From Jail To Generational Wealth: Shawn Lynch Opens Up About The Pain That Nearly Destroyed His Life

It was really tough and made me really lost as definitely like a 17, you know, 18 year old. As a young man, you're already lost. You kind of don't know what you want to do.

What did that feel like to lose your father so young, especially who you were close with?

It made me angry at the world for some reason. Like, I was just, of course, in your young man, trying to prove yourself. And so it. For some reason, I gave myself the excuse to go party and drink and drugs and just do stupid things. And it, you know, became like, you know, very, very often. It's not like, oh, just on the weekends, like, I was doing it all the time and just drinking every night, partying, going to jail. Nothing bad, but like, just for drinking and getting arrested for minor possessions and in my little small town and going to sit in jail. And so I think him passing probably made me have to grow up a lot faster, even though, you know, a couple years I made all those bad choices, you know, and it took a little while to get right on the right path, but I think it. It really made me open my eyes and realize that I couldn't do that forever. He taught me, you know, a lot of good qualities as far as, like, you know, definitely hard work and, and loyalty and, you know, being a good person. And so it did make me, you know, want to be a good father at some point someday because he was all right.

So I'm here with my good friend Sean Lynch. He actually, him and his wife Gentry, are absolutely amazing entrepreneurs and people and parents and friends and all the things. And they had me out in Houston on their show called the Success Formula Podcast, which you guys just recently launched a couple months back now, right?

Probably about six months ago now, maybe.

Oh, my gosh, time goes fast.

I know, maybe six or seven months. We've been, we. We've been doing it since March. We just didn't start releasing episodes until June, I think. Okay, about six months now.

Yeah, well, they did it right. I mean, like, they fly their guests out there, they pick them up at a Rolls Royce, they put them in a nice hotel room, do dinner. It's like I can imagine a Joe Rogan type experience.

So we're trying to make it a little bit different than everybody else's that's out there.

Yeah, you guys are awesome, and I'm really grateful to be friends with you now. And Sean is just like an incredible person. And I know on my show we talk a lot about reaching your highest human potential, and business is a huge part of that. Building wealth is a huge part of that, but so is health, so is relationships. And you've seemed to just master all of it. And that's why I'm really excited to talk to you and share your insights with the audience. Because, I mean, you're insanely good shape. You're a great looking guy, you're a great husband, you're a great dad to your little kids. I love watching your stuff on Instagram. And Gentry is absolutely incredible too. You're just like this amazing power couple. You have multiple companies. You're a serial entrepreneur, a real estate investor that has a large portfolio of real estate. You and your business partner own and operate a oil and gas logistics company that has does around $170 million a year in revenue. I remember we were talking at dinner and you're like, oh, about it does 170. And I was like, like 170,000amonth? You're like, no. 170 million a year.

Yeah. So fluctuates, you know, depending on the year and commodity prices between 130 and 170, know, depending, like in the last. Over the last seven or eight years.

Yeah, yeah. And we'll talk a little bit about that fluctuation, but. And then you have an equipment rental company for oil and gas that you're looking to liquidate, possibly that spits off a bunch of cash flow, obviously a ton of real estate. And then you're getting into the compound pharmacy. Health space.

Yeah, back to the health thing. You know, I think, you know, when people talk about success, it's kind of why we named the podcast success formula, because there's a bunch of different ways to actually reach success. And, you know, business is one. But having a healthy lifestyle and, you know, a great family and all that works together, I think, to actually get you, you know, to the highest level of success. For sure.

Yeah. And what does success look like to you now, and how has that changed over the course of your entrepreneurial and life journey?

You know, I think I've built the life that I wanted to live. I don't even like going on vacations. My wife kind of still does because I'm like, why would I leave and pay to go somewhere when I've already built the life that I want? And so, you know, my life now is probably what I see is like the highest level for me. Not highest level in business, but as far as like, just great family. My kids are great. My relationship is with my wife is amazing. My health is never been better, really. And so all that together, you know, I do feel like I've reached, I guess, a great level of success. You know, before, when I was younger and really until the mid-30s, I was, like, always chasing something and never felt like I was doing good enough. And so I was like, I need to have a bigger business and I need to do more, and I need to buy more real estate. And I think finally, now with my family and all those things I just mentioned, I feel like I'm finally not chasing anything. And I still want to grow the businesses and I still want to buy more real estate, but I feel somewhat satisfied a little bit. And it's definitely a very, very good spot to be. In the last three, four years, I've never, you know, felt better and been in a better mindset, for sure.

I love that. And have you read the book Driven?

I haven't.

You should read it. I'm reading it right now. Member and Genius Network wrote it. But it talks about people that have the driven gene, like the add, the adhd. A lot of the great successful people in the world have this gene that they're born with. And. But he talks about that as, like, so many of us with that gene, you know, are more prone to addiction or more prone to depression or more prone to anxiety and these things because we never really feel fulfilled. And it's always like, just chasing the next hit of dopamine. And I talk a lot, a lot about that because it's such an empty life, you know, to end up in a spot where you've built all these incredible things. But if you truly don't feel fulfilled inside and you're just seeking for more and more and more and more from a place of, like, scarcity and need, not a place of just creation and love of the game and love of life. So it's really amazing that you're actually somebody that's accomplished it and you, you know, for years, were that person that my whole life. There you go.

I've always felt that way. I didn't know what I was chasing, really. I just felt like I was never doing good enough, Never had enough real estate. Like, if I was building that business or my business was never doing enough revenue, you know, trying to grow it, I never. Early on, I, you know, I wasn't focused as much on net margin. And, you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs chase some fictitious number. It's like, oh, my company has to be doing 100 million or 10 million or 30 million, whatever the is for somebody. You just like, pull this fictitious number out of the air and you do anything in your power to go and try to hit that number. You know, the older you get, the more businesses you run, you are definitely going to, over time start focusing on the net margin and you're not going to care about your top line as much.

Right? Yeah. And if you, you know, I know people that have billion dollar funds and their margins 1%, but you could be making just as much doing that with your own money and yeah, anything.

And so that's definitely, you know, maybe part of being in a good place is, is, is part of that too. You know, over time it's like I don't care how much, you know, revenue we do, but I, you know, I really focus on net margin because I do love business enough and I do love real estate, which, you know, is my purpose, you know, and makes me happy every day to do all those things. And so net margin, a high net margin allows me to actually go do more of those things.

Right.

So I really focus on net margin. You know, some of the top line revenue numbers, you know, people hear them and when you watch social media and when you watch YouTube, everybody says this is how I make $5 million a year. But everybody's talking about 99% of the videos are the revenue. And a lot of people see that and they're like, golly, that guy's doing. That guy's making 5 million a year. Well, no, probably not. He's probably making a couple hundred grand a year, but his business does $5 million. And so, you know, it is very important for a young entrepreneur to always focus on the net margin for sure and just don't care as much about the top line. I know that's easier said than done for sure, I was that way. But you're going to spend a lot of time and make a lot of probably riskier choices to try to hit that, this fictitious number that you have in your head. Yeah, 10 million, 20 million, whatever you're trying to get your business to, but you need to focus on the net margin because at the end of the day, good people or what, what will get you to the, you know, 10, 15, 20, 100 million dollar mark. And if you don't have good margin, you can't go hire those good people.

Right.

And so super important for somebody to focus on that.

Yeah.

And so that's where I'm at in my life, you know, fortunate that the businesses do do high revenue, but really focusing on the bottom line as much as we can for all the companies we do and the real estate, you know, on the cash flow side, for sure.

And so I want to go back in time to what inspired your entrepreneurial drive in the beginning and when that started for you and kind of like what your childhood experiences were like. And I know you went through a pretty traumatic event at 18 years old, so can you kind of share a little bit more in detail on. On your story?

Yeah, sure. You know, I was actually a pretty good student in school. Know, probably a lot of entrepreneurs are like, I hated school early on. I, you know, I really enjoyed it, always at the top of my class and, you know, straight A's probably about till the 8th grade when I got to junior high, I started becoming a little bit less interested in just like the traditional school model. I think my first little bit of entrepreneurial spirit came from I saw a bunch of kids, you know, buying candy and bringing it to school. And so I was like, man, a lot of people, you know, there's a demand for the product. And so I had my mom take me to Sam's, and we bought, like, bulk candy and wholesale. And so I would go to school and, like, sell it out of the locker. And so I think early on, it, you know, taught me a couple lessons of, like, just supply and demand and basic finance and, you know, how to buy something low and, you know, mark it up and sell it and make a profit. And so that was probably like, my first little entrepreneurial deal. And then when I got into high school, we. I went to private school all the way up to the eighth grade. I played baseball with a lot of my friends. But, you know, the private schools don't have as much sports where we were from. Very small private school. It wasn't like some expensive top school in the country or anything, Just a little small private school in our town. And I convinced my mom after the eighth grade to let me go to this public school, which they had sports at. All my friends were there, and, you know, reluctantly, she did. And we. That school had some of the lowest, I guess, standardized testing scores in the state of Texas at the time. So we really didn't do anything for two, three, four years that I was there. And you really didn't have to go to school. I'd wake up, I'd go to school around right after lunch to when the PE class was. And then there was one class that you had to go to because there's only one teacher that made you go to class. As I remember, it was like a science class, and you could walk into class all the people had their desk pushed together, playing cards, watching Menace to society on the TV. Walk in with McDonald's, sit at my desk, eat lunch there in the class. Like, that's literally how the whole high school was for four years. So. And I was already getting a little bit bored with school. And then, so when I was 16, a little bit more entrepreneurial spirit, I went to a party, and everybody was smoking weed at the party. And I was looking around, I'm like, man. And people are asking me for it, and I don't even know where to get it. I've never smoked weed before. And so the next day, I was like, everybody's looking for weed. So I started calling around somebody connected me to somebody and was able to sell me a quarter pound. And so I then started, like, rolling up weed and selling it to, like, going to some of those parties and selling it to everybody, which is not something recommended to do. But being from a small town and not having any mentors, not having the Internet, like, I knew not one wealthy person in town. I didn't know anyone that knew anything about money. Like, I had no idea. And so I didn't even think it was possible to go, you know, how do you do it? Go open a store somewhere. Like, I didn't have any money. And so that was the first. For some reason, that was the first business that happened. Kept reinvesting my money. Got up to buying a pound or two. And then some people knocked on my door one day, some potential customers, and I'm like, what are you doing here? I'm living with my mom. And so it's not like a weed house, like. And so anyways, they knock on the door, they leave. My mom's like, who is that? She's like, why are random people coming to the house now? I was like, oh, they wanted to buy a tape. This is back when there was tapes and before CDs. And when I left that day to go hang out with my friends, they searched my room and found all the weed. Took everything, left my money. I don't know why. Super, super mad, pretty disappointed, but never really harped on it. It didn't last a long time. Like, they kind of let it go. And that was kind of the end of that business. But it taught me that I wanted to open. I knew that I couldn't do that, number one, because it sucks. The margins aren't as good as people think for the risk that you're taking. And then you can't scale that business. You can't advertise like you can't tell everybody what you're doing. So I knew then I needed to find, you know, I could go tell the world I was doing, be able to advertise, to be able to scale and then grow a big business. And so after that, you know, again, I think I ended up getting a job like a co op in high school. So then I could go, only I'll go after lunch, go to the co op class and then leave to go to work. And so I did that for, you know, a year and then trying to figure out what I was going to do. I knew I didn't want to stay in that town. I didn't know who to talk to, I didn't know where to go, but I knew I just didn't belong there. And so I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And then right around the age of 18 when I was about to graduate high school, my father passed away, which at the time I was really close with him. And so it was pretty sad and it made me, it made me angry at the world for some reason. Like I was just of course in your young man trying to prove yourself. And so it, for some reason I gave myself the excuse to go party and drink and drugs and just do stupid things. And it, you know, became like, you know, very, very often. It's not like, oh, just on the weekends, like I was doing it all the time and just drinking every night, partying, going to jail, nothing bad, but like just for drinking and getting arrested for minor possessions and in my little small town and going to sit in jail. And so for some reason it took me a long time to learn my lesson and I did that for a couple years. And what I didn't let it get in the way of is I always, you know, would show up to work at the gym at the time and then after that I would always show up to work. I would always still have the entrepreneurial spirit. I bought my first house, you know, shortly after that. I was still doing some of that stuff when I bought the house. And when I bought the house it finally I saved up $18,000 skipping over a couple things, but I saved up $18,000 living with my parents or living with my mom. And then that allowed me to go do a first time home buyers program on my very first house. And so still kind of partying, still doing, you know, bad, making bad choices. And when I bought the house I was still working. And when I did that, it, I was like, I can't keep doing or having this lifestyle and be successful at some point. And so I would go to work all day, get off at, you know, maybe six o', clock, and then I would work on the house. And so I did everything myself and did all the labor, all the sheetrock, all the paint. I hired a tile guy to show me how to do the tile. He's a friend of mine and he had a tile company, and so I helped him the whole time we did it. And then I end up doing the rest of the restrooms and everything else in the house by myself. And so it working all day and all night. You know, blessing in disguise on, you know, helping me get out of that party mindset and, you know, making bad decisions and going to jail. And so, you know, that at that time in my life, I was like, I don't know what I'm chasing, but, you know, I need to do more of this. And so finished the house, sold the house or put it on the market. Sold the house pretty quick. And the net profit was around 30,000. And so I was able to get my, you know, 18 or 19,000 back out with my 30,000. Had around 50,000 and was able to go do that again. And I bought two houses because there was. This is the day of pre 2008, no doc loans. Literally called no doc. Like you just show up with your driver's license, I think, and they just give you a loan. And it's what got a lot of people in America in trouble. I actually use it to go make money. I wasn't buying, like, luxury houses. I was still buying the 100 to $150,000 houses. So put 5% down, you can just buy anything you want. And so I flipped a couple of those houses. I was still living in one, renovating one, and then I had enough money to go hire a crew and renovate another one. And so then that kind of got me on my journey of flipping houses. And so just kept flipping houses. That's how I started, you know, stacking money and making. Making cash. And then the fitness center I worked at at the time, my. My owner became my friend, or the owner of the gym became my friend. And I finally had enough cash and figured that I knew I didn't want to work for somebody anymore. So I went to him and I said, hey, I want to leave. I'm, you know, thinking about just want to go do my own thing. I don't know what that is yet. I'll probably just do more real estate and maybe open A business. And he's like, don't leave, I'll do something, let's do something together. So we bought a couple properties together and he sold me off the gym. And so I continued just to do real estate, you know, owned half the gym and then kept buying single family homes. 2008 hit, had a bunch of houses on the ground, maybe eight houses. And of course you couldn't sell anything. Nobody's looking. I'm like, I got all my money tied up in these houses. Thought I was going to go bankrupt at such a young age. I was like, I'm going to have to start over. This is so crazy. And luckily I, I was like, what am I going to do? Didn't know anything about rental, long term rental, short term rental, put them on the market for rent. So I was like, I can at least try to cover my notes and not go bankrupt. They all rented within like the first two, three days of putting them on the market because nobody hit a mortgage and everybody wanted a three bedroom, two bath house still.

Yeah.

And so that got me into the mindset of long term hold. And then so I started building my portfolio of single family homes while I was still managing the gym. You know, now half owner. Gym did good. It wasn't like a huge business, but it always did pretty, pretty well. And you know, my partner was selling. We sold like I had a little pro shop and sold supplements at the time. That gave us the idea or that gave me the idea to start early. E Com. Before like there was a lot of stuff around. I mean there was a handful of message boards. Amazon was super early at that time. I think ebay was around. And so we started early in E Comm and were able to grow that business in the first three years to 10 million. Landed on Inc. 500 fastest growing companies.

That's crazy.

Yeah. And then started using cash from that business to then go buy more real estate. Kept building my portfolio. I think I got up to like 66 houses on the single family and still flipping some. But you know, the long term hold stuff, I think I Got up to 66. Kept scaling the business we did, you know, from that point I think we got it up at the highest point to about 30 million. And after that we so got it up to about 30 million. The house, the houses, I was up to 66. And then after that we started opening retail stores. So I had a chain of retail stores plus the online business and still building, you know, Lux started getting into luxury builds and you know, in about 2012 or 13. The market, the oil market crashed in Houston. And in Houston back in the 70s, it like destroyed the city because it was all oil and gas. And so I was in another situation again where I was like, I might go bankrupt because nobody's looking at any of my houses. I had $15 million worth of specs on the ground at the time.

Jeez.

And so, and then our business needed money to grow. And so it was like a weird situation to where it's like, what am I going to do? So I started moving into the houses one by one. Was like, at least I'll just pay one note putting furniture in there. Slowly they started selling and was able to get myself out of that situation after about a year and a half or two years. And then we, I, the E Comm company started getting a little bit saturated because Amazon got big. They opened up Two Day prime, social media started taking off and people would buy from, you know, one of their people, they follow one of the products they're recommending, they would buy from Amazon Two Day prime, they buy from us. And so that business got very flat. It wasn't losing money. It wasn't like going downhill fast. It was just like, I could see that the market was changing and there was just kind of no way to compete with, you know, Amazon. And everything was just getting so saturated and we didn't have any special sauce or anything. It was just price. It was like just very, very price driven. And that taught me that I don't ever want to be in a business that is, you know, only solely driven off price.

Right. Because it's a race to the bottom always.

And so, you know, all that stuff in your life and what I've learned is everything's really a lesson. When you look back on it, at the time you're going through it, it's like, it doesn't seem like lessons, but you know, the house, the $15 million worth of the specs, that taught me a lesson of, you know, I used to invest everything that I had, like all the time. So like, I was like, I always got to grow, I always got to get bigger. But it taught me not. My businesses have gotten so big, but I'm still operating off very low cash because I'm just still investing everything. And it taught me a lesson of just not getting over leveraged and keep enough cash around still operating. Just like I was in the beginning with like starting everything, invest in everything I had in houses and, you know, haven't really been through too many bad times. And so it just Taught me a lesson, don't get over leveraged. Keep enough cash around for your businesses. And so, you know, that's what I did. And then we ended up selling the E. Comm stuff. Not a huge exit, but just pretty fair just to get out of it. And then that's when we bought into the. I bought into the oil and gas company.

Okay, and then how did you. When you bought in the oil and gas company, what was it out in revenue? And how did you grow that so quickly over.

It was, it was doing about $30 million in revenue at the time. It had been around for a while, but it was mainly a brokerage business. With brokering, you know, trucks and not owning a lot of equipment. I mean there's a couple of million dollars in assets but nothing, you know, substantial. And I bought my. One of my friends business partners out. And so then, you know, we both own the business and you know, it was, it grew because we started becoming more of an asset based company and becoming a real player in the industry and not just like a brokerage company. And so we started buying a lot of our own equipment, a lot of our own trucks. And then we also just did a really good job. And so the operations were very, very good. Our company was really professional in industry where there was a lot of mom and pops at the time. And I think that that's what helped us grow. And then also hiring the right people and that was the first time in my life that I kind of didn't do everything myself. And the mistake I made in E. Com and managing all those houses myself was trying to do too many things myself and not hiring great people that were probably would do it way better than me. I'm doing everything like pretty much half ass. I mean, if you're doing that much stuff, it's a lot of things are very half ass. And so if I would give advice to someone that was younger or on their, you know, entrepreneurial rise, once you have enough, once you have proof of concept in a business and once you have enough revenue and net margin to go hire some good key people that you need to do it. Because most people aren't good at like five things. Like I'm terrible at like accounting and bookkeeping and all that. So I hate it so much. And so I was doing everything, I was doing all that stuff. And then part of customer service every once in a while I'd pack orders and I'm managing, taking all the phone calls for the 66 houses. It's terrible. Stupid. Yeah.

And so I can barely handle four.

It's bad. I wanted to pull my hair out and, and that leads to burnout, like people. Even though I loved everything about business, which is probably what kept me going, I was getting a little burned out because I was doing a lot of things that I hated and then I was doing a lot of things that I was normally good at. Very half assed because I'm trying to juggle all this stuff at one time. So huge lesson learned at that point in my life. It's like I don't ever need to do that again. And so the reason, to answer your question, I think we did it because of great people. I think that that's how we scaled to 150 and it's not. I think it's. And that is how we did. And now to this day, we still do have very, very key operations managers and executives. And I'm not in the day to day. My business partner still is a CEO. He's a great leader and a really good visionary and he's a founder of the company. And so it still makes sense for, you know, him to be in the day to day. I'm not as much in the day to day, but you know, we still talk to all of our key people, you know, in communication with them. And so I learned to, to leverage people and then that's when we were able to go make, you know, a lot of money. Instead of me doing 100 things, making decent money, but never able to scale past a certain point, it's impossible at some point. And so once I saw it working with this company, we then started applying it to pretty much everything in my life. You know, whether it's real estate. I have a construction project manager now on, on staff and you know, he runs all our projects. So now I'm not going to all the projects every day. I'm not talking to all the trades. I have, you know, executive assistant and actually probably too, you know, Candice runs all the operation side on the podcast. And so when I go into something, I really try to hire the right people now or if we're starting another startup, I have to have a person that I truly believe in that is going to run that company, you know, like I like I believe they can. And you know, that's how we've seen our success and all the stuff we've invested in recently. It's how we've seen our success in the equipment rental company. Our president and CEO did such an amazing job and he earned his equity and so it's It'll be really awesome to see him make millions of dollars. You know, he deserves it. And every business we start now, I make sure that I have a really key partner. Same thing with the functional medicine clinics. Very, very key partner. I would have never started it without her. Like, I would have never just go, I want to start this business. Let me go try to find somebody. I don't really know anything about the industry. Like, that's a, that's kind of a hard road. And so I usually try to find an expert in the industry that also has good people skills and try to hire that person. And that's how we start all of our businesses now. You know, whether we're starting it and then trying to scale it goes back to the people. And so, you know, I am now more of an advisor in, in most of our companies and I still talk to all of our top people, but I don't run the day to day. And, you know, I'm, again, it goes back to like, I've never been in such a good place, but I love the game of business so much, you know, I could never give it up. I would never retire ever. I just don't want to be the CEO and I don't want to be putting out the fires like every single day. I don't mind, you know, helping steer the ship and given, you know, my 25 years of advice and mistakes to try to keep them from making. But, you know, that's it. You know, it's. It's about me pushing them to hire the right key people in really scaling, you know, any business that we invest in or start.

Yeah. Do what you do best and hire out the rest. Right.

It's really true. Yeah. Especially when you have, you know, you find out if you have product, you know, market fit or, you know, a service business that's starting to do really well. Like, you're never going to scale past a certain point without all the right people. Never. And that's where most people get stuck. Most of the business owners I know are in the same spot. It's like I did that don't do, you know, don't do that. And so it's just a hard mindset to get past. When you're the founder, you're the. It's like my baby. Nobody can do it as good as me. You know what? Probably not right. But there is people that can do all five jobs as good as you, if not better.

Yeah. Yeah. Dan Martell says the rule is, I think 70%, if they can do 70% as good as you, then it's worth it because then you just delegate and scale. But that's where I'm at, you know, right now too. And I, I 100% know and believe in that. People are everything and hire who you like. Hiring the A plus players is going to get you to where you can scale pretty much infinitely to the point of your capacity in that industry. But it's hard to find the people. So like, how, how do you. I'm in that spot right now. I'm, I'm founder. I've always been a startup founder person because I never had massive amounts of money to go buy. And then I'm just a visionary. I like, I like the startup process.

You're like me.

Yeah. But how do you find those key partners or key employees that like, have you just like, what, what is your strategy been? Have you used headhunters and recruiters? Have you used social media? Like, how have you really found. And how do you vet those people before you get into bed with them to know that they're good for your company?

Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna say, you know, we're, I haven't hired some bad people too there. We have you staffing companies, but you still have to do, you know, a heavy vetting process on your own to make sure they're a right fit for your company. And so that's one way for sure. You know, spotting people is the reason that I think we've started some of the businesses we have, like, I'll find someone and I'm like, they have like that grit and then also have what I think it takes to go manage a big company and manage people and the experience in that industry. And that's the reason I start business a lot of times. Like, I know I can make it work with this person. And so I'll usually go take them from another company when I do find that person and then, you know, probably give them equity over time. And so for anybody that's out there, the biggest mistake you can do is if you find a person that you like and you're going to start a business with them, no matter who it is, and you're like, you know, you're going to be doing all the work. I'll put up the money, I'll give you 25% equity, whatever the number is. Don't ever do that because a lot of times that person, you know, doesn't work out or, you know, sometimes they don't and then they're stuck and they own company right out of the gate. And then you got to figure out, you got to buy them out or you got to get them out of there, because if they're not the right person to run it, then you got to bring somebody else in. So my suggestion and what we do is they earn their equity in, you know, we do give them a salary that's reasonable, but, you know, they can earn their equity if they hit certain goals and milestones. And then you also have time to figure out if they're the right fit for, for the company. And so that's definitely been the secret to all of our startups recently. That's what we do. I usually, I, I actually find the person when I have the feeling and I just notice all the character traits that are needed to take a company to 10, 20, $30 million. I usually go start a business around that person.

Right.

Like, that's kind of what's hard to find. Yeah, yeah. And so I, you know, I definitely won't jump into an industry now or buy a company that I don't have faith, like complete faith in the person that's going to run the, run the company for us. Yeah, you know, we're getting into some new industries on the health care side, but my partners in the, or my partners in the functional medicine clinic, 17 years of experience. She's one of the most incredible people I know. And she was just scared to do something on her own. And she didn't have, she was like, I don't know how you do it. I'm, I'm just nervous. I was like, it'll work out, I promise. I'll put up the money. She, you know, she owns 50% now and she crushes it. She's the best in town. She trains all the other nurses in town. I was like, we have to charge a premium price and we'll be the best company. I was like, you train. Everybody is like, we're, we're the best. Like, don't be worried. It's going to work out. Like, you have a book of business and some people just can't see that vision. And so for me, that's what I'm good at, is like, we can blow this up. I just need someone like you. And so usually that's what we'll do is we'll put up the money, we'll let somebody earn in equity over what period of time. It just depends on the industry. It depends on the goals we're trying to hit. But I think we did our last service equipment rental company. I Think it was started at four years, but he started.

Any equity?

Yeah, yeah, no. Every year he was vesting in a little bit of equity.

Okay.

But it was also based on goals, and he hit everything so fast that I think he got all 10% in like a year and a half.

Awesome.

Yeah. So super cool to see he deserves every penny of it. But going back to the key people thing, it's definitely the only way to get to the, you know, build a really big business and also not pull your hair out and get burned out and you just get stuck at a certain revenue for the rest of your life.

Yeah. So I want to go back because I know you. You kind of glanced over the fact that you lost your father when you were 18 years old, and how did that shape your life and your drive for success? And you know, what, what did that feel like to lose your father so young, especially who you are close with?

You know, it was really strange at the time. And I wouldn't say that I was depressed because I was never really like a depressive person. Definitely kind of always had anxiety since I was 15. I knew I wanted to be entrepreneur before he passed away. So it wasn't, it wasn't that that triggered it. And then, you know, I did get really close to him when we were, you know, of course, everybody's kind of a jerk when they're like 13, 14 years old. There's like one or two years where you're kind of a jerk to your parents and then they become your best friends again. And. And then that's what my parents were. And so to lose him, it was really tough and made me really lost as definitely like a 17, you know, 18 year old as a young man, you're already lost. You kind of don't know what you want to do for the most part because you're not taught the right things in school. You don't have any skills. So it's like, how do you know what you want to do for the rest of your life? You don't. Like, kind of had eighth grade education. I didn't really go to high school often, and so I didn't really have any education past eighth grade. You know, I think him passing probably made me have to grow up a lot faster, even though, you know, a couple years I made all those bad choices, you know, and it took a little while to get right on the right path, but I think it. It really made me open my eyes and realize that I couldn't do that forever. And so. And you know, I had My mom wasn't remarried at the time, so I, you know, I had to. I felt like I needed to take care of her, although she was fine. And so it did make me, you know, want to be a good father at some point someday because he was. And you know, I. He taught me, you know, a lot of good qualities as far as like, you know, definitely hard work and, and loyalty and, you know, being a good person. But he just didn't know it wasn't his fault, but he just never didn't know anything about money or finance or building wealth, you know, him nor my mom. And so for all those good qualities that he had, he just didn't have the one to be able to teach me about the money thing. And so I kind of had to go out and learn that on my own, you know, which was really tough. And there again, it goes back to the Internet thing. No access to information. Nobody in my town, like not one wealthy person that I could go ask. Even somebody, my friend's dad. I didn't even know anyone that was. Had any money. And so, you know, I had just figured out stuff along the way. Just over the years and years, just learning lessons, making mistakes, learning a lesson from it, make a mistake, like just over and over and over again. And then, you know, I think that that's what ultimately, you know, instilled in my head that like, to drive success is like just learning from your mistakes really.

Have you ever had a rock bottom moment in your life?

Probably. That was probably it. I really do. I think so. Just, you know, living that lifestyle and, you know, not being where I wanted to be in life, that was probably definitely the. It. The rock bottom partying and going to jail and like, I think back on it, I'm like, I don't even feel like the same person. I kind of feel like it was a. It's not even the same life. I don't know, it's weird. Like I remember it, but it just feels like it wasn't even the same life that I, that I started leading or I have now. Just feels like it was a distant past. I don't know. It's super weird.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, I've. I feel I can relate to that too, because just doing, you know, partying and being lost and not feeling connected and not knowing who you are or what you want or having this just anxiety inside all the time. Do you still struggle from the anxiety and like anger or have you worked.

Through a lot of that, you know, zero anger? Like I For the older I got in, going through as much stuff as you go through in business made me super calm all the time because like I don't get worked up over anything like that. Most problems are fixable and you know, businesses taught me to be very calm, level headed. So I, I, I have zero anger really. It's, it's so that that went away probably in my early 20s. It started just going away year by year. But the anxiety stayed, you know, a big portion of my life, probably till I was in my 30s and got really into the health and fitness thing. I was getting headaches every day, couldn't figure it out. Going to a bunch of different doctors and then I got referred to the functional medicine side of business or side of health. They did a bunch of testing that none of the other doctors did. And you know, slowly over the next like two, three years I started, the anxiety started going away. I started having, you know, more clear of a head. The fatigue started going away. So you know, that I wish I would have found all that stuff 20 years earlier because I do think a lot of it was physical and genetics and a lot of stuff that's fixable. But you know, again, from 36 to now, just at a completely different place, feel better than I've ever have, you know, almost no anxiety. Of course there's a little bit here and there just from having it my whole life, but you know, 95 less than I've had it my whole life and then zero anger. So you know, you have to have, you can't overreact and you can't get emotional. In business, the partners that work out well, the most that I've noticed in the past is the people that don't get emotional. And every day there's going to be a problem. And so it's almost like a, if you, you can relate it to a marriage. Because if you're coming home and you're arguing every day and both of you are overreacting for probably really stupid things, you can't ever move forward and you can't ever make any progress. Business is the same way if you have an emotional business partner and you show up and they're freaking out every day because every day some really bad stuff. It's like a roller coaster every single day. It doesn't matter what business you're in, you have to learn how to deal with the ups and downs and having a, a very logical partner. If you're going to pick somebody to do business with, that's who you need to pick because that's what'll get you through all those bad times. You just sit around and talk about it, try to make the best decision for the bad thing that happened that day or a strategic decision. And it's hard when people are fighting and yelling and you know, treating your employees bad and you know that's one of the biggest things in business is just kind of stay level headed, try to stay calm and just work through problems. I mean it's just problem solving every single day and just trying to make things work out. Because the one thing in business is, it'll probably make you tougher than anything else that you can do in your life. It really will. And it'll just give you a good level head on your shoulders. Because if you overreact every time something happens, guy, you're probably going to have a heart attack. When you're, yeah, 35 years old and.

You'Re not gonna have the capacity to build anything great.

Not over a long period of time.

Yeah, because when you're dealing with tons of people and employees and vendors and money coming in and out and market fluctuations and everything that you can't control. Like I think that emotional intelligence and your capacity to control your emotions is the most, number one most important thing in being successful in anything in life, whether business, relationship, health, wellness. I mean, I think so many people and we're not taught emotional intelligence in school or anything. And actually I would love to dive into that a little bit about the school system. I know I talk a lot with Robert Kiyosaki about it. And you, you have an issue with the public school system as well?

Yeah, it's pretty much a joke. You know, definitely this day and age is so outdated, so bad, you know, and even a lot, even for a long time now it has been, but now more than ever, I mean the world is advanced so much. The technology is so crazy, the access to information is so great. Like there is zero need for the way they teach kids and either, you know, even, you know, past junior high, high school, college for sure. You know, I definitely think there needs to be a complete overhaul. You know, I'll, I'll probably pay my kid not to go to college if he's somehow has some itch to go do it. Um, you know, I'm gonna pull him outta school. He was a little bit of a late talker, so I left him in for a couple extra years. He's probably gonna go till about the first grade, uh, and then I'll pull him out and, and develop my own curriculum for Him. Um, all you need is basic reading, writing, math, and then really, communication is number one. Uh, which was always my weakest point. Um, you know, I always joke with Gentry. If I was like, if I would have had your communication skills, just naturally I would have been a billionaire by the time I was 30. But still the same person I am, but with those skills. So I have to work really hard at it. But, you know, basic reading, writing, math, communication, sales, which is kind of communication, too, really. And learning how to negotiate with people, how to buy and sell something super important for almost any individual in the educational process. Basic finance, basic the way money works. You know, interest rates and all that stuff. Very basic version of that. And then, like you said, emotional intelligence is really the only thing you need to be successful. And so I'm gonna build a program for him that will give him all those tools. I hope he'll be entrepreneur, but if he's not, it's not a big deal. With all those tools, he'll be successful. And no matter what kind of path he's gonna end up taking, like, he'll. He'll crush it. And so, you know, not everybody has to be entrepreneur. Doesn't. I'm. I'm not saying I. I kind of think you will, you know, giving all those tools to him, because then he's gonna probably have a different outlook on life than you would have. If you went to school and just sat in class and then got out from high school and was like, I don't really know what I want to do. The reason kids don't know what they want to do is because they have zero skills. Like, imagine, like, if. If you have no skills, you don't. You're not going to have. And you have to solve what you. Or pick what you're going to do for the rest of your life. How are you going to pick? That's why everybody's so lost when they're 18. It's like, I don't know what to do, and my friends are just partying. I guess I'll go do that. I guess it's an excuse for me to kind of hang out and for a couple years and, like, you kind of give yourself that excuse. But I think if kids were taught the right things, like, you know, even since junior high and, you know, even before, you know, hopefully. But, you know, if it was junior high and high school, I think they have a really good idea what they wanted to do in life or a way better idea. Instead of going from not knowing at all. I think you'd probably have a 90% chance of like, really, like, I'm really good at this. I really like doing this type of work or giving them all those skills really, really young will help them to decide what path they want to take.

Yeah.

And so that's what I'm going to do for my son. And you know, long term goal for, you know, the social media stuff and the, the podcast was to, you know, hopefully I can disrupt that system someday, um, you know, down the road, probably be a long time, but, you know, you definitely need some influence to do that for sure.

So, yeah, I mean, that was me. I was lost in school and I didn't have entrepreneurial parents or anything like that. So it was whatever the counselor said, oh, you could be a policeman or an engineer or a biologist or a veterinarian or a teacher, like, whatever. And so it was, what job can you go get? And if I would have been thinking like, okay, what business can I go build or run or whatever, it would have been a game changer. And honestly, I wish I, I don't regret anything, but if I could have focused on business instead of focusing in engineering school, I probably would have advanced a lot faster.

Yeah, I, you know, it's hard to regret stuff because a lot of, a lot of things happen to make you who you are today. Right. And so I always think about that, but, you know, I do if, if there's somebody out there that's young, you know, the partying thing and the waste in your life thing, that is probably the biggest regret I have. But I think I went through it for a reason. You know, I definitely have a passion of wanting to help, you know, definitely men that are, you know, 15 to 18 because you're just so lost, you know, so hopefully I can do that one day too, just because, you know, I feel like I can help them because I know how that feels. And honestly, the kids that are bad and doing, you know, stuff that's probably not normal, that society thinks and ADHD and all this other stuff, they're probably going to make the best, they're probably going to kill it in life once they just get their life on track. And so super, you know, that is a passion of mine. Hopefully that'll happen one day too. Kind of goes back to the whole online education piece, so hopefully that'll be a future project. Um, because I definitely, I think I went through that because one day I'd be able to help those kids. Uh, it's definitely a waste of time. Waste of life. I didn't learn any other lessons from that other than wasting my life and not. I shouldn't have done that to waste those years for sure.

What's one belief that you had to let go of in your life that in order to get to where you've gotten?

Um, well, to get to where I'm at now, it's the. The belief of not doing every. Like, having to do everything yourself again. Your entrepreneur and you start a company and you think it's like you're. It is. It's your baby. You've built it, you worked on it every day. You're working 18 hours, and it's hard to give things up. And it's like, I can do all this myself. I can manage 66 houses. I can do this. I'm a genius like you. You just, like, trick yourself into thinking you can you do all this stuff because you had a little bit of success. Like, I'm like, every house I, you know, touch turns to gold. And like, in my back of my mind, I'm like, I could do anything. But you get really stuck at a point, really stressed out, really burned out, and you don't get to focus on the things you probably started the business for, the things you love to do. So that was one belief I had to let go. I can't do everything myself that I had for a long time, you know, just trying to force myself to. Trying to, you know, convince myself I could. Definitely had to let that go to achieve what I've achieved, you know, at this point in my life, 43 years old, and all the stuff I'm doing now. Yeah.

And you guys decided to have kids later in life and to build your company. And your. Your wife is a boss babe, too, and has a cosmetic Gentry cosmetic line, which I have her makeup on right now.

So.

But yeah, so what, like, influenced that? Are you glad you made that decision? And. And you also, which I love that you guys actually gave me this idea because I was always afraid of one having kids when I was busy building my businesses or sacrificing my life, because I love my freedom and I want to do all these things. And I know a kid's a massive commitment, and I don't want to resent my child like my parents, you know, I felt like my parents kind of did. Did me at times. And. And then you. And then she decided. Or you both decided on your second child to. To use a surrogate instead of. So, like, what was that experience like on. On those decision. Those big, big decisions that you've Made. And are you glad that you did both of those things?

We are. You know, we did. We were. When I met Gentry, she goes, if you want kids, I'm not the girl for you. And I go, well, I don't really want kids right now. In the back of my mind, I'm like, she probably will when she gets older. Like, we were 26, and so I wanted. I was focused on building my business. There is no way I wanted to get at that time, because I, again, I did want to be a good father. And I would have been really torn because I love business so much. And it might have been one or the other at the time, because it is really hard when you're young. Not as much money. You know, you're trying to support a kid. You're trying to still work 16 hours a day. Like, I. I don't see how I could have done it. And, you know, hats off to people that. That are able to manage that. But I'm happy that we waited till later in life. Number one, I think that I'm at the best point in my life to be able to actually raise a son. You know, when I was 20, I was still figuring a bunch of stuff out, and so, like, I couldn't have taught him all the things that I can teach him now. And, you know, luckily we were getting older. We were 35, and we go. She goes, hey, we should go freeze embryos, because, you know, I know you want to have kids one day. Like, I didn't want to. I knew I would regret when I got to 60, building all this stuff, not having kids. Like, so I knew that that would happen one day, but I also didn't want them. At that time, we were still, like, just building everything. And she was getting to the point, too. She's like, was her idea. She goes, let's go. Just. Might as well just go freeze embryos so we don't, like, miss out if we. Down the road, if we don't do it. I'm like, I'm all for it. I'm like, okay. So we go to the IVF clinic. We. Did you do egg retrieval. So kind of messes up the girl. I mean, it's. It's very hard on the girl because you're, like, pumping them full of hormones. Yeah. So makes them overproduce eggs. They pull those eggs out, and of course, they mix them, fertilize them with a sperm, and then they grow them to about day seven, eight. I don't remember the exact. And then they genetically test Them. So they would pull out any, like, chromosome disorders, anything that would naturally miscarry. And then they also test the sex. So boys and girls. So we did one round of that. We got two boy and a girl and we put. She goes, why are we gonna wait? We did all this, like, might as well put one in. And I'm like, okay, so it's like, no problem. Um, we put the boy and the girl in. They started growing and then one had a heartbeat and then one didn't. So heart beats up six days later, they're like, oh, it's kind of slowing down. So the first two, she has a miscarriage. Um, and, you know, kind of mess her up because you're like, pump full of hormones. Miscarriage, like the mental part of it. Yeah, kind of mess her up a little bit. But anyways, we like, hey, let's go do two or more egg retrievals. The IVF clinic said if you do em back to back, you usually get better results. Um, and also we only got two. So it's like, if we wanna have enough. If it. There's a chance that they don't work, we wanna do it a couple times. And so we did the second one. Um, we only got two more and we're like, golly, that's. It's like we're gonna. We might not have any on the last one. And only six fertilized on the last. The third time. But all six were good. So from the first two, it was like very low results. And then for some reason that last time it was like all six. So we ended up with two boys and five girls.

Geez.

That were, you know, genetically tested viable. And then she was like, well, let's just put one in this time. Maybe it was the two that did it. And they don't recommend doing that in ivf just because twins are a lot more high risk and there's just so many more problems. So we put a boy in and then that one stuck and had our son, Liam.

Wow.

Yeah. And so he's five and a half years old now. I think when he was about four years old is when we're like, we need to hurry up and have another one. And of course, she's 40, you know, two now. She's like, probably can't. I mean, the results would probably be really bad if we tried to use our embryos on her. And she didn't want to mess up her body again, didn't want to do a bunch of hormones. So we, you know, chose to have a surrogate and we found an agency, they found a person. It took about six months, by the way. There's like a shortage of surrogates. And we just thought, you're gonna walk in and like, you open this book and you're like, oh, we like her, we like her. They actually pick you. There's big time wait list. And I don't remember the reason the first surrogate picked us. She was a little older. She was 35, you know, for. I guess it's considered geriatric when you're giving like past 35 or something. But anyways, she was great. So we go, we do the first transfer. It didn't work out. We do the second transfer. She had another miscarriage or it didn't stick. One of the two. And then she said, she emailed us and said, hey, you know, I'm probably not going to do another one. My doctor says have some medical issues too. So we're like, okay, we don't want to use any more if it's not going to work anyways. The agency found the second person worked the first time. And so she had our daughter, which is Lila, which was an amazing experience. Gentry was actually loved her faster than she loved our son because the first time she was hormones, pain medication, just all whacked out. And she just didn't have that like bond initially. And it took her months and months and months before she bonded with our son. Like, like she thought she was supposed to.

Yeah.

And then our daughter, she's like right out of the gate, she was just super excited, did the nursery like. And then, because I think she was just in a good mental place and she just showed up and we picked her up and it's like we never had a surrogate. It was weird. And so now she's gonna have another one for us. So in August of 2025 is when the doctors will clear her. So we have two girls left, so we'll see what happens.

That's so exciting.

Yeah. So we. And now when you see your kids, you go, I can't just leave two like frozen. What do you like?

Yeah.

So I think we're going to try to have two. Two more. The odds of both of them working, based on our past experience, you know, maybe we think one will work for sure, but if we have two, then we'd have four kids. It'll be a circus for sure.

Science is amazing.

It is, yeah.

It's incredible. I mean, I'm sure, but I would.

Recommend that to people only because you never know. So if they're frozen. You can use them one day. They're not, they just stay frozen. Yeah. So we definitely, it helped us a lot. Great experience and we're super happy we did it.

That's awesome. I love that. I definitely, I know I think about that because I've always been a no kids, no marriage, no anything person, but.

That'S how we, that's how we were too. Definitely had that feeling and you know, we probably would have been just as happy, I guess. I don't know because you don't, you know, don't know what you're missing if you don't ever have them. But you know, looking back at, you know, especially after you've achieved a bunch of things and you get to this high level and you know, at some point it's like you kind of want somebody to either pass, you know, knowledge onto, not necessarily the businesses and it's just been great. It's great to have a family. They're just so great to come home to. And my son's personality is a little bit more like Gentry's, which is good because I'm sure he'll be super outgoing and super extrovert and a good salesman and like, so he's kind of, he sounds, seems to be following in her footsteps for sure.

Yeah.

So it'll be cool.

That's cool. And it'll be cool to see what the, what your little girl's like.

Yeah, it'll be awesome. It's exciting. I don't have a lot of girls in my family, so it's super new to me. Never had any sisters, didn't really have any.

Gentry's a boss babe.

Honestly, I think I'd probably be a little too soft on her. Gentry won't. So it'll be a good, it'll be good to have her around. Having a little girl. Gentry will crack the whip for sure. Cool.

Well, I know we're, we're about to wrap up here, but just want to ask a few follow up, like quick round questions. So if you could give one piece of advice to your 18 year old self, what would it be and why?

I think I just hit on that. Don't waste your life. Partying is drinking, partying, drugs, hanging around the wrong people. Biggest waste of time you could ever have in your entire life for anybody. Girl, guy, whether you're 16, 17, 18, 19, like going through that phase, you will regret it and you will not achieve what you could be achieving and may never do it. Some people don't ever get off that path. Yeah. So I would recommend, I would go back and tell myself, don't be stupid, you know, don't make stupid decisions. It's not worth it and it's not going to get you anywhere. There's like, there's no, there was zero benefit. I didn't learn any lessons. I learned like from, it was just, it was just a stupid time in my life. And that's what I would tell my 18 year old self for sure.

What advice would you give to someone striving to balance building immense wealth with maintaining a healthy and balanced life?

Exercise. 100%. That's, you have to start there. I actually exercise now, I think more for mental health than physical health. You know, it does make me feel good, I do have more energy, but literally if I don't work out, like I feel like I'm off and I'm not as sharp and I, you know, my mental health is definitely suffering. So, you know, exercise, you know, definitely healthy diet, because all that is still going to affect your mental health too. And when you're running businesses trying to achieve a high level of success, you have to have all the energy and mental toughness that you can. So I'd definitely start there for sure. And I think goes back to the people thing. I think when you can get a business or a portfolio or anything in your life that you're trying to do to a certain point and you have the margin to go hire these key people, I would do that immediately to leave a balanced life. And you know, I love it. But it's funny because you start making more money and you're not, I wouldn't say doing less work, you're just not doing all the, like the busy work that you, you think all that stuff is like, oh, I'm working hard, I'm 18 hours. But you're like doing all this stuff and it's not, not producing any results, not massive results. And so if you can get out of that mindset, you know, I guess now what I consider to balance life is, you know, having all those key people having good health, you know, having a bunch of energy, having a great family. Those are the things I think that, you know, probably matter the most to live a good life and you know, have that balance for sure.

So how do you define true wealth and how has that definition changed over time as your success has grown?

I think it goes back to exactly the same thing I just said. True wealth is, you know, definitely, you know, money. You know, people think you're afraid to say it, but you know, money allows you to do a lot of things allows you to have a lot of freedom, allows you to do what you enjoy doing. And I enjoy building more businesses, so I spend a lot of my money on that. Most of it, I enjoy real estate, and I do that. But I think, you know, wealth to me is, you know, definitely financially secure to do whatever you want to do, have the freedom to do what you want to do. Being healthy, because there's a lot of people, especially when you get my age, you start knowing people that are dying, you start knowing people that are having really, really bad health issues. And so it really hits home. And so being healthy your whole life, you know, it's, you know, when you get older, it's not the end of your life when you're 60. My grandparents, that's what happened to them. They retired, sat on the couch, and just like, slowly deteriorated. And you don't have to do that anymore. And so I think wealth is, you know, you know, financial security with the freedom to do what you want to do and then health and then just always trying to grow as a person and learn because, you know, whether it's husband or friend or business owner, all those things are just going to make you a better person. So I think all those together, the continuous personal growth, the health and, you know, financial freedom is definitely my version of wealth, for sure.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Sean. I appreciate you and I'm so glad to know you. And Gentry, and then what's the best way for people to get a hold of you?

We have a podcast called Success Formula, the official Success formula. Mine, yep. Is the handle on almost all platforms. Mine is official Sean lynch on almost all platforms. And Gentry's is Gentry Kelly. Gentry Kelly Cosmetics. So definitely follow the podcast. It is about a lot of things that we talked about today. Health, success, business, and real estate. So cool.

Thanks, Sean.

All right, thank you.