether they're in college or just getting into their career, and they may be lost, they may be confused, they don't know what to do moving forward. So if you were to restart at 19 years old and you really didn't have a trajectory, like, what would you tell that person that's lost and confused, that may not know what to do, but they're hearing AI, they're hearing social media, and they think they're hearing all these things about the greatest opportunities are right now, but then they're like, okay, but where do I start? So with so much career experience that you've had, what would you suggest to that person that may be lost right now?

If I was 19 right now, here's what I would do. Because time is our universal commodity, Right. We all have 24 hours in the day, Right? Like, we, we all have time. And if I had the time and I was 19 and I was lost, I would take 52 weeks and I'd commit to having 52 new experiences.

Okay?

And I was inspired. I had Jesse Isler on my show and Jesse was turning 50, and he's like, I'm going to learn 50 new things in a year.

Wow.

And the only way we're going to earn the right to an opinion is to experience something. Now there's something I would just choose not to experience. Right. And I'm sure you would too, like anything illegal or whatever. But having 52 experiences, because how will you know what your passion is? You just won't.

Yeah.

And often when people are lost, they're not truly lost. It's just they're choosing to listen to the wrong voice. The voice that says you can't do something or that's not possible. And I'm a person. When people start saying that to me, I get really excited. Okay, yeah, I'll freaking show you. Like, but some people, they, they give those voices too much power. But at the end of the day, if those voices don't pay your rent or they're not paying your bills, then don't give them so much power.

Yeah, that makes sense. What about self education? Because obviously you went to mit, you've had all this career experience in terms of like, high quality education. But also, I've been to your house and you have an amazing library and you read a lot of books and you've been connected and then are connected with some amazing people. How have you taken the self education route throughout your life? You know, when it's when you were 19 to now with, yes, you have college, but how have you built up this self education within your life in terms of mentors and reading and, like, describe that to the people.

Yeah, sure. And education is no guarantee. Like, as I, you know, when I was, when I was 27, I was homeless, I lost everything. And I knew that the only kind of education I would have is self education. And I'm friends with Tony Robinson Jarek. I've done speaking events with Tony, and Tony didn't go to college, but at the lowest point, he read 700 books. And so my mentor, one of my early mentors was Jim Rohn, who is also Tony's mentor. So I've been in this game a very, very long time. And so I still commit as much as I did back then to a minimum of three, Three to four books a month. So I have books everywhere. It's like Easter eggs all over my house. You've been to the house. But I have. You know, I have. You know, let's just get honest. You should have books in your bathroom. You're there. I have audiobooks I listen to when I'm. I've arranged my life. So I put my weights in my home office, and I'll either be like, watching something on YouTube or I'm Day trading stocks, or I'm, you know, audio listening to something. But every day it's just this conscious decision to learn. And I was reading in actually last night in the course of miracles that when we. When we die is actually when we decide there's nothing left to learn. And I feel like I have so much left to learn. Like, I learned you and I learned from Kieran and, like, constantly. Right. There's never, like, it's. I'm. You have to be hungry for it.

Yeah. What are some of your favorite books that you're either reading now or that you'd want to inform the people about through your experience?

Yeah, for sure. So I asked Jim Rohn. It was Dallas, Texas. Oh, gosh, I can't even remember the year I shared the stage with him, the last time he ever spoke alive before he died. So Jim always used to list out the following books, and he would say, only 10% of people will ever read these books, yet only 10% of you will become millionaires. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's on. And at that point in my life, I think I was just making like 300. Not just, but I was making about 300,000 a year. And I was like, well, I have to surrender my ego around this, you know, he just. He just did a throwdown, and I'm going to pick it up. So the books were the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Think and Grow Rich. The Richest man in Babylon, Good to great. And then the New Testament. Jim said, like, I hadn't picked up a Bible in years. And he said, if you. If you want to make a million dollars a year, read the New Testament every single night. And I'm like, I want to make a million dollars a year. I will do it. And so I went and read all those books. The. Even as I'm coming into any part of my life when I want a significant result. And I mean significant. Like, I'm not talking, like, I'm a little Bit better. But people, look, people say to me all the time, like, especially women will come up to me, I want to be like you. And I'm like, no, I want you to be the best version of you. But if you're trying to be like I am now, you're never going to catch up because at this time next year, I'm going to be a whole different version of me. Right. So, you know, I would, I would say also like rich dad, poor dad, you, you know, that's just like to really understand the difference between an employee and someone who's self employed. And there are a lot of people out there hustling, even a YouTuber who are self employed. Yeah, right. YouTube's changing some things right now, as I'm sure you've seen, with content that's targeted at kids. So people have made a lot of money with that kind of content. They're going to have to, you know, do something different. A big keto influencer brand. They just pulled all of their stuff off YouTube and going to print private membership, because again, censorship and things like that. So I would just say like, you know, a, be hungry for learning. B, I just, I just ask anyone who's successful what books they're reading.

Yep.

Right. And then I pile them up on my book stand or my nightstand and I just read like crazy.

I love it. I love it. So you said you were homeless 28, 27. Let's touch on that. Cause I know people are listening. You know, we've. You talked a lot about the successes and what you're working on now. How did that happen? What happened to. For you to become homeless at 27 after achieving this success?

I was really arrogant, you know, I. There I was, I would go into your restaurant and be like, here's a free bottle of wine. Or because I was on television every day, I was like, as I said, an OG influencer. People knew me. I was hanging out with celebrities. I. I let it all get to my head. And plus, I was a professional athlete, right. So I had a lot of things that were driving my ego. But my body started to break down. And in my mid-20s, I just started getting really tired all the time. I was dropping things. I started slurring my speech as though I was drunk. And my doctor was a client of mine. And I just said to him, I'm like, I'm not feeling good. And he's like, oh, you're just stressed. Go on vacation. And I went to Jamaica and I actually slept for seven days. I couldn't even get out of bed.

Wow.

And I came back and I think, you know, one of the things I always say is your past can either refine you or define you. When someone's a victim, it's because they're just holding onto a moment in time, whatever it was, the abuse, the trauma, and they've allowed that to define them as opposed to refine them. And I had a, in a 16 week period, it was the year 2000. I came back from that vacation, I gave him a post it note, I told him the tests I wanted. I got diagnosed with progressive Ms. They said, we have never seen a case this bad. You're going to be in a wheelchair in 10 years and dead in 20. And that was 20 friggin years ago.

Wow.

So I'm not in a wheelchair or dad, obviously, you know, I'm not dead then three days after that, I unfortunately caught my then husband in an affair. And I also had been burying my head in the sand about our finances. Sixteen weeks later, I walk into my health club, there's a padlock on the door and we've been shut down for failure to pay taxes. I didn't have a clue because I chose not to. I was just the, oh, I'm the marketing person or oh, I do the scheduling or I'm on TV and I own my part in the demise of the marriage for sure. Like you know, good people do stupid stuff at times. And so there I was, homeless and a single mom and my, I had a choice. I could have gone back and lived with my dad, which I was like, heck no. My brother in law took me in, I lived on his sofa. I got my resume together, I got really, really humble. I took a job for the largest health club chain in the world. And I said I have to earn my success from the ground up because I went to a new city. No one knew who I was, okay? And I did. I earned it from the ground up. I took that team to the number one producing sales team in the entire world out of 444 locations. And then I went from there. I started a network marketing business. I built a sales team that we produce 42 millionaires now and generate $1.7 billion in sales for that company. And I'm not afraid. And I think one thing I want to say to everyone, I don't care how old you are, and especially for people who are like older than I am listening, you should never be afraid to prove yourself again. Because if you're still riding on what you did in the Past. The past is the past and it's fleeting. Right. So I'm in a phase in my career right now, whether it's like taking the program at mit, being a co CEO of an AI company where I have to earn everything and that's okay because it keeps me hungry.

Yeah, that's amazing. What would you say from that experience of having it all, losing it all? What would you give people in terms of advice from that situation? Just, and obviously we just touched on it, but if someone's maybe in that situation where they're like, they, they had success in their version of success, but right now they, they believe they're not worthy of it and they lost it or they, they feel down on themselves, like what would you tell them if they're rock bottom right now and experiencing what you've experienced?

Yeah, sure. I, I would say the first thing is as long as you have faith, there's hope. And now I want to get really salient. You have to learn to understand money and, and know you need to understand how the stock market works. You need to take control of your finances. Today you shouldn't be saving just 10% of your money. It should be like at least 20% of your money. Know how to read stock charts. As crazy as this sounds, I was just on Tara Aldrich's show and the whole time we were just talking about investments. And I think the, the most empowering thing for people is not to become arrogant about money because you can have a good year. Let's say you get a brand deal. And I've seen it happen to people before. It's like, oh yeah, I had a, you know, $250,000 year. Next year it's crickets because there's a recession. Yeah, right. So I would say learn about money, take control of your money. Don't be afraid to hustle. Work three jobs. You know, I have three, maybe it's four jobs doing now, I don't even know. I just do it. But don't be afraid to do that and don't. Don't what? The reason I lost everything and I got sick is because I was so caught up in who I thought I was supposed to be for everyone else.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So you talk about ego, right? And one of my favorite books is Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. How do you become self aware to see that your ego has been inflated? Or you need to check yourself? Maybe people are listening. They're like, oh, that's not me, but their friend thinks it's them. Or whatever it is. What do you ask yourself to check yourself? And how do you see if that's the case for you to prepare for a potential downfall that could be coming in your future if you let it get to you? Right. Like, what would you tell that person that may need to check themselves? What do you say to them?

Easiest thing, look at everything you're posting, every, you know, email you've sent, and look at how many times you use I in it. When I pick up a book, if the author is like, I just picked up this new book. I'm not going to say whose book it is. There's a lot of good substance. But the first chapter, the, the I, like the personal pronoun, is used at least three to four times every paragraph. I, I, I, I. And it's a personal development book.

Yeah.

And I think that's the greatest litmus test because one of the things you look at social media are being a social media influencer. You're either doing like our friend Jeffrey edutainment.

Yep.

If you watch any of his stuff, like on TikTok or YouTube, Jeffrey is not like, I, I, I, me, me, me. It's like the car is the, the star of the show or the coins or the people are. And that's a great example to follow. Right. That's why he's so successful. But how many times are you using I go back, look through all the stuff you posted in the last three months, that'll tell you right there.

I love it. I've been watching a lot of Larry King and he says one of the most important things is he never makes his interviews about him. He doesn't say I, he doesn't correlated back to his personal gains. Right. And he makes it about the other person and his curiosity. So that's funny you say that. That's good. I have two more questions, Susan, and for people out there that may be getting on social media, what is your thoughts on social media? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it how you look at it? Because everyone has their own opinion on it and their own usage for it. And I know that we're connected on social. You do a lot of stuff on it. But what would you say is the landscape of social now with Instagram's taking away likes and there's this whole social epidemic of it's making people depressed and, you know, there's two sides to every story. But how do you look at social media in 2019, moving into 2020?

I would say it's like anything. I can make some predictions too, because we're going into an election year and when you were at my house for dinner, we talked about this. We're going into election year, so the social media companies are going to contract a bit. So ads. I was just speaking at Digital marketing conference. Ads that used to get approved fairly easily are not getting approved now. Things that have the word you in them, for example, like, no, you can't do that.

Yeah.

So we're going to see more constrictions because they're going to try and keep up with what's fake news, what's real news, you know, all of that. So we're going to see that. I would say the biggest thing on my heart to share with anyone listening is you need to do a check to see if your validation you're getting is, you know, your likes and comments, which a lot of people, it doesn't matter how old they are, that's what's going on for them. That's a problem. Right. And I see a lot of people. One of the many things I admire about you is you'll meet with people face to face. You're so good, you know, interacting as a human, networking. Right. Like you're, you're, you know, it's, it's just amazing. There are lots of people out there that lack that skill. And it depends what year you were born. Because if you're sort of like with a certain generation, my generation, we didn't have social media, so we can still be good with humans. But, you know, they're not my kids, but the generation before me that had kids, their kids grew up with social media. So that level of validation is just unbelievable.

Absolutely. It's so true, too. And I always tell people, like, never let the likes and the comments get to you. But it's more so that thing where if you let it, it will, and it can be detrimental. And I always, I think the most important thing for any young person, it's like, it's how you use the vehicle. You know, it could be terrible if you make it bad. It could be great if you make it great. Right. So that's, that's some good insight.

It's going to change. Like, and I do this thing called Sold out Sunday in my house. So I don't go on social media on Sunday.

Okay.

I need a break. Right. Like, you know, so I don't, I tend not to look at emails. I don't.

Okay.

Like, you know, I just don't. And I pull myself back into just being A present, you know, person right in my life. But I think that one thing I would say to everyone is the platform of the future that we're all going to be on doesn't exist yet. And we're going to see a lot of VR technology. We're going to see. I'll make some predictions. Harvey always tells me to make predictions. McKay. So you're going to see Facebook is going to on the actual Facebook platform, not their Instagram platform. They're going to start to do more custom programming. Right. I'm sure they want to go head to head with Netflix, so they want to keep you on there. Plus, so I'm sure it's not. It wouldn't surprise me if at some point they do a subscription model. Plus they're going to have their Libra currency. So they want to keep you spending the money on Facebook. So people are like, oh, Facebook's dead. I'm like, no, no, you have no idea.

Bigger plan.

They have a bigger plan. We're going to see more VR technology. So instead of just like, hey, hit me up, DM me, you're going to be like literally in a room with.

Someone in a room with virtual reality.

Yeah. We're going to see that the AI is really going to customize what we can see. And it's already doing that. So for example, I know a lot of people who use Facebook to build businesses. Starting in 2008, they did really, really well. And then when Facebook started contracting things back, so on your personal page, people couldn't see what you were posting about business and stuff like that. So, so the post penetration on a personal page right now to all of your friends and followers is less than 2%. A couple years ago it was 18%. A couple years ago it was like 50%. Right. So the. I think there we're going to see a lot of changes this year coming. And I would say to everyone, you know, could you take a day and just not be on once a week and see what changes?

Yeah, right. I love it. I love it. Well, last question to wrap it up. Just going throughout your journey from 18 to now, if you were to go back and give yourself a piece of advice that could stick to a young 18, 19 year old today, what would you give advice and why?

That's a great question for me. I tried so hard to fit in. Right. And to the extreme. So that, that, that deep seated desire for me to want to belong. You know, I look back at some of the decisions I made and that belonging piece made me a Better leader. It drove me, but it also. I did stupid things, like spent money I didn't need to spend. Like, how many freaking Louis Vuitton handbags do you need? Right?

Like.

Like how many hurricanes do you need to. So I made a lot of decisions because of that. And I would just say, you know, going back, I would just say, hey, you know, you're okay. It's okay to be different. It's okay to be, you know, you. And it's not so much about fitting in as creating everywhere you go this sense for other people that, you know they belong somewhere.

Yep. I love it. Well, that being said, just to wrap it up, where is the best place for people to learn more about you, to. To stay connected with you and to just get into Susan's world?

Susan's world is great. So on. On Insta, it's at Susansly, super easy. I do a Facebook show called Bulletproof Monday every Monday. Then we repurpose it. It goes on itunes on the Susan Sly project. It goes on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. My website is susansly.com.

Got it.

Yeah.

Well, that being said, Susan, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. I learned a lot about AI about your stuff story, and I just wanted to say it's. You're someone that inspires me, and I definitely, really appreciate you coming on the show.

Oh, thanks for having me, Casey. I love everything you're doing in the world.

Absolutely. And everyone, make sure you subscribe to the Rising Young podcast. Go follow Susan on Instagram. And that being said, I will talk to you soon.

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